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3we6zm | How does constantly mixing cement keep it from turning into stone? | As pointed out before, it doesn't, however it does prolong the process.
Cement solidifies by basically turning itself (a paste of very specific particles and water) into a crystal. The particles pretty much combine with the water to form nice hard crystals (so saying you're waiting for the cement to "dry-out" is technically incorrect).
By forcing the paste to tumble around, you constantly break the connections before they grow into stable forms. | d59afe7c-de2d-4400-a952-422abfc21693 |
1mk5py | How the hell does life insurance work? | Source: I work for a life insurer in Australia (so am commenting on how life insurance works in Australia. I assume it would be similar globally).
Short version:
Life insurance expires so insurance companies do not pay out on every individual. For most insurers, this is generally between 65 and 70. Therefore, if you take life insurance when you’re 35 and don’t die by the time you’re 70 – the insurer will never pay out on you. When you die after the expiry age, no pay out is given.
The longer version:
Life insurance profitability is primarily based on your claims pay out ratio. Let's assume a company has a realistic target of 30%. That is, they expect to pay out $30 in claims for every $100 of premium revenue it receives.
Note that this is not overall profitability, as you need to factor in additional costs such as wages, overheads, marketing, technology, etc...
To (attempt) to achieve this target they hire specialised individuals (called actuaries) whose primary job is to price risk based on statistically proven data. Basic data used to calculate premiums include country of residence, age, gender and smoker status.
Based on this data, the actuaries create mathematical models that outline how much premium the insurer has to charge for each individual based on their characteristics to maintain the 30% claims target.
Eg (all numbers are hypothetical and the example is simplistic) – we know that 1% of males who are aged 45 in Australia die every year.
Therefore, we price the premium of males who are 45 at a price point that when we have to pay out 1% of the policies due to death, the payout in claims does not exceed more than 30% of the premiums that we have collected for the others.
For insurance companies, data is key – the more they have, the better they can price you (and the risk that you carry). Therefore, depending on which life insurance you get, you may not have to answer any questions, except your age and gender, or you may have to answer 100’s of questions about you and your family and be checked out by a doctor.
Generally speaking, if you are young, healthy and have a healthy family you will pay more money in premiums if your insurance company asks LESS questions. This is because they are pricing you generically rather than specifically.
One last point – life insurance is like gambling. The insurance company is taking your money betting that you are not going to die. To increase their odds, they have common clauses. Generally speaking, insurance companies won’t cover you for pre-existing conditions because the odds are in your favour. (eg you can’t get life insurance that will cover you if you die of cancer if you knew you had cancer when you applied for the insurance). Companies won’t always check this (or ask you) up front – but they will check if/when you die.
TLDR – Good insurance companies who can manage their risk properly, price their risk (premiums) appropriately and word their polices to protect them will generally make money. | 4bda738c-c1e1-49b4-a5b8-af0ea92a1108 |
8rjcww | Can any one explain r-value of insulation, like what I'd lose if I used R-19 instead of R21? | The R-value describes how good the isolation is.
The formula is (T1-T2)/R*surface area = amount of heat lost per hour.
From that, we can conclude that R-21 let's through about 10% less heat than R-19. | 5820ea5c-23ce-4c9f-9627-724e35e32b4c |
27nnr8 | How is the brain able to create images while reading that make it feel like I'm watching a movie? | I'm no expert, but I would say it is because the writer uses words to describe things you've already seen in real life. For example, when I say mountain you start to think about a mountain in pictures, because you've seen a mountain and knows what it looks like. But if I were to say mountain to a person whom never seen one, the person wouldn't create that image because the person never saw a mountain. The philosopf David Hume actually adressed this issue by using the example "the golden mountain" - you can imagine that only because you've seen something golden or gold and you can combine that with the previous image of a mountain. He also stated that if a person never saw either of those objects, the person would be unable to imagine such images.
TL;DR: you can imagine things in pictures but only because you've seen the things you are going to imagine in real life.
PS. I must excuse for errors. English is not my native tongue.
Edit: changed "sat" to "say" - I'm on my phone with a Danish dictionary | 91fe9f91-efaf-4e45-9eaa-adf124554645 |
3nj7oq | what is the difference between Porter, Lager, Ale, Pale Ale, and what does the darkness of the color signify? | Beer is made of a few things: Water, Yeast, a Grain (such as wheat or oats), and Hops.
Generally speaking, there's two kinds of beer: Ales and Lagers. Ales are brewed warm (ish) and their type of yeast floats to the top of the brew tanks. Lagers are brewed cold (ish) and their type of yeast sinks to the bottom.
Basically all beers are variations within the "ale" and "lager" umbrellas. The amount of yeast, hops, grain, and type of grain impacts the final type, among other factors. Porters, Stouts, Pale Ales, Bitters, and others are all Ales, which tend to be very complex and flavorful. Lagers tend to be more mellow; the most popular kind of beer in America is a kind of lager called a Pilsner.
Light/Dark isn't 100% across the board, but generally, light beers literally taste lighter while dark beers are heavier, rich. | 17770fce-b580-4468-a43f-a7cf52fff946 |
7t8rn4 | Why and how do fungus grow on your body? | It grows like it would any other place, with a dark and damp environment generally. Make sure to fully dry your ass and toes ladies and gents.
As for why it is simple, you have what it craves. | cb4e1379-17d9-4440-9129-60bb7a6a0924 |
3qwwah | Why does Aloa Vera sting when you apply it to skin? | As with many moisturizers, the probable answer is to look at all the ingredients of your lotion. Alcohol, acid, or sodium may be cause of stinging? Find a more pure formula if possible.
For minor burns & minor skin irritations, I just snip a portion of stem from an aloe vera plant and rub the inner juice right on the area. | 2023425a-e75d-4e21-af23-8243d7173d49 |
3l9me5 | Why don't bands tour and have 3+ hour shows where they play all their music? | Because that would be absolutely exhausting and some of these bands are playing almost nightly during their tours. | 88bbdb2d-20b9-49e5-9ee5-435b3d123208 |
nwhxk | Why did the Vietnam war happen? | This goes way long, so bear with me.
**TLDR: The French created religious inequality and spawned resentment, the US mistook a nationalist revolt for a communist master plan, and then spent 20 years trying to fight popular opinion.**
In the 1600s, France set up trading colonies in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia). Those didn't do so well, but missionaries came along with the traders and managed to convert about 10% of the population to Christianity.
Christianity brought more Europeans to Vietnam, and the different colonial powers started backing warring Vietnamese factions.
The French supported the Nguyen dynasty, in southern Vietnam. For a while, the Nguyens tolerated Catholicism and started letting Catholic converts into the government and the civil service. When they changed their minds, France decided to just invade and take over. Fast forward to World War II. The Japanese invaded Southeast Asia and forced out the French army. Meanwhile, a guy named Ho Chi Minh came back to Vietnam from Europe and organized a resistance movement called the Viet Minh. Ho was sort of a communist, and he took support from both Russia and China, but at heart he was an anti-colonial nationalist. During WWII, Ho Chi Minh's people collaborated with the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) to pass information about the Japanese. Interestingly, the US mood at this time was very anti-colonial. The last thing Roosevelt wanted was for France to get back Vietnam. He offered the country to China, but Chiang Kai-Shek wasn't interested.
After the war was over, Roosevelt was dead and everybody was afraid of Communism. Ho Chi Minh had a big army and was ready to take the country, but the fact that he was a "communist" scared the US into supporting the French. War were declared. In the First Indochina War (1946-1954) the French holed up in Hanoi and a string of forts across the north. They could easily defeat the Viet Minh in open battle, but Ho and his senior general Giap wouldn't fight them openly.
In 1954, the Cold War was going pretty poorly for the US. The Chinese revolution and the Korean War had been a giant disaster, and people in the US started to see Vietnam as an opportunity to "put a stake in the ground" and stop any more countries from going Communist.
The US started pouring weapons and supplies into Vietnam to help the French, but it was too little, too late. France was tired of fighting and support for the war was very low. France put everything on the line at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and was defeated, despite US air support. Shortly afterwards, they withdrew from the Vietnam and the country was split in two at the 17th parallel. This left Ho Chi Minh in control of the north, and the emperor in nominal charge of the south, but his prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem (an anti-communist, pro-French Catholic) had all the real power.
The two halves were supposed to take a couple of years to cool off, then vote for a single national government in 1956. Ngo Dinh Diem knew that he wouldn't win, so in 1955 he overthrew the emperor, declared South Vietnam a republic, and rejected the referendum. He arranged a massive population exchange to bring all the Catholics in the country to South Vietnam, in exchange for sending all the Communists to the north.
Diem did everything wrong. He pampered the Catholic minority, suppressed the Buddhists, and he squeezed the peasant farmers to please the old landowning families. Meanwhile, all those deported communists were slipping back into the country and organizing a resistance movement, called the Viet Cong. The Buddhists revolted, the Viet Cong revolted, Diem lost US support and got assassinated. JFK was assassinated shortly afterwards. His policy had always been to make the South Vietnamese fight the war, but the new president, Lyndon Johnson, decided that if we were going to stop communism, we had to do it ourselves.
In 1964 some US ships patrolling off North Vietnam were allegedly attacked (the Gulf of Tonkin incident), and LBJ used it as a pretext to expand the war. The US started bombing North Vietnam, which caused a lot of noise, but didn't do the kind of damage that wins a war. Starting in 1965, US ground troops were deployed to South Vietnam. With the Viet Cong running amok, and the South Vietnamese army unable to get its shit together, the US commanding general, William Westmoreland, called for a "surge" to bring the war to a quick end. The plan was never to conquer North Vietnam, but to destroy the Viet Cong and stabilize South Vietnam.
The Johnson administration was not candid with the American public about the war. Official stories focused on the progress being made and ignored the increasingly huge Viet Cong infiltration into South Vietnam. In 1967, General Westmoreland gave a speech saying that the end was in sight. A few months later, the North and the Viet Cong simultaneously attacked targets all over the country (the Tet Offensive). The Tet Offensive was a military failure for the North, but the failure to foresee such a huge enemy buildup destroyed what was left of LBJ's credibility, and he didn't run for re-election in 1968.
Richard Nixon's policy on the war was called Vietnamization, and involved leaving the country with as much dignity as possible. The American media got hold of stories of American atrocities in Vietnam, including the My Lai massacre, and that fueled the anti-war effort. Over the next four years, Nixon pulled as many troops as he could out of Vietnam and pulled the rest back to safer bases. The North Vietnamese invaded again in 1972 and were stopped with US air support, but by now everyone could see that they wouldn't survive without US support. In the end, Nixon signed a peace treaty, pulled out the rest of our ground troops, and left South Vietnam to its fate. Saigon fell in 1975 and the North won.
So to summarize, France created a country where a privileged minority had authority over the majority, spawning resentment and nationalist movements. One of those movements, the Viet Minh, became influenced by Communism, but also became the most legitimate government in the eyes of the Vietnamese majority. The US inherited, through Ngo Dinh Diem, that same resentment that forced out the French and fought a long war to support a kind of inequality that just didn't resonate with the Vietnamese. Mistakes made by the US government destroyed popular support for the war, and eventually we had to leave without accomplishing our goals. | aef1f74d-6403-4683-9783-5eeec4d87ae0 |
845vcr | Why is not participating in the thread when coming from, say, r/bestof, important? | If you come about a thread organically, or as part as a normal subscriber to a community, there is no issue.
But sometimes when some threads from one community are crosslinked to another, that can result in a group of people from the latter suddenly flooding to the former when they: A) are not otherwise involved in that conversation and B) are not otherwise part of that community.
The nature of the second sub that the first was linked to can bias how those people view it. For example, if you are a member of r/worstof, you *expect* to see examples of horrible behavior or horrible opinions. So anything posted there you are going to read in that light. You may walk away from that conversation with a very different viewpoint than someone who was part of that conversation from the beginning in the context of the original sub it was supposed to.
There is also the issue of brigading. It is against the site rules for you to round up a bunch of people just to go to a sub to downvote or upvote a post or comment. Yet that is a natural tendacy when you take a post or comment and link it to subs like r/bestof, r/subredditdrama, etc. To prevent brigading, most of these types of subs have rules against participating in or voting on the linked conversations and that is why "no participation" mode exists. | 35346fbd-0e53-4dfa-b803-274dbbaa24d5 |
6k47o4 | Why so many prescription drugs lower your risk to fight infections | Some diseases are caused by your immune system attacking your own body. The pills to treat these diseases weaken your immune system so it will cause less damage to your own body. | c7890a67-2f28-4332-9e29-604690985769 |
4bov4y | In terms of computer science, what exactly happens when malware is quarantined? | It's moved out of its original directory structure and renamed, so attempts by external software to call/access that file result in failure. Also, software checks are put in place to specifically prevent that file from being executed or loaded into memory. | 075a619b-f45e-4f00-bbfc-6f89a565bb55 |
5fr0bu | Why do U.S. Supreme Court Justices keep such long appointments, often until they die? | The reason Justices are appointed (or given the job) for life is to remove the possibility of undue influence over them by the executive (the President) or others. If a President were able to "fire" a justice, the Justices might make judgements that are biased based on their desire to keep their job. Many supreme court cases involve the executive branch, and in those cases, Justices might be afraid to rule against the executive out of fear of being removed from the bench. It is also because we need very experienced people to rule on the most important legal issues facing the country. If justices only stayed on the bench for a few years each, they would not be able to build up the level of institutional knowledge one would gain from a longer term of service.
The reasons Justices continue to work long into old age are several:
1) It is the top job for a judge in the U.S. There is no other higher office to seek in the judicial system. Adding to this, for a person who is an attorney/judge, it is considered the highest professional honor you can receive. Being chosen and confirmed means both of the other branches of government believe you are one of the best legal minds in the country.
2) It is not a physically demanding job, meaning justices are able to perform the duties of the job well into old age (as long as their mental health remains good). Adding to this, it is likely the last job they will ever have. Many people enjoy working rather than retirement. Often, many retirees will find part time jobs or perform volunteer work to stay active and busy with out the stress or need of a career. Justices likely find the work challenging and enjoyable and so opt to remain on the bench longer.
3) People who seek jobs like being a supreme court justice often feel a very large sense of duty or purpose to the country, and to quit or retire early (to them) would feel like abandoning something before it is finished.
It can be common for Justices to die on the bench, but many do retire as other commenters have said. | b5e0c6a8-f277-4c27-84b1-4039c9ad913a |
35ckd5 | How does the Self Clean function on ovens work? | It burns all the residue into ashes with very high temperatures, which usually reach the border of 4-digits in Fahrenheit. At this point, the ashes can be blown away. However, as many people will say so, the heat will destroy the oven quickly. The heat will completely ruin the coil, since it can't withstand the heat and usually there is a lack of cooling for such high temperatures. | 496605b6-4eea-42f9-9925-1ad8f561d6a7 |
1sma64 | Why has space flight advanced so slowly since the 1960's. Why don't we have a reusable rocket yet even though its been 50 years. | At its post-1970 peak NASA's budget was half of what it was when the Apollo program was in full swing. It's less than that now. Most other space programs either didn't exist until the last 10-20 years, or more often existed but relied quite exclusively on the USSR/Russia or the USA to provide launch vehicles.
As a result you have NASA who spent everything on the shuttle program and learned a lot but have no real successor to build on it due to limited funds and public interest, and Russia with its leftover from the USSR and their paltry advancements since the cold war.
Rockets themselves have been largely dead in the water compared to how hard they were being chased during the Apollo era. The shuttle program and later ISS was/is much more about advances in surrounding technologies like flight computers, orbital construction and docking, science in space not directly related to aerospace, etc.
Now thanks to people like Elon Musk with SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and others we have some people helping push more research into rocketeering itself and we've also got the long-researched stuff at NASA and other agencies like VASIMIR and Skylon that might get us some good advancement in the next few years or decades. | d292895e-1e43-4c1c-acf7-dc8df73d25bf |
1ngguk | If a person is overweight, why isn't the body's 1st choice to use stored fat for energy, when it is hungry? | Think of storing fat like building a battery. Would you plug a machine in in your basement that builds batteries and then put those batteries in each light fixture around your house you wanted to turn on? Why not?
1. It'd be inefficient -- why convert AC power to battery to AC power would losing a little power each time?
2. It'd be annoying -- you have all the work of distributing the batteries and changing them out.
3. It introduces a bunch of breakable stuff for no reason. What if the battery maker breaks, what if the battery holders in your lamps break.
Even if the body did default to using stored fat, it'd be immediately replacing it with new fat, so you wouldn't see a difference. | 7edecd76-8160-4f99-a509-152912001f34 |
3fw6dn | Is it realistically possible to save endangered species or is the planet definitely going to lose turtles, whales, sharks, elephants and many other endangered animals? What's stopping efforts to save them? | It depends a great deal on the species.
As a few examples of highly recognizable success stories:
The American alligator was nearly extinct before it was listed as endangered.
Now there are more than 5 million.
The bald eagle was reduced to around 450 mating pairs.
Now it's around 10,000.
Wolves, paregrine falcons, and a lot of others have been brought back from the brink of extinction. | 6ad5d03e-d181-4e5f-80cc-8b2f71f583af |
3np37o | How does an explorer know if he discovered a new animal species? | The explorer, or whoever, sends them off to a museum, usually who compare them to other similar species; either in books, or other images, or the museums specimen collection (dead animals, bugs, plants, etc in jars of formeldahyde, or on pinboards, etc).
They try to narrow it down to a family or genus, and if it fit's no known species, it might become the ['Type'](_URL_0_) For a new species.
There are buttloads of new species out there, but mostly bugs or microbes, etc. I read this biologist saying that many suburban backyards probably contain unknown species of microbes or worms or fungi, etc. | d1b0f902-488d-4b8a-ab8a-ba384c736a82 |
14q1dc | Why are the Beatles now treated like legends, when back then, they were seen as just some boy-band fad, soon to dissappear? | That is not a fair likeness. While they might be considered such a phenomenon, what they are great by is that they took music and made something entirely new with it. It was simply new and scary and exciting as they released their albums.
Douglas Adams, an outspoken fan of Beatles as he was, once said that when they came out with a new album, he would run to the store, buy the record, and run back, break into the school room where the record player was, and for the first few times he listen to it, it just left him cold. "It was simply unlike anything I've ever heard before"
I suspect that this is the true greatness of the band. | 270aec86-d124-46ee-98b6-2024723940cd |
3dv43a | We've just flown past Pluto and we're entering the age of the driverless car. Why hasn't air travel changed since the 1960's? | Air travel has changed quite a bit in the last 50 years. We have much bigger jets than the 737 of the 60s, not to mention advances in avionics and, speaking of the driveless car, autopilot. | 80a2b95c-fdab-4a6e-8f5e-b209db218e9a |
54lmuf | How does squinting eyes change this image? | High and lo pass filtered images superimposed on each other.
When you squint you lose the ability to see fine detail so the lo-pass filtered image stands out as the details (high pass filter) disappear. When you are not squinting you see the detail parts stand out because the brain likes to see fine detail more than the 'background' (lo-pass filtered) blur.
/edit/ gadamnit, I was about to reply saying wat? I dont get it? 'Lose' ?? and then.. Doh. :) | e8dce556-0787-44e4-b41e-2c101f9a6746 |
3p0l4q | how does someone create a coding language like C++, python, or the protocols that govern Internet traffic out of essentially nothing? | assembler, or machine code.
simplified, you might have a 40 lines of code in assembler that only job is to [put a letter on the screen](_URL_0_).
now that you have it, you can make an alias for that program, call it **print** for example.
**print "hello world"**
this uses the assembler program you called print and puts out hello world as input to your screen.
and you never need to touch the assembler again if you want to put something on the screen. As you have code that puts out text when you use print command.
now do that for everything you want your language to do, and you have a programming language.
this is vastly simplified, i tried to keep it short, feel free to mock me for choise of words or tiny mistakes i made. | 80805b4f-219f-486f-8b6a-915fa3ec8ba6 |
3cj0kh | Why does most body hair eventually stop growing if I leave it alone, but continues growing if I shave or trim? Also why doesn't the hair growing out of my head stop growing if I were to leave it alone as well? | All hair has a terminal length and grows in a cycle. The hair will grow, stay at terminal length for a time, fall out, and a new hair will grow in its place.
Body hair's terminal length is shorter than that of armpit or pubic hair, which is shorter than beard hair on men, which is shorter that head hair for both genders.
By cutting your hair via a haircut or shaving you do not allow the hair to reach its terminal length so it seem that it is continuously growing nonstop, but that is a trick. It is still going through the same growth cycle mentioned above, you just do not notice it.
Also head hair does have a terminal length. It is just so long and in a cycle that can last years that you will not notice it reaching it unless you stop trimming or cutting your hair for years. | 2bdda6fa-8f76-4046-a3c9-4345ac607609 |
2ksnyb | Why is it that I don't have to pee, but then suddenly my bladder is about to explode? | The bladder wall is made out of muscle which has waves of contractions just like your gut. These waves appear and disappear which may give you the feeling of urgency (feeling of wanting to let go). This should not normally happen unless you are holding your urine on purpose. The usual feeling of bladder fullness is a slight one which makes you want to go to the toilet. If you feel severe urgency out of the blue then that's something you should probably get checked.
As for what /u/Deeyzenuttz said, if you have symptoms like increased frequency with urgency (with or without episodes of incontinence) or problems while urinating then that might be a prostate problem. | 36aaa280-e8ad-44e0-93d3-40fecb1e7d35 |
3dq9y6 | Since purple does not exist - When something is purple, what color is it? | Purple does exist, but only in your eye. Purple is what your brain tells you you're seeing when the eye receives both blue and red light at the same time. | c07a2a17-e4ad-445d-b4ec-973ed0d2c04b |
6jfwzr | Why does getting hit in the head knock you out? I understand the force causing damage but why does the system shut down for non critical damage. Seems a design flaw when you're in a tight spot. Do all other mammals as well? Lizards? Insects? | In many cases it's a consequence of the processes triggered by the trauma, a contusion will start a sweeping process which will increase intracranial pressure which in turn will compress blood vessels and reduce blood supply to the brain. The poor oxygen delivery in this case leads to dizziness, disorientation and black out until the blood supply is normalised once the swelling subsides. | 6c95c9ee-aec8-40b3-9a71-b3d4ea55b108 |
74poyk | Why does hold music over the phone sound so bad? | Being specifically designed with speech in mind, the audio codec used to transmit audio over the phone is not suited for music.
It will perform fairly well in the human voice frequency range (100-300 Hz) and horribly bad outside of it.
If you hold your phone against a speaker you won’t get much better of an audio quality. Contrary to what you might think, this is more because of the audio codec than because of the microphone.
Additionally, depending on the specifics of the hold music you are referring to, the contact center software is continually trying to deliver your call to an operator, which may cause the hiccups you hear every once in a while. Worst case scenario, the contact center may have bad network connectivity, increasing the frequency of said hiccups. | 729d4ff8-5201-4311-8ebe-31622c87443d |
2gh4g7 | Neutral and Ground | > Does the neutral and ground go to the same place?
Oftentimes, yes. And yes it can literally be the ground.
> If so would it be bad news bears to connect your fan with just the hot and ground wires and skip the neutral altogether?
Maybe, maybe not. You wouldn't want to do that if the exterior of the fan housing was connected to ground, as it could result in significant potential building up on the exterior of the fan.
> Finally, if the ground is literally the ground does that mean I can hammer a steak into the ground, wrap a wire around it, and connect the other end to the hot side (through a lightbulb)?
Yes, you could do that. It would cook said steak though. | eee08007-99cc-47e7-b059-9e9b039f559d |
37654p | How to set up an IRA | Call Vanguard. They have low fees. And that's a huge difference in retirement accounts.
It's as easy as opening that Ameritrade account. If you already have a work retirement saving account like a 401(k) you might not be able to contribute to it, though.
You didn't ask, but...
There are two types of IRA.
Traditional, that is pre-tax. Every dollar you put in up to a limit takes a dollar off your taxable income. Your tax bill will be lower. You pay taxes on the way out in retirement.
And a Roth IRA. That's post tax, so after you pay taxes on it now it grows tax free and you take out the cash tax free in retirement. | 4483be61-1038-45f9-acf4-c12828a6cc32 |
16is7m | Explain the Red Scare after WWI. | So in 1917, there was the Bolshevik Revolution, and Lenin came to power in Russia. What this means in the United States is that Communism (or the bastardized political form) has some legitimacy. This is a serious problem for American politicians because it means that:
a) they could lose power, and
b) more idealistically, Communism threatens a free economy because it nationalizes all businesses and fixes prices, thereby strangling the economy (if you don't believe me, look at the economic differences between post-WWII Russia and the United States.).
A lot of people didn't get this, and part of the Communist Manifesto is to overthrow every government that isn't Communist and replace it with a Communist government. So it presents a **direct** threat to American democracy and the rights of Joe and Sally Freedom, because instead of a communist utopia, what you'll actually get is a totalitarian state (although politicians then didn't know it at the time, they were more concerned with big businesses having a meltdown over the possibility of being nationalized and losing all their profits).
Anyways, what ended up happening is that there were a bunch of bombs mailed to several big corporations at the time, and then the Attorney General at the time, Alexander Palmer, launched the Palmer Raids, which attempted to weed out Communists.
After finding nothing and having the raids declared unconstitutional, Palmer made a last declarative statement saying that the Communist overthrow of the American government would occur on May 1st, 1920, or International Workers Day. Surprise, surprise, it failed, and everyone realized he was being sensationalist. But it didn't change the fact that communism was (and still is) a serious threat to American democracy, it just made people trying to fight it look silly, and McCarthy didn't really make it any better either. | 7559af08-22f6-4206-8e33-e4576581eeec |
1z7fd3 | What happens when I get a random twitch/flinch? | Essentially, its the result of phantom nerve signals that don't come from your brain. Something in the electrical system of the nerve responsible for one small bundle of muscle fibers goes haywire, and the nerve fires without being prompted. Most often some kind of local electrolyte imbalance is to blame (whole body electrolyte imbalances severe enough to cause random firing of nerves would be a medical emergency). | d32d7184-5301-4f6b-b357-3f506dc4bfa6 |
5khnve | What was the "Reagan Era" and why do people consider it to be such a great time? | The Reagan Era is basically when Ronald Reagan was president, from 1980 thru 1988 and was typified by the rise of social & religious conservatism in the Republican party based on a Christian platform.
By the mid-70s the U.S. had seen a lot of gains by secular (non-religious) groups in areas like women's rights (reproductive rights, equal opportunity employment), reduced influence of religion in government (prayers in schools) and other social issues generally opposed by fundamentalist evangelical Christians (FEC). Jerry Falwell, a Baptist Minister, was the head of a socially conservative religious movement known as the Moral Majority that felt that government policy should be driven by Christian ethics. They found a champion of these values in Ronald Reagan and stood firmly behind him when he ran for California governor and U.S. president.
During Reagan's administration, the Republican party solidified it's current philosophy that lessening the burden on corporations (lower taxes, deregulation and weakening organized labor) equates to economic growth (supply-side economics; also known as "trickle down" economics), that government policies that embody strong Christian values will reduce social problems like crime and drugs, and that a strong military is necessary to maintain the U.S.'s strong influence in the world.
It was during Reagan's presidency that the U.S.S.R. collapsed, which nearly everyone agrees was a good thing. It was also when the air traffic controller's labor union was busted and that fundamentalist Christian values were pushed into government policy, which most liberals agree wasn't a good thing.
Generally speaking, someone who identifies as conservative views the Reagan years as the golden era when the beginnings of what the Republican party is today was forged. Those that identify as liberal generally view them as a time when the trend towards progressive policies slowed or even reversed. | 9a0356e5-473a-414b-bd0b-b05181066410 |
6ajvml | Why do most bipedal robots always keep their knees bent a bit when standing? | I'm still an industrial electronics student but if I had to guess I would say that it is because when engineers program robots they are given a "home position" that the robot stays in. In this case the home position is the one that best allows the robot to react to varying conditions. Like if the robot were to step into a hole and the knees were locked straight it would have trouble being able to step down into the hole because that joint can't rotate any further. But if the knee is in the middle of its rotation then it can straighten to step down into the hole or rotate further to step up onto something. Basically it's the position that allows a robot to do as much as possible and as far efficiency goes we are still just getting the kinks worked out of getting a robot walking. So it's not the most efficient way to stand but it's the easiest. | 76ebc619-2d95-48c5-9405-b180ccfe123a |
456iu1 | Why is the oil price is not going up over the years when it is limited resource | General market laws of supply and demand.
Currently there is more supply due (at least in part) to the slowdown of the Chinese economy and the fact that [OPEC](_URL_0_) is pumping huge supplies of oil onto the world market. OPEC have demonstrated in the past that they have a very strong influence on oil prices, as they control a large portion of world supply.
Less demand for more product = lower prices.
Historically, though, oil prices have gone up year over year. And yes, it's a "limited resource" in that the theory is that oil will eventually run out (though this is debatable), but as of now, there is still plenty to go around. | 2265043e-07ed-44c4-b7ee-c5129d21b7d3 |
30wgwk | The specs of a PC | RAM: short-term memory. The more of this you have, the more stuff your computer can keep running at a time before getting sluggish. More tabs open, more applications running.
Hard Drive/Solid State Drive: long-term memory. The more you've got, the more stuff you can save - photos, applications, videos, documents. A hard drive is a bunch of disks spinning at high speed. The faster they spin (RPMs), the faster you get your stuff. Solid state drives have no moving parts to wait for, so you get information from them much faster.
Processor speed: thinking. This is the thing executing your orders, telling other components to do, to get you what you want. If it's faster, it can issue those orders faster. I'd it's got more cores, it can issue more orders at once.
Most daily needs don't require to think too intensively, so processor speed isn't the top concern for the casual user, who'll care how many photos they can store, how long they take to access from the drive, and how many they can open and view at once.
There's the power supply, graphics card, wireless card and more but I think the above covers what a five year old could handle in that first run. | 38bf2ece-3b32-483b-8dd9-0eec10efe256 |
4m5tok | What is Marxism and how much does it differ from America's current system | Marxism is a revolutionary form of socialism. No, I do not mean revolutionary as in "new and different" (Marx wrote his manifesto well over a hundred years ago), but as in "it calls for violent revolution."
Marxism is not simply an economic policy, but a philosophical one on human nature, a political one, and a model of history. In Marx's eyes, human history is not dominated by the action of great men, but a constant struggle of one ruling class against some larger majority. For example, instead of looking at the Protestant Reformation as the action of individuals like Martin Luther or Henry VIII, but in terms of common people struggling against the Catholic Church.
So, the "modern" struggle of his time (the industrial revolution) was that of the factory owners against the factory workers. The only way for factory workers to gain equal share of the means of production is to VIOLENTLY revolt against the rich.
The democracies of the world would be replaced by a single unified Marxist government, a government who would break down the inequalities of economics, racism, nationalism, and religion. For example, instead of a factory being owned by a single owner, or a handful of shareholders, *all* the workers would have an equal share of owning the factory, and wouldn't work for a profit.
Eventually, the marxist government would've made everyone in the world entirely equal in all aspects, and shut itself down, as it is no longer needed and everyone is now going to be equal forever.
Or as Marx's theory suggest. All practical attempts to bring out Marx's ideas (the USSR and the rest of Warsaw pact nations, Cuba, China, North Korea, etc) into the real world have ended in failure, stalling out at the "revolution" part and becoming brutal dictatorships.
The US current economic system is a *regulated* capitalist one. Factories are owned by individuals for a profit, but have to work under government regulations. A US factory has to have enough fire exits and can't make certain things like nuclear weapons, for example. | ea1e41c2-03b1-42cb-b36f-2b2fb9fc0023 |
11haab | The Club Atmosphere | Taking off your shirt, painting your face and body in a bright primary color and yelling at the top of your lungs will get you thrown out of any church, restaurant, doctor's office or shopping mall.
But you'd fit right in at a football game.
Behaviors and customs are contextualized. Things that are entirely accepted in one context are inappropriate in a different context.
This kind of thing doesn't normally give people trouble. I'm curious why you're struggling with it. Maybe there's more to this that you left out of your question. | c77a6c60-0fb9-41f9-b96d-6b06bbb9cf3d |
39g3c5 | How exactly does computer hacking work? | In real life hacking there are two main phases, discovery of a weakness, and then exploiting that weakness.
The discovery phase involves researching how computer systems work and trying to find ways to interact with them that weren't intended. An example would be going to a site and experimenting with inputting text into an input box and trying to get the system to respond in some way it wasn't designed to. Maybe you try inputting some html code, or javascript, or just putting in way more characters than it says you can.
If the people who wrote the software that runs the website weren't careful, someone might find a way to get the software to do something it wasn't supposed to. I'm not advocating doing that to this site or any other site as doing so might be against the terms of service or against the law.
Once a weakness is found then hackers would try to figure out exactly what they can gain from it and eventually they'll make a script or app that can scan the internet looking for weak systems. In many cases these hackers can write programs that nearly automate the process of finding and exploiting a weakness. | f69b2c97-9f89-40d1-8ace-304cda952e0b |
22r6iu | Why does carbon dating work with man made objects? | The issue is that, in the areas where carbon dating is effective, it's not telling you when the spear was fashioned, but when the thing the spear was fashioned out of died.
A good analogy for carbon dating would be this: Imagine you come across a dead body. You want to know how long it's been dead, but there's no obvious clues. When you do the autopsy, you open up the stomach, and you find a half-rotten Turkey sandwich inside.
Now, you know how long it takes a turkey sandwich to rot (because your that kind of weird scientist) and you know that the turkey sandwich must have been eaten while the guy was alive, and wasn't eaten already rotten. As a result, by measuring just how far gone is the sandwich, you can know the time of death.
With the actual dating, you're not looking for sandwich rot, but instead for changes in the ration of two isotopes of carbon. When trees are alive, since carbon is coming in and going out, the ratios are the same as the atmosphere. But after they die, the ratio changes as one type of carbon decays into the other.
That's why you can only really use carbon dating on things that are organic, and it's why it doesn't work on some things (like the shells of sea animals) where the ratio might change because of how they add carbon during the time the animal is alive. But for land plants, it works pretty well.
And hence, as above, we can use it to date not when the spear was fashioned, but when the tree the spear is made of died. | 3d8fd448-c734-4182-97dd-df461f104c58 |
6ge4oa | Why bands perform with heaps of amps/speakers on stage instead of connecting to the venues PA system. | My band uses both our own towers *and* the venue PA system:
The speakers (or rather, monitors) that are in front of us are used to hear ourselves play, in case our in-ear monitoring system fails.
Optically and audibly, this constellation is a win/win situation, (but of course only if our system and the venue are aligned correctly.)
Edit: 'Optically', meaning that the stage and the entire show simply looks 'better' for the audience when stacks of Marshall amps frame the stage. | a6d3ab9e-05f7-4038-8e93-1de5ddc8f254 |
5aeb7b | Why do tires on a car have air in them? Why not have them made out of solid rubber? | Rubber compresses yes, but not as much as air. Very early cars had solid rubber tyres and the ride was very bumpy (albeit combined with very primative suspension). Also the solid rubber tires would "bounce" like a rubber ball, not ideal. Air inside tires however acts like a shock absorber... then once the tire has returned to its original shape, the air doesn't spring back the other way like solid rubber would. | 751f0c9d-91e5-4e33-8f4b-545ba5fc8be9 |
2cqhjf | Ketosis vs. Glycosis and how they both work. | Ketogenic dieter here. I'll try to present both sides as objectively as I can. I will start off by saying that cutting carbs is not necessary for losing weight. Eating at a caloric deficit is, that is to burn more calories than you consume. Calories primarily come from four sources: Fat, protein, carbohydrates, and alcohol.
Basically, with a ketogenic diet, you're depriving your body of carbs and forcing it to run on fat instead. In order to perform a lot of biological processes, such as to fuel the brain, smaller, simpler molecules than fat are needed. So, the body synthesizes ketones out of fat to do this. Part of the advantage of a ketogenic diet is that most junk foods are carb heavy, so by cutting carbs you're replacing them with healthier, lower calorie, more satiating food, making it easier to eat less. Some disagree with this science, but many ketogenic dieters also say that part of why it works is a low carb diet minimizes spikes of insulin, a hormone that causes your body to retain fat, and makes body fat a more readily available source of energy.
My understanding of glycolysis is more from an exercise point of view. When muscle cells need energy, they primarily use creatine phosphate as a fuel source for very short, intense activities (like powerlifting), and fat for long, easy activities (like walking). For everything in between (like high rep lifting and cardio) they use glycolysis. Slow glycolysis uses glycogen, a form of sugar your body stores, and oxygen. When you're pushing your endurance, your cells rely more on fast glycolysis, which is anaerobic (uses no oxygen) and primarily uses protein as energy. It creates lactic acid (or lactate, I can't remember which) as a byproduct, which gives you the burning sensation in your muscles.
I'm not an expert on biochemistry, so I likely mixed some things up in that explanation. I apologize in advance, feel free to correct me. Like, I just realized OP was asking about glycosis, not glycolysis. | bb0050fe-aa0e-4ede-940f-0dbf3280daf7 |
6657e8 | How do metals such as copper and zinc get into foods we pick from the ground? | So most metals when found in nature are in some sort of salt. You know how you need ores to get iron, ore is basically the salt with oxygen, where copper gets into the plant in -probably- nitrate form. Basically they get another ion and then get dissolved into the ground water, where the plants pick them up. | 942e39aa-4199-4177-910a-559a2164999e |
3ejxzr | Is water pressure from depth a "directional" force and therefore a downward force? Can it be alleviated? (illustrations included) | Water pressure, just like air pressure, pushes in from all around, not just from above. Neither of those diagrams will alleviate the water pressure felt. | 0b4456f0-f440-4f54-945b-aea02cd4c1b2 |
6ell1h | William Yeats Gyre | Disclaimer: I am not an expert on Yeats; I just wrote a paper about one of his poems once.
Yeats believed that history was cyclical, with cataclysmic events roughly every 2000 years. IIRC, he thought that "softer" or "Christian" ages alternated with "rougher" or "non-Christian" ages. For example, the birth of Jesus heralded the end of an age, and World War I was near the end of that new age. | f09c4fd5-dad1-4524-8db1-c897eed60f17 |
43ddsk | How does Ticketmaster get away with charging such insane fees? Why do they do this? | > How does Ticketmaster get away with charging such insane fees?
Ticketmaster gets away with charging insane fees because there is no law that regulates how they price their product. The only way the government can interfere in pricing or a business model is if it becomes a monopoly but that's a whole different issue and for this question all you need to know is that monopoly laws do not apply to Ticketmaster.
> Why do they do this?
Ticketmaster entire existence and business model is not to actually sell tickets but rather be a scapegoat for vendors, venues, artists, and etc. Artists and etc. don't want to take the blame for high ticket costs so they price their tickets for cheap and use the Ticketmaster fees to bring the price back up to the actual amount the artist wants to sell the tickets for. Ticketmaster may take a percentage of those fees but a majority of the fees goes straight back to the artist and etc.
I.e. Justin Bieber charges $40 a ticket and Ticketmaster fees bring up the ticket to a $100 ($60 worth of fees). $12 of those fees (20% service fee for using Ticketmaster) go to Ticketmaster while $48 of the fees (the rest) go straight to Justin Bieber. | e31e5b06-6e00-4277-9b95-24c01fe6a96a |
j48lw | LI5: Could you explain to me what linux is and why it's so different from Windows or Mac OS | Pretend that linux, windows, and mac are **toy lego cars**.
The **windows car** comes with all the pieces you need, and a standard set of instructions. It's pretty easy to put together, doesn't cost too much, and is really popular (you can easily get someone else to make a windows car for you). Because it is so popular, all the additions you can add on to your car like a laser cannon or bigger wheels fit right out of the box. Every lego set is made to work with the windows car. What you can't really change though is the main engine of the lego car. It gets made at the windows factory and you're not allowed to open that lego piece up. Its workmanship is somewhat questionable, but it works okay and does most everything you want.
The **mac car** gets sent to you already made from the factory using its own special legos. It looks really sweet and is super easy and fun to drive. It doesn't do everything you want, but everything it does do it does really well. It's somewhat popular, so a lot of the addons guys will make an addon using the special mac legos too. You can't change the engine and a bunch of other things, so you better hope it already works like you want it too (but there is a good chance that it does). All the mac addons work together easily without hardly any extra work.
The **linux car** is what all the guys that are really good at legos use because you can change everything. Even the engine is made up of more tiny legos. Everyone that makes linux cars shares parts and instructions for free, so you don't have to pay for very much. But a lot of the addons come with "some assembly required" and sometimes you have to use special connector blocks because it uses every kind of lego there is. But you can make the exact car you want, and chances are somebody else already figured out how so you just have to do a little extra work to get that super sweet car. If something goes wrong, you better understand something about legos because everyone's linux car is a little different so the mechanics might not know just how to help you. Also some of the funnest addons are only built to fit on the windows car so you have to do a lot of work to fit it on your linux car.
There are tons of other ways to build cars which usually have a really good reason you might need to build a car that way. Maybe you want to build fast cars, or reliable cars, or small cars, or big cars, or a whole fleet of cars that work together. None of these other cars (aka operating systems) are as popular as the big three.
edit: spelling/grammar
edit2: "the mechanics might not know just how to help you" line is trying to imply that you are going to have to put a little work in yourself to get things working right, or get someone else to do it for you. This does not mean that linux people can't help fix your problem, just that it is not straightforward.
edit3: I am biased against Windows, so I tried to keep as much of that out of my answer as possible. | b51ea18b-3eca-4764-9f40-2e357f1cd358 |
3itpk4 | Why does our stomach and or intestines dont eat itself? | Our intestines have muscosals on the inside. That's a kind of slime between the stomach and the acid.
*Side-fact: When you die, the muscosals can't be regenerated, and then you "eat" yourself. (The acid dissolves you)* | 3cb2ff0e-87fc-43d3-a457-ea1646403baf |
3legda | Why do girls tend to have good handwriting and guys tend to have bad handwriting? | Girls develop their fine motor skills earlier than boys, and it happens to coincide with the typical age around which children learn to write. | 9ddaddf2-3400-4b02-a4fd-adcf47e3f0f3 |
2nt1o3 | Why the sudden excitement after the Star Wars teaser? | I do believe that people are incredibly hyped due to both nostalgia and hope. This is our new hope after the prequel disaster. | c1561ec1-3b4e-4eb4-af04-31d66f38e4c6 |
8qiuls | When you have two blocks, one made of metal and one made of wood, in the same room with a constant temperature, why does the metal block feel colder to the touch? | The answer is difference in thermal conductivity ie how good a material is at conduct heat.
Humans can't feel what the absolute temperature is of a object we touch but instead we sense the temperature change on our skin. So what we thing is a hot object is one that transfer a lot of heat to our skin per unit of time.
So objects at the same temperature will feel different if the material have different thermal conductivity.
The speed of heat transfer proportional to the thermal conductivity multiplied by the temperature difference.
Dry wood has a thermal conductivity of 0.17 for oak (that is high for wood) and cast iron has 55 that is 300 time more.
The same is true for object colder then you but heat transfer in the other direction. It is quite obvious if you are outside when it is below freezing outside. The air done feel that cold and you can touch wood without and pain but touching ice will after a while be painful and metal will hurt you almost directly. All those object can have the same temperature but feel completely different.
Is is a bit more complex for small object where you changes its temperature like tinfoil that you can touch in a oven even if is is metal. The explanation is that the amount of thermal energy the tinfoil contains is so low that is cant heat up your skin any significant amount. | d0079b2a-6c78-456c-b79e-770d2692f86f |
5vyig7 | Why are rest stops built with one on each side of a highway/interstate rather than one build in the middle? | They are in the median in some places. The left exit and entry is problematic for slower vehicles/drivers.
Speaking of slow drivers, if you circle around looking for an open parking spot, eat, pee, and get gas, your internal compass may get confused and you could enter the highway going in the opposite direction I almost did it once and I have a good sense of direction. | d7b8d629-5cf0-4f8b-9288-5719ffea91d4 |
7bd9bh | why can't 32 bit or 64 bit Windows run 16 but apps? | The difference isn't so much in the "number of bits", but rather in the fact that 16 bit apps are old and are designed for an entirely different runtime and file format and they require a completely different set of dependencies. They're now known as "16 bit", but the reality is the operating system's kernel was completely different at the time, and the apps were designed for that particular kernel. | f35c29dd-6f8c-4160-a46c-766ece08bda6 |
4tkdel | The sound barrier, and how you "break it" | We're used to air behaving a certain way as we move through it. It flows out of the way as we move. However, it can only flow so quickly, and at a certain speed its ability to flow basically stops, and that's the speed of sound.
As you get closer to that speed, the air can't get out of your way quickly enough, and builds up in front of you as a shock wave. This wave can have horrible effects on a plane's handling, making it uncontrollable, and it can suffer catastrophic damage and crash. Hence the idea of a "sound barrier" - it was like hitting a virtual wall, and many pilots died that way.
Breaking it required a rethink of plane design and a lot of testing in wind tunnels, before they actually built a plane to do it. One key design breakthrough was the [stabilator] (_URL_0_) a.k.a. all-moving tail, which kept working as you approached the speed of sound, instead of the conventional split stabiliser that was the cause of control problems. | c6048b26-9041-4c56-9c73-55fdea889221 |
3urc57 | Does putting a chair under a round door handle really stop it from being opened? | Yes it works. The objective of putting the change under a round door handle is not to prevent the handle from being able to be turned it its to prevent the door from being opened by way of 'wedging' the door closed.
See [here](_URL_0_) | 6ae498bd-fa83-477e-b436-7c645eb831b6 |
4y1wvm | Why do things sound deeper when in slow motion? | Pitch is determined by frequency. So higher pitch equals higher frequency and lower pitch equals lower frequency. Basically, if you capture sound at regular speed and slow it down, you are also slowing down the frequency of the tone. | a5058a18-ac70-4b38-9e86-a4515cc88f2e |
5dqzaq | what speed do nerve signals travel at? And do giant whales have a delay since they are huge? | The speed is affected by a lot of factors such as age and gender. The impulse has to travel along the axons. Some axons can vary in diameter and can be more or less myelinated (think of it as rubber around an electric wire). There are a lot of types of fibers. The nerve signal can travel from 0.5 to 120 m/s (more than 400 km/h) depending on the type.
Now, the impulse has to travel through your body from your brain to your toes. The impulse will arrive faster to your eyes than to your toes. However, the difference is non significant, because of the speed of the impulse and your body size. But for a bigger animal, the size matters. So yes, there is delay for them. There is delay between sensing and reacting. | 94c704ff-7535-43cd-8aa4-02c4a571678c |
6bbgsj | Speed limits | Road structure, distance between intersections, visibility, and number of lanes. These are just a few factors that go into determining the speed limit. | c6b60367-e478-406f-90fa-1b413f8d4e2c |
2qosuz | Since the first quantum computer has already been built... what exactly does it do and why is it considered a paradigm shift? I understand that it uses quantum mechanics but I don't get it at all.. | First, a practical quantum computer has not been built. Scientists have made some in labs with a small number of qubits(the quantum version of bits), but those are not good enough to be useful. A company called dwave has claimed to built a quantum computer with a large number of qubits but their claim has been heavily scrutinized by some experts. Also the approach they use would not allow you to program the computer with any quantum algorithm you want even the ones we're most interested in like shor's algorithm.
A quantum computer takes advantage of certain properties in quantum mechanics to perform calculations better in some cases than a regular computer. These are unique cases and for the most part a regular computer would be as good or better than a quantum computer.
Some situations where a quantum computer may be better than a regular computer are:
Factoring certain large numbers(very useful for cryptography which is why the NSA is so interested in them)
Searching databases
Some optimization problems
Simulating quantum mechanics
In my opinion the killer app is simulating quantum stuff. You can perform much better simulations of drugs, chemicals, materials, etc. This could revolutionize how we do chemistry.
Coming up with uses and algorithms for quantum computers can be hard, but I think that like the laser once the device is put into the hands of everyday scientists and engineers, applications will be developed that no one had ever dreamed of before. | a009c6b6-cb95-4848-9350-c4a5283d8ce3 |
4b8ad2 | why do you become sexually attracted to someone once you develop feelings for them? | Part of developing feelings for someone is caring about their needs and wants. If they want to have sex with you then fulfilling that need is making them happy. Of course you are allowed to enjoy it too.
When you really want to have sex with them and they really want to have sex with you then you are providing your two favorite people with one of their favorite things.
Also, if your 5 wait a little while.
Edit: I'm glad to see this resonated with so many people. There are a lot of possible answers to this one since OP is essentially asking about what makes people love each other.
For those 5 year olds who have already learned they're air commas, keep up the good work. | 1662fbad-f44e-4219-b481-7910e8801384 |
6h5gvx | Why do so many white, western liberals and progressives defend Islam? | They tend to support freedom of religion. They tend to support civil rights for minorities. Seems strange to think of them as a minority but in the US and Western countries they are. | a3f2c032-0c8e-495d-a6f0-ac8a07ae4293 |
2qrg3s | Why do businesses store my credit card number, and why can't I opt out? | Depending on the store, several factors are at play. Some of the reasons:
1. Convenience - For instance, if you buy stuff from Best Buy, you don't need to store your receipts as long as you have the card you used for the purchase. This one time, I bought a camera in Phoenix and was browsing through a store in NYC a week later (and the camera was on sale for $100 less than what I payed). Walked to the customer service section, requested for a price match (all I had on me was the credit card) and a minute later, I was richer by $100.
2. Fraud prevention - Several reasons why it makes sense to store this information but I will give you one example. I have no money but just a credit card. I buy something expensive and return it. Now if they didn't have my card number stored, they'd have to pay me back in cash, thereby enabling me to get as much cash as the credit limit on my credit card.
3. Tracking - Stores like Target (I don't know if they still do) track purchase history for specific advertising. Read this article. Based on the girl's recent purchases, Target was able to tell she was pregnant and provided specific ads in her catalog. _URL_0_
There is probably more to it and hopefully, a person well versed with the subject will chime in. | 6c9f2182-5141-4b7b-912c-b626fb57097d |
3n3quv | What's going on with Russia and Syria right now and how does it affect the rest of the world? | Russia is allies with Syrian leader, Assad, due to a navy base there. Russia claims to enter Syria to fight ISIS but it appears they may have attacked Syrian Rebels that oppose both ISIS and Assad, Rebels that America is backing financially and with training, risking a proxy war with USA.
Edit - to further clarify...
USA wants to oust Assad and REALLY dislikes ISIS. Therefore we back the Syrian Rebels.
Syrian Rebels fight both ISIS and Assad. Unfortunately a lot of Syrian rebels defect to ISIS since they have a common enemy.
Assad and Syrian army are fighting both ISIS and the Syrian Rebels.
Russian allies with Assad, so is essentially ok with fighting both the Rebels and ISIS.
USA is ok with Russia entering Syria to fight ISIS, it's our common enemy, but not OK with them attacking the Rebels. The situation could get out of hand. | 9b280c02-6d62-476b-8388-c4cb0da31e08 |
3n5ctt | Baseball: From pitch to hits | **If a pitcher is throwing 98mph and the batter makes perfect contact (plus his strength index) the ball will be traveling close to 105mph. That lower speed or what some people would think is too low of a speed is due to the wooden bats used. If the MLB players used aluminum bats the ball would be traveling at near 130mph. That is why they will never be allowed in MLB.** | 616572af-185e-4991-8fc7-a03ea9c69626 |
xaqts | The Visual Acuity AKA 20/20 system | This is the way it was explained to me (And I may need to go check my facts).
Imagine someone is standing 20 feet away from a wall. Someone with 20/20 vision will be able to clearly read text written in letters that are 20 inches tall. 20/40 would be someone who needs text 40 inches all.
**EDIT:**
I *was* in fact wrong.
"If you have 20/20 vision, it means that when you stand 20 feet away from the chart you can see what the "normal" human being can see. (In metric, the standard is 6 meters and it's called 6/6 vision). In other words, your vision is "normal" -- most people can see what you see at 20 feet. (From here on, please assume that the word "normal" has quotes around it).
If you have 20/40 vision, it means that when you stand 20 feet away from the chart you can see what a normal human can see when standing 40 feet from the chart. That is, if there is a normal person standing 40 feet away from the chart and you are standing only 20 feet away from it, you and the normal person can see the same detail. 20/100 means that when you stand 20 feet from the chart you can see what a normal person standing 100 feet away can see. 20/200 is the cutoff for legal blindness in the United States.
You can also have vision that is better than the norm. A person with 20/10 vision can see at 20 feet what a normal person can see when standing 10 feet away from the chart."
[Source Here](_URL_0_) | 78d0b5e7-84af-4329-9419-27f000bb73a5 |
29rwd6 | Why is it considered immoral to outsource labor to workers in countries willing to work for very little money? | Usually it's the working conditions that people are protesting. Factories in developing countries with little regulation and workers' rights can be downright abysmal to work in. They're not called "sweatshops" for nothing.
In addition to poor working conditions is also worker safety. A man might lose an arm operating a press or similar machinery because the safety regulations aren't written into law or enforced. So a man without the factory might not have gotten that pay, but they might still have both arms and have been able to farm or some other small-time employment, whereas the man in the factory might have earned a year or two's worth of wages before becoming a cripple.
It's a value judgement, nothing more. | a8419f75-fa25-4dfc-8f1d-ad2e62a47f41 |
2vduss | In simple terms, what does the mathematical constant "e" mean? | e is special because of what happens when you take it to some exponent. Namely, if you graph y=e^x . [Here is a reference](_URL_0_). It's special because, at every point on that line, the slope of the graph is exactly equal to the y value of the graph. At y=1, y'=1. At y=2, y'=2. Turns out, that symmetry is very useful and helps to solve a lot of problems. | 1f90532e-8abe-4228-82fb-e137dbbfc634 |
7nr330 | Why are certain credit cards not accepted by certain buisinesses | Very simply: every credit card company requires the business to "subscribe" to their service. The subscription lets the business accept that particular credit card.
Unlike a magazine or MMO subscription, however, there's a charge **per transaction** (MasterCard, for instance, may charge 2.75% of the transaction + a $0.30 processing fee), with a mandatory minimum charge (usually something achievable, like $10).
Some businesses are small enough that they can only afford one or two, but not necessarily [all seven](_URL_0_) (and that doesn't include frequent flier miles cards, AAA, etc). The margins in retail are small enough as-is, and it can be a risk to offer support for a card that no one uses. | e82cdea0-4778-4e65-a80b-b036cd0c90b8 |
4fucan | How do people become addicted to smoking cigarettes when it is so awful the first few times? | For many people, smoking isn't about cigarettes, but rather about a little social club you get to hang out with outside every few hours.
It's not always bad the first time. I liked the cigarettes the first time I smoked one. It just felt right, and the feeling of hot smoke in my lungs was pleasant. I only didn't pick the habit up because I know it would kill me. | c7b74c86-a692-4d17-a134-d9ebe967f767 |
11qjlb | Why do some games have huge modding communities (Minecraft, Skyrim), whereas others have none at all? | Some games are easier to mod than others. Most have no official modding tools, unlike games like Skyrim or Valve games. | fb953fbf-3dfd-4649-8a01-8a2e77df19c5 |
j5eqm | Can someone please explain LI5 what redshift is? | Chris and Bob are playing with a slinky together. They're a little odd, so the best thing they can think of is to have each of them hold one end, and have Bob run away from Chris while he is standing still. The two notice that the slinky stretches out when Bob does this. A bit later, they decide to have Bob run towards Chris (who is still standing still). The slinky gets really tightly compressed and close together.
You see, light is like that slinky. When Chris, or a planet, is moving away from us, the slinky, or light is stretched out. When Chris, or a planet, is moving towards us, the light is squished together. But what does that do to the light? Well, [here](_URL_0_) is an image that might help. When light is *longer*, it's to the left, and when it's *shorter*, it's to the right. [Here](_URL_1_) is another useful image, which also shows the "slinky".
So redshift just means that the "slinky", which is light, is being stretched out. What does that tell us? Think back to Chris and Bob. It means that the planet is moving away! And if it was blue (blueshift)? I leave that one to you. | 528606eb-b54d-4545-b8bb-7eaa6dc52df9 |
2bh4wu | The concept of 'squatting' in a home that isn't yours and why it's so difficult to remove squatters from the premises in certain places. What stops people from kicking in the door to residence they own and throwing squatters out? | Could be a number of reasons:
The owner of building is not aware of the squatters, or simply doesn't care. Remember, the owner of the building may be some nameless overseas corporation. Or, a rundown building is scheduled for demolition sometime next year. Do you think the owner cares what happens to the building between now and then?
In some/most countries squatters have legal rights and you literally can't just kick them out. Even stranger, if they squat somewhere long enough they could have a legal claim of ownership.
(Look up slums in Brazil. If you squat somewhere for 5 years you can claim ownership, there's a reason they are bulldozed exactly every X years or something like that)
Police are not always keen to enter buildings with squatters in them;
Place could be boobytrapped, or even fortified, not to mention drug paraphernalia lying about. Or simply so rundown that it is not safe to enter. Also, don't assume that the squatters would live in easy to access parts. Good chance they're hiding in the crawlspace for example. Are you going to crawl in there and ask them nicely to please leave the premises?
Did I mention fortified by the way? Here's a choice quote from Wikipedia:
**"The squatting movement took on an increasingly anarchist tone during the 1980s. On 29 February, police moved to evict residents from a squatted building on the corner of Vondelstraat. It was immediately reoccupied and barricades erected. Street fights ensued between riot police and the squatters, with the building being cleared when a military tank demolished the surrounding street barricades"**
Last but not least, another little anecdote about squatters in Amsterdam:
(Most buildings in Amsterdam are multi-storey FYI).
A rural cop spends a few days in the big city for work-experience, and he notices that his city colleagues always take their hats off when they walk up to a building.
So he asks: **"Why do you guys take your hats off when you walk up to the building?"**
"Ah, that's so we can see if the residents are trying to drop a fridge out the window onto our heads!" | 7b3aa550-ca4c-4731-9457-ffee675881c4 |
6uc29j | Why do some people scream when they sneeze? | Could be cultural ties. Even the way people sneeze is influenced. Culturally and ethnically. That's not the be all, end all reasoning... But it definitely influences it. | 5d86435d-adaf-490f-9518-7676c9da4ac3 |
3g1j7q | How do people invest in stocks without going through a broker or brokerage firm? | Do you mean just like "how"? I used Robinhood (iOS app). If you mean figuring out what stocks to buy - that's a personal choice, but there are tons of resources online. | 8606e722-798a-428c-97a8-0f3ded1514c9 |
1natrs | Why do i always feel a bigger need to smoke when i drink alcohol? Is it purely the social part of smoking, or are there in fact other factors which are to blame? | I think it's just being intoxicated in general. Why are you more hungry/horny/outgoing etc... when you're drunk? It's just easier to give in to your desires, whatever they may be. | e92d2823-4a39-4b61-8e35-ab0613fe9d81 |
3t8g4i | Syrian Refugees are being housed in Fresno county (Central California). How are the crazies separated from the real refugees? Is there a screening process or something they have to go through? Very curious how the refugee thing works. | Refugees have to be refereed either by the UN or from the individual Embassies overseas. Then they are screened and interviewed by officials from DHS and specifically Citizenship and Immigration Services, with cooperation from the Intelligence Community, and domestic and international law enforcement to spot either criminals or potentially dangerous or radicalized ones. They are also given a health screening to prevent the spread of communicable diseases before entering the country.
The entire process can take over a year before a decision is made, which means if a person is any sort of crazy or serial criminal that is a lot of time for them to mess up and take themselves out of consideration.
The US has a large natural benefit when it comes to this, because of the ocean it is much harder for anyone to come directly here, they end up in a camp in another country first, and are already to some degree screened, leading to a much reduced pool from which the US will then consider for Refugee assistance.
_URL_1_
_URL_0_ | e2ee19c2-1203-4752-aa1b-7c823b83e4a3 |
3g55h4 | if muscles can work anaerobically, why do we need to breathe oxygen, on a biological level? | Without oxygen we would lose about 94% of our capacity to convert glucose to energy usable for our body. It generally doesn't take too long for this to become a problem. | 4ad3d75b-1a8c-4d37-9cf4-ed285f267493 |
30xqgy | Why do we get to decide if Iran is allowed to make nuclear weapons? | Iran is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has therefore agreed to not build nuclear weapons.
Source:
_URL_0_ | c57bbfc8-2de5-476c-94c3-6235ae028030 |
27ze4r | History of Reddit | It sounds like you're wanting to look at _URL_0_. | dd275c42-832a-46c0-9180-0ecc1efe7c33 |
65jgod | Why did Canada get rid of the penny? | Canada got rid of the penny because the penny costs more to make than it's worth.
A good video: [Canada gets rid of the penny](_URL_0_)
Edit: put in the right link | 255b1828-4441-410b-9efb-60c092552b57 |
22ywif | Is there a mechanical reason fan switches often go from off to full power, and then down? (Ordered "0,3,2,1" on the switch) | Although the other answers may have some truth to them, one of the big reasons for this is that any electric motor will have a "startup current" that's much higher than the normal operating current. When the motor is physically rotating at a different speed than its electricity makes it "want" to rotate, it soaks up excess energy that all goes into heat and mechanical stress inside the motor. [Figure 7-3 in this book](_URL_0_) shows how the starting current can be 5 times as much as the normal current.
All the stress is bad for the motor and wears it out over time; so, they make the switches so that the most powerful setting is the one that's used during the first, most important, part of the turning-on process. That accelerates the fan quickly through its most vulnerable time. | f4378e95-44b9-452b-8ee0-0736095dd3c8 |
38hpj8 | Why does glue not harden when it's in the container, but harden when it is poured out? | Glue only hardens when it is exposed to air, and the water inside it (which is what makes it fluid) evaporates. | 0c5e0f21-70d4-487b-a894-366a27b9e2e1 |
1zci7a | If memories are so susceptible to change over time, how can I be sure an event that I remember actually happened? | supporting evidence. Other people agree it happened, there are photos, diaries, souvenirs. There are lots of reasons to be trust your memories. | f7da1311-7468-4650-bdba-d19f244c8f02 |
35ngsy | Why does it feel better to have feet elevated when you sit? | Your feet take a lot of wear and tear, and are often in tight shoes and socks. Elevating them on a footstool repositions them so they're off the ground and not at the very bottom of your entire bloodstream's contents. It takes a little bit of the pressure off of them, meanwhile flexing the knees a bit so they're not rigid either. | f873a20d-c288-4700-803c-1e27bb3cd3ce |
1xv48s | What actually causes graphical artifact in a video game? | What kind of artifact? Different graphic glitches can be caused by different things | e651a60b-7b83-4d03-890e-183998ca7cbc |
1ojom8 | Does having a larger penis increase the likelihood of conception? | No, just like a longer needle doesn't increase the effectiveness of a vaccine. As long as it's sufficient for injecting the genetic material in the correct hole, that's all that matters. | afd5eb92-b1eb-4471-90df-cc54ef731b61 |
3w2asi | Why are Computer Malware so obvious to detect for the victim? | Some malware is obviously visible, like changing your browser's homepage to some ad-riddled horror show. Many casual computer users won't know what to do, so they'll just let it slide, and use the bloated crapshoot as their homepage, making the malware people advertisement money.
However, just because you can see some of it doesn't mean you can see all of it. One example is the (until recently) popular torrent program utorrent, which decided to bundle hidden malware in one of its updates, which would use your computer's processor(s) and internet connection to mine bitcoins for them. Had it not been for dedicated savyy people sending out warnings, most people would never have found the reason and would just have cursed the gods for their computer's newfound slowness.
Just because you can see one tiger prowling in the jungle doens't mean there isn't one just behind you in the bushes about to murder you. | fc98e7cb-1be4-4d50-9982-899bfb8510a0 |
pcj38 | How does the on field screen work during the Superbowl halftime show? | While I could be quite wrong, I am fairly certain that it works something like this:
During the game, you'll notice that they put images onto the field, such as a marker indicating who has the ball, and the line they must cross before the end of the 4th down (Football is not my forte, so please excuse me if my terminology is wrong.) These images are not actually on the field, nor are they visible to the players, but a computer system draws these images. By knowing the location of a camera, and the direction that it is facing, it is possible to tell where, on a flat image (the one the camera produces), points on the field are. Furthermore, the computer system knows what the field looks like when there are no players / objects on it, so it can determine what is the field and what is not, making it possible to make it look like an item is "under" the player on the image, and not "on top" of everything.
This same technique can be used during the halftime show. Each camera knows where it is relative to the field, so a computer generated image can be placed, with some 3D graphics techniques, on the field, but under the participants in the halftime show.
Want me to clarify anything, or does this make sense?
I don't recall the Olympic opening in China, so I can't help with that. | c8655c58-9b99-4bd4-884e-d430540c4a4f |
46nbs4 | - Why some occupation titles have genders and some don't? | It's because we've been slowly winnowing the gendered occupations out of English. "Author" is a good example -- until probably the early 20th century, the word "authoress" was used to refer to a woman, but that dropped out of fashion.
The same thing is happening with "actress," and you can see the term "actor" being applied more and more to men and women equally.
Other terms that vanished in the 20th century include "aviatrix," for a female aviator, and "flight attendant" has become the accepted replacement for "stewardess."
If we go back even farther in time, we can find pairs like baxter/baker and webster/weaver, which dropped the feminine version a long time ago.
Also, gendered words like policeman/woman and salesman/woman are falling out of favor, to be replaced with police officer and sales rep. | a0a1bf8f-660b-4765-a547-11905a3b13e6 |
34myru | Is there an evolutionary benefit for men having beards other than helping with the ladies? | They actually have a surprising benefit if you spend a lot of time outdoors in the cold. At least for me, I shaved off about six months of beard growth in the middle of this winter, and my face felt much, much colder.
It's not a huge benefit, but it was the difference between having to wear a scarf or not. | 9f8f9c23-e690-4134-a2ae-3993db662b9b |
7btszr | Difference Between Heat and Temperature | You can think of temperature as being similar to the level of water in a bucket, and heat as being the actual amount of water in a bucket.
If you have two buckets, they might both be filled five inches deep with water. But if one bucket is much wider, that five inches represents a lot more water in the big bucket than the small one. Adding more water will raise the total amount of water in both by the same amount, but will raise the level more in the small bucket than the large one. | fed9af13-02fa-433a-8706-d795970dfb5c |
443645 | Before college became a requirement for many jobs, how did employers screen and filter out candidates? | Basically before the late 90s you got a job by 'knowing a guy'
Most older people (over 50) you meet, if you ask them how they got into their career the story will start "I knew this guy..." | ac7038dc-6503-4b73-94fe-71766af0358b |
80h5q5 | When you have anxiety, why does your body feel weak or even have pain in your chest? | Anxiety is not just mental, it also causes the "fight or flight" effect. In essence your body prepares to run/fight an entity, this involves increased or erratic heart rate and other associated factors. This leads to the chest pain from your heart and lungs prepping for but not being used, kinda like redlining a car without ever shifting out of first. Not sure what you mean by weakness. | b1231588-b8d7-4d5d-8455-5c8316116621 |
7vgi58 | How does a phone's (specifically an IPhone) cooling system work? Since it's a smaller computer, is it essentially the same? | Phones are designed to utilize passive cooling only. That being, they do not generate enough heat through standard operation to require a fan. This is due to the size, power, and space required for fans and various failure points introduced by them - and also any CPU that generated enough heat to require active cooling would not be usable as a mobile device as it would drain the battery very quickly.
Since you mentioned the iPhone in particular, the most powerful iPhone's (iPhone X) CPU is the A11, I can't find exact specs on this but the power usage of the CPU is likely in the 5-10 watt range. For comparison, processors in laptops are usually in the 25-45W range (on the low end, these may not need active cooling to cool) and desktop processors tend to range anywhere from 65W to 85W+. | 91879dec-007f-4aad-91f9-5f61c5b69017 |
4k1vc8 | What happens to me if my province goes bankrupt? | It means that the province won't pay back some of its debts/obligations. That can take many forms. For example, people own government bonds. It's basically an IOU that they bought. The government sold an IOU for $100 that they'd pay back $120 on some date, for example. That might not get paid in full or at all in a bankruptcy scenario. Similarly, governments have pension obligations. They've told workers that if they work for the government for a time, they'll get money in the future for their retirement. Those benefits might get reduced.
Even if you have no direct claim on the province, it will probably impact you. The government is often one of the largest employers and spenders. If the government goes bankrupt, it will mean people around you having less money. You don't own bonds, but people in your town might and then have less money to be spending if they aren't paid back. You might not have a government pension, but a lot of people might have less money to spend on things. You might not be employed by the government, but if the government goes bankrupt and has to cut spending, it will create unemployment and lower services. If the government can't borrow at low rates because it's a bigger risk, that makes investment in infrastructure much more expensive.
Even if you're not directly impacted, you'll be impacted by the fact that others around you are. If you run a restaurant, pensioners now have less money and go out to eat less and the restaurant gets less income. Maybe you have to lay off some workers due to lower patronage. If the government isn't going to be able to spend as much on things like education, maybe people leave the province for other parts of Canada and housing values go down.
Things are very interconnected. Even if you don't have a government pension that might get cut, a certain percentage of those that pay the money that likely ends up in your pocket somewhere down the line do. Say you're a fisherman that supplies restaurants. Pensioners spend less on luxuries like restaurants, the restaurants buy less fish from you, you have less money.
The impacts are likely greater on some than others. If you directly have a government obligation, that's worse. But it still isn't wonderful for anyone since things have ripple effects. | 4b447ed8-4827-46d7-a69a-62a10696c39b |
16vitb | How does a plunger work? | The plunger is bell shaped....so when you put it into the toilet, you are pushing a pocket of air down with it. When you compress the plunger, the air is pushed against the clog, and with enough pressure it can dislodge the clog and get it moving. Try blowing out your mouth with your lips pressed together...it's the same concept. | fcd23c07-820d-44a3-a685-d53fae39ea36 |
4r7dy1 | Why does American use a Presidential system, rather than a Parliamentary one? | Because we divide our government into separate branches and use them to limit the other branches. In a parliamentary system the legislative and executive branches are fused into one, which gives it more power, and in most parliamentary systems the judicial branch is partially fused as with it as well giving it even more power. In the US they are all separate and have powers to counter the other two.
We also prefer to have a bit more of a democratic process by voting on who we want our States to vote for as President (electoral college). In a parliamentary system you do not actually get to choose your leader at all, it is chosen by the majority party in your parliament. | cd3fbaa8-1554-445e-935f-741817fb2cf5 |
5xibx5 | Why is getting gold on Reddit such a big deal? | People will often use gold as a kind of super upvote. The recipient takes it as a compliment and confirmation that their post or comment was in some way more valuable to people. | bb43a1ea-5479-494c-8d60-f44e38b2ab3d |
2s073i | Why I can understand people speaking to me in my dreams, but when I try to read books or notes in my dreams the words are all gibberish. | In your dreams, you brain has to do double duty...it makes the world you are perceiving, and then it perceives it. Some things, like complex and consistent visual details, are harder for it to make. Sound, on the other hand, is more reactive...you hear whether you want to or not, and it is more of a reflex. | 9c52889a-32ce-42a7-9156-ba72d09da47e |
39y5q1 | Music for studying | I guess it depends on you. I myself don't listen to lyrics, but people who do could be distracted by them. So listening to instrumental music may benefit their concentration.
My bet would be to not listen to music that begs for your attention all the time by using high pitched sounds and quick patterns. Your brain will just be distracted. | ee60a6e2-4902-411f-9ea5-71a773a5a812 |
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