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[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What is the sensation I get in between my eyes on my forehead when I hold something like a pen or my finger close to it? What causes it?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "This is a more scientific answer than it sounds: it's all in your head.\nTry having a friend hold a pen there randomly half of the time. You guess when it's there, the more you guess the closer to chance you should get."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Warhammer 40,000] Could any of the Chaos gods touch upon my fascination with Xenos?\n\nI'm a member of the Ordo Xenos.\n\nI'm fascinated by Xenos, and I will never pass up an opportunity to learn more about the myriad of species that the galaxy has to offer. Their biology, culture and society, technology, weaknesses and battle strategies...\n\nIf I ever get a chance to see one - alive or dead - in the flesh, I take it.\n\nIt's my greatest obsession. I get the feeling that some of my fellows are unsettled by my enthusiasm, but I'm good at my work and have helped in the capture and extermination of several species, so they don't say anything.\n\nHowever, I've heard stories that such obsessions can be an opening for the Ruinous Powers to worm their ways in. Is there any way for my interest in Xenos study to open my heart to Chaos? Are there any warning signs that I should notice in myself so that I might not stray from the Emperor's light?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Sounds like the taint of Tzeench to me, you filthy heretic. Lust for knowledge is his forte, as is fascination with the new and different. And what xeno could compare in sheer novelty and amazement with a change demon? This quest for knowledge will drive you to madness and ruination, unless you return to the safe and bland fold of the imperium."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why are electromagnetic railguns not used to launch rockets into space?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Because then it wouldn't be a rocket, it would be a bullet.\n\nBut seriously, many people have considered this approach and put together designs to do just that. The biggest barrier to their implementation is that with a railgun you need to impart all the kinetic energy into the payload before it reaches the end of the \"barrel,\" whereas with a traditional rocket you can spread that acceleration over the entire flight.\n\nIn practical terms this means you either need cargo that can survive hundreds or thousands of Gs and a relatively short barrel gun (not to mention incredible heating from friction once out of the evacuated barrel), or you need an incredibly long barrel and can then transport more delicate cargo/humans. Unfortunately the lengths of barrel you need essentially take you all the way into space (tens to hundreds of kilometers).\n\nAs of right now, even though rocket launches might cost hundreds of times more per kg of cargo, they are still the easiest and best understood method for putting stuff up into space."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: If a mosquito sticks his \"needle\" into someone with AIDS, then into someone who doesn't have AIDS, why doesn't the second person not get AIDS as well?\n\nWouldn't it be almost identical to sharing a needle with someone who has AIDS? Other blood-based diseases spread with Mosquito bites, so why not this one?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Very few blood-based diseases spread via mosquito bites. The main one is of course malaria, but the malaria parasite is an organism that actually needs to be inside mosquitoes (as well as inside humans) to live.\n\nHIV, the virus which causes AIDS, cannot live for long outside of a human body. What's more, mosquito bites aren't really like an injection from a doctor -- that they're not putting anything *into* the bloodstream, rather they're taking blood out of you."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "CMV: Celebrities and politicians that believe in climate change should adopt extreme lifestyle changes and donate bulk of their $ to the cause.\n\n(I actually do believe in climate change, FYI). Many mega-rich celebrities and politicians love to talk about climate change, but most of these same people seem to make little to no significant change in their personal lifestyle or use their considerable resources to effect change.\n\nOf course, there are many ways to cause change (influence, governmental, private industry) - it just seems very hypocritical for these people to say they want to \"save the world\" and then jet off to their 4th vacation house. I am sure there are a few examples of individuals who have committed to the cause, and while that is great I wonder why it does not happen en masse.\n\nFrom my perspective, if you truly believe in something then you should follow through with it. If you do not - then it makes it hard for me to believe that these same people actually believe and/or care. The politicians I can see doing it for votes, so the celebrities stick out to me more.\n\nI am hoping someone can provide an argument that helps me understand why I should give any of these people my time/attention if they are just spouting words without any real action.\n\nEDIT: Adjusting to specify \"mega-rich\". My argument is not about making everyone do this, it is about those people who could dedicate 80-90% of their resources without impacting their day-to-day lifestyle.\n\nEDIT 2: I also want to state that systematic change (e.g., government, private industry) is needed, this post is just not focused on that part of the equation."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "> if you truly believe in something then you should follow through with it \n\nI think your main flaw here is that you think \"following through\" on believing in climate change means making drastic individual changes, when in reality climate change is not that kind of issue, and raising awareness of the systematic issues behind the main problem will probably be making a much larger impact anyway."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "CMV:Buying one, and only one, lotto ticket is a worthwhile venture\n\nHave had this conversation with a couple of friends and my partner, and I wanted to know if my reasoning is flawed. I believe that the lotto is, a.) in general, a tax on poor people, b.) of an infinitesimally tiny chance of winning, and c.) a tremendous waste of money.\n\nAll that applies above, but with the caveat of saying, '...except for buying one ticket'.\n\nBecause your chances of winning are so absurdly low, and you almost certainly will not win, so buying more than one ticket makes no sense whatsoever. Having said that, if you buy zero tickets, you have no chance at all of winning. \n\nOne ticket (infrequently bought, say, once a year) buys you in for the possibility that you might win. You won't, but you might. It's like qualification, and, at the cost of $1.00 (or whatever small monetary amount), it's a small price to pay for the chance. That seems like a worthwhile purchase to me.\n\nThis, of course, does not take into account all the possible consequences of actually winning the lottery. \n\n**EDIT**: Thought I'd catch everyone up with where I'm at following all your wonderful responses (which I really appreciate!). To summarize, the major arguments I'm hearing are, plus my thoughts:\n\n* *From a traditional economic standpoint, the numbers don't work out.* This I'll accept. I know nothing of statistics or economics, so I'll buy that (for a dollar). \n\n* *From a behaviorial economic standpoint, it might make sense to get a lotto ticket, as the potential improvement to one's life makes it worth the small loss of the investment.* I do believe this. The possibility of making enough money to serve me for the rest of my life definitely seems worth blowing a buck every now and again.\n\n* *Playing the lottery is not worthwhile, because it is inherently bad for society (evil), i.e. the effects it has on the poor, and so on.* So far, this is the closest opinion to get toward changing my view (not quite there yet, folks). In this case, even winning is participating in an evil, and thus not worthwhile. \n\nOn the last point, I feel like I can't call this done yet, because my original question has to do with winning money rather than judging the system. I concede that it's stupid statistically to think you will win by putting in a dollar. But, again, I haven't seen anything yet to convince me that I *absolutely cannot* win by putting myself on the board with one dollar. Whereas I certainly will *not* win by not buying a ticket. \n\n**EDIT 2** Thought I'd address the \"entertainment value\" argument--I think it's a good one, but I think it's outside of the point I was going for, which is that having a ticket qualifies you to win money--which would be why I would buy a ticket.\n\n**EDIT 3** I've been swayed a bit by the arguments that playing the lotto is inherently evil, and, as such, not worthwhile, and the notion that buying an infinitesimal chance is virtually as worthless as not buying into the system at all. I'll admit, I'm not *totally* swayed, but I thought we were at the Delta awarding point. Thanks everybody for your great discussion!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": ">One ticket (infrequently bought, say, once a year) buys you in for the possibility that you might win. You won't, but you might. It's like qualification, and, at the cost of $1.00 (or whatever small monetary amount), it's a small price to pay for the chance. That seems like a worthwhile purchase to me.\n\nYou can actually do the math to see what is the expected value of return, and regardless of how many you buy, except zero, you are losing money. The chance to win you get from buying $1, is not worth $1."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What does an economy of scale mean in a tv show sense?\n\nI was reading the Black Mirror Wikipedia page when it said “The series was expensive for Channel 4, as the anthology format meant there were no economies of scale.” I looked up what an economy of scale meant and the video made sense in the context of making bread, but how does it apply to a show? I guess it means the higher budget of the show should mean it makes more profit, but how does an anthology not apply to that? Is it because the episodes aren’t continuous and don’t build up to some bigger thing?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If you take a long running TV show like, say Game of Thrones, although it may be hugely expensive in terms of building sets, designing special effects and employing actors and crew, you get eight seasons worth of show for your investment - hence you have economies of scale in production of a lot of shows with the same set up.\nIn an anthology show like Black Mirror, because every story is different, you need to start from scratch with new sets, cast and effects. Each investment is a one off which has to pay for itself from only one show."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Why does (did) static on TV look like that white snow?\n\nBack in the days before streaming, if there was no signal, TV would be a dynamically changing, usually black and white, blank image. How did the lack of signal translate from the antenna/cable input into that image? (And why was it called \"static\" if it wasn't actually static--not changing--anyway?)"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "When you tune any receiver to any particular frequency, it's going to pull in the strongest signal. Older analog TVs would show the station when it was close enough, but the farther away the source, the lower the signal strength. If that signal couldn't overcome other signals on that frequency, including the cosmic background noise (radio bursts, microwave background noise, etc...) then the electron gun that shoots the signal at the phosphors on the CRT screen will fire with that background noise. Thus, it looks like 'static'.\n\nThe same thing happens with digital TV, but you end up with bars and skips due to list data instead of a fuzzy signal. And, you don't get static because there is no data signal for the receiver in the digital tuner to lock in on."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Eli5. Why do you only get dandruff on your scalp and not anywhere else? What causes flakes to happen\n\nSince your scalp is just skin like everywhere else like your arms etc why do we get dandruff up there, since it’s just skin, why does your scalp that gets all those flakes?\n\n\nThis is a stupid question, please no hate. I have autism and perseverate, wonder about weird things and I don’t always comprehend well. :)"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You do get dandruff everywhere on your body (I believe you shed all your skin every two weeks or so). The reason we seem to see more dandruff on our heads is because the skin gets trapped by your hair."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "How are telescopes and space observatories arranged at the L2 Lagrangian point so they do not interfere with each other?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Spacecraft placed at a Lagrangian point are not literally parked at that singular point in space. In reality, they are placed in orbits with the L-point at their center. \n\nFor example, the JWST will orbit L2 at a distance of about 800000 km (500000 mi). There is plenty of room. The L2 region is essentially empty space."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Would it be possible to jump off of Ganymede?\n\nFriends were playing the CCG \"Wars\" and debating whether the dinosaur creatures could simply leap off of Ganymede rather than needing a spaceship. I am not smart enough to answer this query I hope that reddit can help."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Gravity on Ganymede is about 15% of that on Earth, only a little less than the Moon. Escape velocity is 2,741 meters per second, so, like the Moon, you'd need a small rocket to escape.\n\nDeimos, Mars' smallest moon only has surface gravity of 0.003 m/s^2 (as opposed to Earth's 9.81), which gives it an escape velocity of 5.5 meters per second, or about 20 km/h. Kameson Konz recorded a 46\" vertical jump at an NFL pro day, which means he left the ground with a velocity of about 4.78 m/s. Not quite enough to escape Deimos, but enough to have him in a suborbital freefall for 53 minutes."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Marvel] How and why were Black Widow and Hawkeye selected to be on a team with superpowered beings such as the Hulk, Thor and Captain America and Tony Stark's armor? Aren't they hopelessly out of their league?\n\nEven in the movie, Scarlett Johansson's only role was ass and character development for Hawkeye, and Hawkeye's only role was shooting shit with fancy arrows, while the other hero's did the ass-kicking and name-taking. So why were they even considered, let alone selected, for the Avengers Initiative?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Hawkeye and Blackwidow were not part of the Avengers Initiative. They are shield agents who were assisting those members of the Initiative that accepted the call to assist when the asgardian attacked."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Harry Potter] Which of the professors could take on the Basilisk and win?\n\nThat is after we exclude Dumbledore (away at the moment) and Snape (who would have to maintain his cover)."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I think Flitwick or McGonagall could do it if they knew what they were up against. *Maybe* Sprout too, we never see her do much spell casting, but one would expect a head of house to be pretty skilled. On the other hand, she deals mostly with plants."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "CMV: I believe the Collegeboard is a scam\n\n As I said in the title, I believe the Collegeboard is a scam. The reason I say that is because they are slowly taking over the US educational system. Public schools are paying the Collegeboard for having AP® courses in their schools. Some schools pay for students taking test, as it will make the school look good. People use the amount of AP® courses in order to determine how good a school is. It also shows the amount of income inequality, as schools with a lot of money have more AP® courses than ones without. I believe that instead of schools having AP® courses and making students take a stupid test, schools should offer dual credit courses, which would offer both college and high school credit and teachers would have a broader curriculum.\n\n\nThe SAT is the same story. Instead of using that test, universities should make their own test, and the students that are interested in taking the test or want to go to the university would take and the test would determine If the student is qualified for that ONE university they want to join.\n\nI see it inside the school I attend how it has been affected. I hope we, as people, can change it.\n\nEdit: added the last part and I wrote this on mobile, so sorry for not knowing where to put the disclaimer."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If Choate and Municipal High both offer dual credit courses, MIT isn't about to give college credit for both of those. It knows that Choate has a good dual credit course, so it might accept Choate's course. But Municipal High's \"dual credit\" course might not be at that level. Right now, MIT can say that an AP course at Municipal High with a score of 5 counts for college credit. But without the AP test, what tells MIT that Municipal High's \"dual credit\" course is at a college level?\n\nRegarding the SAT, the main issue is that having to take twenty tests to get into twenty schools would be a serious cost (in $ and time) for the applicants. This wouldn't matter too much for rich kids, but it would be a severe handicap for poorer students."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: How do bodies of water exist above ground?\n\nHow come bodies of water (lakes, rivers, wetlands, oceans even...) exist above ground instead of the water simply being absorbed by the earth?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "1) They *do* sink into the ground. Eventually it'll hit an *impermeable* layer of dense bedrock that the water can't go through. The ground will become saturated and no more water can drain down.\n\n2) The ground slows the water down: imagine a cup with small holes in it. The water will drain out, but as long as water goes *in* faster than it drains, the water level will stay elevated.\n\n3) Some kinds of soil are less permeable to water, like clay. Rock, obviously, doesn't allow water to sink through very easily.\n\n4) Water that drains through the soil will eventually either sink into an aquifer or get forced back up from pressure and form a spring."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What textbook or general interest book would you recommend for people with an interest in your field?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Dan Ariely's *Predictably Irrational* and *The Upside of Irrationality* for general interest books. Anderson's *Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications* and Baron's *Thinking and Deciding* for textbooks."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi - does that mean the true psi of my car tire is the difference of the tire pressure from the atmospheric pressure?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Normal tire pressure is 30-33 psi. We describe that as \"Gauge\" pressure. The \"Absolute\" pressure would be 30-33 + 14.7 psi, which is the pressure in the tire and the pressure of the atmosphere.\n\nTherefore the pressure in the tire is 44.7-47.7 psi (a)"
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5 why the US has in interest in keeping drugs illegal in other countries.\n\nI see it a lot. I know it has to do with trade agreements and whatnot, but what does the US stand to gain from something like pressuring a harm reduction heroin clinic in Europe to be closed?\n\nEdit: fucked up the title, first in should be an."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If those drugs that the American government doesn't want Americans to use become more available anywhere in the world, they will also become more available in America, since it will be easier for people to obtain them in other countries and then smuggle them into the US. The concern about a harm reduction heroin clinic in Europe is somewhat hard to justify, but even so, any tolerance of drug use by anybody anywhere for any reason is conceived (by the anti-drug establishment) to create a bad precedent which will eventually lead to mass, out of control drug use by American school children."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[General/The Fermi Paradox]What would a \"predator civilization\" look like?\n\nOne of the proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox is that other civilizations don't broadcast their existence for fear of \"predator civilizations\".\n\nWhat would such a civilization look like? Just a conquering empire, like we've seen on Earth, or something more alien? The empires of Earth have generally made a lot of \"noise\"."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Realistically? Without a form of FTL, a \"predator\" civilization would almost have to rely on mass production of Von Neumann machines — self-replicating machines with the sole mission of exterminating life they encounter. They would 'seed' the stars with thousands, millions, or billions of these machines.\n\nUpon arrival of these robots in a stellar system, they'd scan for any signs of intelligent or technological life (radio transmissions, etc), then camp out in the far reaches of whatever solar system. Depending on the technology available to these machines, the best bet would be to create a sufficient number of dense probes/machines/rocks at some fraction of the speed of light. They would then ram those projectiles into the planet, killing all life.\n\nAfter that? The machines would use the materials from the solar system to produce even more machines and begin the hunt anew.\n\nWithout FTL, there's zero hope of peaceful contact between different alien civilizations (and the risk of hostile first contact is too high). Too much can change in the hundreds of years it takes to send and receive a simple message. The safest bet is the immediate and total annihilation of all alien life, performed with self-replicating machines that require no communication with their makers.\n\nSpace is too big and life is (probably) too rare to make fighting over resources or territory meaningful. Given that space is infinite, if there's even a 0.001% that first contact would end poorly, it goes without saying that immediate, silent, and preferably anonymous xenocide is the safest option for alien civilizations. Kill them all, because the risk that you're wrong is simply too high."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[The Matrix]Does the limitation that no physical mass can reach the speed of light exist in the Matrix Universe? Did the Machines simply put that into the Matrix so that the humans don't leave the planet which would require additional processing power?\n\nI don't mean the actual Matrix. I mean in the real world. In the real world outside of the Matrix, in The Matrix movies."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Probably not.\n\nThey wouldn't need to mess with physics to keep humans on earth - the Matrix is set in the 90s, and there's no way humans develop to the point they can leave the solar system before the Matrix gets rebooted anyway.\n\nThe speed of light is actually pretty intimately tied to a lot of things - it's an essential part of the equations for relativistic space distortion that is the reason gold is gold-colored, and non reactive. If there were no speed of light, stars would be rainbow-colored streaks rather than dots. You'd have to fabricate all of human history and a whole lot of day-to-day details to cover up a change there."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Is the form of a galaxy influenced by the black hole in its middle?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "There are many things that determine the morphology of a galaxy, one of them being the black hole at its core. There is a well known relationship between the mass of the black hole and the mass of a galactic bulge- namely a spherical conglomeration of stars in the middle of the Galaxy. Black hole mass is correlated with other aspects of the Galaxy too besides the bulge mass, namely the luminosity (and velocity dispersion but never mind). \n\nFurthermore the black hole can also feed off nearby gas and grow. In the process of ingesting ambient material, the black hole can cause massive outflows of super hot relativistic gas - like a fountain - basically spraying plasma into the universe. This gas can heat the environment well beyond the Galaxy disc to millions of degrees inhibiting the future condensation of gas into stars. The effect of black hole heating can be to suppress the formation of new stars meaning that the Galaxy will appear older and redder lacking young newly formed young blue stars. Although this process (known as \"feedback\") can be short in duration, the effect can be dramatic and cause what's know as an active galactic nucleus or even quasars."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Star Trek] What are the transporter's limits?\n\nThroughout the various shows, films, and shorts, the transporter is often shown as being capeable of transporting people of various races, and objects of various sizes. This process is often explained as breaking something down to it's atomic structure, and then reassembling said structure in another location.\n\nWhat I'm curious to find out (if people more knowledgeable about Star Trek have any idea), is does it have set limits? Like if I wanted to transport an entire planet, and all the people on it, could I do it if I had suficcient power to do so? And if I could do it, how far could I transport it? \n\nI'm assuming that there are some limits, otherwise why couldn't Voyager simply get transported closer to home?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "There are several limits:\n\n* Range: You can beam down to a planet from orbit, but you can't beam across a star system.\n* Size: Something needs to be small enough to fit on a transporter pad. \"Site to site\" transports without a pad are a bit of a misnomer, they're actually 2 different transports where they first beam you to a pad, then to sickbay or wheverever you need to go.\n* Power: Transporters take a lot of power. Transporting a handful of personnel here and there is nothing to a starship, but transporting a lot of stuff begins to strain their power.\n* Cooldown: It actually takes the transporter some time to charge up between transports. We never see this because it's \"precharged\" when they step on the pad, but if they need to transport two sets of people it takes a while for the transporter to recharge. Transporters are super fast for a small group but if transporting a large number of people or a large volume of cargo shuttles are actually faster.\n* Warp speed: Transporting to and from ships moving at warp is not technically impossible but *very* different. Even Montgomery Scott, one of the most brilliant engineers in Starfleet, had trouble with it."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: How are we able to hear more than 1 sound at the same time?\n\nHow can I hear two sounds at the same time when my eardrum can vibrate at only 1 frequency at a time? How can my brain decipher that 1 frequency into its component sounds?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Because we aren't just able to pick up one frequency at a time as such. All the frequencies mix together ( as it's all moving air) and it produces sort of a frequency that keeps changing rapidly and that's what makes up the sound we hear."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Is it possible for a terrestrial, life-sustaining planet to have rings?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I don't see why not although it would make sustaining life much harder as ring particles and materials would periodically hit the surface of the planet. Additionally a terrestrial planet would have a much smaller gravitational force than say a gas giant planet, which would mean that the actual rings would be smaller and less visible."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: How can it be profitable for AliExpress merchants to sell and ship an item across the world, for just $1\n\nIt blows my mind why anyone would do it, when you gotta factor in order processing, delivery to couriers, the shipping services, etc."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Think of it as there is this container already planned to go your city, on a specific date, from the shores of South China. It is booked on every ship, train & lorry it needs to get there. The company merely puts your extra item in the container."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5 - What makes someone a morning person? And the same with night owls? Is there a scientific explanation behind being one or the other or is it simply a lifestyle choice?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The scientific concept is 'circadian rhythm' - basically you have an inner clock that gives you a sense for the time of day. Unfortunately for most people, the inner clock is not set to 24 hours exactly.\n\nIf you have a short circadian rhythm, you are likely a morning person because your subjective days are shorter and don't require that much sleep - on the other hand a long evening will feel wrong for you much quicker.\n\nWith a longer circadian rhythm you are likely an evening person. Your rhythm demands a longer night than reality can provide, so you will rise late and/or fight drowsiness. You can go much longer in the evenings though because in your rhythm barely a part of the day has passed."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Half Life]So what happens after humanity beats the Combine?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Well, after the Combine Citadel was destroyed, they had no means of retreating or calling in reinforcements. This put them into a corner, which was further reinforced when the portal storm was shut down by the Black Mesa satellite network.\n\nWe don't know how many Combine there are, nor how distributed their forces are across the globe. However, I'd say it's safe to say that humanity has a fighting chance (the slug-things might be a challenge, but the Vortigaunts are adept at handling them, it seems).\n\nWhat we have, after the Combine are defeated and purged from the world, is a very post-apocalyptic scenario. The Combine were in charge of food distribution, which is now gone. They were also in the process of terraforming Earth when they were defeated, and atmospheric conditions have changed for the worse due to it.\n\nFurther, the chaos of the initial Black Mesa Event led to alien flora and fauna spreading across the world - many of the planet's native species are extinct and replaced with Xenlike ecosystems, such as the headcrab and antlion (and Antlions are prodigious tunnelers and will not be killed easily, as witnessed during the chain of events leading to the collapse of the portal storm).\n\nWe also have to deal with restoring crumbling infrastructure: The Combine were using cities as ghettoes (evidenced by the *only* population outside City 17 being rebel cells), and did the bare minimum to keep humans alive so as to recruit them into their own ranks. Much work will need to be done to restore cities to properly working order.\n\nYou also have the issue of predation. With the animal repulsion systems down for the count, antlions and headcrabs can now swarm the cities left standing. A coherent military presence will be required to keep people safe from marauding headcrabs, zombies, antlions, and more. The Vortigaunts might be able to help on this front.\n\nSo, to conclude:\n\n* Food distribution is down for the count\n\n* There's crumbling infrastructure everywhere\n\n* There's no coherent military with enough force to repel threats\n\n* There's a global mass extinction in progress due to Xen fauna\n\n* The planet itself is less liveable due to Combine terraforming\n\n* Humanity is not connected - no means of city-city communication\n\nI'd say humanity survives, but with millions if not billions dying as we revert to an agrarian subsistence civilization within walls to keep out headcrabs and the like. Rebuilding might take 1-200 years, and the planet will never be cleaned of Xen animals, leading to massive ecological changes. Isolated regions with energy, such as Aperture Labs (Chell might've popped out in a wheat field tended to by a nearby civilization) and the Black Mesa laboratory, as well as anywhere near hydro plants will become the new centers of civilization as people flock to these most developed areas. Kleiner and Freeman would likely become teachers for the next generation in an attempt to preserve as much knowledge as possible."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5 If diamonds and other gemstones can be lab created, and indistinguishable from their naturally mined counterparts, why are we still paying so much for these jewelry stones?\n\nEDIT: Holy cow!!! Didn’t expect my question to blow up with so many helpful answers. Thank you to everyone for taking the time to respond and comment. I’ve learned A LOT from the responses and we will now be considering moissanite options. My question came about because we wanted to replace stone for my wife’s pendant necklace. After reading some of the responses together, she’s turned off on the idea of diamonds altogether. Thank you also to those who gave awards. It’s truly appreciated!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Marketing and monopoly. Diamonds are not unique or rare on this planet. The DeBeers corporation has a long standing monopoly, and an incredible marketing campaign stressing that you should spend 2 months salary on a ring if you really love your future wife. \n\nTruth be told, lab grown diamonds are so perfect at this point, that DeBeers is spending millions trying to figure out how to tell the difference."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Borderlands] Do all these gun companies have specific models? Could you buy two of the same gun?\n\nAll of the guns in Borderlands are so diverse and all over the place, do the companies just spam out random firearms or do they have specific models? How does that shit work?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "In fact, each company has a strict set of design philosophies, models, and styles that no other company can replicate. Mostly because of legal issues, but also the fact that one company can always send a battlefleet to the HQ of another and bomb them to the stone age if they try. \n\nHowever, the insane/genius (insaneous? genane?) denizens of Pandora, as well as collectors and inventors all over the galaxies, have figured out ways to digistruct the patented components of different companies and fuse them together into weird and totally-not-spec combinations that may or may not be more powerful than other guns. \n\nMister Torgue High Five Flexington is a prime example of this pioneering spirit. He built his entire fortune by taking a Jakobs firearm and attaching dynamite to it until he figured out how to make his own guns that shot EXPLOSIONS. *guitar riff*"
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Bitcoin's supply limit\n\nIf one can purchase fractional bitcoins, then how exactly is bitcoin supply-constrained?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ten apples are ten apples, even if you can in theory slice them into an infinite amount of slices.\n\nJust taking smaller parts doesn't change the amount that exists.\n\nOr, let's say for the sake of making an example that the total number of bitcoins that exist right now is 2. Can you buy 3 bitcoins? No, you can't. Because they are supply constrained, there simply are only so many in existence. In principle, it doesn't make any difference whatsoever that you can also buy 0.5 bitcoin, or 0.00000000001 bitcoin. Slicing them into smaller pieces doesn't suddenly enable you to buy 3 bitcoin if only 2 exist."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5 Why PS2 emulation is harder than Wii emulation."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "the PS2 runs the \"emotion engine\" which is 8 processing units that run simultaneously. trying to emulate 8 processors in software is a lot harder than emulating the processing power of the wii, which was designed more like a computer."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Is it possible to compute your latitude and longitude based on your surroundings like the sun, the moon and the stars?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Latitude can be calculated from the stars. More particularly, the angle at which you see the northern star gives you an indication how far north you are (works only on northern hemissphere).\n\nLongitude cannot be calculated without a precise clock, because any indicator west or east of you, rotates as earth rotates (and additionally depends on the time of year).\n\nWith a clock and some time you could also determine you longitude by observing the sun."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Why do some small engines (like my lawnmower) take 100% gasoline while others (like my weed whacked) require a special mix for fuel?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "2 stroke engines require gasoline-oil mixture\n\n4 stroke engines do not.\n\nThe reason is that 2 stroke engines are much simpler such that the oil mixed in the gas will reach all the important parts that need lubrication. \n\nA 4 stroke engine is much more complex. Oil needs to get places that a gas/oil mixture would never reach. So they design an oil system to manage that."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Writing a Book for Public Consumption\n\nDoes anyone have experience in writing a book on their field for the masses? I wish to do so for my field to better inform them in a short book but I don't know how the process works. My best guess would be I have to sell the publisher on the idea and then give them a rough draft and rework it til they accept it. Kind of like a paper. Any advice would be much appreciated. Also any suggestions for publishers that might be interested in the idea would be very helpful. Wetlands if it matters."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I work in publishing. Happy to answer any questions. Generally speaking, you send a proposal following their guidelines for submission (usually on their website), and then if they're interested, they'll invite a chapter or the whole manuscript and review it. If it's an academic publisher, the review is likely external by your peers, but if it's a commercial or non-profit, non-academic publisher, the review might just be in house. If the reviews are favorable, you can expect to receive a contract. The best fit publisher for you depends on how much control you want over the project, how much funding you can get to publish if relevant, whether you want to use the book for your tenure file, and your target audience."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: why does 3G use so much battery life on my phone while wifi barely uses any."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Like you're 5: The phone's wifi is talking to your wifi router, which is in your house. So it can just talk to it without using much energy. But the 3G system is on some telecoms tower that might be miles and miles away, so your phone has to yell really loudly to talk to it, which uses a lot of energy."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[General] Through some magical fuckery, I die very publicly, am confirmed dead, and insurance money is paid to my family. One month later I am very publicly resurrected and yay it's a miracle. The question is, does my family get to keep the insurance money or do they have to pay it back?\n\nEdit: Let's say I come back 1 month after benefits are received."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Hopefully you had a really good policy, because most of it would go to legal battles. Life insurance is (barring bureaucracy) paid out when you're legally dead which in this case you are. But after you come back, you wouldn't be issued a returned-to-life certificate, your death certificate would be rescinded. You would no longer be considered dead. You'd need a hell of a lawyer to convince a judge you should keep the money."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[The Mandalorian] Is the whole rule about never taking your helmet off something only Din’s clan does or was it a new rule created for all Mandalorians ?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "His clan is more orthodox than others. There may be more clans like his that follow the rule, but it’s not culture wide. (Well, presuming there are many of the others left out there)\n\nEdit: probably should have led with this tbh but it’s actually stated in a current book that came out recently. *The Star Wars Book*."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Doctor Who] When the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors are disabled, the humans inside collapse in horror at what they've become. What would happen if one such human thought becoming a badass cyborg were pretty frickin' sweet?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I believe there are a few examples of people being committed enough to duty and honor that they were able to take constructive action post-conversion and post-inhibitor failure. Though it was less \"yay, dope metal body\" and more fighting through the pain and terror on raw gumption.\n\nYou see, the act of becoming a Cyberman is profoundly traumatic; a live, typically conscious human is quite brutally disassembled and then rebuilt into a mind-controlled monster. When the inhibitor goes off, they deal with all of that trauma, plus whatever horrid stuff they were made to do while a Cyberman, plus the horrid body dysphoria of having a human brain in a cyborg frame.\n\nFor someone to experience all that and go \"woot\", they would have to be quite seriously disturbed. So, such a person would likely be a villain in the making. A heavily armed and armored nutcase, a walking tank with a defective pilot. Depending on how canny they are, they could either wind up an impossibly brutal spree killer or an ever- present specter over human civilization."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Why, despite having a majority on both house and senate, President Obama had such a hard time passing legislation\n\nI know the issue had something to do with the GOP's power, or threat of, fillibuster, but if I am not wrong, the GOP never really used this all that much. Many thanks in advanced for putting this in plain words and providing sources if possible."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Two main reasons:\n\n1) No party will have a solid 60 person majority; the country is too divided. Even if you have 60 \"D\" or \"R\" senators, a decent amount of those are going to be moderates that won't always fall in line with their party. This is because a few of these people will be D's in places that usually elect R's or vice-versa. Thus, they have to show they aren't a shill for their party. \n\n2) There was only a 60 Dem majority in the Senate for roughly 2 weeks. Remember, it took months for Al Franken to get sworn in (due to the recount), and Ted Kennedy was incapacitated just a little later. Then, Scott Brown (R) was elected to take his seat.\n\n\nWere there things the Obama Administration could have done differently to pass more stuff? Yes. No one, however, expected the R opposition to be as lock step as it was, particularly in regards to bills that R's themselves were trying to pass just a few months earlier. It was quite literally unprecedented. But as they say, hindsight is 20/20."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "AskScientists - what is the significance of Watson's performance on Jeopardy? Is this a man on the moon moment for AI, or a gimmick?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If it is a man on the moon moment is debatable. The major significance of Watson's performance is the natural language understanding, and information search related to that. To most, it will not seem like anything, but then again, we have been living in the world and learning language for years. Computers don't have this ability. \n\nWatson needs to first understand the category of the question, and then in that context parse the question to get an idea of what it is asking. It doesn't seem like much to us, its a baked in ability to the human mind. For a computer to do this is quite a feat, and a very hard problem to solve."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why is it that when you dig a hole and put some water in it it disappears, but it doesn’t do the same with ponds?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It does do that with ponds. If you keep filling your hole with water, you will eventually saturate the soil in the area and it will start to fill. Just like when it rains and doesn’t flood, the total amount of water matters. If there is a long dry period the pond will dry up, and hosing the area down will have the same result as your small hole until it enough water is present to saturate the soil again."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Are there any \"solved\" topics in philosophy?\n\nOkay. So, first, folks do forgive me if my post contains erroneous misassumptions regarding philosophy. I don't know much about it, but my (possibly wrong) impression of the field is that it's very, well, diverse. Lots of different viewpoints regarding different problems and questions - so not really \"objectively\" definable in, say, the way science can prove the speed of light is equivalent to 299 792 458 meters/second, or that humans generally take nine months to give birth. \n\nAre there any philosophical topics that were once the rage of the party - debated fiercely, to the death, perhaps - that are now settled, solved questions. Of course, I suppose that calls into question whether you can \"solve\" a topic in any concrete sense.\n\n To define it more simply, so, if we assume we can't \"solve\" something - say, what about an supermajority-type agreed consensus on a topic that was once, say, fiercly split or contested? (I suppose, as much as there can be an agreed consensus in philosophy...)"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "A pretty endless list of questions in Political Philosophy no longer have any defenders on one side of the question. Should we have an absolute monarchy, should we practise the institution of slavery, should women have the same rights as men, should our society be dominated by aristocrats etc. etc."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why did mammals lose the ability to lay eggs?\n\nI wonder why all mammals, (except monotremes) lost the ability to law eggs. What was the evolutionary benefit?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Technically we still have eggs, they're just not eggs in the same sense as what we see with reptiles or birds.\n\nThink about it this way: fish have eggs and fish fertilise externally by ejecting both sperm and eggs into the water where they can interact. The young then develop in \"eggs\" in the ocean. Mammal reproduction is essentially the same, the main difference being that we live outside water and so must replicate a water environment for our sex cells to interact with, thus the reason why land animals have sex.\nWith reptiles and their distant relatives the birds, they lay their eggs externally with the offspring and food stored within a protective shell. Mammals on the other hand allow the young to develop internally, so they don't need a protective coat and do not have eggs similar to that of chicken eggs.\n\nTo answer you inquiry on evolutionary benefits, developing inside the mother can mean better protection for the developing young, especially if the animal lives in a social hierarchy. The other major benefit is that there is a constant, potentially unlimited source of food available to the offspring - offspring that develop outside the body are provided with a limited food source which is limited by the size of the egg. It's thanks to the benefits of internal foetuses that humans have evolved to be as intelligent as they have, because we weren't nutritionally limited by things like egg size."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Can you feed a bird so that it gets too fat to fly? Or would it die from health complications before it ever reached that point?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I remember hearing at a lecture about birds given by a guy who runs a conservation that some types of vultures will eat until they can't fly because they don't find meals that often, and will just walk on the ground until a predator appears, in which case they will vomit in its face to distract/blind it, thus lowering their weight and letting them fly again."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Star Trek] Are there any other races in the Klingon and Romulan empires? If not, how is this possible given the large scale of both empires?\n\nThe Federation has at least well over 100 member worlds [sources vary, but it's at least 150 worlds in the TNG era], and we commonly see many different species from all across the Federation. \n\nThe Romulan and Klingon empires are smaller than the Federation, with maps of different sources varying to a great degree. However, both empires are within an order of magnitude of the size of the Federation. Where are the other species in those empires? Why are they never shown? \n\nAnd if there are no other species within the Romulan and Klingon empires, how is this possible given their relative sizes?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Remans are part of the Romulan Empire. Kriosans are a part of the Klingon Empire. The reason you don't see a lot of the \"client races\" of those Empires is because they are not allowed to serve on their starships alongside Romulans or Klingons."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "When somethings travels at 99.9999...% the speed of light, does only it contract in length, or does the entire universe experience the same length contraction from its perspective?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "From an outside observer, the moving object is length contracted, and the moving object's clock ticks slower. From the perspective of the object, the Universe is length contracted and everyone else's clock ticks slower."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Eli5:why is it that when a clear item(like clear wrappers)is crumpled it turns white?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "A clear substance becomes white when tiny cracks, localized crystalline structures or other impurities are introduced due to strain.\n\nThe white look is due to the same dynamics that make clouds and seafoam look white. That is, the scattering features involved are the same or bigger than the wavelengths of light and so reflect them all similarly. When you get smaller particles you see color-selective scattering, and you get sunsets and blue skies!"
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Scooby Doo] How CAN I get away with it, now that those meddling kids have arrived in town?\n\nHello all. Old Man Whithers here. \n\nAfter thirty years of thankless work of scraping by as a street sweeper in my small town, I've decided to enact a sure-fire scheme to finally get myself a retirement fund so I can get out of this depressing place and live by the beach. My plan involves dressing up as a menacing ghost from local folk tales and scaring people off valuable land that I will then buy for pennies to the dollar before selling it off at full price to out-of-towners who don't believe in our local ghost. Brilliant, eh? I bet nobody's ever thought of that one before! \n\nAnd it was going great, but now there's this new bunch of kids that arrived in town and they're looking into my whole ghost thing. Normally I wouldn't be worried, but these ones are giving me bad vibes. One of them (I'm not even sure which one, but probably the stoner) is doing some sort of constant ventriloquism act that they all play along with by pretending that their dog can talk. They're weirding me out, and I want them gone.\n\nSo what's the best way of getting rid of these guys? I can't just stop my ghost act, otherwise people might realise that there was a living person behind it who got scared off. Ghost don't run away, after all. And I don't want to kill or badly hurt any of them - I'm trying to scare people off, not murder them. I'm okay with swinging a sword around to make them think they'll be murdered if they don't run, I just don't want to do any actual knife-in-body stabbing. So what do I do to get rid of these meddling kids? \n\nI should list my resources. I have access to some glowing paint that looks very unearthly, a sword (as part of my ghost cavalry officer disguise), and a really well put together rope/pulley system that's quick to set up anywhere and is pretty much invisible to the naked eye at night (it helps me look like I'm floating/flying). I also know all of the ins-and-outs of the local rickety abandoned mansion, including its long hall full of doors which face each other, if that helps."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I think I've seen these kids driving down the freeway, and at a few rest stops.\n\nI say the best bet is to give them something else to worry about than you. It is definitely animal abuse to be hotboxing that poor dog, and he *never* has a proper leash. A report to the right authority should have them heading for less restrictive hills."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Would it be possible to use gravity as an energy source?\n\nIf you could \"capture\" the pull of gravity somehow, could you use it as a power source?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "we already do it. \n\nHydro electric power. \n\nWe use different level of water to make some kind of waterfall and put a turbine under the falling water.\n \nHydroelectricity is the term referring to electricity generated by hydropower; the production of electrical power through the use of the gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable energy, accounting for 16 percent of global electricity generation – 3,427 terawatt-hours of electricity production in 2010,[1] and is expected to increase about 3.1% each year for the next 25 years."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why do accents disappear when people sing?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "singing is different from speaking because it uses sustained sounds. this changes the way we pronounce words because its drawn out, and it also changes the way the audience hears the words we sing because it exposes every little part of each syllable. \n\ngood vocal technique is very focused on vowel shape and diction (consonants) in order to get a full, rich, mature sound and be clearly understood. interestingly, vowel shape and diction are also a big part of what differentiates regional accents. singers who use good technique will naturally start to drop some of the hallmarks of their regional accent as they focus on using warm, open vowels and clear, crisp consonants. \n\nI should also note that singers who are not classically trained do not focus on these techniques as much. This is why many singers in pop, country, rock, folk, and so on sing just like they talk."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why do people deny the holocaust?\n\nIs there any credibility at all in the denials?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Back in the 1930s and 1940s, there were no easy way of telling how exactly many people lived in any one place, and wars, as you might know are very destructive things that make good record keeping even more difficult. People that are called \"Holocaust deniers\" are people that question the generally accepted belief that 6 million people of the Jewish faith were killed on purpose by the Nazis. \n\n\nSome of these people could be called \"Holocaust information skeptics\" or \"Holocaust fact revisionists\" because they are not denying that the Nazis intentionally killed as many Jews as they could find, but they are using information that they have found to try and revise the number of people killed. However, because this is a VERY personal subject to many people, it isn't easy to separate emotional feelings, and many people who are simply trying to help are called the same label as the few crazy people who say that the Holocaust didn't happen at all. The vast majority of people accept that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and there is nothing wrong with accepting that as a decent estimate, but we have to realize that it is just an estimate, there could have been more or there could have been less. \n\nNow some of these people claims that the Nazis DIDNT kill as many Jews as they could find. These people are crazy, and you should not accept a ride home from school with any of them, as they are likely dangerous drivers as well."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "CMV: People who are Pro-Life or Anti-Abortion (specifically those who oppose abortion at any stage) have an obligation to adopt at least one child.\n\n**Note:** *I do not want to argue on whether a fetus should be considered a human or at what stage a fetus is considered alive and has the right to life.*\n\n\nHow many children are brought into this world to parents who are in no way capable of handling the responsibility of raising them to successful adults? How many of these parents decided against abortion solely because of the stigma attached to it and the shame thrown at them by pro-lifers?\n\nThere are half a million children in need of loving homes in foster care or available for adoption. Yet I never see any pro-lifers protesting for a better foster care system or standing up and adopting the children that are brought into this world unwanted."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "A person's belief that something is wrong is not and cannot be grounds to obligate them to fix it. \n\nIf someone is against ISIL, it is not their moral duty to go to the Middle East and fight ISIL directly. If you start to apply this standard life quickly becomes impossible for everyone; there are simply too many problems for everyone to actively try to correct everything with which they disagree."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Why can't saltwater fish survive in fresh water?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Simply put, saltwater and freshwater fish have different systems for maintaining the right amount of water in their bodies. Think about salt, if you sprinkle it on a slug it makes the slug dry out, killing it. The same thing would happen to a freshwater fish if you plonked it in the middle of the sea. saltwater fish deal with this by clinging onto urea in their bodies. Urea is normally something we want to excrete because it's a waste product that gets produced by the detoxification of ammonia. Too much of even urea in your blood is very bad for you, let alone the deadly ammonia. However, saltwater fish are specially adapted to deal with this. \n\nLet me explain something called 'water potential'. When you have something dissolved in water (a solute dissolved in a solution), we say that the water potential has been 'lowered'. The more that is dissolved, the lower the water potential. Water tends to move from an area of low to high water potential until it is balanced in both areas. The water actually moves both ways (its called a dynamic equilibrium) but eventually ends up with an equal concentration in both areas because of the random movements of the water molecules (the concentration of the solution = number of solute molecules per volume of water so larger volume of water needed for more solute).\n\nBy having urea in their cells, the water potential of the cells is roughly the same as the water potential outside the cells (caused by salt in the salt water) so no water movement occurs. hence, water does not gush out of the cells and leave the fish all dried up and dead. \n\nFreshwater is 'purer' so has a higher water potential meaning that water would move into the fish cells, making them burst. Some fish can survive both environments due to different biochemistries but properly saltwater animals like sharks (excluding the bull shark) have this urea retention mechanism."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why is there a distinction between the sounds of voices in humans (Females have higher tone, males lower) but not in other animals, like dogs.\n\nAlso, what animals (if any) have distinction between their voices for male and female."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Let's say you have two dogs. They are brother and sister. When they were puppies their voices were pretty high pitched because they had small throats. As they got older their throats started to get bigger so their voices got deeper. Now the brother, let's call him Spot, has a special part of his body that makes chemicals that would normally make his voice get even deeper than his sister's as he gets older. Unfortunately this body part also makes Spot angry and causes him to hump your mother's leg. Because of this your parents cut that part of him off when he was a puppy. Because that part of Spot is no longer there to make those chemicals his voice ends up developing the same way as his sister's and so they sound the same."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Why do random little moments that I haven't though about for years, pop into my head at seemingly random moments?\n\nLike, not even embarrassing moments. I'll be sitting at my desk, and suddenly remember being in a carpark with my friend 15 years ago.."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You know how you can often see or smell something, and it triggers an easily recalled memory associated with it? The easiest way to understand involuntary memory recall is that its exactly the same as any other memory. It is triggered by something.\n\nThe difference is you are not aware of what the trigger is. Unlike thingsi n the environment triggering memories, with this its other memories triggering the memories. Usually a chain of memories set off by some mundane process, in just the right way so as to trigger recall. But because you don't know what the specific thoughts are that triggered it, it seems random."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "How effective are microwaves at sterilizing objects?\n\nLet's say I drop a slice of apple on the ground. It is now covered in germs. I have always assumed i could throw it in the microwave oven for a few seconds, and that would instantly kill any bacteria on it. \n\nAm i right? Does microwaving an object sterilize it?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Microwaves can sterilize by heat - the radiation isn't at a toxic wavelength (i.e., doesn't pack enough energy) to kill most organisms. Microwave sterilization time would vary by the amount of moisture in the food, and wouldn't work to clean macroscopic dirt particles from food."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5 how come in shows when a plane door opens up, everyone gets sucked into it?\n\nIdk how accurate it is, but whenever a plane door opens in a show or a movie, it’s like some sort of gravity vortex gets activated and everyone is trying not to get pulled into it. What gives?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "At high altitudes, the air pressure and density are extremely low, making it hard for people to breathe. Passenger planes pressurized the cabin to be of a pressure equivalentish to earth’s surface. This means that the air pressure win the cabin is constantly pushing outward. If a large hole is made, all the air will rush out, and will likely push unsecured objects or people out with it. Luckily it’s essentially impossible to open a cabin door at high altitudes, because even if it were unlocked, the door opens inward, which means the internal pressure will keep the door closed. But when for example the plane becomes damaged a large enough hole might exist and suck things and people out."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5:How come shrimps are pale and semi-translucent when raw, but when cooked are turned red?\n\nThis goes for lobsters and crabs, as well."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It's a pigment called Astaxanthin! It's red, and is present in the shells of those crustaceans, as well as in fish like Trout and Salmon, which is why those fish are reddish-pink as well. As for why Crustaceans don't turn red until you cook them, that's because in their shells Astaxanthin is bound up in other proteins. When you cook them, the heat begins to denature these proteins and the released Astaxanthin suddenly becomes apparent."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Yu-gi-oh / Marvel] Would Seto Kaiba and Tony Stark respect each other in a business meeting? What would their conversation be like? Both their companies used to make weapons that affected people's lives and both have egos."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Tony is willing to put aside his ego and every personal concern when it comes to others. For example, he literally sent his suit of armor away and onto Pepper when he thought it would protect her more.\n\nKaiba is just not capable of that level of thought, consideration and operation."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Why is it that when my tv remote \"dies\", I can pull a battery out, put the same one back in, and it suddenly works again?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The battery contacts and the contacts in the remote control corrode very slightly due to the electricity flowing through the connection. When you move the batteries (you can just roll them in place for the same effect) you clean the contact points slightly and allow better electrical flow. The batteries are still probably close to death due to the time they have been in use, but 'exercising' those contact points gains you a little more battery life."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "CMV: Trophy hunting is unethical and should be internationally banned.\n\nThe hunting of animals for the main purpose of collecting trophies is a practice that causes massive amounts of damage to ecosystems, drives our most beautiful animals to extinction and is unethical not only on this basis, but on the fact that it is needless murder of a sentient being.\n\nThis applies particularly to African big game such as lions, giraffes, rhino (whoops too late), elephants etc but also to any animal hunted purely for sport.\n\nA law that made each participating nation able to prosecute its citizens even if they went to a non-participating country to hunt would be the most effective way to deal with this.\n\nMost of the hunters hunting big game are rich westerners, if they were able to be brought up on charges when they returned home with trophies or with pictures of them hunting lions etc splashed across their social media, it would give many a pause for thought. Outlawing ivory was a similar step but hasn't done enough.\n\nFor those who will suggest that hunting is a major economic factor in some places: the fact that it makes someone money is simply not a good enough reason to allow anything unethical. Plus, people who run hunting tours could switch to other forms of income like safaris etc and they would if the flow of hunters dried up.\n\nFor those who suggest it's a suitable conservation method: a) the most valuable (both in monetary value and prestige) big game hunted for sport are often endangered species.\n\nB) you can control populations of other non endangered big game with means that don't glorify the killing of animals for sport.\n\nI want to clarify that hunting for food and resources is something else entirely and I have no real issue with it if it's a necessity.\n\nIs there any valid case for allowing trophy hunting that I am missing?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ill start by saying by saying i hate people who hunt for trophies, how much of a bitch do you have to be to be lead out and shot another animal like that. Im not even a fan of killing animals for food.\n\nThat being said, from a consequentialist point of view trophy hunting can be seen as a net good, because the main danger to a lot of these animals isnt trophy hunting, its poachers. And if it is set up to insentivise the protection of animals from the poachers so that a small amount can be sold off at a premium price for trophy hunting then the animals will survive.\n\nThe biggest success of this was in Namibia and south Africa where the Rhino population skyrocketed after they started using trophy hunting. The trophy hunting money also goes towards funding conservation and locals, and the meat of the animals can go towards feeding locals.\n\nIts not pretty, but making it illegal will result in the extinction of animals, because otherwise people in Africa have bigger problems to deal with than the extinction of wild animals."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5 What are skin tags and why do we get them?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "A skin tag is actually a benign tumor that usually forms where skin creases, like the neck or armpit, and sometimes the eyelids. They are almost always harmless. They're very common (moreso in women than men), and thought to be formed by skin rubbing on skin, but the exact cause is unknown. \n\nThey're safe to leave and safe to have removed - they don't grow back. Be sure to consult a dermatologist for advice."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: How some restaurants make a lot of recipes super quick?\n\nHi all,\n\nI was always wondering how some restaurants make food. Recently for example I was to family small restaurant that had many different soups, meals, pasta etc and all came within 10 min or max 15.\n\nHow do they make so many different recipes quick?\n\n- would it be possible to use some of their techniques so cooking at home is efficient and fast? (for example, for me it takes like 1 hour to make such soup)\n\nThank you!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The kitchen is always running, starting from the morning to after closing, even when the restaurant has not yet opened. There's a lot of prep work that happens out of sight. The chefs do everything short of actually cooking most food in order to save time when orders come in. Long lead items like soup stocks get started in this time."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[MCU] Are there any people that are skeptical of Wakanda's power?\n\nIs it likely that crazy people in the MCU would think that Wakanda simply cannot be as powerful as it is? \n\nAnd what other conspiracy theories would people have regarding Wakanda?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Literally everybody was skeptical of Wakanda's power because until 5 years ago the idea that Wakanda was anything more than a few poor farmers was a closely-guarded secret.\n\nAfter that it was plainly impossible to deny-- they landed a spaceship in the middle of Oakland."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Are the terms big government and small government used in social science?\n\nThese terms get thrown around a lot in politics, but are they useful in academia? I've been thinking about it and they seem kinda ill defined. Like, a medieval monarchy is theoretically big government because the king has complete authority over the lives and property of his subjects. But in practice he can't even perform simple bureaucratic tasks that more permissive modern democracies take for granted like collecting income taxes. Is there an agreed upon definition for these words in academia?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "No, because they don't mean anything. You're correct that they're vaguely defined amorphous terms. There's no point in using a term in political science if it's only going to obscure your point. \n\nAnd beyond that, academic writing on political and economic systems doesn't lend itself to such overt and meaningless pejoratives, **using a term that vague and politicized would be about as appropriate as writing a Biology paper about the moral failures of abortion.** \n\nIf a freshman year undergrad used the term \"big government\" in an assignment, they'd lose points. You can comment on what the priorities and aims of that state are (e.g., to what level the state provides welfare programs, what portion of GDP is government spending, etc., etc.), but there's little functional use to a vague term like \"big government\""
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Why don't transgender people simply get counseling on their feelings and learn to accept their bodies as they are, rather than getting life altering surgery to fix their mental state?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The explanation I've been given is that being transgender is like having a mismatch between your OS and your hardware. Your brain continues to create error messages like \"ESTROGEN LEVELS LOW!\" or \"Pinging Vagina - ERROR VAGINA NOT FOUND.\" Counseling can help some people deal with the dysphoria, but in many cases we've found it is better to actually treat the physical problem with hormones and surgery.\n\nTo keep the analogy going, changing the hardware is easier than trying to patch or rewrite the OS.\n\nThere are scientific studies that strongly suggest that transgendered people legitimately have different brain chemistry than cisgendered people, and that their concerns are medically legitimate. To not treat them would be dickish."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5 why do muscles spasm or twitch?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Your muscles are like electric motors. They are controlled by nerves, which are just like an electric cord you see attached to your living room lamp. \n\nSometimes the chemicals in your body are not balanced well, especially your potassium and salt. Too much salty food or too much sweating can cause this problem. Other times your body needs to repair or replace a cell in your nerves. They do grow old and die sometimes. \n\nIn each of these situations, the electrical signal that normally goes from your brain to your muscle is being interrupted. Just like if you were to unplug your lamp and wiggle the tip of the cord in the electric socket, the same interruption is happening somewhere in your nerve. This makes the lamp flicker the same way your muscles \"flicker\" on and off. \n\nA \"loose connection\" in your nerve causes \"sparks\" to travel down to the end. The sparks cause the muscle to twitch or spasm. \nUntil your body repairs the loose connection, or balances your chemicals in that section of your nerve, you can expect to continue to have the unwanted movement."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[DC] How would Lex Luthor take it if someone else took down Superman?\n\nWe know Joker considers batman \"his\" and gets very unhappy when someone kills Batman without him. Does Lex Luthor have the same relationship with Superman?\n\nIf some random thug who stumbled onto some kryptonite killed superman, would Lex's reaction be more \"finally that alien is gone\" or \"how dare you deprive me of finally beating the alien?\" or somewhere inbetween?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Publically he'd make sure that the hood was arrested and sent away. Then he'd make sure the guy had a nice cell and plenty of conjugal visits.\n\nPrivately he'd be planning his next move, either a hit on Wonder Woman or stealing Green Lantern's power ring.\n\n[btw, considering that Lex's greatest power is his indominable will, has he ever gotten a power ring? Any color?]"
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Marvel] What if Black Bolt stubs his toe?\n\nJust imagine one Monday morning Black Bolt wakes up with a terrible hangover from the weekend and is all groggy and hasn't had his cup of coffee yet when he **nails** the bedroom door with his little toe. Does he have like a charm or something on him to prevent sudden outbursts like this? Or is his pain tolerance/self-control REALLY high? Or does Attilan just get leveled?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "A single tear might escape his eye, and his wife might bolt out of bed from the intensity of his emotion, but other than that, naught but silence.\n\nHis default mental state is simply to not ever utter a sound. Where you make noise as a matter of nature, he does not. It may not even occur to him to make noise because of a surprise or sudden pain.\n\nRemember, the weak willed don't even make it out of Terrigenesis. Only the strong survive to even become Inhuman."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: What is the Illuminati and what is the big deal surrounding them?\n\nI've googled this but none of the answers are making sense to me. Can someone help me out?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Illuminati, contrary to the current top comment, are not a fictional group of people. Whether they still exist today is debatable, but they were at one point a very real, and semi-secretive group of men (lead by Adam Weishaupt) who formed an order of sorts with the stated intent of bringing \"Illumination\" to the world through the control of corporation and government, with the eventual goal being the formation of a one world government.\n\nThey thought of themselves as enlightened thinkers - free from the rigid control of the Catholic Church and for this they earned themselves the reputation of being evil.\n\nAnything you hear about the Illuminati beyond this is theory - some of which can be substantiated, most of which cannot. Considering the revelations that we've been privy to the past few months, courtesy of Edward Snowden; I'd say just about anything is within the realm of possibility when speaking about shadow organizations who run/manipulate world politics, behind the scenes."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Sabrina - the Netflix version about a teenage witch] With all of history to chose from, why and how did the demons settle on Victorian England Royalty as the preferred style of dress?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Demons and the supernatural typically look down on humans as inferior beings, but sometimes you just gotta respect the drip. Humans do sometimes create some pretty good stuff, that particular clothing style just so happens to be one such example."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[PokemonGo] Why are Pokeballs not re-usable?\n\nI don't get it. I tossed a Pokeball at a Zubat I found in some grass, and missed - but now it's gone forever! I swear I saw exactly where it landed, it couldn't have rolled far..."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Okay, so part of the way a pokeball works is that it actually draws in a pokemon that's thrown at it and creates a temporary pneumatic seal to hold it in. As you can imagine, this is quite energy-intensive, and because the companies that make pokeballs need a source of income, they use proprietary batteries that cannot be changed or recharged except at the factory. Once you prime a pokeball to throw, it's going to expend its charge no matter what you do. (Incidentally, this is why it is important to collect your missed pokeballs after you're done with them and take them in to a recycling center.)\n\nOrdinarily by the time this seal has failed on a successfully caught pokemon, it is no longer necessary, as the Pokemon decides to submit to the skill of its trainer and the comfort of the simulated environment inside the ball."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Star Trek] Whenever Picard is talking to an alien that is having their speech translated, sometimes he'll say something to them in their language as a gesture of respect. Like, to a Klingon: \"Qapla!\". But since the translator is still working, do they have any idea that he knows that word?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "When the crew of *Enterprise-A* hijacked the vessel after \"Operation Retrieve\" was vetoed, they are forced to manually translate a message to get past a Klingon surveillance post, because if they'd used the UT it would have been obvious in some way.\n\nThey don't go into the specifics, but apparently there is some telltale giveaway for the message as a whole.\n\nFor individual words within a message, I'd imagine it's much easier to take note of that with visual communications than one that's audio only. Like when you're watching a dubbed holovid, the mouth and sounds don't line up right. But when they say a word in a language you understand, it kind of jumps out at you."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Waterfalls-TLC] What's wrong with chasing waterfalls? If I miss, I'm still bound to run into a river or a lake that I'm used to."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "While waterfalls are powerful and exciting, they're also dangerous. People underestimate their ferocity, and how quickly the edge comes upon you when you're caught up in the waterfall's tide. You may run into the river or lake that you're used to, but you'll be destroyed by the overwhelming forces along the way."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[SW - Darth Maul: Son Of Dathomir] If Dooku had a change of heart and sided with Talzin and Maul, could they have defeated Palpatine together?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yes. Perhaps not directly, but they could have massively disrupted Palpatine's carefully laid plans. Palpatine's greatest strength (remaining hidden) was also his largest vulnerability at that time. Dooku and Maul together could have robbed Palpatine of the CIS and any underworld resources. This would have forced him to rely on his Republic influence much more strongly and may have disrupted his carefully laid plans, causing a confrontation with the Jedi earlier than planned. This combination of factors could have led to his defeat."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: if the population was down to just a mere handful of humans left how many couples (man and woman) would it take to repopulate the earth without having any inbreeding in order to get numbers back to where they are today?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "There'll always be *some* degree of inbreeding. Even today you might well be distantly related to everyone you meet. \n\nThe issue is one of genetic viability through variety. I've see people estimate the number of *couples* needed to maintain genetic viability could be as low as 32."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Why does my key fob only work for my car?\n\nWhen I press \"unlock\" why does it only unlock my car? Why don't other cars react to my key fob? Are they all on different frequencies or what?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "the very first ones actually had a keypad on them, and you entered a code to unlock it remotely. these days, that's done on the inside. when you press the button, it sends a unique digital identification code through the radio frequency editor that's in there. you were pretty close."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If I brew coffee with twice as much water but the same amount of grounds, how much more (if any) caffeine will be in the resulting pot?\n\nMy intuition says it would contain somewhat more but less than twice as much caffeine. Is that right? Does anyone have a better idea of where in that range you would fall?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It will have almost no effect on the amount of caffeine in the water. Caffeine has a very high solubility in water, especially hot water, so the limiting factor isn't the amount of water used, but the amount of coffee grounds added. Even at room temperature, one cup of coffee with its ~100 mg of caffeine is only around 2% of the saturation level. That's a good thing, because a cup of saturated caffeine solution (5 g of caffeine in 8 oz) is nearly enough to kill you."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Is it possible for an extinct animal to re-evolve into a near-identical form? If so, how does this differ given different scenarios?\n\nHere's some example scenarios that are easy for my small brain to convey, and may be easier for you to understand and answer (if this ends up being too confusing though, just answer the first question in the title): \nContext: \nLet's say an animal called the Chilga and an animal called the Nimra share a recent common ancestor called the Kodor. The imaginary Chilga is a blue flightless bird that excels at catching prey using its long legs and thin sharp beak to sprint towards animals and impale them. \nQuestions: \nThe questions I have for each of the following given scenarios is as follows: \n1. If the Chilga went extinct, is there a possibility that it could re-evolve from genetically similar animals? \n2. If so, is it possible that the Chilga will re-evolve to have identical characteristics to its pre-extinction counterpart? Or will some characteristics be different, such as having green feathers instead of blue, or shorter legs due to an additional joint that allows them to run faster? \nScenarios: \nScenario 1: The Chilga goes extinct. Both the Nimra and Kodor are still thriving in various locations around the world. \nScenario 2: Both the Chilga and the Kodor go extinct. The Nimra is still thriving in various locations around the world. \nScenario 3: Both the Chilga and the Nimra go extinct. The Kodor is still thriving in various locations around the world. \nScenario 4: All three animals, the Chilga, the Nimra, and the Kodor, go extinct."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yes, it's possible. There are environmental niches that tend to be filled by animals with certain characteristics, so a repeat of a similar evolutionary path is not unheard of. One interesting example is that marsupials in Australia evolved to have a lot of similar characteristics that mammals have in other parts of the world as a result of filling similar niches and similar selective pressures."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: What do people mean when they say there are two China's?\n\nI briefly read a comment somewhere on reddit where the person said there where to China's. What did he mean by that?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "There are two countries which claim to be \"China\". There's the \"Republic of China\" (ROC) and the \"People's Republic of China\" (PRC).\n\nThe PRC is the one that actually controls what you'd normally call China. It controls that massive territory in mainland Asia, plus the Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong.\n\nThe ROC only controls Taiwan and a few surrounding islands. Most people would probably just call this country Taiwan rather than China, but officially they claim to be the legitimate government of mainland China too.\n\nThis all happened because before and after WW2 there was a civil war between the Communists and the ruling Nationalists. The Communists managed to take over the mainland and declare it the PRC, and the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. After a while most of the rest of the world decided to accept the PRC as the legitimate government of China, and on paper don't recognise Taiwan as a separate country."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Can economies be expected to grow overall, forever?\n\nSo I know there are periods of growth and a recession every 7 to 10 years give or take. But my question applies to the longer time frame. Can modern economies continue to grow at the rates we've seen forever, or will increases eventually start to taper off? If they're expected to taper off, what implications does this have for say retirement plans because they rely on long term economic growth? I know this would probably be like centuries down the line but it's just an idea I thought was interesting."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": ">Can modern economies continue to grow at the rates we've seen forever, or will increases eventually start to taper off?\n\nI think the answer to this can be boiled down into one simple question: do you think our technology can always keep improving? \n\nSo much of growth literature (and macro literature overall) is focused on the technology level and how exactly it grows. Seminal work from Lucas and Romer in the 80s and 90s is worth taking a look at. But at any rate, let's imagine a super simple scenario where the production in the economy is determined solely by y = A K^x N^(1-x), where K is the capital stock and N is the amount of work put into it. So obviously, there will be an upper limit on N, determined by the number of people who can physically work. Perhaps we even say that there's an upper limit on K, or we're only really interested in a \"steady-state\" K (in other words, changes in growth rates are being driven by capital stock). \n\nThen it just boils down to: how does A change over time? If you think that we can always keep making that bigger (aka make more stuff with less input), then sure, we can always keep growing. If you somehow think that's limited, then real growth could taper off."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[40K: Space Marine] If completed, would the doomsday device have made a difference?\n\nIn the game the inquisition is working on a doomsday device that seems to be capable of instantly killing all Orks on a planet instantaneously. The project never comes to fruition to due to the Okrk invasion, but I can't help but wonder: if the project had been completed and worked as intended, would it have made a difference in the endless threats besieging the Imperium?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Are you kidding?! Orks are probably the single largest threat facing the Imperium, purely because of how insanely numerous they are and how tough it is to eradicate them. Thousands of worlds and trillions of lives have been lost to the green menace and it will only get worse. \n\nThe ability to essentially flip a switch and annihilate the entire ork presence on a planet would be a total game changer. What would take millions of IG several years to accomplish (and not permanently, due to ork spores) can be done overnight without any damage to the planetary infrastructure. \n\nThe amount of manpower and resources that would be freed up to face other threats would be staggering, and could very likely tilt the balance of power firmly in the Imperium's favor."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Does the body store protein for muscle building, like it stores energy as fat for later use? If so, how does it do this?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Amino acids are 'tied up' in protein structures in the body. It should be noted that proteins in the body refer to a wide variety of different biological structures with varying functions - not just components muscle cells themselves. Proteins contribute as structural components, biocatalysts (enzymes), antibodies, hormones, lubricants, carriers etc. All of these may contribute to skeletal muscle protein synthesis in some way. The basic functions of proteins can be divided into: growth (pr synthesis), maintenance (pr turnover), regulation (hormones, acid/base balance, enzymes), energy (contribute to glycogenic or ketogenic processes).\n\nThere are basically three fates for an AA in the body: \n\n1. protein synthesis\n2. as metabolic intermediaries for gluconeogenesis or fatty acid synthesis\n3. carbon skeletons used in energy production\n\nThey can provide a significant percentage of energy requirements - sometimes as high as 50% in high protein diets. Also the BCAAs can be directly used by skeletal muscle as an energy source, and glutamine and alanine by the digestive tract.\n\nThere is a small free amino acid pool located in the intra/extracellular spaces that is not bound up in protein structures. This contributes to around 0.5-1% of the total amino acids in the body and plays a large role in the balance of muscle protein. It is thus in constant flux and can vary significantly. \n\nFor a net increase in protein synthesis in the muscle, you have to have:\n1. increase in rate of synthesis\n2. decrease in rate of breakdown\nor\n3. both\n\nTo rephrase this: Your protein balance is a function of input versus output and this is in a constant state of flux. Muscle tissue is highly plastic and can definitely function as a 'reserve' within the body. Less active muscles actually see more use as a supply of AAs when needed. For example, the amount of leucine oxidised during training can be as much as 25x the amount available in the free AA pool, so endogenous breakdown can be a major source of AAs.\n\nthere are at least four ways cell protein concentration could change:\n\n1. increased transcription\n2. increased translation\n3. decreased rate of mRNA degradation\n4. decreased rate of degradation of the protein\n\nSo the rate of protein synthesis in skeletal muscle taking place during or after exercise depends to a large extent on having a complete complement of precursor AAs. It can also be affected by the availability and efficiency of various enzymes, tRNA, ATP etc.\n\nLong story short, the amount of intracellular AAs can be an indicator of the level of protein synthesis in muscle, but there is no particular 'storage' capability equivalent to glycogen or fat.\n Amino acids are either used in metabolism or to form protein structures with a function beyond simple storage. A very small amount is kept as a free AA pool."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Legend of Korra] what is the fuel sauce used to power vehicles is it petrol/gas as the vehicles have internal combustion engines ?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It almost certainly is gas/petrol. One of the comics that follow up the original series (*North and South*) has oil exploration in the South Pole by a Northern Water Tribe corporation as a subplot. This indicates that gasoline is a thing in the Avatar world, and is presumably used in vehicles."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[ST] If Scotty invented Warp Speed Transportation later in his life, and this is communicated back to a younger him, why in the primary universe, where it was only old Scotty aware, do we not see Warp Beaming in VOY and DS9? Or the TNG Movies?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Probably because it happened after the TNG movies. He was found in suspended animation in TNG. Bones was 137 when the Enterprise D launched. Odds are Scotty would still be alive as well during the Hobus crisis."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: How does a Roth IRA work?\n\nMy brother's been telling me about using a Roth IRA and using mutual funds to become a millionaire. Someone wanna help explain what a Roth IRA is and how it works?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Okay, so first let's talk about what a *security* is. A security is, in the most generic sense, a thing which you buy today for some price $X, and which you sell in the future for some price $Y, with the goal being that Y should be greater than X. It's a simple idea: You buy low, and then you sell high, and you end up making money on the deal.\n\nOne type of security is a *share in a mutual fund.* You know how you can buy shares of stock which give you an ownership stake in a company? Like imagine you own a company that makes widgets. You can divide the ownership of that company up into pieces, called shares, and then give some to yourself and sell the rest. These shares are securities, in the sense that we defined above: They can be bought, held on to for a time, then sold at a different, and ideally higher, price than what was originally paid for them, because in the time between buying and selling the shares became more valuable.\n\nA mutual fund works *kind of* like that. It's basically a pool of money which is used to buy securities, but rather than each member of the pool directly owning some of the securities, the securities are owned by the *fund itself*, and the members of the pool own *shares in the fund.* You might buy a share of a mutual fund which owns shares in the widget company we described above, but then sells those shares and uses the money to buy shares in a different company, one that makes gadgets. When those shares in the gadget company have gained in value a bit, those shares are sold and the money's used to buy shares in yet another company, this one making thingamagigs. And so on, and so on … but you, as a shareholder in the fund, don't need to worry about any of that. All you need to know is that the shares you own in the fund as a whole are accruing value over time through the wise buying and selling of securities on the part of the fund manager, the person responsible for managing the fund's portfolio and increasing its value over time.\n\nOf course, the basic rule of buying and selling assets applies to mutual funds as well: You are not guaranteed to make money. In fact, you aren't even guaranteed to *keep* the money you start out with. It's possible for mutual funds to lose value over time, meaning if you put $10,000 into one right now, a year from now your share of the fund might only be worth $9,000. So why would you put money into a mutual fund rather than just putting it into an interest-bearing deposit account, or buying bonds with it? Because an interest-bearing deposit account or bond investment might, over a year, turn your $10,000 into $10,300 if you get a good rate … while a mutual fund *has a chance* of turning your $10,000 into $12,000 in the same time. There's a chance for bigger returns, balanced by a chance that you might lose value over time. (This is pretty rare, though. Most mutual funds are well-managed, and give you returns that are *at least* somewhat better than what you could get from risk-free investing over the same period of time.)\n\nNow the question becomes, how do you go about buying shares in a mutual fund? Well, the most obvious way is just to walk into the office of some mutual fund someplace and write them a check. But when you do this, you need to know two things. First, the money you use to buy the shares of that fund has *already been taxed.* If you earned $30,000 last year and paid $10,000 of it in taxes, the $20,000 you have left is all you have to buy shares of the fund with.\n\nThe other thing to know is that in the future, when you cash out of the mutual fund, *you're going to be taxed again* on the *profits* you made from your investment. The rate at which those profits are taxed depends on how long you stayed in the fund and how much you made when you got out, but the point is the government is going to take a cut.\n\nThe way around this is to structure your investment as a Roth IRA. IRA stands for \"individual retirement account\", and a Roth IRA is a type of IRA (named for the guy in the Senate who sponsored the law that created it). The virtue of structuring your investment as a Roth IRA is that if you follow certain rules, you can get *out* of having to pay taxes on the profit the investment pays you. These rules are pretty complicated, and involve contribution limits — a limit to how much you can put into your investment every year — and seasoning times — how long you have to leave the money in the investment before you can take it out. But as long as you work within those rules, a Roth IRA backed by a well-managed mutual fund can be a really good way to store your money, protect its value against inflation (by getting a return on your investment that's equal to the rate of inflation), and make a decent profit for your trouble."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Harry Potter] Could “The Doubling Charm” be used on a hamburger? If so, would that hamburger have the same nutritional value as the original (if eaten quickly enough)\n\nFrom what I understand, The Doubling Charm creates a perfect replica of whatever it’s cast on; however, over time, the copy breaks itself down and it’ll lose value... while it does say it can’t copy metaphysical or fundamental entities, it doesn’t exclude organic matter in its description."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The relevant passage from Deathly Hallows:\n\n\n Hermione: \"Your mother can’t produce food out of thin air, no one can. Food is the first \n of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfigura—\"\n\n Ron: \"Oh, speak English, can’t you?\"\n\n Hermione: \"It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where\n it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got some...\"\n\nSo, while it's not clear if the Doubling Charm specifically works, there should be spells that can duplicate food."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Has the popularity of reusable bags and cups decreased the consumption of plastic/paper bags and cups? Are we actually saving fuel and resources?\n\nI feel like everywhere I go I see reusable grocery bags and plastic tumblers and bottles. Has the production of all these things meant to be reusuable made any dent in the use of disposable products? Is there any net energy or resources savings?\n\n**Edit to add:** I support the use of these things, and felt compelled to note that because there are some people ITT that seem to think this question dismisses the use of them. I am just wondering about the actual economics and enviromental impact of people constantly buying and re-buying reusable bags and bottles."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Bonus question: At work, they took away the (recycled paper) coffee cups and made everybody use their own coffee mugs. This has resulted in everybody washing their mugs in the sink and using tons of paper towels. Which is worse?"
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Our bodies have adapted to make sugary things taste good since they provide energy. Why hasn't the same thing developed with healthy items like vegetables?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Because vegetables don't provide as much energy as sugars. They are only considered healthy in a modern context of an abundance of food. If you go back several thousand years (an eyeblink in evolutionary terms) finding enough food was a real problem that occupied most of your time. High energy foods like sugary fruits and fatty meats were *way* better than vegetables."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What is an observation in quantum mechanics?\n\nFrom what I understand, an observation causes the wavefunction of a particle to collapse (forgetting this year's Nobel for a minute). This collapse is due to the interaction between the measurement device and the particle. As a simplified example, to observe an electron in some way a photon can be scattered off of it. The interaction between the two causes the wavefunction to collapse. Now if an electron is traveling through space in an area near an energy source so that the photon density in the space surrounding the electron is very high, does that mean the electron will constantly exist in some sort of collapsed state? How exactly does this work? We don't really cover what exactly constitutes an observation in class, but the professor almost makes it seem like there is a human element attached to the process -- as though even though the electron would be constantly colliding with photons its wavefunction would evolve as though the photons are not there unless a human observes the interaction? Can someone please explain this to me?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Observation does **not** require a human element.\n\nIn QM an observation can be thought of as any interaction between two quantum systems which entangles them. When this happens, if you try to look at the state of one system alone, you get a classically mixed state (which is basically what people mean when they say the wavefunction has collapsed)."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why do fabrics become more resistant to tearing when wet, while other materials, like paper, become more prone to it."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Simply put because the wetness softens the fibers.\n\nIn a woven fabric, the fibers are basically going the entire width of the item in one strand. So when they become softer, they tend to stretch or slide past each other, and they still need the same amount of force applied to break each fiber, but it is harder to apply that force to each fiber.\n\nIn paper, they aren't woven. They are just laid down in the sheet, pressed and dried. So when the fibers soften, and slide past each other easier, it is that much easier to pull one fiber completely free of its neighbors.\n\nEdit for clarity: In a fabric, they are purposefully woven so that the fibers don't pull free of each other easily, the hems and seams prevent fraying. In a paper product, they aren't.\n\nSo in a fabric you have to break every fiber in the ripped area, in a paper you just have to pull the fibers away from each other."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Can we forget what a color looks like?\n\nSay a normal person who has lived with colors their whole life, were put into a black box, without any other color. Would they eventually forget what colors looked like, why/why not?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Ever heard of the colour Taupe?\n\nLook it up now, then try to remember it again in a week.\n\nI can never remember if it's a shade of yellowish-green or magenta.\n\nEDIT: Turns out it's neither, it's beige..."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: What happened at the New York Stock Exchage today and what it affects\n\nWhat exactly happened at the New York Stock Exchange today, and how does it affect anything?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "To put it simply the computer system that runs the NYSE crashed and it took about 3 hours to get it back up. It's believed to be an internal technical issue that has now been resolved. Strangely enough though, Anonymous, the hacking group, tweeted something about it yesterday, but the media is reporting that there was no malicious involvement. \n \nWill this affect anything? Not really. There are 11 other stock exchanges and lots of the trades from today were just routed through the NASDAQ."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Why is harvesting rain water illegal.\n\nBeen hearing for this for a while, why is it illegal?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Okay typical harvesting of rainwater usually isn't illegal. Whats illegal is trapping large amounts of water on your land. So you cant go and build an artificial lake to catch all the rain on your property. This is because in many places farms depend on the water that would have run off your property into streams. Simple rain barrels arent illegal, giant water storage like diverting streams etc is."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: How do fortune tellers know what to say to you?\n\nI don't believe in fortune tellers but i'm guessing there is some trick in order to guess information about people in order to \"tell their fortune/horoscope\""
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Fortune tellers do what's called cold reading, picking up on little nicks and things that you physically show. They are also great at reading on your vulnerabilities such as emotions.\n\nThey then attempt to predict, based on information that you have provided, try to create a crazy, but understandable fortune that can actually occur, such as the death of a loved one or you going bankrupt, not that dragons appear or Thor comes down from the heavens. If that person is really vulnerable they'll accept that information and then believe that's going to happen. Placebo effect takes place and they start acting like it has been foretold to happen. Then it actually happens because of the person's actions and they believe that the fortune teller was right all along.\n\nIt's all bullshit and they are just really good manipulators and they interpret information really well."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "CMV: Limiting business hours is not a reliable way to limit the number of customers and may actually be detrimental\n\n I've seen a lot of businesses recently shifting their hours to try to limit the number of people coming to their store. While this may be effective in shopping malls, where a lot of people wander store to store just to shop, I do not think this is effective for the huge majority of stores, and may even have negative consequences.\n\n If I need to go to the store (for necessities like food), I'm going to make an effort to go to the store whether they've limited their hours or not. All that limiting store hours does is take the number of people who were going to come to the store throughout the day and put them into a shorter timespan. This also has the negative effect of crowding people closer together in the store.\n\n Rather than having the same number of people spread throughout the day, you have put them closer together and perhaps more at risk. I fail to see a benefit to this policy, at least for a majority of stores."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "So, the counter to this is that some stores are limiting hours to enable their staff to clean more than usual. \n\nIn other cases - 24 hours stores have dropped an entire shift of workers. This is a group of people less exposed because that entire shift is not working. \n\nWhile you might be concentrating the number of people at once, if it is still below guidelines on average, cleaning surfaces may be a better option than spreading those people out."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[BTTF2] Why is Biff the carwasher so much nicer than Biff the grandfather in 2015?\n\nWhat happened that caused him to essentially revert from looking for advice on matchbooks to bullying?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "1985 Biff was *terrified* of the McFly family. He has a bad reputation in Hill Valley because of the attempted rape back in 1955. While they couldn't prove anything, nobody would hire him. Seeing an opportunity to get back at him, George McFly offered Biff a job as a carwasher and general servant. Biff knows that if he steps out of line, George will fire him.\n\nAs the years go by and people slowly forgot about Biff's reputation, he began to lose his fear of George. Additionally, the sight of his grandson developing into a mirror image of himself in 1955 inspired Biff to relapse into his old habits."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Star Wars]Why is the battle of Yavin used as the dating point in the galaxy?\n\nSure it was a defeat for the Empire but it wasn't the end of it, but wouldn't the battle of Endor be a better candidate?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It was more for the significance of the battle. It marks the destruction of the first Death Star, an unbelievably huge victory for the rebels. Not just in the destructive power of the Death Star's weaponry, but also the millions of Imperials on board, all the resources it held, thousands of ships, and all the time it took to build (20-some years?).\n\nIt's also a major boost in confidence, moral, and credibility for the rebellion as it's their first major victory that shows that the Empire isn't all-powerful and can be taken down. After the Battle of Yavin, the rebellion started gaining support from thousands of systems that were originally neutral or not-pro-rebellion in the war."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "[Left 4 Dead 2] Why was it necessary to blow up the gas truck with a rocket, instead of going around it?\n\nCould a pipe bomb or Molotov not have done the job either?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Well, they figured crazy man with guns plus relatively easy task to retrieve cola, a rocket would have gotten the job done faster, and doing the favor would have decreased the risk of being shot by him. Also, it was payment for the guns they took from his store."
}
] |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ELI5: Why does adding one methyl group to Adderall change it from being a common prescription medication to an extremely hard drug?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why does adding one oxygen to water change it from being refreshing to a corrosive nightmare?\n\nEven seemingly minor alterations to a chemical structure can radically alter the way it interacts with itself and other molecules.\n\nIn this particular case, the methyl group in *meth*amphetamine is altering the electron structure around the adjacent nitrogen center, which significantly accelerates its reactivity."
}
] |
Subsets and Splits