I was on top of most bitcoin information until about two months ago. There must be many more in the same boat. If anyone would care to ELI5 any of the follow concepts/questions for the sake of the community, it would be much appreciated.

1. What is ASICBOOST? Pros and cons? Is reverse engineering it good or bad?

2. When will Lightning Network be ready? And what is the process of readying it? Does that mean coders are still developing and testing it? If so, how can they predict it'll be ready or if it'll even work if they haven't finished it?

3. How can new version of Core be rolled out when Bitcoin requires 95{88c91daedd271a990a10650c05d769cae2765e0603edf30ca95f18704e5748e8} consensus to implement any changes?

4. Core is saying they are winning because node {88c91daedd271a990a10650c05d769cae2765e0603edf30ca95f18704e5748e8} is 80{88c91daedd271a990a10650c05d769cae2765e0603edf30ca95f18704e5748e8}~ and BU is saying they are winning because their miner something something rate is higher than Core. Which one am I to believe and which one matters?

5. What is happening on June 1 or August 1? I think I read that that is the date when it will be determined whether some kind of fork with happen or not. Is this true?

6. What's the difference between USAF and SegWit?

7. What is the difference between Core and USAF and which do we want?

8. What is Antpool and who is Jihan Wu?

9. What are the steps to forking one's mother?

I know it's a lot of questions, so answering any one of them would be appreciated. Thanks.