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[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "ELI5: Why do so many Americans blame Obama for practically everything?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because most American citizens have very little idea of how their government actually works, and how limited the president's power is, domestically and economically. The president is the most well-known governmental figure, and it's a lot simpler to blame him than to go watch C-SPAN or check voting records and see that it's actually your representatives and senators who are screwing you, in many cases, *specifically* because they know you'll blame Obama for it and they want his approval rating to go down." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "[House of Cards] Is Frank Underwood able to deliberately break the 4th wall, are we simply seeing his thoughts in those moments, or is something else happening?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Before tv series there were movies and before movies there were plays, before plays there was your buddy telling you what was going through his head earlier when you both were at that thing. \n\n\nIts called an \"aside\". As in taking the audience aside to fill them in on more details.\n\nHe's not breaking the fourth wall, he remains in his own universe. You are the one who has left yours." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "[40k] never played, can somebody explain the psychic orcs to me?\n\nThe most I know is the story about a guy who was kidnapped (or surrounded?) by orcs and without any ammo, but because the orcs didnt know he had no ammo he just pointed his gun and shouted BANGBANGBANG and the orcs... actually died? \n\nThis one story has made me somewhat interested in 40k for no reason other than sheer bullshittery \n\nBut how do orc psychics work? Is it all orcs or just some? Whats the gist of their power?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All orks possess a low level of psychic ability that contributes to the gestalt psychic field. This means that the larger the assembly of orks, the more psychic power there is to create effects that mirror what the orks expect.\n\nFor example, a small band of a few dozen orks might paint their trukk red because they believe that red ones go faster. They will be able to channel enough energy to actual make a red trukk go slightly faster than other trukks of similar make.\n\nOn the more extreme end, a space hulk with a massive greenskin infestation may have orks walking on its surface without void suits because they forgot that they need to breathe. It's the psychic field that is keeping them alive in that case.\n\nThere is also a caste of orks that woeld psychic abilities, called weirdboys. They are able to channel the energy of the psychic field into the material world intentionally to create a multitude of desired effects." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Is it possible to reverse yellowing of teeth by brushing harder? Or is tooth yellowing permanent?\n\nEdit: wow, calm down mods! I'm seeing a lot of helpful comments being removed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Staining isnt the only reason teeth turn yellow. Enamel is white-ish but it's not completely opaque. Dentin, the material underneath your enamel is naturally yellow, aging and natural wear thins your enamel making the dentin more visible. If you brush too hard you could just end up stripping away more enamel resulting in even yellower teeth." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "ELI5: If so, what's the difference between a Sith Lord and someone using the dark side of the force?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A Sith Lord is trained as a Sith Lord. He or she learns not only the Force, but a certain code of ethics as well, questionable as they may be. \n \nSomeone who uses the Dark Side of the Force is just someone who has figured out how to use the Dark Side of the Force. Most likely, they were trained, at least to some degree, by Jedi, but chose not to follow their code." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "ELI5: Why is hand-made stuff \"better\" than machine-made stuff?\n\nA lot of high end suits and shoes brag that they're hand-made. Why is this better than machine-made, where the machine will do things precisely, while the man making it could make mistakes?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Machine-made generally means something that's designed for mass manufacturing. There are shortcuts in the design, because it has to be efficient to manufacture in quantity. The materials involved also have to be suitable for mass manufacturing and, ideally, inexpensive.\n\nA good craftsman can do much better work. This involves skill, time, and generally better materials, because there's no point in wasting skill and time on inferior work." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "If I lie in bed all day and don't eat between 10am and 6pm, I feel ravished and will go far out of my way for a meal. Every single night I lie in my bed and eat nothing between 10pm and 6am, and I feel no urgency to have breakfast. What's the difference?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Insulin levels rise and fall depending on your sleep schedule. Leading to hunger and fasting. In fact recent research in mice showed those mice that only ate during \"mouse day time\" for a set amount of time. 8 to 12 hrs. Maintained weight better then those who forged anytime." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "How straightness is achieved in construction?\n\nHow did we develop first straight objects? For example to create a ruler we need some straightness reference(I assume). Of course nothing will be 100% straight but when you think all the delicate machinary such as medical devices and the machines used in the space we must be pretty close. Is there a way to geometrically approximate to a straight line without a straight device?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "simplest straight lines are a taut string or a flat water surface.\n\nearly surfaces were just created by hand. our precision has increased over time. we never hit perfectly straight, just straight enough to suffice." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "ELI5: Why do video game developers choose to only release games only on some consoles/PC but not others? How much more work does it take to program a game to operate on a different console, say Switch vs Playstation for example?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It takes a lot of work. Consoles tend to have less power than PCs and each of the major consoles uses a different operating system. PC and Xbox share a lot of internal code, but PCs have thousands of combinations of parts, compared to the consoles all using the same processors. For a small studio this is a lot of work. \n\nIn general game companies have two options: make a game run okay on all platforms or really well on one. Im a PC gamer, but Im shocked at how well God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn run on the PS4. Knowing exactly what hardware your game will run on is a major help to optimization.\n\nAnd also, game companies sometime sign contractors to only release on a single console. Sony may pay a company a million to not sell their game on the Xbox. Or in the case of Bethesda: Microsoft owns them, so theyll be making almost exclusively PC and Xbox games from now on.\n\n\nThere you go, it takes a lot of people and time to make a good cross platform game, and theres a lot of money involved in keeping games from getting ported." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "When a video game runs at 60 frames per second, does that mean only the display shows what happens every 60th of a second, or does the game have markers that take inputs and produce outputs only at those times too?\n\nFor example, I know that the CPU that's processing everything can make a cycle every couple billionths of a second, and all though it would take a lot of them to produce a result, taking an input and sending it to the game should be very fast, and be able to happen in between frames, right?\n\nSo for instance say there's a certain game that runs 60 fps, where the simple objective is to press a button before your opponent. If you press it after exactly 101 ms, and your opponent presses it after 115 ms, since the next \"marker\" for the game would happen at 116.6 ms, would this produce a tie, or would you win? I would imagine that the CPU could tell you pressed it first, but when working with emulators and such, everything is cut into individual frames." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It depends on the game.\n\nMinecraft will draw frames as often as your GPU and your monitor can handle, but the physics system only \"ticks\" once every 1/20th of a second. Time happens in 50 ms slices. If you and a friend both hit two buttons to start two redstone clocks at the same time to within a few milliseconds then they will be perfectly simultaneous.\n\nIf you are interested in breaking things for fun or testing purposes then the weirdness of discrete time is a good place to start looking for bugs." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "[General] Everyone is envious of Superman's Kryptonian powers and Spider-Man's spider-like abilities, but what superpowers are the most overrated?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fire powers. Like... yeah, if you had Human Torch level immunity or Pyro's manipulation, it could be awesome! But if you had Avatar level fire bending, you're more than likely going to end up burning everything and everyone around you. \n\nAlso, power copying or cancelling... not only is it lame for stories, but if no one else had powers, you're just a fucking muggle. \n\nFlight has a lot of inherent problems that would limit your ability unless you had other abilities to compensate for the temperature, pressure, oxygen levels, collisions, and it's basically useless unless you can fly at a velocity (at least) comparable to your fastest running speeds." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "If you pointed a powerful laser (like the ones the military are using to take down missiles) at a mirror would it burn through the mirror or bounce off it?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, even a really great mirror isn't 100% reflective, so it will always absorb some of the light. If you pump strong enough, yes, you'll start to heat up the mirror faster than it can dissipate the heat and eventually it will melt. \n\n Another thing to consider is that the reflectivity of a surface depends heavily on the wavelength of light. A mirror that might be reflective to visible light, say 99% reflective, might only be 5% reflective to infrared light. So if you were trying to build an anti-missile laser or a laser-proof missile hull, for example, you'd want to take that into account." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "ELI5: why do LED torches have multiple small LED's instead of one big one?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Some of them (the nice, expensive ones) do have a single LED, such as Mag-Lite. Low-output LEDs are much less expensive to produce, so cheap flashlights often will have 25-50 of them (a dead giveaway is their very bluish tint); their overall light output is typically less than those with a single LED. When purchasing, look for how many lumens the flashlight produces, not how many LEDs; more lumens = brighter." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "ELI5: Why aren't other animals as freaked out by bugs and creepy crawlies as humans?\n\nAre we the only ones afraid, rationally or irrationally, of bugs?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fear is generally a learned response in humans rather than being present from birth. Whenever a human is observing another human as being a role model, the observer sees the response taken by the role model, and is more likely to recreate that response in the future. Because of this, it's easy to pass on your fear of bugs to another person, as long as that person's subconscious processing thinks you are worth learning from. \n\nOn the other hand, some fears are present from birth as a defensive response to tell an animal to run away when presented with a dangerous situation. Most animals don't fear bugs simply because bugs don't do anything to the animal. But if you put a cucumber behind a cat while it's eating, it will panic and run away because it is born with a fear of snakes, and the cat's innate processing mistakes the cucumber for a threat. \n\nIt's likely that our original fear of bugs did come from the knowledge that certain bugs can have bad or even deadly effects on us, which then spread the mentality that we should be afraid of all bugs. For an animal to fear that same bug, it would have to be because of a survival instinct, unless the animal somehow also learned to fear bugs.\n\nEdit: apparently the cucumber/snake thing with cats may not be 100% scientific, but it was the first example that came to mind when thinking of innate fears." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "[Star Wars Legends] What was the point of the chosen one prophecy?\n\nIn legends, even though Anakin killed Palpatine on the second Death Star, he only truly died during the events of Dark Empire. The Sith would also still be around for at least 100 more years. Considering this, what was the point of the prophecy when the Sith still exist and Palpatine only died years later and not due to Anakin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The imbalance came about because, through Palpatine's machinations, the Dark side had grown incredibly powerful, blinding the Jedi and other servants of the Light to his intentions, and even some of his actions. The Light was crippled by bureaucracy, negligence, tradition, politics, and a slew of other things. The Dark side had no such impediments: the Chancellor (or Emperor) made the rules.\n\nThe (first) death of the Emperor by Anakin's hand brought balance to the Force. It put a stop to the Sith, at least in that one moment. The Emperor was dead, Anakin turned back towards the light, and all that was left of the Sith were a few scattered apprentices.\n\nWhen Luke put together the new Jedi Order, that allowed the Light side to grow and dominate, and thus they were able to fight the Sith on almost equal footing. Yes, the Imperial remnant fought on, and yes, Palpatine kept playing the part of the mole in a game of whack-a-mole, but the Jedi weren't as blind anymore. They didn't have to hide. At times, they even had the entire Republic behind them. Knowledge and training in the Force was allowed to grow and diversify.\n\nIt wasn't a perfect balance, but it was better than the utter oppression of the Force that existed under Palpatine's rule." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "If Earth's atmosphere is primarily nitrogen, then why did life develop using oxygen and carbon dioxide?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Something that is not brought up in many of the comments here is that life did not develop using molecular oxygen (O2) at all. The large concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere is actually the result of biological activity (carbon fixation from CO2 and reduction of iron oxide before that) and not a prerequisite for it." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "[Marvel] If i had a way to contact Galactus, how hard would it be to convince him to make me his herald?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If you can actually contact Galactus, you're pretty much halfway there. He's been known to force Heraldry onto various people, causing them to lose their memory and only want to serve him. If you simply ask, it's very possible he'll say yes if he doesn't currently have a Herald or has one that's openly defying him." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "ELI5: Why does it feel colder inside in the winter even though the thermostat says the temperature is the same?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Humidity plays a big part in temp perception. In the winter, outside colder air cannot hold the same amount of humidity as hotter summer air, so typically your house, while the same temp, has less humidity. Even if you have a humidifier, it's tough to match the potentional summer air humidity. That difference eventually makes it into your house.\n\nThe lower the humidity, the more moisture evaporates on your skin, making you feel cooler despite the temp at the thermostat saying the same." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "ELI5: Why is it when I eat or drink some things I feel like pooping within a few minutes when food and drink take hours to digest?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Eating or drinking something kick your digestive tract into motion. Lots of enzymes start squirting into your intestines. Lots of muscle contractions from your stomach to your butthole getting things moving along. Some chemicals in food (caffeine in particular) are *really* stimulating to your intestinal muscles. When those start working overtime, you suddenly get the urge to go, like, now." } ]
[ { "from": "system", "value": "Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:" }, { "from": "human", "value": "If gravity is a property of spacetime, why are we trying to explain it as a fundamental force?\n\nI feel like I sound like a complete idiot asking this. I should mention I have no real background in physics, so I probably am an idiot.\n\nFrom what I understand, we describe the strong force, the weak force, and the electromagnetic force as fundamental forces of nature, with each force being mediated by their own boson (or in the case of the weak force, two bosons).\n\nAlso from what I understand, gravity is caused by mass bending spacetime around it. To me, it seems that gravity isn't something we should be describing as a fundamental force, and that it should be described as a property of the fabric of spacetime. Are we trying to explain it as a fundamental force because it fits better with the math?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the other three fundamental forces are gauge theories, meaning that they also admit a \"geometrical\" formulation similar to, but not equal, that for gravity given by general relativity.\n\nThere are immense similarities between the other three interactions and gravity. Moreover, the geometric picture and the field picture (the one with the gauge bosons) are really equivalent - barring some global subtleties.\n\nFinally, the unification of gravity with the other forces is almost a necessity, not just something that would be nice. It is likely necessary to build a consistent theory of quantum gravity. We write gravity and the other forces in all possible equivalent ways so that it's easier to understand possible connections when studying theories of everything. For example, understanding how gravity unavoidably arises as the theory of a spin-2 massless boson (the graviton) made it really easy at the time to recognize that string theory included gravitation.\n\n(btw, the weak force has three bosons, and the strong force has eight)" } ]