query_id
stringlengths 3
6
| question
stringlengths 1
299
| goldenAnswer
stringlengths 3
35k
| doc_id
stringlengths 36
36
|
|---|---|---|---|
4lgqti | What changed that allowed SpaceX to go from crashing rockets on barges to a 3 for 3 success rate? | Every crash is a learning opportunity.
They weren't crashing because they didn't know WTF. There's a ton of very complicated stuff to work out to land a rocket, and getting it even a tiny bit wrong usually results in an explosion. Rockets don't really do rough landings. It's either perfect, or kaboom.
So every time they crashed one, they tweaked the next one a little, until eventually they found the winning setup. | 7682df6b-e842-43d7-bd2a-dbabf95013b0 |
oewnz | Why can't fresh water fish survive in salt water, and vice versa? | Many fish can, and do. Salmon, for example, make babies in fresh water. The babies swim out to sea and grow up and get big and strong, and then they come back to fresh water and make more babies. They have this ability because over millions of years, they were able to have more babies in freshwater than saltwater. That is, they evolved to take advantage of reproduction in a freshwater environment. The fish that can't do this made babies just in the ocean or just in freshwater, and so never had pressure to evolve to be able to tolerate both environments.
A fish's body wants to have an amount of salt inside it somewhere in between the ocean and a river. The way both kinds of fish's bodies do this is called *osmoregulation*. So a freshwater fish will get its salt from its food, and it makes its pee super watery, or diluted, so there is more salt inside than in the water. A saltwater fish gets too much salt just from living in the ocean, so it makes its pee super salty, or concentrated, so its body is less salty than the water. Most saltwater fish can't live in freshwater because they only knows how to make their pee concentrated, so they'll lose all its salt. Most freshwater fish can't live in saltwater because they only know how to make their pee more dilute, so they'll get too much salt. | de4d257e-fb5b-43f1-98f3-ace40c063614 |
1wg27o | Why is there ice in the mens urinals | Ice cools the urine which reduces odor. Ice also melts, which produces water and flushed the urinal. Much more popular back in the days before auto-flush systems. | 95e60021-c60d-412c-ada7-dee75705487a |
6ny34n | What is a "housing bubble" and why did it crash a few years ago? | A housing bubble is when the price of homes in a market rises unsustainably. Banks started loaning money to people who realistically weren't going to be able to pay the mortgages back. Too many of them failed to pay their mortgages, and were foreclosed on, and it crashed the market. This problem was exacerbated, by the fact that many of these mortgages were bundled together, and sold on the market. It nearly caused a depression in the us. | 20c4b33c-55ee-44d5-8e9f-44f3ec45b792 |
5htpk4 | How do other animals cut their nails in nature? Do they even have to? Also, how did humans cut their nails in the past? | Usually just using them makes them eroded and they are as long as you need them. In nature, animals and humans use their nails for lots of things, and there is where they are "cut": every time they are used, they are a little bit shorter, making up for their growth. If they grow too much, they can be scratched against something to make them shorter, that's all it needs. | 171be851-def8-4b47-9429-f82529617081 |
qn275 | EL5 Why we have a two party system. | I have a beautiful youtube video just for you!
_URL_0_ | 82492ec6-8d23-4148-bb05-2562a75e3273 |
58xxkm | why do people with accents lose their accents when singing? | Because when they sing, they are consciously controlling their voice and producing a particular phonetic effect. Like you would if you're imitating birdsong. They are in very good control of their voice, and can produce specific desired sounds rather than speaking/singing in their natural accent. | 57bcaf4f-c961-4a4e-b763-ab9979600e56 |
4je6ay | In movies that take place during 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries in America, characters are often depicted as speaking with an English accent. When did American born citizens actually shed the English accent and adopt geographically identifying accents like in the north east and south? | Each area of america was settled by different ethnic groups. These ethnic groups shaped the way English sounded in a given region. The southern accent is actually closest to what the old English settlers would have spoken. | cc740a6f-cc47-49dc-a8b9-9254d0e0987d |
14ae86 | Why we still label circuits based upon "conventional" current when we know that current actually flows in the opposite direction? | Pretty much, everything was defined before the discovery of, say the electron. Scientists, being positively minded and optimistic, decided it would probably be the positive charge moving around. Note also how stuff like Capacitance is measured in Farads, which is a huge unit and you usually use micro or nano farads because the SI standards are way off. Same with Coulombs. It was defined before that notion of electron charge. So, like Farads, it is also really small. (x10^-16)
So yeah, it was just guess work that got well known to the point where it can't be changed, so everybody gets to deal with it. | 9f059cf0-d659-4c74-8a90-19d404d02e71 |
3e8cep | What's the fastest way to cool hot liquid? Is it faster to cool hot liquid by pouring it over a cup of ice or by pouring ice into the hot liquid? | So cooling is all about surface area. You want the hot liquid to be as exposed as possible to the thing its bleeding its heat into.
Whether you pour the ice or liquid in first is unimportant. What's important is the amount of the ice's surface that's exposed to the liquid. If the ice is in a single block, it will cool much more slowly than if it were crushed ice. | cf61db66-8a3e-4d3f-b49c-4db3eb2c482f |
29xkks | How do tattoo's work? | The tattoo is a hollow needle that basically stabs you over and over really fast and drips colorful ink into the place it's stabbed you. It has to go deep to the dermis (below the epidermis) because that's the permanent part of your skin, you keep it for life. You're constantly shedding little bits of your epidermis, so if you put tattoos there, they'd be gone within weeks, months at the most. (Fun fact, most of the dust in your house is dead skin cells and the corpses, droppings, and eggs of the microscopic insects that feast on them!) | 61416aaa-5f11-4497-a920-6e11ca87af97 |
7p7wdl | How can I simply explain to my friend that two outcomes doesn't mean a 50% chance of one happening? | I would simply say that your odds of winning the lottery are not 50/50, even though there are 2 outcomes: you either win, or you lose. | 4f52f4cd-e18b-4e12-9d3d-4e6cfda06154 |
6gm8f1 | Why do Stores and restaurants in US cities, often in lower income area, all have a very similar style? | In the US, there is not a strong tradition of going to the nearest store, rather than the one you think will serve you best. So stores are trying to draw in new customers who only pass by occasionally. Extremely bold and informative signage has proven to work. | 3ad3d983-90ec-44ae-984a-7640a7feaa8f |
618qr6 | Why are there different sized stars? Once enough mass is gathered to commence fusion shouldn't additional gasses be blown away from the star? | The gas clouds that stars form from collapse into a disc shape pretty early on in the formation process.
The big-ish protostars blast most of their early heat of formation out in polar jets that never cross that disc, so the incoming matter doesn't meet the outflowing energy until the star is well formed.
It takes some time for heat from fusion in the core to make it to the surface so there's an additional brief lag period between when the star "ignites" and when the stellar wind finally stops the star from gathering any more gas.
Supermassive stars are rare and their formation is not well understood. We're not sure if the real monsters formed through accretion like the others, are products of multi-star collisions, or some other exotic process. | d9521314-01e4-4652-8a1b-0bc05477f0ef |
2yzh4t | Why do online job application systems force me to attach my resume and then also fill out their own resume system? | The parts you have to fill in will be run through their HR system, which can make a preselection. With how many people apply to some jobs, there simply is no time for them to check out all resumes, so they have to select them some way.
Once you are through the preselection, your actual resume makes it onto the desk of whoever is tasked to further select which candidates to call / invite for an interview. The reason why they make you attach the resume already is because that works the most efficient for them. They immediately have the resumes of the people who are interesting enough rather than having to chase them down for one. Remember, unless you have really specific in demand skills, you are simply not worth enough to the company that they want to go through the circus of emailing you, requesting your resume etc etc. | 32ef6383-2261-4102-8c8c-3cbc2597e1d6 |
6z317e | If cold humid air is more cold than dry air, but hot humid air is hotter than a dry heat, what is the tipping point? | A person's perception of temperature is a bit complicated by several factors.
Except for extreme heat, your temperature is going to be lower than the air temperature, so it is a matter of how much energy it takes to warm the air up and cool you off. At low humidity, the air requires very little energy to change temperature, so it takes very little heat away from you on its own. At high humidity, it takes more energy, so it is able to take heat away from you more quickly.
Another thing which affects temperature is the rate of evaporation from your skin. With higher humidity, the moisture on your skin (e.g. sweat) evaporates more slowly, reducing the rate at which heat is removed from your body.
These two factors are going to interact. At low temperatures, higher humidity means you are retainng more of your body heat, but the air is able to take more energy away from you. You will really feel it as you get to within a few degrees of freezing.
At 50-60 degrees farenheit, the air is not taking as much heat from you, so you start feeling the effect of retaining more heat due to less evaporation.
At higher temperatures, the air takes very little heat from you or is actually adding heat, so high humidity means that you can't rely on evaporation to cool you off. This can kill people. | afbf06e6-c7cd-495e-a723-85ff2a7c4a35 |
1xiz7j | Why do so many people hate Piers Morgan? | I don't watch his show, so I don't have any strong feelings about him. From what I have heard from other people, there are two major complaints:
1) Back when he was in the UK, he had a reputation for publishing inaccurate, sensationalist content as news.
2) On his show in the US, he is viewed as arrogant and condescending to guests. | 170674a9-8966-4141-83c2-2477d220f0cb |
1f0ju4 | Traditionally, Where does the responsibilities of the CIA and Pentagon begin and End in relation to each other? | Accountability and Authority.
CIA is responsible for Intelligence abroad (FBI handles this within US borders), as well as clandestine operations.
The Military is a large scale force that requires Congressional oversight and is expected to follow strict protocols such as the UCMJ and things like the Geneva Convention.
Whereas a CIA operative can infiltrate and conduct operations in secret in foreign countries we are not at war with, the Military can not.
A good example of this was the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden, since we were not at war with Pakistan, technically, Military units like the SEALs were not allowed to engage in operations in Pakistan, which is why the operation was a joint one with the CIA and Military. (to understand why the Military can not conduct operations in foreign countries, just look at Pakistan's response after they found out about the Op).
Since the "War on Terror" began, the lines between the two have become a bit blurry at times. The other example is the Drone attacks....if the CIA conducts them, they do not need to answer to the Pentagon or Military intelligence, nor do they need to report to Congress to justify their actions (they can claim information is classified, for example). Whereas if the Military were to conduct Drone Strikes (which they should), then they would be held more accountable, and the reasoning behind a strike would need to be run through a chain of command, and the Generals in charge could be summoned to testify before Congress if need be. | 4879bd42-bf2f-4f0c-8c66-1f0ace1f32ea |
134xxr | I notice a marked difference between my ability to think and word things when I use double spacing as opposed to single spacing when writing, say, a paper for a project. Is there a particular reason for this at all? | Probably related to your expectations about how your double-spaced writing will be evaluated (as different than single-spaced).
Guessing you expect the double-spaced content will be more thoroughly reviewed, not just ideas, but sentence structure and individual words.
Double spacing provides more room for comments. Almost puts a spotlight on everything you write.
You, are now on your best behaviour. | e5dd0289-e617-47e4-ac7d-b828f54a1004 |
1jmo88 | Since there is no "air" in space, what do spacecraft thrusters push against? | Thrusters, rockets, engines, etc push against the spacecraft, not the air. The force of the material being expelled creates an equal and opposite reaction on the spacecraft. | dc5311b2-0dbb-4340-a7bd-93a172ee4f85 |
1t1wve | How does Apple own the Beatles? | [The Beatles sold the rights to their catalog of music back in the 1960s.](_URL_1_) It's been owned by many people, most famously by Michael Jackson, who made almost as much money on Beatles royalties as on his own music.
I don't know if Apple Computer has any ownership in Beatles music, but you might be confused by [Apple Records](_URL_2_). Long before Steve Jobs was in business, The Beatles named their record company Apple. There was actually [a lawsuit between the computer company and the record label, because of conflicting trademarks.](_URL_0_) | 6b878a86-c23a-483b-8223-e88658e43a96 |
1nkx68 | How does the software "Tor" work? | Here is a little diagram to start off with:
_URL_0_
The (very!) basic gist of it: You connect to the network which proceeds your request along a randomized route through network-relays using data encryption, before it transmits your request to the final destination. Backtracking is extremely hard, since the randomizing algorithms obscure the path taken and all data in the network is only proceeded encrypted. | 57ad5708-7056-4369-ab53-caa31a8e8baf |
1lro4y | Why is it often recommended to fully charge electronics before using them for the first time? | Imagine that your battery is an opaque water bottle.
When you first get it, it has some amount of water in it. You have no idea how much water is actually in it because you can't see the water. It has a weight to it but that doesn't tell you anything because you have no reference. For all you know, it could be empty or it could be full.
The person who sold you the water bottle tells you to fill it up until you can't fill it up anymore. You do so. You know now it is completely full of water. You can now weigh it and get a reference point.
When the water bottle weighs this much, it is full. When the water battle weighs half as much, it is half-full.
Basically, without that initial reference charge your battery could report 100% charge when it is actually only 25% full. | be279176-5023-4f61-b9f0-3a0ba5e17518 |
5h3bu4 | Why are symptoms more potent in the morning and evening when you are sick? | In the morning it's usually because you've been dehydrated due to sleep or if symptoms just arose, you aren't used to it. In the evening, because of being tired and talking all day, you get worn out. Just think of going to a sporting event all night yelling then getting home and having a sore throat. Wear and tear of everyday things just exaggerates your ailment. | 9e75976b-a4d8-42bf-869f-f6f3e59c85de |
5me5bq | How did the alpine tunnel makers ensure that when they bored through the mountains they came out where they intended or met the other diggers coming from the other side before the days of GPS? | Not only from the days before GPS but GPS does not work inside tunnels so they still have the same problem. The way you do this today is that you use lasers to measure the distance and angles of the tunnel walls. You put down special reflectors into the walls of the tunnel and measures their position to the other reflectors very accurately. This way you can calculate the exact position of every single reflector. By measuring the angle and distance to different reflectors you know exactly where in the mountain you are and can direct the machines to drill in the direction you want. | 620f1ef1-7f1d-4471-84ce-53c1a95be139 |
8sebdo | How to people find amber with preserved life inside? | It’s just random. They mine the amber and then upon examining it and cutting it up to sell, find what’s inside | 4aac8a06-4b23-4a01-a81f-ef498576ca19 |
2avnpw | Why does 80 degree water feel so much colder than 80 degree air? | Water absorbs much more heat per volume. So water touching your skin aborbs more of your body's heat compared to air of the same temperature. | c88de17b-e667-4d24-9b38-59948540b2b7 |
6fivug | Ugly power lines, poles, transformer cylinders and other mess of stuff cloud my neighborhood. But my well-off parents' neighborhood has not a single wire in site. How? | All those things can be run underground, but it can cost up to 10 times more than overhead systems. This cost means that they tend to only be put underground in regions where people are willing to pay that price, ie wealthy neighborhoods. | 193db9c5-aef6-4bde-a455-d7301e0accdd |
1hd0vj | Congratulations ELI5 on 300,000 subscribers! And thank you! | I enjoy seeing the questions people post. Sometimes, i feel like just replying "google it," but then i realize that a lot of times, even if you do google it, the answers you find require you to either know a lot about the topic to begin with, or are so buried that you may never find the answer you are looking for, so it helps to have someone just break it down simply. | ce51289d-59b4-4309-b53b-9f543fc123b9 |
58xf8v | Why is it so hard to spot this "Planet Nine" when we can easily observe and photograph light years far off celestial bodies? | Well first of all, we can't easily observe and photograph most celestial bodies that are lightyears away.
The ones we can photograph tend to be either giant flaming balls of light, clouds full of giant flaming balls of light, or a collections of billions of giant flaming balls of light.
You might notice the recurring theme here: Light.
You don't get much of that on the edge of the solar system. | c86c6268-fdd1-4569-87ff-b024e58fe11a |
3wn2mu | How does paying for windows 10 work? What's their plan, im confused by the whole thing. | Microsoft wants everyone in their app selling environment more than they want to cling to the idea of home users paying to upgrade windows. The app environment sells things like google play or the itunes thing. Those environments are huge money makers | 3294739d-cbb1-4d3c-99b9-540e36fa6b33 |
5waoht | What exactly happens if Russia is proven to have tampered with the voting process (ex: Brexit, US elections)? | The UK has mechanisms to force a new vote. So they could "revert" things fairly easily if the public decides to do that.
The US does not have such a mechanism. They could impeach Trump for it which would leave Pense being President. They could also theoretically impeach Pense as well since he was on the same ticket and if they choose to do that the Presidency would go to the Speaker of the House.
That could also be considered an act of war and either nation, and by extension NATO could go to war over it.
But it would most likely be lots of political "yelling" and then some sanctions that do basically nothing. | ca265596-458d-4773-9dd3-7f7195b74ccd |
5j5xdg | What is it that specifically makes the new car smell and why is it the same in every car? | Offgassing plastics. There is some concern that plasticizers and solvents released from many industrial products, especially plastics, may be harmful to human health. All the car companies use the same types of plastics so thats why the smell is the same. | d328d20e-0f07-4460-8a61-305c53c4293a |
4d3lnt | Why is Netflix Throttling such a controversial issue? | It's when the ISP is hand picking what websites are fast or slow that really gets people. It's an incredible amount of power where companies that used to be just neutral pipes to turn into places that hand pick what websites can or can't exist.
The fact that many of the largest ISPs are media companies and the sites they most often talk about throttling are media companies makes it even more double sketchy. A cable company would be very interested in making video companies that make it so you don't need cable tv anymore not work anymore. | 001a6754-89c1-4213-aa5c-fe53fe174a3f |
43ftr1 | Why did Chairman Mao kill so many people including teachers? What could he have been trying to accomplish? | He was trying to purge China of The Four Olds as these were seen to only further the exploitation of the classes. The Four Olds are old customs, old habits, old culture, and old ideas.
A lot of teachers were executed publicly, monks were humiliated in the streets, a great number of Kung Fu masters took to the hills or left China altogether. These were all seen as part of the Old China that the Cultural Revolution was meant to be burning off. | ffc7e385-cad0-464a-a00f-51b6f89f7729 |
5fvfq8 | how can PPI (pixels per inch) be different across certain devices? Aren't inches and pixels a set size? | an Inch is a measuring unit.
a Pixel is an object. It can be any size.
A display's resolution describes how many pixels it has. 1080p means it has 1080 pixels on the short side.
So, obviously, to fill a 42" 1080p TV and a 5" 1080p phone with the same number of pixels is going to require differently sized pixels. | 3f3245ea-1e05-472c-8cdc-0f620435234d |
3sg43x | How will TTP copyright laws affect people in non-signing countries? | It would mean that any web service that operates in those countries would be subject to the new copyright terms. As a person using a web service that operates in one (or more) of those countries, you are also indirectly affected by the new copyright terms because presumably all the content made available though those websites will need to be in compliance with the new TPP copyright terms.
Web services that operate entirely outside the jurisdiction of TPP nations are not directly affected by the new copyright terms. However, if they have presence (e.g. offices, employees, server equipment, etc.) in countries like the US that are part of the TPP, then they are subject to all copyright laws enforced in those countries.
Note: TPP is not a law and it does not directly impose copyright laws. The TPP is basically an agreement between countries that obliges each signatory nation to ratify the agreement and create new laws (in their respective countries) that effectively accomplish the goals of the TPP agreement. The precise way in which those (e.g. copyright) laws are implemented may vary between nations. | 6a0336d1-6811-4feb-af2b-2d793f89b871 |
3m5dso | What is 'Trickle Down Economics' and why or why not is it bullshit? | Trickel-Down economics is the idea cutting taxes on the wealthy will lead to higher overall economic growth---more than enough not only to help the economy, but also to make up for any lost revenue to the government for the tax cut.
When the idea originally came to prominence, top tax rates where extremely high, and the idea that reductions might be especially beneficial for the economy was highly plausible. Most economists today, however, believe that even if there was a slight boost from these sorts of tax cuts when they were dropping tax rates from 80% to 30%, there is no special boost anymore. This doesn't mean that there can't be any positive effects, just that it's no more (and maybe it's less) effective than cutting taxes elsewhere, or even raising taxes and spending the money you raise differently.
Of course, it's not a fully settled issue, and your mileage may vary, as demonstrated by [this scandal](_URL_0_). | c7c34eaf-ba66-474e-94b1-537be71e0de6 |
619gqq | What does the successful vote to allow the sale of people's browsing history mean for the average person and what is the scope of this? | It really doesn't mean much. The rules that this vote seeks to overturn haven't gone into effect yet. Everything will stay as it is.
It's also important to add the the senate vote is what just happened. For it to mean anything at all the house must vote to approve it and then the president must sign it. That will likely happen which will result in the status quo being preserved | 3985671f-8833-43af-9c87-c429e8e14be5 |
48klv0 | why they call dark matter "matter" | Because as far as we can tell it is matter. It's just a special type of matter which doesn't interact at all with the electromagnetic force, so we can't directly see it.
**Edit:** Something I want to add, matter that doesn't interact much with EM isn't actually all the strange. For example, neutrinos interact very weakly with EM yet they have mass(There are billions of neutrinos from the Sun passing through your thumb every second). What's strange about dark matter is that cosmologists have been systematically going through all the possible candidates(like neutrinos) that we know of and showing that they can't explain the dark matter effects we see. | 502efbbd-2e24-476a-a54b-bf34b16ccef3 |
3spvd8 | With the attacks going on right now, why has France been the target for so many terrorist attacks? | They, like all the old European powers, had colonies in the lands that are now terrorism hot spots. They treated millions of people very badly. | 42e67b45-b50b-4c93-8af8-0e89d1a3af79 |
45uu1r | Does my way of doing this math problem make any sense? | All you did is multiply both sides by the denominator in the x fraction, and then rearrange terms a bit.
a/b = x/c
c * a/b = x
c * a * 1/b = x
c/b * a = x | c030563f-263f-468d-aa3a-dbc03ffd9591 |
632hko | Why is destructive interference unnoticeable, say if you have two sources of light and you move them around? | The wavelength of light is smaller than the smallest thing a human eye can see, by far. So these effects are too fine in scale for us to see. | 4cf3afca-f58f-4c00-9612-c846900e9c8a |
2n3kzu | why carbon monoxide is so poisonous to breathe when carbon dioxide is not. | Carbon monoxide binds very strongly to hemoglobin, the molecule that carries oxygen in your blood. When it does so, it stops hemoglobin from binding to oxygen, and limits your body's capacity to get oxygen in the process.
Carbon dioxide, which is almost completely non-reactive, doesn't do that. | 30b4d147-07e3-45fb-ab60-e3d7c9c85413 |
5gud4x | How do they turn old black and white photos into color photos? | Unless the negative is preserved, they literally just color it. Think of it as a coloring book. I've tried photo colorization, and while choosing correct colors isn't that hard, getting the blending to work out realistically is much harder. For video, when it's a single shot, you can use tracking software so you don't need to fully color every frame. | 6a346b44-0c00-4c51-bee6-9c6ee013a3d1 |
49v5gb | What exactly does vigilante justice mean? | In the simplest terms, it means justice administered by individuals (or angry mobs), outside of the legal system.
It could be a single person "taking the law into their own hands" and attacking a person who committed a crime against them. It could also be a person cruising around trying to punish criminals in general (acting like a comic book hero), or it could be a group (spontaneously angry crowd, organized group, semi-organized lynch mob) who seizes a person or persons they consider to be guilty and administers the crowd's idea of justice upon them.
The key is that the legal system is being ignored and/or subverted.
There are usually only cons to the situation. The rule of law is important, not only to everyone's safety, but also in terms of being certain that justice is adequately served. Even if a person is factually guilty and "deserves" whatever the extra-legal vigilantes do to them, there are other considerations to take into account: for instance, if the accused intends to plead guilty to charges & cooperate with an investigation, a lynch mob rushing the indictment proceedings, dragging the guy outside, and hanging him from a lamp-post may ensure that other guilty parties are never brought to justice. | 6be1c1cb-f25a-4eeb-85f2-1beb3441ba7f |
5iqq3a | Why can speakers be blown out? Couldn't manufacturers just prevent the volume controls from going that high? | Speakers don't affect volume. They can support a maximum volume without blowing out.
If you connect speakers to an amplifier that boosts the volume you can blow out the speakers. But they are made by different manufacturers. The speaker company doesn't know you're plugging into to an 800W amplifier. The amplifier doesn't know you're plugging into shitty speakers.
Then there is also the audio source itself which can be sending a hotter signal than usual. | 704f7d49-9e7e-4288-9fc3-883ad2254b44 |
5wg1yg | How do gemologists tell lab-grown gems from natural gems when the crystal structure is the same? | Naturally formed gems are not perfect.
They have atoms of other elements dispersed within their crystal structure.
When a gem is grown in the lab, it is usually 100% pure. There are no imperfections, (or nearly none). So when a gemologist observes the crystal structure, and they see no impurities, it is almost certainly lab grown. | 7fa4a26e-3424-4c49-88e2-3567b846e3f3 |
4bxqip | Fire... does it push things or exert force? | Fire itself does not, no. However, fire heats up the air (and other fluids) around it which can increase the pressure that they exert.
For example, have you ever seen ash from a newspaper (or something similar) floating out of a fire up into the air? It's not doing that because the fire is pushing it, but the air beneath it is heating up and starting to rise which pushes it up. Similar idea to when an aerosol can gets thrown in a fire: the fire heats up the air inside, which puts more force on the inside of the can until the can bursts. | 26ae29b3-919d-4ce9-a614-d2d9292271a5 |
1joqhj | Why are religious texts open to interpretation if they are the word of god? | because they're arguably the word of an infallible being, but they've been written down by a man. I think the bible even recognizes this fact at one point, or it was just my religious education teacher that pointed it out. | 51ef9d74-3a31-49ea-857b-7ba68425ad46 |
1lwr7o | Why are newer smartphones so much easier to break than "old" ones? | The big change has been making the entirety of one side a fragile glass screen.
The decision to make the bezels thin means that there is little space to absorb impacts without putting the forces onto that large, fragile glass panel. They try to make the phone strong instead, but the desire to make the phone as thin and light as possible compromises that as well.
Tough, modern phones do exist. My Motorola Defy has been dropped many times. It has a tough, rounded bezel that absorbs impacts. | 01906327-87c6-4c2c-8d35-1082cae699b1 |
2x4juo | How did we discover Pluto? It's so little and our solar system is so huge. | Random chance.
We thought, incorrectly, that Neptune's orbit was being influenced by another body. We did some math based on that incorrect assumption and came up with some areas to look at. Then took thousands of long exposure photographs. At least two were taken of each small area of the sky on separate nights. Then Clyde Tombaugh sat at a [blink-comparator](_URL_0_) a device that quickly shows one photo then the other and looked for objects that moved. The eye detects motion or apparent motion very well but is not so good at sorting out small static objects. By flashing one photo then the other the object that moves in all the soup appears to flash and is easily distinguished from all the ones that don't. Tombaugh found an object near where the math based on the bad orbit of Neptune predicted one should be. We announced the discovery of a new planet, called it Pluto and quit looking.
Later we determined that Neptune's obit was not being perturbed. That Pluto was too small to have an effect anyway and in the 1990s we started looking for other bodies in Pluto's neighborhood in earnest and starting find lots of them. This time we used computer software to do the blink comparison for us. | 73854fce-89e7-41f7-bb3d-649075d5ace7 |
7sthz7 | Is it actually possible for Korea to 'reunite'? | Yes, it is possible. Just as it was possible for East and West Germany to go back to being Germany.
That doesn't mean it would be easy, however. There are a lot of practical problems with merging the two states. Even if you assume that the North collapses and the South just takes control (rather than trying to create a new government from scratch) what happens to, say the political prisoners in the north? the regular prisoners? people who get money from the NK government to live on? Do the poorer people in the North automatically qualify for assistance programs from the south? can they join the military? and so on, and so on. | f400635b-b8a1-4b70-9c3b-4b453b3113d5 |
7mv2pb | Why does hearing a song lots make us dislike it? | I think you can relate this in a similar way to drugs. When you take a dose of drugs or listen to pleasant music, your brain is simulated and releases signals that it is happy with whatever you consumed. However, over time the same stimulus will result in lower and lower stimulation in the brain, as it becomes used to that stimulus. This is why many drug users have to take increasingly high amounts of drugs to attain the same high.
The more you listen to the same song, the less pleasure you will get from it. But unlike drugs, you can’t increase your “dosage” of music. You can’t listen to a song twice at the same time. So, over many listens, you eventually lose all pleasure you gain from listening to that song, and it becomes boring. | 2937f8f4-f555-432c-8d2b-55c1960e09d5 |
4n8qhp | if someone comes on your property without your permission and they slip or get attacked by a dog, can you be held liable if they sue? | That fully depends on the country/state that you live in. In some places you can be held accountable for any injury, in some you can be held accountable if there was injury due to your negligence (lack of maintenance, lack of warning sign, etc), and in some their trespassing negates all rights to sue you for any injury they get. | babd3407-f1cc-4750-9d11-ad37637fc56e |
1r4syu | Why is the US West Coast a desert | The west coast is nice and green, but then there are several mountain ranges. Air that is pushed over the mountains is cooled and forced to drop most of its water vapor, so it is much less moist. This means less rainfall beyond the mountains and more desert conditions. | c346a69e-79f7-4116-964d-d68f617544da |
3cq3tk | do antibiotics target individual infections and if so how? | Yes you get certain antibiotics for certain infections. When a cut on your foot gets infected you will get one set of antibiotics, and when you get a tooth infection you get another set.
Also you can use antibiotics from your cut foot incident to help with your tooth infection. Antibiotics will help bring down your infection no matter what they were designed for. Why? That I really don't know but I have also heard many times it is not good for your body to take antibiotics for one infection when they were designed for another. | e1aeff07-60b9-484d-b4e0-92a83c6a688b |
o6gt1 | Why are there poor Conservatives? | Don't you ever wonder why there are so many rich Liberals, too?
All this "what it means to be Conservative / Liberal" crap that you get poured into your head by the media and your school system and your party-liners is just a bunch of bullshit establishment lies.
"Poor" and "Rich" have nothing consequential to do with political leaning; the powerful (the politicians and executive businessmen) are rich, regardless of party, and the powerless rabble aren't, regardless of party.
The 2-party system is just a way to keep the rabble distracted so the powerful can get more powerful and more rich, at the expense of the rabble.
Anyone who tells you otherwise has an agenda. | 8c32c3fa-c21c-4946-bcba-59e6d6028495 |
7gmw87 | What happens to the body when you donate one of your kidneys? Does it become less able to filter stuff out of your body? | When you donate one kidney, or one kidney fails, the other will pick up the slack.
When functional, both kidneys are not operating at the fullest capacity. | 3d9f2898-eb99-447e-b6eb-60285be0a848 |
4gdtsh | Why do Dutch people eat spaghetti with knife and fork, instead of spoon and fork? | American of partial Italian ancestry here, what would you even use the spoon for? why not just a fork? | 89638685-e1f9-45f9-9dac-c27261a8ae74 |
8le3wc | why does cleaning your ears cause gag reflex? | It does?
If it actually does, I would say it’s because the ear, nose and throat are all connected. | c0fbdca5-a9b2-4d78-a8c0-2f224b82673a |
4nn90w | Why do browsers replace spaces in the URL with %20? | It's because URL's are split up and processed in such a way that there's no guarantee any space character(s) will be accurately preserved. Instead, the space character is explicitly stated by %20.
Just as an example, loading _URL_0_ sends the following header to the _URL_1_ server:
``GET /r/explainlikeimfive HTTP/1.1``
The server uses spaces to split it up in to key/value pairs which can be processed:
Key|Value
:--|:--
Request Type|GET
Resource|/r/explainlikeimfive
Protocol|HTTP/1.1
If reddit changed it to ``/r/explain like im five `` you'd send to the server ``GET /r/explain like im five HTTP/1.1``.
Splitting it up on spaces gives:
Key|Value
:--|:--
Request Type|GET
Resource|/r/explain
???? |like
???? |im
???? |five
????|HTTP/1.1
There were two spaces between 'im' and 'five' and a space on the end, but they got dropped when the url was split up. Worse, the server has no idea what you want it to do.
To avoid this ambiguity, ``/r/explain%20like%20im%20%20five%20`` can be processed as a single string and contains every space the user entered. | 79ce3882-c17c-4060-9f3f-84c10a543bc2 |
7bryqp | I have some questions regarding orphanages in 1980's-90's America for my novel. I have trouble finding answers online, some help? | There weren't that many orphanages in the US in the 1980s and 90s. Orphanages were phased out by the 1950s and instead kids were sent into private homes for foster care, overseen by social services such as child protective services, where social workers monitored the children's environment with periodic checks. Day to day they were taken care of by a foster parent. There were some temporarily facilities that were residential treatment centers, plus group homes. These are much smaller, more temporarily places than the old-style orphanages (pre-1950), where a child might stay for years in a large dormitory-like environment. So if you want to set your novel in an orphanage in the 1980s-90s USA, it might be anachronistic. The kids in these situations would go to regular public schools just like kids who were not orphans. There were social workers in charge of the facilities but for the most part kids were in homes with foster parents and perhaps foster siblings, possibly several other foster kids. Also, most kids classed as "orphans" aren't parentless, nor were they parentless in the days of orphanages. They were without parents who could care for them for one reason or another. Could be that they had only one parent and that parent couldn't take care of them. Could be they had 2 parents but neither parent could take care of them. Like Marilyn Monroe, who grew up in an orphanage despite having parents. She was a bastard so her father didn't claim her, and her mother was both poor and mentally ill so couldn't care for her. | 11a35f93-7a8f-4994-b72f-017cf3659a08 |
4z7ymd | The 4 basic assumptions in financial reporting | Economic Entity - The company is a separate legal entity from its owners with its own finances
Going Concern - The business is operating with no planned shutdown period. In other words - it's going to keep operating
Monetary Unit - All reports are done in a single currency
Periodicity - These reports are generated on an established schedule (every year, every 3 months etc.) | 4f27fd0b-63e9-4153-aa4a-cff2b5cfa207 |
1ob280 | Why do humans/mammals bleed from the mouth after head/chest trauma? Why is this always the imminent death factor in movies? | Think of what the mouth connects to - your lungs, stomach, and the passageways to your nose and ears. Head/chest trauma can lead to bleeding into one of those areas, which is usually a sign things are going pretty wrong. | a9f571be-b52a-4aa5-a806-bd1a541354f9 |
pwnwy | Why does it take so long for a country to develop nuclear warheads/ weapons? E.g. Iran and N. Korea. | It depends on how many resources they want to put into it.
North Korea is a very poor country so they can't spare the same amount of resources that the US put into the manhattan project.
Additionally usually people who are developing nuclear weapons programs are doing it against the will of the wider international community so they are blocked from importing many materials that might speed up the process. For instance highly efficent centrafuges require something called maraging steel. However because of this it'd be almost impossible for someone like NK to import maraging steel from any other country.
So they have to re-invent the wheel and do it all with local assets.
Just an aside but there's little evidence Iran is actually making nuclear weapons. | 45091737-8e83-4091-9121-e48fab7f74fd |
3rnewj | Why don't we pronounce the name of a country like the natives do? | We don't speak the same language they do! The English name is often simply different from the native name. The idea that things should be rendered precisely as in the language of origin is very modern. When people were more internationally oriented and less particular about the country they were from, it used to be the norm for names to be anglicized, especially if they have a direct English equivalent. For example, "Pyotr" is a Russian given name, but we always speak of "Peter the Great" in English, because "Pyotr" is just the Russian rendition of "Peter". It's the same name.
"Germany" is an English term derived from the Latin regional name "Germania;" "Deutschland" is a term that originated in the German language. However, until a few centuries ago, "Dutch" was a term commonly used for Germans (derived from "Deutsch"), until it came to be exclusively associated with people from the Netherlands, who asserted a separate identity from the Germans. | 93b4790f-f548-4bdf-ba4f-9aab0fcb62e7 |
216h5k | Why are we so worried about a plane that has gone missing? Couldn't it be assumed that it's in the ocean as no one on that flight has spoken out? | It's a fairly new plane and they have no idea why it went down. If it was a design flaw it could happen again. If they don't know what the design flaw is, how can we be sure that in the next planes we start building the same flaw isn't there? Or if it was the pilot's fault for whatever reason, knowing why and investigating how it happened can prevent it from happening again. Until they find the plane, every guess has just as much credibility as the next and nothing will change. | ba1bbb5e-6aad-4b3a-b562-fc6623a177a9 |
oulqx | The recent changes to US healthcare and the changes happening in the near future | **What happens under the Affordable Care Act:**
*if you already get health insurance through your job*: Your children can stay on your health plan until they turn 26. Other than that, nothing else changes.
*if you don't get insurance through your job*: You are required to have health insurance one way or another. No ifs, ands, or buts. If you're close to the poverty line, you can get on Medicaid. Otherwise, the government will give you money to buy health insurance.
The government is in the process of setting up a public health insurance markets for people to choose insurers, as well as regulations that prevent insurance companies from gouging you. Insurance companies will be required to offer one-price insurance (i.e., all people aged 50 have to be offered the same price) and cannot impose lifetime coverage limits or consider pre-existing conditions.
*if you're a senior citizen and already on Medicare*: Nothing changes.
*if you're already on Medicaid*: Nothing changes. | 4a9cbbfb-222f-417a-98ed-74e64096e9d9 |
84mvm0 | Why does rain make the internet slow? | Depends on type of connection the wifi uses, if it is through cable to wifi then the signal will be okay, if the wifi is connected through antenna the connection will get worse because the rain is blocking the signal from travelling from the signal emmiter which causes data loss along the way, so the data needs to be sent again. | cf8be464-56d8-4e90-9716-472b150926b7 |
5adz7s | Why are "normal" bodily functions we all do such taboo topics or exceedingly gross when it's someone else's? | It happened through evolution. A lot of germs or viruses can be transmitted through poop or blood or snot and many other things. If they are your own, you do not run much risk since you already have those germs/viruses within you. But from someone else's: that's like playing the lottery.
I say it happened through evolution because people who were grossed out by someone else's bodily fluids had less chances of being infected in the rare case these communicated diseases. With time the people who were grossed out had more chances of survival than those who didn't and this became a somewhat common human trait.
Now there's the special case of a SO. There again natural selection made you consider your SO's bodily fluids almost as safe as your own, otherwise we would never dare to reproduce. Sexual attraction will trump being grossed out. | 39f1054b-8f7c-42f6-99ce-df5ff1ca8eaa |
1gano5 | The DNA being patented case in the USA. | A patent is a license from the government that says that no one can use your invention without your permission. You are allowed to make people pay you for the permission. If they don't want to pay, you can ask a judge to make them pay.
To get a patent, you have to show 1) that you invented something useful, and 2) that it didn't exist before you invented it.
The whole debate surrounding the recent decision concerning the BRCA gene patent was over point 2).
Obviously the gene existed before the scientists at Myriad found that it was an important gene in breast cancer, so they can't have invented the gene, and they shouldn't get a patent on the gene, nor make people pay for permission to use or study the gene.
However... the gene as found in the human body is not "useful", in the sense that unless you do something else to it you can't use it for a particular purpose other than it's natural purpose. Just like you can't use a finger bone for anything else other than to be a bone in your finger.
That is... unless you take the gene out of its natural context and make it useful for something that it doesn't naturally do, such as detect breast cancer.
So, the judges were asked to decide if taking the BRCA gene out of its natural context (the technical term is "isolating" it) and if using this "isolated" gene to detect breast cancer was an invention or if it was simply an "observation".
The judges decided that the "isolated' gene was not a natural thing, in the same way that taking a finger bone, and adding a few "bells and whistles" to it is also not natural. So the scientists at Myriad were judged to to have invented something (a way of detecting risk for breast cancer), using somthing that did not naturally occur (the isolated gene).
Note that this judgement has absolutely no impact on anyone using the gene for either its natural purpose or for any purpose other than detecting risk for breast cancer. | 87e8e670-ab30-4fb1-88d2-57dc14f7f358 |
6rdi53 | What specifics are there when war is declared? Is there a start date? Is there a specific region that is designate as warzone, and are there boundaries? I know modern warfare is a little more complex than this. | It has always been quite nebulous and needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
As a modern example, the Iran-Iraq War started with a downgrade of diplomatic relations and persecution/deportation of civilians of the opposing country. This was followed by small skirmishes in disputed territory, then a full-scale invasion. Both countries started mobilizing their armies after the diplomatic breakdown, but the gap between that and the Iraqi invasion was about 6 months from March-September 1980. If you only count full invasion as "war", then it started on 22 September, 1980.
A modern counterexample is the US invading Panama in 1989, which despite including a proper invasion isn't usually considered a "war". The US deposed the leader and dissolved the country's military, installing an opposition leader. We have a clear date of invasion, but it's unclear if this actually qualifies as a war.
Sometimes a government will declare war, which makes things a little more tidy, but doing so can have legal consequences in a country. The US hasn't officially declared war since WW2, despite various invasions of other countries over the years that we still commonly recognize as wars (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again). If you are a defending country, a declaration of war isn't necessarily that meaningful in the face of defending yourself.
As for what counts as a "warzone", that's a little unclear as well. Generally, a warzone is "wherever the killing is happening". When the US invaded Afghanistan, the mainland US was definitely not a warzone, but all of Afghanistan was considered a warzone. From a civilian perspective, the important factor is how safe your area is. A warzone is any area where you have a significant likely hood of getting killed by military action, with the meaning of "significant" really being important to the individual. For a military, a Warzone is anywhere where they can conduct operations with an actively hostile enemy. Again, all of this varies case-by-case.
A given government might put out travel advisories describing the safety of traveling to particular areas. That government may designate an area unsafe due to war or violence, essentially defining a "warzone", but this definition is specific to the safety of the civilians of that country. | d0e4c880-c15b-4e89-864d-1e032575b155 |
1ue2yh | Why are some meats edible undercooked/raw? | You can get [Trichinella spiralis](_URL_0_) from undercooked pork, it can cause intense muscular pain, difficulty breathing, weakening of pulse and blood pressure, heart damage, and various nervous disorders. Not something you want. | c48df58a-9855-46eb-903e-37cb9833ccf7 |
5eih2y | pizza gate | A group of people have read through some of the various hacked emails from the Clintons, their friends, and their foundation.
They believe that they have located in those emails evidence of a ring of pedophiles, led by the Clintons, that operate primarily out of a pizzeria in Washington, DC. The evidence of all of this is sketchy, at best. The largest 'evidence' comes from HRC's campaign chair, John Podesta. When his email was hacked, it became clear that he was a big fan of Italian food in general and pizza specifically. He often talked about getting pizza, enjoying pizza, and what pizza places to go to.
Somehow, the Internet decided that "pizza" was code for "child rape", since apparently no one in the world likes pizza. So now anything in there discussing pizza is actually discussing child rape, and pizza parlors are now child rape centers. | 6ad32bdb-f1b2-4121-93f3-f8b7852105d0 |
xmc6q | The controversy with Gabby Douglas' hair. | It's not pulled back tight enough, it looks like it was haphazardly thrown together. It's not really a controversy so much as people just paying too much attention to a women's looks yet again. :\ It's something people with more experience with black hair (read: black people, esp. black women and mothers) and are thus those that are calling it out more readily. | 9ed74166-4c19-4600-841b-d166eedc63a9 |
8d8zls | what does polishing shoes actually do? | There are leather conditioners to keep leather hydrated so it doesn't crack and peal,
Then you can buff a shoe with special brushes or swab type implements (or a clean rag) to remove light scratches or marks and go over it with a polish that matches the tone of the shoe to restore the richness of color and even it out where it's become mottled from stains or fading
It's important to gently clean the surface of the shoe to remove substances that could damage the leather, like salts and other things before applying polishes.
A good leather cleaning ritual can extend the life of the garment and keep it in good condition longer | 64e6387f-adba-46b7-abe1-9d91a2b41c76 |
27xkok | How do artillery spotting work? | They're called Forward Observers, 13Fs, FISTERs.
Using a compass, map, protractor, lasers - you can determine the direction and distance to a target, from the Forward Observer's position. Now this is important, the FO has to relay his exact position, since all corrections to the artillery fire will be made from his sight position.
In essence, if I'm telling the guns "right 30 meters" to me, the rounds will go right 30 meters. But, if the gun line (the actual cannons) say, is 12 miles to my north, they would actually be firing south, "longer" or further from their position, while simultaneously it going to my right.
For this, the Forward Observers call the Fire Directional Center. They calculate what "right 30 meters" means for the gun line, and they inform the FO what types of rounds are available, how many rounds will be fired, and when exactly they will impact the ground. This is called "splash" exactly 5 seconds after "splash" is called, the round impacts the ground. This is done so that the Observer does not have to keep exposing himself by looking at the target continuously.
The observer keeps making corrections "add" brings the round farther away from him. "Drop" brings the round closer to him. "Right" is right, "Left" is left. "Up" means the altitude will be increased, and "down' altitude decreased. Altitude is important when calling in illumination rounds that start to burn high up in the sky, illuminating the enemy. With "continuous illumination" one cannon can fire the illumination, and the other cannon can fire the "HE" impact rounds, with practically daylight. It is also used with artillery rounds that impact over ground troops, or to infiltrate trenches, or place mines using cannons.
FOs can also laser the target, giving them an exact grid coordinate, altitude of target and the direction.
Think of the Artillery as a Man;
Arms: Gun line, brawn
Brain: FDC, figures out all the calculations
Eyes: FOs, get close enough to the target to blow it to smithereens.
FOs are also cross-trained at a certain level as JFOs (Joint Fires Observers) to help call in Close Air Support (CAS) and helicopter strikes (Close Combat Aircraft, CCA).
It's a fun job I did for 7 years, but I now wish I had become an Air Force JTAC, those guys are awesome. | 48f7c2eb-cca1-4ea1-b91e-85352ae194c4 |
1ws7lp | why does the show "Power Rangers" still have monsters that look like rubber costumes? | Young children are not especially critical of shitty special effects. | 9adbd981-6ca7-4b8a-9f3b-f3051f5402e6 |
2xz3uj | Why are certain types of plastic non-recyclable? | In addition to economics, there are two main types of polymers. [Thermosets](_URL_1_) are irreversibly cured: once they are formed they can't be re-formed. While these can't be recycled into new plastics, they may be re-purposed for other uses once their primary useful lifespan ends. What makes these materials unable to be re-used is that the polymer chains have a high degree of cross-linking. That is, instead of a jumble of individual chains (like a bowl of spaghetti) the chains are bonded to each other to varying degrees (like net or fence).
[Thermoplastics](_URL_0_), on the other hand, generally lack this cross-linking which makes them easier to re-work and form into new plastics. | fec7da41-be3a-423f-a40c-81dce3e8cca3 |
86rw0h | why is water able to evaporated below the boiling point? I was always taught 212F (100C) was when water could turn into a gas. | First let me say, if you have the time, ignore my answer and read the first chapter of the feynman lectures here: _URL_0_ Absolutely ELI5, great stuff.
Here's my explanation.
People found that liquid water is made of a huge number of tiny molecules. These attract and repel each other (too close and they repel, too far and they break, right in the middle, and they balance ... kind of like weak springs), and they're constantly moving and jiggling about.
Evaporation is when the molecules on the surface, after some kick of energy from collisions below, break the last of their springs and bounce off into the air and just leave. And more and more leave like this, until poof, almost all are gone. So while temperature would affect it, it is not necessary for the water to be at boiling point. And you can imagine that different liquids evaporate at different rates based on the strength of those springy bonds.
And temperature is nothing but the kinetic energy of these molecules. The higher the temperature, the more they kick around.
Boiling is only a little bit different. It's not related to the water molecules on the SURFACE, but all around. Because you heated the water to such a high temperature that it just violently ejects water molecules all over the place, even inside (gas bubbles do form deep inside when you boil some water, right? Does that happen in evaporation? Nope.). And it's very easy for water to escape in the form of vapour.
Hope this cleared things up for you. | 00543f8a-3e87-448a-b155-f4b1b9af11e0 |
308q0d | Why do we get headaches? | There are many things that factor into headaches, and there are different types of them. Dehydration can be a contributing factor. The most common type of headache is a "tension" headache. These are muscular in nature,( yes we have muscles in our faces/scalp) several muscles also attach to the back of our head (neck and back muscles) these are responsible for actions such as turning our head side to side, flexion and extension of the neck, raising our shoulders, etc. When these muscles become very tense, they can result in tension headache. Often stress is involved.
Source; I have been a licensed massage therapist since 2009, and have relieved many headaches by working on the muscles of the neck. | d763bc03-0a12-489f-bc19-adfbba9462ec |
1k0a6c | How does patient zero get a sexually transmitted disease? | A disease evolves from something else. Usually that is from an other disease on the same animal (then this is easy - it is just there) or on a different animal.
If it is evolving on a different animal, that diesease suddenly developt capabilities to infect humans (due to mutation and similar mechanisms) Now it has to **get to a human** (patient zero). With "normal" diseases that happens the same way it would happen with between humans: close contact, sneezes, fecs (accidentially getting eaten/on hands/small wounds- > blood), raw eating raw flesh (parasites), other body fluids ...
So, one way would be sex between different species. Animals do that. Humans do that, too. Quite often. Probably more often than you think. [Wiki-link](_URL_0_) - the relevant numbers were 5% (men) and 2% (women) - that declined, probably, but in remote areas it should be similar.
That is not the only way - many sexually transmitted diseases have secondary means of transmission. For example, HIV is transmitted by blood. It just happens that there are many small wounds while having sex. You can get HIV if you rub infected blood on your body (if there are wounds - which is rare). You could imagine that such diseases might start in a cow and then infect the butcher...
Also, there are people who stick thinks in their private area. These things might get dirty...
**TL;DR:** Spreading from animal to human: poor hygiene or bestiality(sex with animals - that happens. More often then you think). The virus/bacteria/parasite does not need sex, it just has to get to its target.
Diseases **start** by mutation or other genome altering mechanisms.
For easy understanding: The genome is the building plan of a bacteria/parasite/virus (the famous DNA (or RNA - basicially the same in the "universal" "language" - RNA can be read by every living thing; that's what most viruses use)). A mutation is a random change in a genome. Since these are random, in most (or almost all cases) the result is nonsense. More likely is a change due to some other mechanism: The genome in itself is not just a clear, finished plan - it has complex instructions, like, for example: cut out some part here/add some other apart (there are way more possible mechanisms; for example do some bacteria exchange parts of their genome with each other). These changes are more likely to be usefull.
If the change works, and the result still "lives", the new virus/bacteria/parasite reproduces itself inside of its human/animal and hopes to get to the next host. Usually that means leaking out in some specific fashion.
A sexually transmitted diseases might be "born" when, for example, the change made it able to survive in/on the vagina/penis (these are not the best areas to live in: there is air, urine, other fluids and current trying to flush you out, there is no easy source of energy/things to eat ... but there is less immune system and it is still wet...). If it leakes out through the vagina/penis - TADA! - it is now (additionally to what it was before) a sexually transmitted disease.
**TL;DR:** A new disease develops by some change in genome. If that changed version is working, it spreads inside the host (if it is better than the old disease it might even surpress the old one) and then hopes to get to a new one. | 1aef3df4-9242-46ed-aed6-498e81c10056 |
2j9esi | Why does certain fast food give us diarrhea? | It doesn't, unless you're *very* unaccustomed to greasy food.
Food poisoning is always a possibility, but it's pretty rare with fast food, since the stores usually either don't handle raw meat at all (Taco Bell comes to mind) or raw meat goes directly from frozen to the grill. | ec9dbe57-938b-4817-87eb-61d831278fa4 |
k7zot | How floating point numbers are represented as bits. You know, mantissas and exponents and such. | A floating point number has a dot in it like this 11.31234124. If this were money that could be 11 dollars and 31 cents
How to express this in binary bits, 1's and 0's?
First let's decide to limit the binary representation of our floating point number to 32 bits. Why? Because it turns out we won't need a lot more than that.
Let's make this easy on ourselves: let's decide that the floating point numbers start with 1 to 4 digits, then a dot, then 6 more digits after the dot. For example, 123.456789 Easy. That fits in 32 bits, everything is the same, great.
Wait, that's not good because what about 27122.8700 and 0.00000000438721109 ? That dot can be anywhere. Those wont fit in our fixed width scheme.
Here's what we do instead: it turns out 27122.8700 is also 2.341233^12, and 0.00000000438721109 is 8.3124^-8
So to store floating point numbers in binary, we convert all floating point numbers into exponents where the mantissa part (the 2.341233 part) fits in our fixed width scheme, and we also need to store the exponent value (the little 12 up in the air) and the sign of the exponent next to it which requires just a few more bits from our 32bits. There's also going to be some rounding errors in this conversion process so we also store an "exponent bias" which is a correction factor on the rounding errors. | 8e78b32d-376d-4942-b553-e8c07cfacfe1 |
2dj0zy | Considering they are related to Wolves. When a Dog is playing fetch, what does it think it is doing? | It simulates hunting prey. That's why dogs like squeaky toys, they sound like injured animals. | 91a4a7db-22c3-4441-afc1-9414217a0c17 |
1p8dm9 | If I have to poo but hold it, when the sensation goes away (and it doesn't come back) what happens to my poo!? Does my body absorb some waste? | It's sits in your intestine, being compressed by the new shit piling up. If you hold it too long you'll get constipated. | 91fd7ee2-8050-4ad6-8044-b03e2cefeaa5 |
6xu07q | Why do we instinctively seem to hit machines / devices that aren't functioning properly? Where did this come from? | It's called "Percussive maintenance" and it's related to the old mechanical and analogue systems that used to drive machines where if they got stuck sometimes a sharp jolt to the machine could cause the stuck pieces to jump into their proper places. | 39243881-d176-489f-b0b6-80dbb16c7df2 |
4fp48h | How can a drink (Monster / Coke / etc.) have zero calories? | Protein, Fat, Carbohydrate are all converted to energy and energy is measured in calories. Almost every drink, whether it be fruit juice or sodas contain a ton of sugar which is where all the calories come from.
Drinks with 0 calories replace the sugar with sweeteners, most commonly aspartame. Research shows that sweeteners make your body crave sugar, which is kind of why they are not better for you than regular sodas. | 9da65382-a8f8-40ce-a3e2-961984ba0508 |
5brhzs | why is there not an app or website for voting? | It's a horrible idea. A virus, a hack or a DDOS attack could destroy the integrity of the whole system. Many people are against even using electronic voting machines because they leave no paper trail, doing it online is a no go.
...and it would be nearly impossible to keep it anonymous which is a *critical* part of the system. | 22b8a71a-62cd-4769-9c64-102a631f4580 |
39upwq | Why are campaign funds correlated with winning an election? Why don't people just vote for who is the best person for the country? | Because marketing is everything. If you don't know somebody exists, how do you vote for them? | d5fcda93-0a8d-4f90-a9d3-76077c0f4f5c |
2bm7gd | Why do those "pan-tilt" photos make things look like models? | I'll try and actually explain this as easily as possible.
The quickest reason for this miniature illusion is depth-of-field, which is the blurry background or foreground effect you see in photography when an object is in sharp focus.
Depth-of-field is usually not achieved in photographs that are taken in landscape or super wide because there is not an object close to the lens for the camera to focus on, and there is no reason for the background to be very blurry.
When we take a landscape shot, like the second image you provided, and make the statue in sharp focus, and blur the background and foreground, the illusion of it being miniature is created because that effect is achieved normally on objects where the camera is very close to the object in focus. This, combined with increasing the saturation of the image, makes it seem like these landscapes are miniature toy models. | 0ab8d4c2-9f87-441e-acfa-b5e55885a3e4 |
75d2q2 | How can a car detect that a Windows has been broken and sound the alarm? | Most car alarms are vibration sensitive, which is why they go off when someone bumps into the car.
Because you will require a significant force to smash a window, the car will register the hit and sound the alarm. | 8a56f774-83d7-456f-a3c0-da1baa4c64e8 |
75efog | Why is chloroform not used as a sleeping medication? | Because chloroformed sleep is a sedated, unnatural state of unconsciousness. The compound depresses the central nervous system and too much can easily kill a person. | ada5b2f4-b083-4d8f-9fef-a51081955a1f |
3w3kjy | who decided that vulgar language was vulgar? | This is a bit like asking who decided what is polite and what is kind and what is mean - they are bound to culture, context and they ebb and flow with social norms. While we can talk about how and why words get put on lists that the MPAA uses in ratings, or that are OK or not OK on broadcast televition, it's nearly impossible to pinpoint the evolution of the meaning of a word, or the change in its interpretation within a culture. | a801464b-ea4f-4d05-8e2c-f527c71f351b |
7vvbo3 | Film: what does a producer and executive producer do? | From Wikipedia:
* Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the making of a commercial entertainment product. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or with associated legal issues (like copyrights or royalties).[1] In films, the executive producer generally contributes to the film's budget and usually does not work on set, in contrast to most other producers.
* Film producers fill a variety of roles depending upon the type of producer.[1] Either employed by a production company or independent, producers plan and coordinate various aspects of film production, such as selecting script, coordinating writing, directing and editing, and arranging financing.[2] During the "discovery stage", the producer finds and acknowledges promising material.[3] Then, unless the film is supposed to be based on an original script, the producer has to find an appropriate screenwriter.[4]
So in short: the EP is overseeing the administrating (finance, legal, organisation) side, the P the entire creative aspects. Overlaps can happen. | 267e8347-9f22-40fc-befe-0788ff81ffdd |
3m9mbl | How does forcing car companies to sell through dealers "protect the consumer"? | It's from back in the days where trying to hold an out of state car company liable (e.g., if there were any problems with the car) was pretty much impossible for the average person. The dealer exists partially because in that era it was important to have somebody nearby to hold responsible for the car you bought. | 0644c9cc-8296-4724-a957-67f2e1a11ecc |
1wn1j3 | Why are modern day toys and electronics so flimsy compared to, say 15 years ago? | Consumers would rather pay less and buy devices more often. If there was more profit to be found by charging more and being durable, that's what you would see.
The obsolescence curve for many technologies is also getting faster, so manufacturers can more safely assume their product will have a shorter life anyway. | f4c669ce-1252-4690-95cb-7504d1e8c04e |
51yvb7 | Imagine we wanted to nuke Russia at midnight tonight. What military movements would need to be made, how many people would have to sign off on it, etc? | The exact processes are kept pretty secret, but you'd be surprised how simple the process would be.
The President can order the strike. The Secretary of Defense confirms the identity of the President and passes the order down the chain to the leg of the triad that will be conducting the attack.
We have three methods of nuclear strike capabilities, referred to as the nuclear triad. That would be ICBM's, Nuclear attack submarines, and nuclear bombers. Both the missiles and the subs have a range of about 8,000 miles, and will impact minutes after launch. They are always ready to launch, and we always have both options aimed and within striking distance of Russia.
If the order was given at 12:00 am, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that we could strike Russia by 12:30 am, with multiple warheads if necessary. | cb1afb59-49c3-4f57-8df4-d13719848dcd |
3bf8h8 | Why does time move at the speed it does? | How would you know the difference if it ran at any other speed? It would still be "normal" to you. | 00a0c731-3a10-4d97-ac43-deb19b15470e |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.