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c9au3z | Why does your chest and head physically hurt when you are sad or heartbroken? | These are all symptoms of stress: muscles tightness or contraction, increased heart rate and intensity, shortness of breath, and blood concentrating to one's core in a fight or flight response. Scientists arent totally sure they know why this happens but they believe the vagus nerve can be so overstimulated that it causes one pain and nausea.
_URL_0_ | d57c535a-7899-4b43-a428-7b507ae5a545 |
c9awtw | Where does this "neutron" come from that splits U-235 / U-238 / PU-239 | > Also why does the fuel assemblies / U-235 pellets, during transport / creation, not under go spontaneous fission causing generation of heat / chain reaction, if its enriched to a higher percentage and indeed undergoing fission spontaneously ?
Spontaneous fission is so unlikely in uranium and plutonium (less than one in a million decays go the fission route but as all of them have rather long half-lives so decay activity itself isn't that high) that the neutron flux is negligible and a chain reaction is not really possible whether it's highly enriched or not. Aside from that fuel rods are not critical and without a moderator most neutrons will not cause a fission event.
> From my elementary understanding is during a normal nuclear reactor start (new reactor / all new fuel rods) or after a longtime shutdown, you need to have an appropriate neutron flux (spare neutrons). Therefore, using a start up source either (Californium-252 or combination of beryllium with Plutonium-238, americium-241, polonium-210, or radium 226)
Californium itself is relatively unstable and has a relatively high rate of spontaneous fission which supplies neutrons.
Another option is shooting lightweight nuclei (lithium or beryllium) with alpha particles released by heavy radioactive elements (i.e. plutonium, radium, polonium, americium) which also releases neutrons. This is done by simply mixing both in powdered form and statistics does the rest.
A third option is to shoot light nuclei (i.e. deuterium, tritium, beryllium) with extremely high energy x-rays which can also knock out neutrons.
The last two are essentially different ways to transfer enough energy into the light nuclei to overcome their binding energy. | e6d61bcf-bbbc-4c57-a7e3-38ef9f29d23f |
c9ax6w | 5: Prior to the first moon landing, how did scientists get the necessary data to help them design the equipment required for them to land? For example: rockets, landing gear, space suits and stuff necessary for the astronauts re-entry into earth. | Through space missions and experiments on earth prior to going to the moon. It's why there were space programs, like Gemini, before the Apollo moon missions. | 9a2f2d84-ddae-4c6e-a852-341ffa0f7e32 |
c9b5yw | Why doesn’t water damage a jet engine | Rain is almost all air, with very little water. The water does get into the get engine, where the heat boils it to steam which exist with all the other exhaust. Jets are made of materials that can survive this situation, as it's common whenever you fly through a cloud. | 2255f8a5-e740-4980-a8e6-6e4b8659385f |
c9bo2i | Why are certain artists songs available on Youtube and not on other platforms? | I'm no expert. I could be wrong. (Please correct me if so)
But it costs money and specifications to publish songs to spotify, iTunes etc. So if the artist doesn't like the song or couldn't get it in a better quality recording for example, they can choose not to publish it. But release it on a free platform like YouTube so the song doesnt go to waste. If it get good views they can publish it later on.
Edit. It could also be down to the artist not finding a publisher they want to associate with. | 8878edee-db6b-467a-8b86-08d49b6ea3da |
c9burx | Why hasn't Bluetooth been replaced by another technology such as infrared wireless, ultra wideband, induction wireless, etc.? | Infrared requires line of sight. Bluetooth which uses radio waves does not. Bluetooth has a 20-30ft of range. Inductive has millimeters of range. | 5a470457-5a6f-4c57-8b08-b5a8bdb050f4 |
c9c5cl | How do psychologists keep their own mental health while constantly dealing with depressed patients? | My psychology professor said that he and his colleagues see other psychologists to work through any issues they face. | 5888f655-6f34-44ea-8613-a2b114203af6 |
c9c90n | Why is time the fourth dimension? How were we able to come to this conclusion? | It's the fourth necessary dimension to get an exact location of something.
For instance I can tell you that a ball falling is 10 inches from the ground, 10 inches away from you 10 inches to your left. But if I don't tell you WHEN a particular measurement took place during the balls fall, you can't do anything with that information. You couldn't grab it at that spot right now - it's not there now. It was there at (insert time) | 2f82de45-2ab4-4fba-b979-1dade03beaba |
c9cgsn | Why can we not hear random sounds when our bodys vibrate | Our ears detect sounds from 50Hz to 20kHz (roughly and depending on age)
50Hz is pretty fast, 50 Up and down per second | 426776eb-336d-4f80-8230-ad0d29fec4bf |
c9cjhi | Why do city lights look like they are flickering in the distance? | This may be better suited for /r/answers than here, because the answer is simple and straightforward:
The air between you and the lights isn't perfectly uniform. There are pressure differences and particulates in the air that distort the light. Since air is always moving, the distortion changes... this shows up as a flickering effect from a distance.
That's the same reason stars flicker, too. | e1ab9e1e-b268-439f-9abf-684850f0094f |
c9cvry | Is there a buoyancy equivalent to terminal velocity? If so how does it work? | I don't think there is a term for the maximum velocity an object floats at to the surface when released from under water.
I also don't think the water pressure from the depth affects the velocity that much in the end since the pressure should be more or less uniform around the entire object (unless its really big). So this means that the force pushing the object down should be cancelled out by the force pushing it upwards which only leaves the buoyancy to determine the velocity.
Salt or freshwater does matter. Buoyancy comes from an objects ability to displace water and how heavy the displaced water is. Salt water has a higher density than fresh water which results in a greater buoyancy. For example the Dead Sea has such a high density that one can literally sit in the water and read a newspaper. | 6099e500-b8aa-4b3a-aef1-079a18411978 |
c9czpe | How is all money debt? Is all money debt? | There’s no money in existence and I am a bank. You come to me to borrow ten dollars. You must pay me back the ten dollars. Plus interest. The ten dollars I gave you is the only ten dollars in existence. You can never pay off the debt. | 49ddb339-eb0c-407a-8c2e-c9ccde197992 |
c9d1aw | How is it that people who committed crimes that are no longer illegal, are still imprisoned? | A crime committed is still a crime committed, even if later legislation makes the same action legal going forward. That is unless there was specific action to pardon those convicted for that action. | e2d7fe1b-b5bf-41f0-ae1b-9c3a16aaee1e |
c9d6ez | What happens to a glass of water when left alone for a night? What makes water taste "stale"? | Slightly off topic, but I once spent the night at my grandma's house and when I got up I noticed little bubbles on the side of my glass of water. I asked her where they came from and she said the spiders blew the bubbles while they were swimming.
It didn't seem to be the correct answer but gma hadn't steered me wrong yet, so I didn't question it further.
Anyway, oxygen is dissolved in the water when you put it in the glass, and that oxygen slowly bubbles out of the water over time which can affect taste. Though it's probably mostly dust and other floaty things falling into the glass. | 893ff372-78fc-420c-9812-f34e954f9980 |
c9da44 | Why does shaking a bottle of carbonated liquid before opening the cap cause such a huge release of carbon dioxide compared to not shaking it? | Soda in a can/bottle is highly pressurised. This pressure forces the carbon dioxide to dissolve into the liquid. When you open the can/bottle, this pressure is released, so the carbon dioxide no longer has a 'reason' to stay dissolved, and it starts to come out of solution (the fancy way of saying 'un-dissolve'). Gas in a liquid, of course, forms bubbles. And, as these bubbles make their way to the surface and release the carbon dioxide into the air, you end up with a flat soda after a while.
What if you don't want it to take a while? What if you want it to happen faster?
It's actually pretty difficult for bubbles to form initially, but they can form more easily at locations called *nucleation sites*. The factors that cause this are probably beyond the scope of an ELI5 answer, but suffice to say these sites are spots that happen to provide ideal conditions for gas to come out of solution. If you boil some water in a pot, you may notice that bubbles tend to stream from certain specific locations on the inside of the pot - those specific spots are nucleation sites.
So now we know how carbon dioxide escapes (via bubbles) and how we can speed that up (via nucleation sites).
Well, it so happens that bubbles themselves can act like nucleation sites. It may be difficult for a bubble to form initially, but once one has formed (at a nucleation site), it's progressively easier for more gas to come out of solution and expand that bubble. This is also why bubbles in boiling water get bigger as they rise.
And when you shake soda, you mix air into it, which creates bubbles, kickstarting this whole process.
**tl;dr: when you shake soda, you create lots of bubbles, each of which makes it easier for the dissolved carbon dioxide to come out of solution. The result is a chain reaction that leads to a huge release of CO2.** | f7efb31f-4ea8-4f15-b3a0-06ab9f159e70 |
c9dh18 | What is happening to your body when you get motion sickness? | Your mind relies on two senses to judge where your body is in space and how it's moving: your sight, and something called the *vestibular sense,* which relies on the structures of your inner ear help determine motion.
Usually, those two things agree with each other, and everything's fine. But let's take the common trope of carsickness while reading, as an example. Your eyes are reporting that everything's stable and not moving, but your inner ear is reacting to all the sways and bumps and twists of the road.
This mismatch leads your mind to assume that your body's been poisoned; after all, what else could cause two systems to report different information? The body's best response to poison is to try to get it out via vomiting, which is what the sensation of sickness is meant to elicit. | dca8b4cf-ca68-4278-b73d-ba2eb38f38ca |
c9eyvx | What's the situation with 5G? Is it indeed that dangerous as people say? Or only in very high frequencies? Is the public uproar just overreacting? | Decades of studies have found no link between cell phones and cancers like brain tumors.
& #x200B;
It’s easy to find claims online that the greater frequency of 5G alone constitutes a risk. [_URL_1_](_URL_0_) observes that “1G, 2G, 3G and 4G use between 1 to 5 gigahertz frequency. 5G uses between 24 to 90 gigahertz frequency,” and then asserts that “Within the RF Radiation portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, the higher the frequency, the more dangerous it is to living organisms.”
& #x200B;
But asserting that the higher frequency is more dangerous is just that—an assertion, and there’s little real science to stand behind it. 5G remains non-ionizing in nature.
& #x200B;
Scientists say that the most important criterion about whether any particular RFR is dangerous is whether it falls into the category of [ionizing or non-ionizing radiation](_URL_2_). Simply put, any radiation that’s non-ionizing is too weak to break chemical bonds. That includes ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, and everything with a lower frequency, like radio waves. | 54bdb2c1-f0e4-4401-b8b2-e7ec0e1e5d3e |
c9f127 | Why do under inflated tires pose a greater risk of a blowout compared to recommended inflation pressure? | Underinflated tires squish down and then expand and bounce back with every rotation. This constant expansion and contraction causes heat to build up in the sidewall eventually weakening it and causing a blowout. | e7f223bc-c288-4ed8-9bb7-47e7496d400b |
c9f6dr | How are studios able to come out with a 4k re-release years after the movie was made? | Good quality film stock is actually significantly higher quality that 4k. So you can take an old movie filmed with quality equipment and get a solid 4k copy out of it.
The biggest problem in all of this is trying to remaster movies from the early days of digital filming. Star Wars Episode 2 apparently was filmed in rather low-quality digital.
If you want some further reading, here's a well responded thread from another time this was asked.
_URL_0_ | bd8710ad-7293-4e03-9a0a-f0f1b5bcbc56 |
c9fdhp | the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist. | The two often work together to treat someone, with slightly differing approaches.
Psychologists tend to focus on the mental and emotional part, "walking" patients through their thoughts to help develop better thought patterns.
Psychiatrists tend to focus on the physical part, prescribing medication to correct chemical imbalances in the body.
Any mental health issue is best tackled by both approaches. While only one can help patients recover, studies have found recovery to be much faster when both are used together. | b2b44d36-1a4e-4976-aa94-2619c2deaba3 |
c9g7bh | How does a pump work? | It creates pressure which then provides the force to move something. Exactly how it works depends upon what type of pump you are talking about and whether it is water air or something else that is being pumped. | db680706-8d24-46c9-bfc7-9af192f5dbc0 |
c9giwh | To combat adverse environment modification how do they not continuously cut down trees and bury them | That handles some minor levels of carbon sequestration, but think about it: trees are one of the best carbon capture devices on earth, and can do so for 80-3,000 years for each tree, depending on variety.
Trees don’t reach maximum efficiency until they’re at least 30 years old.
So if you cut them down, you lose all that carbon capture for 30+ years until the next tree is mature.
Better to selectively log the area and re-plant for every tree removed, alternating varieties so that one type can grow up in the shadow of the other, reducing inefficiency.
And hey— instead of just burying the logs, why not preserve them with bleach or a protective oil or pitch coating and do something useful with them? Such as making paper, houses and furniture. When done, put the used objects in a landfill. | 868edd06-8a97-4b87-bd1a-06c0cf434041 |
c9gjht | how do spiders string a web at face height across large open spaces? | Spiderwebs have two types, strong or sticky. So a spider will just spin out some sticky followed by some strong, and it will drift on the breeze until it hits something and sticks. It's so light it doesn't take much to get it going across a large distance. Then they move where they want to attach the other end and peg it down with some more sticky. Now they have a secure anchor line, that they can use to move from Point A to Point B if they want to travel to a new home, or they can use it as an anchor line to spin a web.
Some spiders like the barn spider will spin a web every evening, and every morning they disassemble the entire thing except for that one anchor line, go and hide in a cool place all day, then they repeat the process the next evening. | a1493e4e-f69d-46c0-ab4a-4876c7a4737a |
c9gkih | Why are air vents always placed by windows? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? Wouldn’t the room be more efficiently cooled/heated if the vent was placed somewhere else in the room? | Window glass is the coldest part of a wall. When warm room air hits it, the air cools, and cool air sinks. The movement of cool air creates floor drafts that most people find uncomfortable. The placement of forced-air heat registers or baseboard heating units under the windows counteracts this process by sending up warm air to mix with the cool. The end result is that the room feels more comfortable.
At one time, builders didn't understand this process. That's the reason that one of the stereotypical descriptions of old houses is that they're "drafty".
EDIT: I'm not in construction. I copied this from the This Old House website. | 5b9d236d-7c4b-4365-a91a-5c7e8136a604 |
c9goq1 | What exactly is a pyramid scheme? | First, send me 10 dollars. Then ask 4 of your friends for 10 dollars each. Ask them to do the same thing. You can keep half of whatever money you get but give the rest to me. Then you'll find out what a pyramid scheme is. | 77e9bb56-2dea-432e-9f83-b4f33d65d098 |
c9gt4p | Why do people say mic check so frequently even if it works the first time? | Saying 'check' into a mic is multi-purpose.
1, its a 'line-check'. Making sure sound is being coming out of the microphone (usually via a mixing desk and multiple cables). If this doesn't work, you know something along the route isn't working.
2, it's also a way of testing the frequency response of the speakers and/or microphone or singer. The word 'check' forces a vocalist to push out the right frequencies that an engineer will use to measure the vocalists part of the soundscape.
Hope that helps? Can answer more but wanted to keep detail to a minimum since its ELIF | b01983cf-14a2-4543-8f7f-4cbff4796dba |
c9h61c | How come after a CIA or Military operation gets declassified the files say “redacted” for certain things? | Because there are still secret aspects of the file that cannot be revealed to the public. A file doesn't have to be 100% declassified to be "declassified", if that makes sense - it just means that it has to go through the process of being cleared for public release. | 9ff506a1-86b0-46c4-a297-f6f8a9117b46 |
c9h883 | What is Condensation and why does it stick to windows? | Water can exist in three forms: ice, water, and steam. When it's cold, water is ice. When it's nice out, it's water. When it's hot, it becomes steam.
The hot steam from a shower touches the cold glass of the bathroom mirror and becomes water again. | b133ef29-84b9-4559-a47f-3e7ece01cf2e |
c9h9w9 | Why has the US historically had trouble winning wars with Asian countries? | Korea was [crazy all-around](_URL_0_); the US was literally *about* to win it (Communist forces had been pushed all the way north to the Chinese border) when the Chinese stepped in on North Korea's behalf, and the US was unwilling to actually fight the Chinese because we thought it would trigger World War III.
Vietnam was never a war that we were going to be able to "win," and we stopped trying to win when Nixon flipped China against the USSR, at which point there was no longer a reason to fight in Vietnam in the first place (hence why the Paris Peace Accord was signed less than a year after Nixon's trip to China). | 3725ba9a-8892-4db3-beaa-3a0f72a40c48 |
c9h9z4 | Shooting unarmed soldiers is a war crime but why not bombing unarmed cargo ships? | It isn't being unarmed, it is the surrender.
An unarmed soldier is still a target. Buildings full of unarmed soldiers (doing work that doesn't require a gun) are still targeted. If a soldier throws down their weapons and flees they are still a target.
If a cargo ship surrenders (not trying to save the cargo by fleeing), they are a surrendered opponent.
Note the definition of combatant requires you be part of the armed forces, not that you actually be armed: _URL_0_
As for why a cargo ship would be a valid target, it would be an "objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose (destruction) offers a definite military advantage."
_URL_1_ | eefe4dfb-7763-4088-b25c-dfab968ce47d |
c9heh9 | How does an FHA loan work and is it difficult to get one? | Hi! FHA loan holder here!
My wife and I just bought our first house 2 years ago. Here is the run down on FHA :
First thing you need to know is that more than likely, this type of loan is going to come with PMI (Mortgage Insurance) and it can be HEFTY. I have PMI and mine is around 300/mo. This is rolled into your mortgage payment.
The real pull of the FHA loan is that they will give you a loan with as little as 3.5% down. That makes it much easier for someone to come up with a downpayment. Traditional loans require 20% down which in today's market is a pretty serious number. For my house it would have been around 60k.
I didn't have 60k so I got an FHA and did roughly 7% down.
Now....how to get rid of PMI!
Yes, you can get rid of PMI. Depending on how your loan is structured it may never go away completely, but you can gradually lower it to the point that it is a negligible charge.
The first way (and in my case) you can eliminate it completely, is by having 20% equity into your home. As soon as you hit 20%, the PMI falls off. For me, I bought my house for less than it appraised for (hooray!) so I instantly had about 14k in equity.
Unfortunately because of amortization schedules being as awful as they are, I am only paying about 350 a month towards my actual principal balance. The rest is going towards interest.
To speed things along, I am planning on building a fourth bedroom in my basement and then getting the house reappraised. If it reappraises for enough so that I had 20% equity, I can get the PMI removed. At the very least it will speed things along quite a bit.
So long story short, an FHA loan allows loans to be given out to people who can't afford 20% down, but has PMI built-in to avoid another housing crisis situation. The loans are insured, and you pay the premium.
EDIT: Forgot to answer the "is it easy to get one" part of your question. Yes, it is the easiest type of loan to get if you are a civilian and not active/former military. | db7ec636-1daf-42a4-9095-41a2e35afc60 |
c9hfcp | how bidets work/are supposed to be used. how does it cut tp use so much? | Okay, here’s the deal. A bidet attachment sits on your toilet, so after you go, you can directly spray the area with pressurized water. All of this is happening inside the toilet bowl, so there’s no mess to deal with. Compare having to wipe several times with toilet paper and still not being totally clean, vs. using the bidet for roughly 10 seconds, knocking off all the waste, and then only needing a couple of sheets to dry off.
My boyfriend and I got one, and we’ve saved so much on TP it’s crazy. What would have lasted us 2 weeks suddenly lasts 2 months. Get into it! | 0849c71f-b0cb-4c09-a9d6-64ae869188a8 |
c9hmm4 | How do fish survive when lightning strikes a body of water like a lake or pond? | If they are near the surface, they don't survive.
Water is a super good conductor and keeps the electricity up near the surface. Anything deep enough in won't even notice. | 8805183f-a79c-4ffc-86e4-fea8fb29a582 |
c9hmmz | How does the US prison system work? | Private prisons also have contracts with the state so that is they fall below a certain number of inmates the state has to pay a fine. Incentivizing them to imprison more people. God bless capitalism | 49f40d38-d2f4-4315-a16e-db4bc52fe688 |
c9hokc | Why did Andrew Jackson hate the National Bank and try to destroy it? | Kennedy hated it for the same reason: the National Bank is too dependant on the National Government. We Americans like to be independent on a national, state, and local level. Depending on the world Bank is putting too much power on the National level. America was founded on the principal that it's citizens' taxes would go somewhere they would want it to go, and not to serve a government organization where they are not sure what difference their tax contribution makes. Giving people money like that leads to corruption. | 752d9583-5278-4528-a233-db1fd539dae1 |
c9hrlo | How are developers able to program computers to be better at the game of chess than most humans? | Chess is very well understood. Early chess computers worked by assigning a value to pieces and then having the computer simulate possible moves and see which ones an average lead to having a "material advantage". They would search through branches of possible moves and countermoves, thousands of possibilities. If a branch showed too much loss the computer would ignore it to save time.
This made the play style of chess computers very distinctive and frustrating. Basically they were extremely conservative. They won simply by gradually building an advantage. Highly skilled human players generally didnt lose to some impressive trick or gambit or even incredible positioning. It just that pver time they made more small miscalculations than the machine.
The endgame of chess is quite different. This material advantage strategy isnt the most efficient. Instead computers were programmed with the ability to play certain known endgames. Again the advantage of the computer is that it never makes any mistake executing the endgame.
Newer chess systems like AlphaZero are harder to explain. Very roughly they start off playing almost randomly. Then when the match is finished they judge how well they did and adjust. This is repeated many thousands of times until the computer learns to play very well.
The results of this had been much more interesting to human chess players than traditional chess computers. They play the game in a way that feels clever and aggressive. Even better we can track the learning of the system. AlphaZero reinvented a variety of known chess strategies on its way to playing at a superhuman level. (This is pretty validating to human players, it suggests that the traditional method really did just rely on outlasting the other player)
Unfortunately systems like AlphaZero dont do a good job at explaining why they make the moves they do. So to an extent we don't know why they work so well even though it is known how to design them. | c0f88975-78d2-4d02-9c8e-efb0bbec91c1 |
c9i4rx | Why do all the yummy foods have such high calorie amount or calorie density? And why does the human body want it so much? | Sugar and fat are 2 good sources of energy, that's why your body craves them, you need them to stay alive. The problem is now it's much more easily available than ever. | acf436d1-692e-48a4-a6ff-626f89f1f244 |
c9i76p | How do animals with large antlers like Deer and Moose get through the forests without getting tangled constantly. | First they tend to walk on established animal trails, which from centuries of animals grazing along side the are cleared of most snags.
Second they do hit tree branches all the time, they just keep walking and get untangled or back up. Very rarely does an animal get so badly tangled that it starves to death. If you Google search for deer tangled, you'll see plenty of pictures of a deer tangled in something, typically wire fencing,.but a few trees too. | 82e2ae8f-7b13-4ac3-8658-d336aa40ca68 |
c9i7hu | Why is it if I enter a successful password most systems log me in immediately, but if I enter an incorrect one, it takes notably longer? | It's often a method of preventing brute force attacks. If you delay everytime you get a bad password, it slows down the attacks to the point either the attacker gives up or it gives intrusion detection systems time to say "Hey, this guy is an asshat, block his IP". | 8579ae95-c9c9-43b3-8e3d-a75d3c20327b |
c9iqx9 | why do memes/jokes like “root beer is just barbecue soda” or “a sneeze is just a boneless cough” make so much sense? | These are all extremely common things with common associations.
Root beer has a sweet flavor as opposed to a more sour/tangy flavor of fruit flavored sodas or Coke. When you think of root beer being BBQ soda, you don't think of a tangy BBQ, you think of a sweet BBQ.
Same with a sneeze being a boneless cough. A cough is rough and gutral. A sneeze is more thin and wispy. The association with bones being hard, and firm and stout fits more in line with a cough than a sneeze.
It is all just word association. | 8dcba581-cd1d-4d8b-bc65-bc601d690c87 |
c9iwi7 | Fevers. I understand the purpose, being to make the body an inhospitable place for diseases in the organism. But, I don’t understand the actual cell actions that cause this. What cells sate responsible for causing fevers, and how do they do it? How do the complex body systems beat the heat? | I don't pretend to understand all the nuances of it, but the ELI5 version of it I was told was this:
Your immune system can detect invaders and can release hormones into your body. These hormones, rather than telling your body to heat up, tell you to instead stop cooling down. If it weren't for your active cooling systems (most notably sweat and skin flushing), your body's metabolism could actually run hot enough to start slow-cooking yourself from the inside out (especially when you're already on high-alert for fighting an infection).
Your own body's cells are hyper-specialized for their jobs and have the support network that comes from living in a body all the time, while also having evolved to do so. Bacteria don't have that sort of support structure, so when we start turning up the heat, they can't cope as well. We're literally slow-cooking the bacteria inside our bodies, causing proteins to miss-fold and inhibiting their ability to reproduce. Unfortunately, we're not all that much tougher, and a lot of our own cells die as collateral (hence why fevers are so dangerous and make you feel like shit). It's a game of super-lethal chicken, in which we raise the heat and see who drops dead first.
It's worth noting that our immune system's optimal temperatures are actually higher than our normal temperature, so for our white blood cells (and only them), their environment goes from too cold to just right when you get a fever. | 6b58a8ff-4c55-4ac8-8326-0a38835886f4 |
c9j2dq | What's the difference between the major forms of martial arts? | Someone else might get into all the different forms of martial arts, but I would say that there are three big "groups" of martial arts, divided by their purpose. Some martial arts can fall into different groups based on the emphasis and teaching style of the place you learn them.
The first group is martial arts as a sport. The most well known ones tend to go here: boxing, (Greco-Roman) wrestling, Karate, Judo. These tend to focus on honing skill in specific sets of moves, according to the rules.
The second group is martial arts as self-defense. Some of these don't have names because they're just a mixture of moves from other martial arts and common sense. Named examples are Krav Maga, Eskrima and sometimes Jiu-jitsu. Although it's a sport, MMA often pulls from this group. The goal of these martial arts are to help you defend yourself from real attacks, and they emphasize practicality and a lack of rules.
The third group is martial arts as a way of life. Most traditional eastern martial arts originated or passed through this group, even if they are now used more practically. Some modern forms that exemplify it are Kung Fu, Aikido, and Tai Chi, but some martial arts like Judo can become part of this group if the teacher emphasizes history and philosophy as integral to the art. The point is that these are less about skill or practicality in combat and more about conditioning your body and mind for life in general.
I should also mention a fourth group, which is much more rare these days and only exists in a sort of remnant form: martial arts as training for a soldier. This usually involved the use of a specific weapon. Modern forms include fencing, archery, kendo, and perhaps the jousting seen at renaissance fairs. It should be fairly obvious why this died out: guns made it much simpler to produce fully-trained soldiers. | a8f524a2-e9bc-489b-a5df-ba23a111e2b3 |
c9jc87 | Why do people seem to explore deep traumas through their sexual personalities? (Those w/ kinks) | I am unsure of the connection, but growing up and all through puberty I was a heavy bedwetter. I never used diapers or goodnites or anything, but always wished my parents had me use them as I hated waking up wet. As an adult I found out that wearing a diaper when under extreme stress helps me relax and be more confident to push through to the other side of the situation. Probably some psychological connection, but I don't know it. | 7cf8f217-74e2-4427-aa0f-dc72f2912594 |
c9jjnk | How do cryptic crosswords work? | Each clue is in two parts one a straightforward clue the other a cryptic one, however in most crosswords there isn't a guide to which part is which.
So a cryptic clue might be - Musical with two soldiers to which the answer is GIGI, Gigi is a musical and another word for soldier is GI or general infantryman. two soldiers means that the letters gi are repeated. | 92839561-2eec-4367-b7b7-bc090b2b70c1 |
c9jlhn | What happens to a Fly when they are exiting a vehicle window of a car that is going 60+MPH? | Immediately upon leaving the vehicle it would be traveling at 60mph.
If that vehicle is a spaceship traveling in vacuum, the fly would continue traveling at 60mph until it hit something.
On earth, the fly would leave the vehicle doing 60mph, and then have to cut through the static wind doing ~0mph around it's non-aerodynamic body.
Odds are it would spiral out of control until the wind speeds around the fly's body were something it's wings could control.
Depending on a TON of specifics, there is a speed where if they fly leaves the vehicle the wind forces around it's body will start tearing things off of it, like wings and legs.
However, fly appendages are really strong for their size and it's more likely that the forces tearing wings off instead just slow the fly down before any real damage occurs.
Going the other way, you could presumably have a fly outside the vehicle going 60mph, flying under it's own power IF you had a sufficient wind block/fan system that kept the fly's tailwind around 60MPH-[Fly's top speed]. | 8a9e04e5-c44b-49ad-b8ac-3381a79dc8af |
c9jx36 | Why does sitting out in the sun tire you out if you are not doing anything? | You expend energy to keep cool through sweating. That mixed with general overheating can tire you out quickly. | f33a6411-471b-407c-85bb-3867b7f357aa |
c9jxzr | India's Caste System and why it's important | Indian society used to be separated into castes, meaning that you are born into your job, and that job defines your place in society. Social mobility was non-existent. The priests were at the top, then rulers and soldiers, then artisans and craftsmen, then manual laborers, then finally "untouchables".
This system existed in various forms for thousands of years. When the british took over, they enforced it because it made administration easier. When they finally left, the indians decided to get rid of the caste system. But that's easier said than done. Indians have been taught for generations to never interact with people outside their caste. People there are still very discriminatory towards their "lessers", and it's a huge problem, complete with "honor killings" and lynching.
It's a similar problem to American racism. American slavery was arguably a caste system with two levels; white owners and black slaves. Even though the slaves were freed 150 years ago, racism continues to this day. That's the problem India is dealing with. | c3974713-271d-43ad-ad7e-df75742a1570 |
c9k94g | How do machines transfer movement (gears, windmills, water mills, etc.) into energy? | Everything on earth is energy in some way, shape or form. In the case of machines like wind turbines and water turbines, the energy is in the form of moving matter (called *kinetic* energy). A turbine (like the blades on a windmill) captures some of that energy by slowing down the wind or water that passes by in order to spin. The spinning motion powers a generator that converts the kinetic energy into electric energy.
The electric energy might have to go through one or more transformers to reach the appropriate voltage before going onto a bigger network efficiently. | c191fac0-8385-4d18-b2a7-71abe8ca714c |
c9kdar | How did the world universally start using cotton swabs to clean ears when it warns on the packaging not to use to clean ears? | The usage came before the warnings. Warnings come after stupid people hurt themselves then get lawyers involved. | 440b8d33-3cd7-4d4b-b825-5d1796c9f613 |
c9kfu0 | Edge vs Cloud computing - what's the difference? | Cloud computing refers to using a centralized server that is located elsewhere (amazon aws, microsoft azure, etc.). The downside of this is latency, all your data has to travel very far away to be processed and then sent back to your local client.
Edge computing tries to bridge this gap by having that server more local, sometimes even on the device itself. This solves the latency issue at the cost of the pure processing power you can get via cloud. | 93ea0eef-3949-4933-9dfb-dd6ff5dd5738 |
c9ldm9 | Why does our voice sound a lot different from what we can hear and what others can hear? | It's because of the way we hear. Your inner ears work by picking up vibrations in the air on the tympanic membrane (ear drum) and transferring them into the cochlear duct, which is kinda like the sensor that your brain uses to pick up sound. Tiny hairlike fibers inside the cochlea vibrate and pass that information onto the nerves that go to the brain.
When you talk the cochlear duct picks up your voice vibrating the air around you like anyone else voice, but it also picks up the vibrations of your vocal chords as they pass through your skull. This would be kindof like listening to music while having your head inside of a tin can. You'll still hear it but there's echos and other distortion. | 4090c17c-bbbc-4e22-920e-85acf8eff5f9 |
c9lu3p | How do we know that domesticated/farmed animals and pets are actually happy? | With dogs and cats, we have had them long enough to know, behaviorally, what depression and anxiety look like. You've probably heard people talk about how their dog gets anxious when meeting strangers. Now you have a baseline, so you know when they are not happy, so you can tell when they are happy.
Likewise, there are survival traits that will kick into gear when an animal is upset. Defensive postures, tightened muscles, baring teeth/fangs, *etc*. You've definitely seen it.
Lastly, in modern time, we can use a lot of methods (not going to get into the nitty gritty of it) that allow us to see hormone levels of animals. We can show that Spot and Mr Whiskers are indeed happy. | 2b9bed1d-ecdb-4e6a-8e8c-6ea1a33c7f6d |
c9m1wr | Why is it when someone yawns, do we also have an impulse to yawn right after? | Learned behavior (echophenomona) from primitive pack hunting days. We were much more efficient when we slept and woke up together.
_URL_0_ | 0f2675e8-5f9d-4521-8946-64361ab19595 |
c9m8fr | Why do busses stop before railroad tracks if cars don't have to? | Not an expert, but I believe it’s because the length of a bus is 2 to 3 times longer, thus twice as much time crossing. It’s probably for insurance reasons though. That driver/company is responsible for everyone on the bus. Stopping to make sure you don’t fuck up and get hit by a bus is worth the risk. | da83cdee-8ddc-4eae-aeb7-1cd6023ced1c |
c9mbvz | How come my body tenses up when I'm trying to focus my eyes, and how do you prevent contractions within the body when concentrating on tasks? | Breathing exercises help. Count five in, hold for four, release for five. Repeat a few more times and massage whatever muscles are reacting. We tend to stop breathing properly when stressed out, which affects the vagus nerve and heart rate, as well as deprives the muscles of oxygen. I really recommend a book called The Pocket Guide to Polyvagal Theory if you want to learn more about these sorts of responses- I work as a violinist and it’s been extremely helpful to understand what’s going on inside my body! (It’s half written for the self-help crowd, half for therapists, but very easy to read despite the occasionally dense medical jargon.) | ac6fde1e-78b8-44b6-abc9-6c6f8f7a2c6b |
c9med6 | why recipes say you need separate mixing bowls for ingredients, when in the end we mix all contents together? | You want to mix your leavening agents as little as possible so you don't activate it too much/too soon. Combining wet ingredients usually requires a lot of mixing to homogenize the eggs/milk/oils etc, so you do those separate from the dry. That way you can mix the liquids as much as needed without disturbing the leavening which is usually baking soda/powder in your dry ingredients. The goal is to then 'fold' or mix gently when you add the liquid to the dry ingredients, this allows the reaction of the leavening agent to the liquid to take place mostly while baking, causing CO2 bubbles to form and be trapped in the mixture while it bakes.
Some things, like crepes, you actually want to have zero leavening in the mixture, so you can dump all the ingredients together at once in a blender and mix until it's totally combined, then let it sit in the fridge overnight so the bubbles can rise and escape. | 0274a2ee-d882-4563-a3df-a81745aec2d6 |
c9meki | How does money from sold records go to the artist instead of the store that sold them? | The store pays the record company for the records they sell (this is actually more complicated than it sounds, but doesn't affect our end goal). As an additional quirk in the industry, the record company seriously only gets paid for records that actually sell, not just ones that are shipped to the store for sale. In many ways, records sent to stores are sold almost on consignment.
After a sale, the record company pays the artist a portion of the sale. Generally this ends up being something like 10% of the sale price (its actually usually, less, but lets round it up and say our artist has a pretty good deal)
That means that buying a $10 CD, the artist may only get $1 or so of that.
There's a lot more complicated math that goes into it, because the music industry is full of that stuff, but this is the simple ELI5 version. | 57b66146-7f9f-4a5a-959e-6fc2417df7bf |
c9mgtp | what are all the down sides of the proposed USA census questions asking about citizenship? | People who are not citizens or those who host them, like land lords or relatives, will feel reluctant to report the true number of people living under their roof if they believe that doing so could mark them for raid and or deportation. It is put there as a scare tactic to make people afraid to be counted, similar effect of voter ID laws.
Now if you feel that counting people who are not citizens is a bad thing, that you can take up with the constitution. The constitution states that all "free persons" should be counted.
You could argue that they're not tax payers, but in fact they are. Every purchase they make is taxed and if they are using false documents, they're still taxed at work. Regardless, it is in the constitution so it would take a major effort to change it.
As for the downside, it is an injustice to attempt to scare people out of their rights and we are judged by the injustices that we commit. | e481c732-8a7f-4c00-a1f5-c33c166822c7 |
c9mj1q | ; How does heat help muscles in relaxing/repairing process? | Increases size of veins and arteries allowing more blood flow. Blood has healing stuff in it. Ice reduces size and prevents swelling. | a4114308-1b48-4f07-ad52-2d503889b01c |
c9mpt1 | How do we learn emotions? | There is a lot of research saying emotions are instinctual and not learned behavior. We all experience the same emotions, and no matter the culture or upbringing, can recognize the same emotions. | 96cbb7fc-d736-4c73-96a4-6fb1afea46a3 |
c9mqi7 | why do some roller coasters exhaust their lifespan in 8-10 years while others made of the same materials last 40+ at the same parks? | Most short lived coasters tend to have significant g forces that put extra stress on the structure. This causes harder wear on the rails, substructure, and train components.
If the coaster has a unique or complex mechanism (tilt coasters, original LIM, launchers, etc) it will most likely have life span issues due to those components failing more and more with age. | 2fb8b298-b41f-4d14-bcbe-73d558abecf9 |
c9mqke | why does the feeling of needing to go to the bathroom come and go until it’s unbearable? Why don’t we have to go right away the first time we feel it? | Because it's not immediately full in an instant, and eventually it reaches a point where something has to give. | 2be53d41-cc29-4a84-bf6a-67dd5c823501 |
c9mv7d | Why is the skin on male genitals about 5 or more shades darker then the rest of the skin on my entire body? Been this way my whole life. | _URL_0_
“ELI5 translation: The chemicals that turn you into adult also make you darker. The skin at your genitals reacts more from those chemicals. We evolved this way likely to protect the areas more from harmful sunlight radiation."
You can also argue that it’s part of sexual coloring, or that the skin in those areas tends to be thinner than in other areas of significance.
Hope this helps. | 13a3d287-6e50-4da2-830d-aa456c49f627 |
c9njg9 | What is the benefit of doctors and nurses in hospitals working shifts longer than 8 hours? | Nurse here. Transitions of care between care providers is where most errors occur. Reducing the number of transitions of care reduces the likely hood of errors. So instead of 3 transitions in a 24 hour period, you're looking at 2. 33% reductions by that intervention alone. Also, most hospitals consider working 3, 12 hour shifts (36 hrs) a week as full time. | 04cd887e-d13d-47b5-a94d-79fdac6593f5 |
c9nk4e | Can police pull things from a restored phone or computer? | It depends on the type of storage and how you try to destroy it.
Magnets work only for hard drives: Imagine them as big collection of many tiny magnets. The computer can change the direction of these magnets and measure their direction again later - it can store data that way. If you put these drives near a very strong magnet then this magnet will re-orient everything along its magnetic field, destroying the information about their previous orientation. Can a magnet around a door do that? Probably not. There are big strong magnets, but then you are looking at devices like [this](_URL_0_) (second image, humans for scale).
Phones and many modern computers will use transistors to store data - for all practical purposes they are immune to magnetic fields. But if that guy installed such an oversized magnet then he won't use these.
If you just delete files the computer won't actually destroy them - it will just mark their space as being available again and forget what was stored there. The information is still recoverable, although figuring out where your file was can become a bit more difficult. Over time the computer will probably overwrite some parts of the storage where the file was to save new files, then it gets much more difficult to recover something.
The best approach to destroy data: Burn it in a fire hot enough to completely destroy it. You can't restore anything from a bunch of gases. If that is not available: There are tools to overwrite the disk multiple times. | a0a411d6-c455-47df-a8e1-45b621140c65 |
c9no4v | During a battle during the American Civil War, how would generals have accurate maps of elevation, roads, woods, etc and know where their troops were and how they were doing as a major battle was unfolding? | They wouldn't. They couldn't. They didn't. They used scouts and runners to carry messages and explore terrain as best they could. But it was of limited effectiveness. No matter how good their information was or how well they knew the terrain, they could still fall victim to what's known as "for of war".
The fog of war is the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations. It refers to the uncertainty regarding one's own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign. | a6e84d29-f2b5-421d-a69c-1ac6012bcac2 |
c9nzbs | Are the "antiques" in a pub or a Cracker Barrel actually old? | For the most part, no. They're props, especially in chain restaurants. There are companies that make and sell old-timey stuff. Might be a different story at your local pub or restaurant though. They may have collected their decorations from estate sales, antique shops, etc. | 928f8cca-5fd4-491b-a3f7-d7b39677f25c |
c9nzc0 | How does CVT fluid work? | It is not the opposite of a lubricant. It is a very high quality lubricant with a bunch of wear reducing additives. The mechanism has geometry that doesn't slip in the direction of applied torque, but it does slip in the direction that changes the "gear ratio". | 2d119d07-dd16-4cc6-9dc8-124865c39966 |
c9o0aq | Where do viruses come from? | This can't be answered as a general question, there are too many different types of virii and they all have unique transmissions and incubations.
& #x200B;
But as a general thing, virii are a piece of "malevolent genetic information", so to speak. It's a piece of genetic information that is able to be copied by the cell. They have evolved(virii are not alive mind you, they exist on a fine line between what is considered life and genetic information) to bind to a specific receptor on a cell through a specific protein, and from their infiltrate the cell. They release their DNA/RNA into the cell, which the cell cannot tell between that which is supposed to be there. The virus then takes over the cell, and forces the cell to replicate it during cell division. Then, afterward, the virus has ways of forcing the host to expel it(through the respiratory, circulative or reproductive systems, generally), to which it can then spread to other hosts, and continue to exist. | caa5c1ce-5ccb-4aa9-af34-9211add0adb7 |
c9ollm | When smoking cannabis, why do you only get high for a few hours even though THC remains in your body for 30 days? | The psychoactive effects wear off bc your brain flushes the THC. What doesn’t cross the blood brain barrier is stored in muscle and fat tissue after the body metabolizes it. | 6fe2b59b-598a-4bac-8d7e-d5e23c0ebc11 |
c9orw5 | how and why do humans age if cells reproduce? | There are a couple reasons.
One of the big ones are a part of the DNA in the cells called "telomeres". They're like the endcaps on the DNA that keep it protected. Over time the telomeres wear down after lots of cell divisions, and eventually the DNA doesn't work properly, so the cells can't reproduce or have more defects when they do.
That leads to the second big reason, which is that sometimes the cell divisions just don't work exactly correctly. Even if the cells divide exactly right 99.99% of the time, over time that's still millions and millions of cells that won't divide properly, leaving the resulting cells with damage, problems working correctly, or even cancer.
Over time, these two issues result in enough issues to cause larger systemic breakdowns in organs or other areas, eventually leading to death. | cd981c3a-408c-4e57-9b6c-83a1e37aea2d |
c9ozha | why it feels so insanely uncomfortable, almost painful, when your asleep leg gets poked or to even touch anything with it? | With lack of blood, it almost simulates nerve damage. Your nerves essentially misfire; sending false signals to your brain. Explained by someone who has extreme nerve damage in 1 leg from a near fatal car accident that ultimately resulted in no blood to 1 leg for roughly 12 hours. Long enough for necrosis to begin briefly. | 7c37e9f5-2868-49c4-a042-2cbe80803717 |
c9p2ey | How are skyscrapers resistant to earthquakes? (How) Are they the safest place to be during an earthquake? | The LA building code has significant earthquake safety provisions. You're much safer in an LA skyscraper than you'd be in a NYC building of the same height, if there was a 6.6 magnitude earthquake happened 150 miles from NYC.
Large buildings get much more strict inspection when they are being built that lower cost structures. Single story homes are arguably safer, because they are smaller. | 74d07fbe-4a71-4d0a-8949-26d898b5ae22 |
c9p8v8 | How did Christianity expanded to countries like Russia? | During the 4th century AD emperor Constantine of the Roman empire adopted christianity and converted the empire. Then the empire split and the new capital was constantinople and became the byzantine empire. The byzantine empire stretched as far north as crimea, north of the Black sea.
In the 9th century missionaries went north from constantinople to Kievan Rus, areas now known as Belarus, Ukraine and Russia and introduced them to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. | aebab9a0-f04a-4b31-b3b9-0509984200a0 |
c9pfmr | Can someone explain with an example how drugs are designed to target exactly the ailment they are supposed to fix and nothing else? | Short answer is they usually don't. Most drugs have a long list of side effects, some minor and some pretty major. The goal is to find one that causes the most good with the least harm. | 10d1cf63-f97e-4e58-9fbf-cee22d86663e |
c9pk6j | Is human instinct learned or part of our genes? | Before I answer I need someone to define human instincts. To my knowledge we aren't even sure if language aquisition is instinctual or learned.
That said, any behavior that can properly be called an instinct has to be genetic by definition.
From Meriam Webster:
a: a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason
b: behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level
So it is possible that the only human behaviors that are purely instinctual are those exhibited by infants, such as grasping at objects or holding our breath when submerged. | 59b96d15-753e-4ba7-a83a-a23019203306 |
c9pxp6 | How do bullets fired into the air come down fast enough to do damage? | Bullets are propelled by gases from a gunpowder charge. Once it leaves the barrel traveling up, eventually the round reaches an apex, and heads back toward gravity. It will reach terminal velocity falling back down, which is much less than muzzle velocity firing up, but still enough to do damage. Case in point, a stray round coming back down in this manner took out the back window of my friends car a few 4th of Julys ago, it was found in the trunk after passing through the seat back. | b5279dc7-8b83-4a95-9f00-858a3e6480b8 |
c9q53u | San Andreas Fault | A fault line is where two tectonic plates meet.
The San Andreas fault is the boundary between the North American continental plate and the Pacific oceanic plate.
It's a transform fault meaning the plates run against each other horizontally. Every now and then a piece of one plate gets caught on the other. Pressure builds up until something gives and sends out a shockwave, we call an earthquake.
"The big one" is a hypothetical massive earthquake, 8.5 or greater on the scale, that is expected to occur soon due to the fact that study of geological history has shown one occurs every few hundred years and it's been a few hundred years since the last one. If such an earthquake were to occur it would cause massive devastation along most of the western US. Millions of lives would be at risk. But saying we're "overdue" is not how statistics works. Time frame between earthquakes has no scientific bearing on what causes the earthquakes to occur. It could be another couple hundred years until it happens and it would not be "late". | 12679528-eb42-4da9-ba15-79c96fc3ace8 |
c9q829 | If someone dies and they're not found for a while, are utilities charged to the company or is it just strictly taken from asset values? | The company will try to recover the bill from the estate of the deceased, just like any other creditor with an outstanding debt owing to them. If they can't, they just have to write it off. The usual order of asset distribution is 1) funeral cost, 2) creditor's bills, 3) specific bequests, if any, 4) residue of estate divided as per will or intestacy rules. | 5605fad3-0188-4864-9161-ad5facff5216 |
c9qdr6 | Why are we not in full control of our brains although we are the host? | Imagine if you could alter how the engine in your car performs at any moment. Chances are, you'd tweak settings that might ruin the engine permanently. Same thing with your operating system -- there are settings you can't change (or have very restricted access to) because messing around with those settings can cause a lot of damage.
Your brain is largely the same way. If you could consciously change how your body behaves, you'd have a very high likelihood of hurting yourself. In addition, if the processes in your body were controllable, you'd have to *always* be monitoring them, which would consume a lot of your time. By having them automatic and "in the background," you can focus on more important things, like staying alive.
And "important" brings up another point: there's no real benefit to having these things consciously controllable vs having them be automatic.
So in the end, there's no real reason to have conscious control over the things that are automatic. | 60a5930d-a349-4f07-af96-e733c2a9c5cb |
c9qqvz | Why does putting the key fob up to my cheek boost the signal and lock my car when normally it's out of range? | In certain cases, your body can act as a makeshift antenna, interfering (sometimes constructively, as seen here) with electromagnetic waves.
In this case, your body is boosting the signal being produced by your key fob, allowing your car to interpret it. | c8b50972-a304-4954-9bd6-b2b79d4961a9 |
c9quv7 | How does self-harm release something to make you feel better? | When your body experiences pain, you can get rushes of chemicals like adrenaline or endorphins. Endorphins make you feel good and adrenaline gives you a rush. It’s the reason why self-harm is hard to stop because your body can get addicted to those feelings. | 1c685330-30db-4c61-aaed-81c1c4c69860 |
c9r6fe | Is there a meaningful distinction between neurological and psychiatric disorders? | A Psychiatric disorder is a disorder that affects the way that the brain interprets or processes information. A neurological disorder affects the way in which the nervous system transmits or exhibits signals.
In other words; things such as depression, schizophrenia, autism, selective-mutism, sociopathy, these are psychiatric conditions and disorders because their condition (due to lack of chemicals or proper brain growth or whatever) causes non-neurotypical responses. On the other hand, things such as Ephasia or Tourettes are neurological disorders because while the person may INTEND to do "A" something happens that causes the signal to be lost or muddled. | 89f1e16a-ca81-4aea-bc60-0ef734ee206b |
c9raa4 | What is the thing with people getting mad over Nike and Mermaids? | I think Nike showed support for the NFL players who protested police brutality during the national anthem | 1b35871d-64fc-4cf2-875b-375d9ff1bfff |
c9rh91 | How does Russia manage to antagonize much of the West when its economy is not much bigger than Australia or Spain??? | Russia - unlike Australia and Spain - takes actions to antagonize the west is the principle reasons. Both those other countries probably could cause issues for the west if they were so inclined, but they are both friendly nations with a similar core values.
Russia is a historical enemy for the west, a legacy of the Cold War that has never truly healed. Some of the blame there can be attributed to the west, and to western assumptions made at the end of the Cold War. But Russia, or rather the Russian leadership, deserves the vast majority of the blame.
Russia may be a democracy on paper, but in the chaos of the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, much of the countries wealth and power was sucked up by a tiny number of individuals – the oligarchs. These individuals have massive personal power. If you think social stratification is a big thing in the west (and it is!) then take a look at Russia to see the end game. Corruption is endemic, with public works projects being incredibly expensive as each person along the process shaves of a little extra. Life expectancy has plummeted amongst Russians.
Add to this, a lot of the countries that Russia regards as being within its sphere of influence, especially in eastern Europe, happily jumped ship into the arms of the EU and NATO. Russia again bears a lot of the blame here, and its hard not to see them as something of an abusive boyfriend shocked when their girl leaves them for someone else. But there was a failure on the part of Western politicians to think on how Russia would react to this perceived encroachment.
Russian leaders fear the west, and westernism. They have [personally](_URL_1_) profited [greatly]( _URL_0_), and the last thing they want is domestic Russians getting ideas about wealth redistribution (its notable that the 100 year anniversary of the Communist revolution in Russia passed with very little fanfare, despite a governmental willingness to make a big deal about Soviet leaders). To maintain this control, they continued the state tools of media control that had been developed during the Cold War. It’s very easy to control TV, Printed media, and Radio. The internet however, is a bit harder. That requires more effort to control, and you can see this with the way that Russian Social Media sites such as VK were snapped up by buyers linked to Kremlin leadership – something akin to the US government buying up Facebook. This mechanism of controlling online discourse was developed defensively – but a tool of defence can also be used offensively.
Meanwhile, two other events occurred. The Russian invasion of Georgia, which made other small nations, particularly Baltic nations, nervous and drove them further into NATO/EU hands, and more importantly, Ukraine.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine would probably have passed with only a few minor waves of sanctions if not for the shootdown of MH-17 in 2014, with the loss of hundreds of EU citizens. Suddenly the pressure on Russia ramps up, the sanctions get serious and relations between the Russia and the west go off a cliff, not helped by the Russian denial of the facts in the face of overwhelming evidence.
These sanctions are biting, especially with the dive in Oil prices. Russia is being stonewalled by European nations and the US. They don’t have the economy to challenge the united west in the way that China might be able to. They don’t have the military either, and a military action against the West would be massively counter-productive as it would inevitably cost more than it would gain.
So, they need a new way to fight back. It had long been the Russian view that while the West was basically unchallengeable in a direct confrontation, Russia could use its soft power apparatus to undermine the cohesion of the western alliance. Information was a vital weapon here, fanning the pre-existing flames of discontent and division. Those cracks in western society already exist, and to a certain extent they were pushing on an open door. People talk about fabricated Russian stories a lot, but as was seen with the MH-17 shootdown, it’s not that successful there. Its when it takes the real gaps in western society and works on those that it has success.
Money was the other great weapon. While Russia lacks the vast economies of the West (sometimes being called a “mafia gas station” posing as a state) it does have more than enough wealth to fund division within the west.
Russia hasn’t played the game perfectly – the Skripal case was botched (both the intended victims surviving) and the unity displayed by the West post Skripal did surprise them, and the sanctions remain. Putin is without a clear heir, aging, and the Russian elite are not loyal to him through love. He’s got a tough hand to play with.
But how they do it? Its very simple. When you are fighting an enemy, you don't fight them where they are strong, but where they are weak. Modern day globalism allows for foreign states to have great access to populations. That gives access, and access can be leveraged. | eb699773-adb2-4155-8a7e-2d61c84b57b4 |
c9rzan | What exactly is DNS, and what does enabling it do? | Without DNS, if you wanted to go to a specific website, you'd have to type into your web browser something like 84.15.136.7:80. With DNS, you can simply put into your web browser _URL_0_. The application of DNS is a server that your computer goes to and says "hey, my user wants to go to _URL_0_, what's the IP of that?" The server then says "hmm... Ah, here it is in my logs! It's 84.15.136.7!" or "Hmm... I don't have that in my logs right now, let me go check" and consults another DNS server to find it. | 2edae4aa-c0af-4db8-910d-ed745355e3c9 |
c9s14u | What are the criteria by which scientists decide whether a seismic event is a new earthquake or an aftershock? | Hey /u/gsnow! I just relayed that one amazing post of yours to another grieving friend. I've been doing this ever since you first posted it.
So, I decided to see if you were still posting and how you were doing. I'm happy to see that you just posted this.
I feel like I can safely say /u/TheEarthquakeGuy can probably answer your question.
Thanks again for the years of comfort you've given me and my friends with that one comment. I hope you're doing well! | 905991c3-853a-4db8-9c3f-99685a6b50af |
c9s6ur | What causes a ship's propeller to lose efficiency as its RPMs increase past a certain point? | Cavitation causes the prop to loose efficiency. When the blades cut through the water too fast they cause hundreds/thousands of tiny bubbles to form as the water is literally cut, this is cavitation. These bubbles lower the density of the water causing loss of efficiency. They will also over time cause damage to the prop blades. The bubbles act as tiny blasting caps and they erode the metal. The reason the engine needs to run faster and the speed needs to be reduced (and this isn’t always the case on larger engines like in freighters) is for torque. Water is 800x as dense as air, so for the blade to cut through the water at all it needs the torque behind it or it just won’t move. | 7c5e0b27-799f-45a9-b004-49da52f2555f |
c9sdgg | Why are mobile game ads are so bad? | What's worst is when multiple different games use the same 'stock gameplay footage', so you basically watch the same ad, just with a different logo at the end. | ab980fb9-28a3-4f7c-8aea-7b49feea2bef |
c9th6j | Why did the FBI have to hold on to Tesla’s papers? Was there something about him or in them that they were investigating at one point? | During World War II the situation arose where people would die in the US with property that they intended to leave to someone who was living in a Nazi or Japanese occupied country. Due to the war, this property could not legally be transferred to the intended heir. The way that the US Government dealt with this was to have the FBI create a subdivision called the "Alien Property Custodian" that would seize the property and hold onto it until the war was over, at which point it could be distributed normally.
Tesla fell into this situation - he died during WWII and all of his remaining family were living in Nazi occupied Serbia. Tesla's property was treated the same as anyone else's would be in this situation and it was seized by the Alien Property Custodian, which held onto it until WWII was over. After WWII was over the property went to probate and was ultimately shipped to one of his nephews in Serbia.
Separate from his property, the FBI also maintained a file on him. This isn't uncommon, the FBI used to maintain files on more or less every noteworthy person living in the US. The file itself is pretty boring and mostly contains newspaper clippings on him.
What gets people excited about the Tesla's papers is that the Alien Property Custodian made copies of everything and then had them reviewed by some scientists from MIT on the off chance that there was something of strategic value to the war effort. There wasn't, but since the Alien Property Custodian was part of the FBI all of those copies got dumped into his FBI file, which is now available online. | a746dfb2-5bac-47a5-a1cf-84ad01ef63ed |
c9txl0 | If eyesight is not treated it gets worse and worse over time. Can it heal itself? If there are people with bad foresight and myopia why cannot it turn back? | If you have poor eyesight, it gets worse over time whether you treat it or not. Usually, it stabilizes once you reach adulthood*. Again, regardless of whether or not you treat it . And no, it can't heal itself.
It's caused by your eyeball not being quite the right shape as it grows, which causes images to be projected slightly in front of or behind your retina instead of directly on the retina like they're supposed to be.
***
\* Until you reach your 40s, and then you start suffering from presbyopia, where the flexible lens in your eye begins to harden, and you begin to lose the ability to focus on close-up objects. | 112623c0-7c54-4693-ad52-70139f7bd369 |
c9ud11 | After a natural disaster, what is the benefit of declaring state of emergency? | Not sure about insurance. But declaring a state of emergency will activate funds that have been set aside for clean up, repairs, and other needed things for after a disaster. | 7e048c8f-c882-486c-a350-75f43844ccdc |
c9uiqz | How does a ski chairlift slow down for the people getting on/off, but the rest of the chairs in the middle of the ride up don’t feel it? | The chairs disconnect from the main drive cable as they enter the stations at each end. They proceed on a slower drive system in the stations then reconnect to the main cable as they leave.
See: _URL_0_ | 33ec0416-0ed2-44e6-86a4-75db8748a676 |
c9um7t | why does inbreeding lead to problems for the offspring? | Inbreeding is a problem because there is no substitute for faulty genes.
Humans can carry the genes for a fault, with out experiencing problems them selfs. Your siblings have a high risk of the same faults.
Now if 2 People have a Child, the healthy genes often wins.
If there is no healthy gene to pick from, like the scenario with you siblings, Inbreeding becomes a problem. | 6cd1b3d9-44c9-47f4-9244-47eaf61484f6 |
c9uwc5 | Why can firms like Ally & Goldman Sachs offer much higher interest rates for savings then my own bank? | Instead of higher interest rates, it offers services like in person tellers, physical branches, linked checking accounts, notary services, certified checking and networks of no-fee atms. Enough people value those extra benefits that those banks don't feel the need to offer higher interest rates to compete with online no frills banks. | 7af7b044-0dd2-495f-98a8-da58b14106b9 |
c9v06f | What has the US actually gained, in terms of assets or tactical advantages, as a result of the Iraq war? | It strengthened Iran considerably. You could argue that a strong Iran is good for the United States because it makes the Arab countries more welcoming of US power. | 2a427a18-da93-42e4-80f5-16b1b227c40b |
c9v4be | How does snake charming work? Is it legit? | Snakes move according to the movement of the instrument that the snake charmer plays and maybe even his hand movements. Snakes cannot hear loud music the way we hear them, they don't have an external ear. They can take in low vibrations but music as such, no.
Either the snake is trained to follow the instrument or it feels threatened and is keeping it's eyes on the instrument. | c04550ab-1950-4b02-ae77-863fee350160 |
c9v8sq | What's federally mandated busing? | Racism has been a problem in the US for a long time. Up until the 1960s or so, white people forced black people to use different schools (and shops and bathrooms and so forth, but busing is about schools). This was allowed, even after the Civil War, because two different schools could in theory be just as good -- "separate but equal", they called it. Except they weren't equal. White people made things harder for the black schools in order to keep black people from getting a good education.
Then the Civil Rights movement, and the Supreme Court said that this whole separate but equal business didn't work out, so let's get rid of it. So black kids could go to white schools. Mission accomplished, you might say from the back of an aircraft carrier.
Except the mission (spoilers) wasn't accomplished. The people drawing the maps to say which kids would go to which schools were clever about how they drew those maps, and they made it so that no black kids could go to white schools and vice versa.
In came federally mandated busing (also known as forced busing). The idea was that some kids from black neighborhoods would go to white schools, ignoring those maps, even if they had to take a really long bus ride. It wasn't that great for the kids being bused, because the racist white people made sure that the bus rides were really really long. It wasn't great for the other black kids, because they were stuck with the schools that were half rotting and the discarded half-broken supplies that their school managed to scrounge. It was really handy for the white kids, who had an opportunity to learn that black kids are just other kids and racism might not be good.
Unfortunately, that last bit was a really hard thing for the racist white people to deal with. They needed to save their kids from the horrible fate of not being bigots, so they fled to the suburbs, leaving inner cities largely black. | 11b35628-62c5-4ac0-ad4c-bf4678f8ca38 |
c9vb76 | how hot air balloons navigate with accuracy | There are different "layers" to the air, so at 100 feet, the wind may be blowing to the west, but at 250 feet the wind may be blowing to the east.
So hot air balloons have to go up and down until they find a layer that is going the direction they want to go. It's not an exact science by any means and sometimes they can't go where they want to go. | 17f4fc7a-23da-4a72-9d34-7a5843f7099f |
c9vnt4 | How far up into space are we affected by country's laws? | The generally accepted boundary of space is 100 kilometers, also known as the [Karman Line](_URL_0_), but this isn't absolute. The US military, for instance, uses a standard of about 80 kilometers (because it equates to about 50 miles).
Even in space though, a country's property is considered to be under its sovereign authority and protected by treaty and convention from attack or remote hijacking.
If a murder occurred in a spacecraft somewhere in space, including any sort of orbital or lunar station module, it would be under the jurisdiction of the country that owned the spacecraft, station, or the station module it happened in. | de3f269b-4a26-4255-9759-8d82c8731a22 |
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