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4s4x42 | How did the term "fine" come to mean both something extremely detailed, pure and exact, as well as "just ok"? | These sorts of words sort of go through a cycle of fading in their meaning. Because fine means things like pure and exact, describing something as being "fine" means "really good". But if we start using that word too much, over time it loses its impact, and describing something as being fine no longer actually sounds that remarkable any more. And so eventually it just becomes run of the mill.
You can see this with lots of other synonyms for "really good". If you say something is "awesome" now, the reader/listener has to infer from context whether that means "ok" or "really good". For example, someone might say "awesome, thanks!" in response to "here's the link to that report you were looking for", and also to "I got us two tickets to your favourite band's sold out show you thought you'd missed". And even in that example, while you could *say* "awesome, thanks" to the latter and have just how really awesome it is come across in your voice, in writing you'd probably worry about "awesome thanks" coming across as dismissive and would instead write "HOLY FUCKING SHIT that's so fucking awesome you are my hero man, thank you so fucking much!!!!!! Heart-emoji partyhat-emoji face-with-loveheart-eyes-emoji music-note-emoji heart-emoji heart-emoji" Because awesome on its own just doesn't mean what it used to.
Also commonly seen in English is bad words coming in to replace the overused words for "really good". Even "awesome" would have in times past included a connotation of inducing fear, as would words like "terrific". "Sick" can be good, as can "wicked" and "bitchin'". Over time some of those words might become commonplace (probably not *those* ones though), and then fade into mediocrity as "fine" already has and "awesome" is currently doing.
All this is just a wonderful feature of language, that as people use it, meanings change, almost without us noticing. It's why "literally" now also means "figuratively" and "ironic" means like a million different things depending on context. | 17893485-1d2c-40fd-8a9f-d8f255f9cf90 |
269m76 | Why do dogs stare at us? | since none of the comments here are actual answers, i'll try to do my best to explain it.
first off, dogs are a result of hundreds of years of artificial selection of wolves by humans. they are bred to do work for humans. naturally, the dogs that took direction from humans better than other dogs would have a higher chance at being bred. so over hundreds of years of breeding, dogs became really good at reading human emotion and body language.
dogs are one of the few animals that can actually read human facial expressions. when humans look at another human face, we have an automatic reflex called [left gaze bias.](_URL_0_) basically it means when we look at a face, we automatically look at the left side of that face. dogs exhibit this reflex only when looking at human faces.
dogs will also look to humans when trying to solve puzzles. there have been studies conducted between wolves and dogs to demonstrate this. the test was quite simple. a treat was tied to a rope. it was placed in a cage with one end of the rope hanging out of the cage. the treat was obtained by pulling the rope to remove the treat from the cage, which both wolves and dogs easily succeeded at. the same test was administered again but this time the rope was attached to the cage so it could not be pulled out. a clear difference between wolves and dogs was shown when the wolves worked tirelessly to get the treat, while dogs gave up easily and looked to a human for help.
hope this answers your question! | 18d0f1cf-0467-439a-ab7e-04791d9b1364 |
1xrn6m | I'm a Senior in High School in New York. We are required for our government class to do 10 political hours, what are they and how do I get involved? | I would ask your teachers or advisers what "political hours" are. I've never heard of them. | 1ba2889c-d34c-462d-b0ba-cbe027ab79e7 |
34vgg0 | Institutional Racism | Institutional racism is typically a holdover from periods of blatant racism.
Imagine you are born *just after* the end of Jim Crow and other formal, racist laws. Growing up, your family will be poorer than average and less educated than average. As you look around yourself, you will have few people who are very successful with whom you can talk, network, learn from, or model your behavior after.
*That's* institutional racism. Nothing is explicitly keeping you down, but you are at a huge disadvantage none-the-less.
This is the idea behind special programs like race-based scholarships or affirmative action/race quotas in hiring. It helps to level the playing field a bit, so that underprivileged communities can begin to build some wealth, as well as a resource of people to serve as a guides and role models to the following generation. | 4b4170a6-5c01-42a8-b85f-127e1c993834 |
1kv2la | What is the point of 120Hz monitors when we can only perceive 60fps clearly? | Actually, our eyes can quite comfortably perceive differences of up to around 80fps. It's not a *huge* difference above 60fps, but it can be noticeable in frame-by-frame rendered scenarios, such as games. [This diagram](_URL_0_) might help you see the peak point.
The added benefit of 120hz monitors is that they're capable of generating 60hz *3D* images (if paired with the right technology, such as glasses). | 93f118aa-9783-4557-8343-2cd70e5e1786 |
43x9dr | How do chameleons camouflage themselves? | They do not. They change colors in response to temperature in mood, not as camouflage.
But as to how they do *that*: they have cells called chromatophores in their skin. These cells are layered on top of each other and can expand and contract. When a cell on top expands, it blocks the one underneath. When it contracts, you can see the one underneath. By controlling which colors are visible this way, the chameleon changes color. | a1e37509-c03c-4f7c-ba4b-09a423bb36ce |
38nx5x | "The captain always goes down with the ship". Why is this a thing? | Captains wont intentionally kill themselves no, but they are supposed to be the last ones off since they are responsibly for all crew and passengers.
> "The captain goes down with the ship" is an idiom and maritime tradition that a sea captain holds ultimate responsibility for both his ship and everyone embarked on it, and he will die trying to save either of them. Although often associated with the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 and its captain, Edward J. Smith, the phrase predates the Titanic by at least 11 years.[1] **In most instances the captain of the ship forgoes his own rapid departure of a ship in distress, and concentrates instead on saving other people. It often results in either the death or belated rescue of the captain as the last person on board.**
Think of it more as a figure of speech, like women and children first. | e34bb778-95cc-4f61-bb7e-e39b617fc4ea |
4aza72 | How does a deaf person know what you are saying when they gain hearing? | I was born deaf, and I had a cochlear implant surgery when I was seven. Prior to the surgery, I was wearing hearing aids, I was not able to hear well with it, and the cochlear implant helped me to hear, but I can tell you this, it took a lot of practice to understand what people are saying without reading their lips. I am able to understand people and know the surrounding sounds, but it took me, I would say about 5 years to actually understand what I am hearing. It takes a lot of practice, patience and most likely an intensive speech therapy for a deaf person to understand what they are hearing. | 2ccf9d20-d00b-407f-8065-1a1a2510c43b |
190suy | What is ethernet and how does it differ from regular internet? | Ethernet is just the particular type of port and network protocol which is used in wired ports to your computer. You probably know what it looks like: a larger, wider telephone connector. This is generally only used in local networks, and once it leaves the building changes to cable or fiber of some sort.
The Internet as a whole uses very many different methods to move data, from fiber optics to cable to microwave to satellites. | b763c3cf-aaf8-473f-8cd9-568df97f54e1 |
4r7sqx | Why are there no laws to stop lies in politics, like there are to stop lies in advertising? | there was a premier of Ontario (like a governor in the states) who signed a pledge publicly not to do 'x'.
A few months after being elected, he did 'x'.
The dude who initiated it took it to court where it was thrown out, because politicians can be expected to lie.
True story. | 7782be1e-d56e-43a0-aac7-ba00941d6cc8 |
6g78gf | Why are scars clearly a different pigment color than the rest of our skin? | Your normal skin was made slowly and precisely like a professional carpenter.
Scar tissues was made in a hurry to plug a leak like an amateur DIY emergency bodger. | ceb3d91f-7e4e-4e8d-a853-d1af4e9e3dfa |
16xvke | Why Japanese always do the "V for victory" symbol when totally not applicable(or just in every picture ever). | Its a cultural thing. Like how we say "say cheese" when we take a picture. | 22f9d641-ec25-465b-a8d1-66c7c191806c |
7v6u56 | How is it that the US economy flourished and expanded so extraordinarily during the late 1940s and 1950s when the government was so burdened with war debt? | The USA was more or less the only fully intact industrial economy.
We supplied everything. To everyone. | a0826bdc-744a-4bfa-a2ef-e0cdf03a1c11 |
4qlsvw | How does the pedometer know that I am walking and not just shaking my phone? | If you looked at a graph of what the phone was recording as it moves you would quickly see patterns that were unique to walking.
The phone records how it's moving (accelerating) in 3 different directions. It also records the magnetic force in 3 directions like a 3 dimensional compass. A graph of this would look like 6 lines all waving around.
When you're walking you have a very rhythmic movement and it only happens in certain directions relative to the direction your phone is orientated in your pocket or bag. The same for climbing stairs and a load of other actions. The graphs of these actions will all have unique things about them that the phone can pick out to tell what you're doing. It's like recognising your voice - it's not perfect but it's getting very good. | ccb64ff4-9f1b-4051-8428-126d59805ac2 |
2ib6v5 | the contact rules in ice hockey | You cant hit (*check*) a guy if he is not actively involved in a play (*interference*). You can not use your stick to impede a players progress (*tripping* or *hooking*). You cannot elbow someone (*elbowing*). You cant intentionally push someone head first into the wall in an unnecessary manner (*boarding*). You cant smack someone with your stick to make them fall down (*slashing*). You rrally cant do anything the ref says was unnecessary. (*roughing*).
Probably missing a few. | 6c902899-68cc-4c17-b132-a135747676db |
3fw4sy | Why is 13 an unlucky number in Western culture? | The Last Supper, the last meal Jesus Christ shared with his 12 apostles, had 13 men total attending it, the 13th of which betrayed Jesus. So 13 was then felt to be an unlucky number by Christians because of it. | 8f100a4b-4e64-46b3-a953-bf0e968e2a8f |
1jlcs3 | how does services like Instagram make profit? | There are three main revenue models online. Advertising, freemium and venture capital.
Advertising = letting companies get access to your users for a fee (Facebook, google)
Freemium - pay extra for more features like a mobile app, or other upgrades and purchases (think Facebook gifts)
Venture capital - screw the business model, let's get big and hopefully sell it to google, yahoo or Facebook.
Instagram is in number 3. They tried to use the pics for ads but that was after Facebook bought them for a lazy billion.
In reality most transition from venture to either ads, or paid content and upgrades. A lot just want to get bought after getting massive and if they don't succeed with a massive audience they get shuttered. | 8e725290-d771-49ed-b8c8-edaf17842c14 |
36bepi | What MUST be done to fix the water supply problems part of the world are having | Folks simply have to live elsewhere.
By most theoretical guesses, we're in the final 25% of Earth's optimal capacity as far as human population. [1](_URL_0_)
At a point, society will no longer care about who has an iPhone or what happens to Don Draper on Mad Men tonight. Food resources will be spread thin and masses will be forced to sustenance farm. This is expected to begin at around 25 billion humans. [2](_URL_0_)
People located near abundant supplies of fresh water will prosper. | 152719d3-4337-4a82-8a90-1eecdc510766 |
3yaisl | What is the point of those "Fowarding you to your download in 5.." pages | They basically either make you look at ads, or are there to convince you into paying for a premium service.
There's a *slight* chance that they're actually load-balancing and just want you to have something to look at so you don't think it's frozen and hit reload constantly, too. | 31a10cc5-1c37-4a0e-9f0d-e8503ea40154 |
49xpra | How did modern Americans come to lose the English accent? | It's not so much that Americans lost a English accent but that both accents changed over time. For hundreds of years, there was no regular voice communication between England and America so their accents naturally drifted.
Amusingly, the closest modern equivalent to the English accent at time of early colonization only exists in America, now. In the rural areas of the Appalachian mountains. | 3b84e91e-43a0-48fd-93cd-bc3de2b77ef8 |
2pp58x | how the heck does wireless charging work? | Pretty much the same way as wired charging works.
When you plug something in, in the charger is a transformer. The transformer consists of 2 coils of wire. One it attached to the house electricity. 1 is attached (via the wire) to your phone.
As current passes through the primary coil, it induces a current in the secondary coil. There is no direct electrical connection between your phone and the 120V/240V electricity in your house.
With wireless charging the secondary coil is in your phone instead of in the charger. Current in the primary coil induces a current in the coil in your phone. | 645d0cae-08c6-4457-b9fe-ddec9bde2ab9 |
1rxbzv | How long does it take for vitamin supplements do make a positive effect on your health after you take them? | Depends on the vitamin. If you have scurvy (Vitamin C deficiency) and start taking vitamin C, it can make you substantially better in as little as 8-16 hours. If you have a Vitamin D deficiency, and start taking vitamin D, it might not have a noticeable affect for more than a week. | 99473407-f148-42dd-8f60-c28c118a159b |
3i7wq9 | Why can't we mix firework colours like we can paint? | Because light doesn't mix the same as paint. To make purple you use metals that burn purple. Adding in magnesium can make it a lighter purple, or adding zinc oxide can make a forboding smokey purple.
Think of it like this: when electricity is pulsed through hydrogen it looks white, but it's actually a few colors of light mixed together.
Here's a guide for what colors different metals make: _URL_0_ | efd568bd-3dfe-4f37-ae2d-6546945617fb |
j32w5 | LI5: The Stock Market and trading. Can someone explain it to me how they work? | To be honest, I would recommend looking at an [investment fund.](_URL_0_)
Since you don't know anything about trading, I would suggest not starting to trade until you have some market knowledge under your belt. If you use an investment fund (go for an open ended if you can, OEIC's etc)
don't try just jump on the hottest fund, everyone has good and bad times, just chose a consistent performer. Once you have a firm knowledge of the trading process then get a few grand and start trading. | e1438370-ef93-445f-b2b4-2add32a030d4 |
6i1yoa | What is an intuitive explanation of the Feigenbaum constants? | I'm not sure what intuitive means to you. A visually appealing version is to look at the Mandelbrot set. You have the biggest part which is the main cardioid. To the left of it is a circle. If you keep going to the left and zooming in, you'll find infinitely many circle-like shapes attached to each other. The ratio of the sizes of neighboring shapes stabilizes the further you go. That ratio is the first Feigenbaum constant. | ae0a600d-a8c8-4a68-87f1-9f20316e088e |
2dfw8f | What are the dangers/benifits in protein shakes and supplements concerning muscle development. | Dangers of protein? Basically none. A lot of people say protein is bad for your kidneys, but that's only if you have a preexisting kidney condition and/or are consuming an obscene amount of it.
Benefits, in addition to the fact that higher protein consumption helps rebuild muscle after working out, shakes in particular can help your muscles replenish their stores of glycogen, a sugar that they use for energy.
There are an immense amount of other supplements out there with their own sets of benefits and risks, I recommend _URL_0_ as a good resource to read up on them. | a8a9bce2-37e5-4c1b-95dd-d659619243b5 |
5ue0vr | Why is everyone on reddit explaining their edits? Even when it is just a typo and they added 1 letter, they write: "Edit: Typo. I was on a phone" or something like that. | You can troll people by posting something, waiting for people to reply, then edit your post to something else so the replies no longer mean what they intended.
E.g. You post something innocent like "noodles are the best food". Someone replies "I agree". Then you edit your post to say "Hitler was right". Now it looks like the other person is agreeing with that.
To combat this, reddit shows a star next to posts that have been edited. So if you see that star, you know that the post could have said something very different originally.
So when people edit for legitimate reasons, they say what they edited so you're not left wondering if the post originally said something completely different. | b445a70b-b100-4292-aa9c-26b37644aabc |
4jismp | How can newborn animals instinctively know how to walk moments after birth, but humans take months to be able to even stand? | First of all, not all newborn animals instinctively know how to walk. There are just as many that are born blind, deaf and completely helpless.
You are looking at two things here.
First of all, there is the question of need. Some animals *need* to be able to walk quickly after birth to avoid predators. Think of wild horses, for example. They roam in herds. Running is how they avoid predators. A newborn foal has to keep up with the herd or it dies. (and therefore doesn't pass on its genes). This behaviour, this ability to walk quickly after birth, is one that was selected for during the evolution of this species.
But that is not a universal thing. Plenty of animals are capable of defending their young in other ways after birth (because they are very strong, or because they are able to give birth to their young somewhere predators can't get to them). Take newborn polar bear cubs for example. They are born completely helpless. And that is fine because when they are born there is no need to be able to walk, so this was never selected for during their evolution.
Now another thing that you are looking at, and that is very specific for humans, is that we give birth to underdeveloped young. We have relatively large heads (because intelligence is our evolutionary niche) which we sadly enough combine with relatively narrow birth canals (because our other evolutionary niche is walking upright). We need to give birth to young while their brains are still very barely developed simply cause women would not be able to birth them if they stayed in longer. But again, that is fine because we don't *need* our young to run immediately after birth. We are group animals who can carry and protect our infants, so again, evolutionary we never selected for young that can walk very quickly. | 5dc26ff7-14ff-4d4b-a27e-65749a484a32 |
657fi7 | Why are birds such loud creatures? How come ground animals (squirrels, rabbits, deer, etc.) are generally so quiet while communicating compared to their flying wildlife friends? | Birds have the ultimate method of avoiding predators - flight. They simply fly away from anything dangerous. This also means they move around a lot and so they scream and yell to find each other.
Ground animals have a lot more shit to worry about. They aren't as loud so that they can hide from predators, since they can't fly away. | af52bc65-7862-45ed-9662-70e54d1071da |
68wti2 | Why is it common to see the flag of the Confederate States of America in states which were never members of the Confederacy? | Every state has Confederate apologists in it.
It's the modern way to fly the Nazi flag without flying the Nazi flag.
The Confederate flag, whatever it may have once represented, is now the flag of American White Supremacists, de facto Nazis, and other far right-wing extremists like the Bundy family, whose patron, Cliven "Let me tell you another thing I know about the Negroes" Bundy, doesn't "recognize the Federal Government as even existin'."
I don't think most people who fly Confederate flags would continue doing so if they were ever to realize what it tells the world about them. They'd certainly still do it in secret, though. | 4431d22c-5bb4-4560-b2aa-64815f98f613 |
2l5n3x | (kind of NSFW) Why my testicles ache if I get sexually excited for long but do not ejaculate at the end? | Educated guess here.
Lots of blood and lubricating fluid builds up in all the "tubes" of your genitals when you sexually excited, and the tubes expand a bit for better flow. The "plan" is all that fluid is expelled in an ejaculation, then all the blood flow goes back to the rest of your body and all your "tubes" constrict back to their normal size.
When you don't ejaculate, the tubes eventually return back to their normal size, but all the pent up fluid is still there, so your body is trying to constrict around a mass that "shouldn't be there."
It's a pressure ache, and your body has to manually clean it up, absorbing the water and destroying all those "foreign bodies" that are sitting there. | e8ac3454-3865-4fa5-bcc4-15314c81e72c |
p4nul | - What, exactly, is gravity? | Gravity is the tendency of objects with mass to attract one another.
Everything has gravity. The gravitational force between two objects can be calculated.
F=GMm/r^2
F is force, G is the gravitational constant, M and m are the masses of the objects in question, and r is the distance between the center of the objects.
The gravitational pull of a human or a building is so tiny that it isn't noticeable. The gravitational pull of the Earth, Sun, and Moon, however, have significant gravitational effects. (Keeping me in my seat, holding planets in orbit, effecting tides, etc.)
What causes objects with mass to attract each other isn't perfectly understood. The leading explanation of what causes gravity is given by Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.
Space is like a big fabric, and massive objects interfere with this fabric, and bend it toward themselves. When this happens, other objects will be pulled through the curved fabric toward the massive object.
Imagine you have a trampoline, a bowling ball, and a marble. If you place the bowling ball on the middle of the trampoline and the marble at the edge, the marble will roll towards the bowling ball. Bending space is similar. If you were to roll the marble off to the side, it would roll inward to the ball in a circular motion. If it was going fast enough, it would completely circle the bowling ball. This is comparable to orbits. | c587c074-ac19-4d49-bfff-293eeb2085e7 |
2gwp5y | Why do gas stations charge an additional 10 cents per gallon for card transactions and why is it legal? | Because it isn't illegal.
They are a business, and as a business they have the right to charge what they want for their goods/services. Your method of payment places a burden on them, why should they have to eat that cost? You could pay in cash and pay a different price. | b0534487-966f-456d-93ea-cddca0cff0ce |
49b8i3 | Who controls how delegates vote in presidential nominations | Delegates are local party members who are picked to go to the Convention. The majority of delegates are pledged, which means they are required by the rules of the Convention (and in some cases state law) to vote for a specific candidate based on the results of their state's primary or caucus. There are also superdelegates, which are major party officials as well as those holding political office who can vote for whomever they want. The number of delegates a state gets us determined by its population of Party members.
While the primary or caucus determines how many delegates each candidate gets from that state, in most states exactly who gets to go to the national Convention is determined through a state or local mini-Convention.
Once at the Concention, the delegates vote for the nominee as pledged. If a candidate won some delegates in the primaries but has since dropped out, he can keep his delegates or he can release them to vote for whomever they want. (He could also ask them to vote for a particular other candidate, and often they will, but as I understand it, he can't require them to do so?)
If one candidate receives a majority, they become the nominee. If not, the delegates vote again. However, on this second ballot as well as all later ballots, the pledged delegates are free to vote from whomever they want. (In some states pledged delegates are required by law to continue voting their pledge on the second or maybe even third ballot, but eventually they are released.) So if a nominee doesn't get a majority of delegates, then the field ends up wide open and the candidates and delegates negotiate, horse-trade, twist arms, all the normal political stuff, until eventually a nominee receives a majority. This person doesn't have to be one of the people who ran in the primaries -- in fact it's unlikely to be, because all those people have already shown themselves to have been losers this cycle (except the guy who won but couldn't get a majority -- and if the superdelegates aren't willing to bump that guy up the votes necessary to win on the first ballot, then obviously he has some problems within his Party and is unlikely to win a later ballot.
The last time there was a brokered convention was the Democrats in 1968, back when there were many fewer primaries and less voter participation in the process. Bobby Kennedy was winning the primary over Gene McCarthy, both running on an anti-Vietnam War platform, when Sirhan Sirhan murdered Kennedy the night of the California primary. This threw the race into disarray, and eventually the Conventioneers nominated Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, who had not run. Although Humphrey was personally against the War, President Johnson convinced him to adopt the establishment position that the war was necessary. There were riots both outside and inside the Convention, the Chicago PD ran wild on the protestors, several people were prosecuted for incitement to riot, and seven months later Richard Nixon was president, so this is not something that has a great history of success. | daab6e75-64ca-4be7-828d-209c653432ff |
7pvpsb | why does running just after eating cause cramps? | When you're digesting, a lot of your blood is directed to your stomach and intestines.
Which means you have less available for your legs. | 5752e26b-a162-44b0-bde1-7e697e3d66d6 |
uv008 | The United Kingdom | Think of two buildings next to one another. One building is two stories high and the neighbouring building is three stories high.
The two story building is called Ireland and the three story building has a floor for England, one for Scotland and one for Wales.
At various times in the past England took over ownership of all the other parts of its own building and of the building called Ireland but recently the ground floor of the Ireland building went back to the original owner.
Now, England is the landlord who controls the three floors of it's own building as well as the top floor of Ireland which is called Northern Ireland. The bottom floor of the two story building is called the Republic of Ireland or "Éire" and is independant of England's control.
The three story building is known as Britain.
The lower floor of the three story building is called England.
The entire three story building and the upper floor of the two story Ireland building is called The United Kingdom.
The lower floor of the two story building is the Republic of Ireland. | bdd69669-346e-4f07-9778-b7f5d22d3d3a |
2bo5hi | If velocity affects time then how can we be sure the age of anything? | You don't know with great precision, but you can still make a good guess. We'll be able to use the "13.8 billion years" estimate for a while instead of having to change to "13.8 billion years and 5 days" next week. Here, our precision is only to the 100-million years. Fluctuations due to relativity are negligible there. | 7d57279d-a8b8-46d5-be73-45a698e63f94 |
527tw9 | If anything we sense is converted into electrical signals that are then interpreted by our brains, why can't we capture, analyse, and re-transmit those signals? | Neuroscientist here! I do research that involves recording electrical signals from neurons.
The main reason we can't do this is that the electrical signals of neurons ate very small and hard to detect. If you want to know what any one neuron is doing, the only good way is to implant an electrode into the brain (or whatever other tissue the neuron is surrounded by), with the tip of the electrode no more than a few millionths of a meter away from the neuron itself.
There are several problems with this. First, it's invasive and potentially dangerous, so it's seldom something we do in humans except at VERY great medical need. Second, there's no good way to target individual neurons. You can stick an electrode into someone's motor cortex, for example, and you'll probably detect the activity of a couple different neurons, but you have no idea what kind of neurons they'll be. They might be neurons that convey information about hands movements.. Or they might be neurons that serve some kind of poorly understood computational / logistical purpose, and might tell you very little at all about hand movements. This is why implants for brain-computer interfaces have to have hundreds of recording sites: to have a decent chance of getting enough signals from neurons of the types you care about.
Third, and related to the second point, we don't always know how to interpret what the neurons are saying. In many brain systems, we have only foggy guesses at what a particular neuron is doing. It might seem to be just firing randomly and with no obvious relationship to anything an animal is doing or experiencing. It's probably doing something, but we haven't cracked the code yet.
There has been some success in this field. A while ago, there were some articles in the media about a paralyzed woman who had received implants of recording electrode arrays into a couple movement-related brain areas, and been able (after much work) to operate a robotic arm. But that's the result of months / years of time spent tuning the interface system to enable it to make sense of the neural signals they were able to detect. Just getting enough information out to operate one robotic arm (and somewhat haltingly, at that) probably took a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears, plus (I imagine) a whole lot of computing power.
If you have more questions, ask! | a68bb838-3b7a-41c4-ab21-65c5a4e3ffc7 |
7h6f10 | Why do we sneeze when plucking our eyebrows? | The nerves for this area are very close to the nerves carrying sensory data from your nose. The signals overlap accidentally. | 390ede77-2a37-41b7-ad10-84136e17cd38 |
5u836c | How does the brain 'click' and come to a conclusion when it receives multiple pieces of information? Why does the brain 'click' for some people, but for others, not so much? | I'd say it depends on what information one has previously learned and trusts in. If I tell you that "the moon causes the tides" it may click for someone how the moon's gravity can effect a large fluid body on the earth. But for someone who doesn't know how gravity works or who's never heard of the concept it may not click for them how a big ball in the sky can move the ocean. | 30b38628-de18-4b21-961a-65cd3cdaa5d6 |
47vrpq | How is the Galaxy s7 IP68 waterproof rated? Even when it has open ports like the USB and headphone jack | The ports aren't open to the rest of the internals. Liquid and gunk can still get in the ports, but that's as far as it goes. | b8ab583c-a846-4071-9785-14cfb6d71467 |
3qax8m | The latter part of the periodic table | > Why are the lanthanides (and actinides) down there?
Because it's easier to print on a page than [this](_URL_0_).
> Why are some masses in parentheses?
Some large elements are really unstable and aren't observed in nature. Instead of putting a weighted average of the atomic masses of the isotopes we observe in the wild, we just list the atomic mass of the most stable isotope we've produced.
> And what's with the elements like Uuo and stuff?
Some elements have been made and observed but haven't received their fancy pants names from the IUPAC yet. They just have systematic names denoting their number on the table as a placeholder.
> How are elements being made with a specific amount of protons?
We launch smaller elements (of the appropriate size) in particle accelerators and ram them together.
> If we have that control over protons how come we can't make materials like gold or silver?
We can, but it's more expensive than just digging an equivalent amount out of the ground. | d58cb1c0-6247-48d8-b823-36071aacc979 |
5zqqgd | why silence sounds like a high pitched ringing sound. | What you're hearing isn't silence - it's tinnitus which is generally caused by noise-induced hearing damage.
_URL_0_ | 95acd23a-95c4-464f-889c-59e5d0ce4483 |
1aaz8b | Why does dog poo come out in a swirl but human poo is usually a log? | Maybe it's because we shit in a bowl of water, and they shit directly on the ground. | 9a01f166-e232-406e-a045-60410489d8f2 |
3583gz | How does Sodium Pentathol (Truth serum) work? | _URL_0_
It lowers your inhibitions like when you drink. This makes it easier for you to accidentally confess to something. But, as with being drunk, it also makes you more suggestible or nonsensical. There's no guarantee that what the person says is the truth. | 98d06868-b3d2-46f0-ae7b-9014c7557adb |
2y2nzn | Why don't they just make toilet pipes wider so they don't block? | Wider pipes require more water to push more material through, otherwise the water spreads out and drops everything it was carrying like a river delta. Also, I challenge you to make a pipe big enough that it can't clog. | 0d48a556-719a-4b12-9547-00212fbcfe29 |
j77jo | Hey Li5, how does coding/programming work? | By analogy:
Your company manufactures different types of toys. You manage the assembly line for your company's manufacturing facility.
Each person on the assembly line must do a specific set of tasks in order to create a toy. Each time there is a new toy, you must create a new set of instructions for the factory workers. Your workers are very good, but they are not very creative. They will follow your instructions exactly, even if you make a mistake in your instructions. So that means you have to get your instructions just right for the toys to be manufactured properly.
This is the same thing that a programmer does with a computer. The hardware inside the computer is your set of "workers". A programmer tells computer hardware a series of instructions. Computers can understand certain simple instructions (like add two numbers together). With these simple instructions combined in a certain order, the programmer can build powerful software. The programmer tells the computer which instructions it should follow. Instead of making a toy, the programmer is making a computer program.
Now, there are many different kinds of programming languages. Let's go back to our analogy. You get tired of telling your workers every little instruction for common tasks. So instead, you decide to teach your workers a new instruction for a common task. You tell your workers: Look, when I say "Screw A to B", that really means "Pick up the screw marked A. Place the screw in slot B. Pick up the screw driver. Place the end of the screw driver to the screw head. Turn the screw driver until the screw is firmly secured."
You have now begun to invent your own instruction language. Your new instruction is a shorthand way of telling your workers a series of simpler instructions that your workers can understand.
This is the same for computer programmers working with different programming languages. Computer languages generally make it easier to tell the computer to do something complex, because you don't have to tell the computer every single little instruction in order to accomplish a common task.
I hope that helps. | 3ac2d981-e895-4b9f-9c01-5086275429b8 |
6vcwxt | What is the purpose of tenure? In practice, is it a positive or negative thing, why? | Its purpose originally was to allow professors and students to explore controversial ideas in an academic environment without fear of being fired for discussing them.
As for positive/negative, theres no way to truly answer that as everyone and every study will tell you something different. | 545fbd26-7c79-4db1-b79b-a07982ebe0de |
85oykz | How come there are different ways to defend yourself depending on the type of bear? | I think it’s mostly the same except for Pandas and Koalas. Koalas you just punt and Pandas you act like you want to reproduce with them. | 0906abe9-b15c-41f0-bd8c-274ed3fb203a |
92p4bi | why do children have such simple, underdeveloped palates? | Exposure/experience. As you grow you try new things. And also your taste buds change as you get older because your dietary requirements change. | 0261a604-cf06-41bb-9910-f42d36c718d4 |
2wo8uk | Why is Greenland called Greenland if it's all icy, but Iceland called Iceland if it's all green? What happened historically? | I believe I've read that scandinavian explorers gave them those names to discourage people from going to iceland so that they could settle it easily, and encourage them to go to Greenland, which would be very difficult for them to live in. | 620d847f-6f5f-4a55-b537-7502e86167b6 |
428arj | Why does audio sound deeper when slowed down, and higher pitched when sped up. | When audio is slowed down, you're stretching out the sound, effectively making the wavelength longer with a lower frequency. Speeding it up is squishing it, making wavelength shorter with a higher frequency. | 19f3ea63-06a2-4a2a-8bff-1d5c310ccd30 |
2zo0ur | What is Throbbing; Why do you feel it when you are injured? | When you're injured your nerves send more messages and are more sensitive so pain becomes more acute. Throbbing is feeling your blood pump through your veins. You can feel this because you nerves have become more sensitive due to the injury. | a595d669-0e7c-4a80-b388-2845dac5496a |
6soznh | How would I get a visa to permanently move to the USA. Currently living in the UK. | Do not ask here. Call the US embassy. Look online. How would you earn a living? Remember, here there is no universal health care, no provision for your retirement unless you work at least ten years, then it is skimpy. Our taxes are high and benefits skimpy because we fund an expensive military. | 32827c81-2f2c-4e7a-b89c-5263077f7c90 |
1p3a07 | Why/How is abortion still is a huge issue in America at this time? | Why would it not be? Anything that people have a fundamental disagreement on is going to be an issue. | 8c01ab4f-cd4b-4247-814a-b18dadb86f2f |
2mr8vu | Why do call-ins and phone interviews on radio and TV shows sound so much lower in quality than actual phone calls? | In audio engineering, there is a saying that goes 'anything louder sounds better' - it's something a producer has to take into account when mixing a track.
In this case, it is likely that when you talk to someone on the phone, your ears are right beside the source(phone speakers), which is why it sounds better than if you were to hear it from a further(hence likely softer) source such as your TV or car speakers.
Bonus: Phone communication audio quality is really bad. It generally runs on 14.4kpbs(kilobits per seconds) using old compression technology. For comparison, Youtube videos generally run on 128-256kbps & using .AAC codec(which is 10-20 times more space efficient than an old compression technology) | 92efc48b-ec78-452c-b93c-c9ff18e92801 |
70l0he | If the landscape was dominated by giant 20 foot tall mushrooms 350 million years ago, and mushrooms spread like wildfire if their caps are kicked off, where did they go? | You appear to be talking about Prototaxites, giant fossilized columns discovered in late Silurian to late Devonian strata. First, not all fungi are mushrooms. These probably looked more like asparagus spears than capped mushrooms. Second, there is some debate whether Prototaxites are fungi at all. But putting both of those issues aside, the simple answer to your question is that the species went extinct.
The environment changes over time. In 350 million years the environment has changed so dramatically that species that were alive back then couldn't survive today. Change drives evolution and extinction is a part of that. This species went extinct as the conditions that allowed it to thrive changed allowing different species more well adapted to the new conditions to take over. | ae426132-a6c3-4fbf-a2b0-1398ed93a64d |
253jll | How do shows and movies get converted to higher resolution copies? | Older movies are shot on film, which holds much more information than 1080p resolution is capable of displaying.
10 years ago, 1080p technology was new and expensive. There was barely a market for it and certainly no market for 4K. All older films were being scanned at 1080p for eventual blu-ray releases. These 1080p "masters" were used for re-releases on DVD (advertised as "mastered in HD") and for the blu-rays themselves.
Now that 1080p is the norm and there is a growing interest in 4K. All of the 1080p masters are essentially obsolete and the film is now being scanned at a 4K resolution to create new masters. Sony recently began a line of "mastered in 4K" blu-rays. Obviously existing blu-ray technology cannot display anything greater than 1080p. I have yet to view a "mastered in 4K" blu-ray so I can't really comment.
There were two standard formats for film. 35mm and 70mm. Both could be matted to produce different aspect ratios. 35mm would peak at about 8K resolution, likewise 70mm would benefit from scans up to and possibly exceeding 16K. For reference, 1080p would be approximately 2K. Beyond that, the film grain would appear sharper with increased scanning resolution, but no new detail would emerge.
One big problem was for the brief period (early 2000s) when 1080p was considered the "be all and end all," in other words people thought that there would never be a need or desire for home video at a higher resolution than 1080p. A large number of films were shot digitally at 1080p and will remain 1080p forever (Star Wars Ep. III is an example). Unlike film, you cannot go back and "rescan" a digitally-shot movie.
Most movies are still shot on film, as it is both cheaper and more futureproof than shooting digitally. Now, most digitally-shot movies are shot at 4K, but what happens when 4K becomes the standard and development begins on bringing 8K video to the masses. The digitally-shot 4K films will forever be stuck at that resolution as well. | 444dee3a-90c0-4dfe-877f-08b0edb91c16 |
5hhqpg | Why is it that in the ocean so many different species can live in such close proximity to each other but on land it seems like they live separately. | Volume of room. On land you have one flat plain while in the ocean layers. It boils down to volume vs. Surface area. | 01cd5a34-4c6d-47ce-abbe-1bc351de64eb |
jw1kq | For those that remember VHS and audiocassette tapes - I think I understand how you can get pictures on a tape of plastic, but how the heck did they get sound on there? How is it audible? | I think you have the wrong idea of how they get images on the tape.
There is nothing on there that resembles an image to the human eye (not even outside of the visible light spectrum) it's nothing like the reels they use in cinemas.
The VHS tape is magnetic, kind of like hard drives (except VHS is analog and not digital). So you store stuff on there by magnetizing the tape in a certain way.
You can do the same thing with audio. | b93dfd00-40b9-4db9-81ed-8b58e9184ea1 |
1udw2u | Why did George Lucas make the last 3 movies instead of beggining with the 3 first movies? | When he made the first film (Episode IV), he didn't know it was going to be part of a 6-film franchise. He was just making a film. Sequels followed naturally, and I guess at some point he decided to do the prequels. | 2f4399fd-7da4-4167-b872-1cfc0076345a |
6hi3fa | Why do rabies cause an increase in aggression in animals? | The rabies virus has evolved the ability to modify the behavior of its hosts - making them more aggressive to increase the likelihood that the host will spread the virus to another animal via biting. Rabies is [not the only pathogen](_URL_0_) to have evolved this behavior-altering ability.
As for how exactly it increases aggression, I'm not sure. Likely by mimicking the action of certain neurotransmitters associated with aggression or promoting their release in the brain. | 61de373f-b8d3-41bc-9d9c-7e7ef6a9c1d5 |
7rjkwl | If the government actually shuts down what does that mean for me. | Probably the same thing it did when the government shut down 5 years ago. If you have to ask: probably nothing. | 9431ade2-c1f8-4589-9b84-e55c885a1573 |
16vf9z | bubbles! How can they hold their shape? What characteristics must a liquid have to be able to make bubbles? | The liquid must have strong cohesive properties. Cohesion means "sticking together", so the liquid molecules must have strong bonds to other molecules of the same liquid. | d83e3893-86f9-4331-9cb8-89e6b6fba44a |
4oj3xo | What transforms otherwise normal people into "criminals"? | Well... the most direct answer is that you become a criminal when you commit a crime.
But the deeper answer is... it depends.
Some are doing it out of desperation, others out of greed, others out of rage... sadism... or some other misplaced emotion. There isn't really a simple answer to the question "what pushes someone to commit a crime" as everyone has their own reasons. | 5f1423a1-0bf7-4245-a2d1-045ff60fd2c3 |
6azcwx | why does hydrogen peroxide works so well as a disinfectant? How does a substance necessary for life turns into another that easily becomes toxic? | Hydrogen peroxide is two oxygen atoms and two hydrogen atoms stuck together, but this is incredibly unstable. Oxygen *does not* like to be stuck to other oxygens, except for perhaps O2, but even that isn't particularly stable, hence why it will readily burn and become CO2 and H2O. Hydrogen peroxide would much rather be H2O, but that leaves the extra oxygen left out, and as much as oxygen doesn't like being attached to another oxygen, it *really* does not appreciate being alone.
This has to do with the electron cloud around the oxygen atom. Atoms will attract electrons to fill the cloud to a full 8 in the outside shell. Oxygen has 6 electrons in the outer shell and would be more stable at 8, so it will immediately snatch them up from other atoms. This is called electronegativity.
So the H2O2 immediately decomposes into H2O and free oxygen, and that free oxygen reacts to whatever atom happens to be close to it, even if that atom is, say, part of the DNA of a bacteria. That will tear the atom out of the DNA, potentially destroying the DNA and killing the bacteria. Or it could rip an atom out of any part of the bacteria. | 775ca2fb-8247-4d95-a9b6-1538b591561b |
2czqn1 | What is the sound that hurts my ears when there's only one window down in a car and where does it come from? | It's basically the same thing that happens when you blow over the top of a bottle and it makes a sound. When you "push" on the air inside a container, it will compress and then push back out in a certain amount of time based on how much air is in the container.
Basically, the air moving over the edge of the open window forms little vortices which "push" against the air in your car at a certain rate. At a certain speed, the frequency of these vortices matches the speed at which the air compresses and expands again inside your car - this is called a *resonant* frequency.
Just like when you push someone on a swing at the right time and they go higher and higher, this causes the pressure in your car to begin to oscillate to a larger and larger magnitude until it gets to the point where it hurts your ears.
Hope that was clear! | 850eab53-75ea-43ac-8a7c-2399ea82c825 |
1w79cn | Why did WWII bombers always fly in formation? | Formation allows for each bomber's guns to support the others. If a fighter takes on a bomber one-on-one, it's probably likely that the bomber will go down, if the fighter knows what he's doing. If ten fighters approach ten bombers in formation, it's going to be a lot harder to destroy the bombers, because there's going to be so much defensive fire coming at the fighters at all times.
Also, since saturation bombing was "in style" in WWII, having bombers in formation made it a lot simpler to manage bombing runs. Instead of "Bomber 1 aims for Target A, Bomber 2 aims for Target B, etc.," they can just order "When you to Waypoint A over the city, everyone start dropping bombs." The formation will help concentrate bombs on the target, and reduce the demands on the bomber crew to find specific targets.
EDIT: Reduced bomb dispersal, not increasing it. | 9487074b-da1c-4052-9ad1-1246365cdd1c |
1uags0 | why is some snow great for packing and fight with, while other snow just falls apart? | The amount of moisture (unfrozen water) inbetween the snowflakes determines how well the snow packs. Wetter snow makes better (and harder) snowballs -- drier snow does not. | e6ca4faa-bad8-49f8-be1a-e586e2654f51 |
22i0an | How do people who aren't vacinated effect people who are? | It creates a breeding ground for the disease thus making it able to evolve.
If there are no susceptible hosts, the disease will go extinct. | 62b55e06-b3b7-482f-847c-0d66f74b2ab0 |
2jfmrs | what is the purpose of having an RPM gauge on the dashboard? | The tachometer (tack-aw-meter) is the sensor which measures the rate of revolution of the engine shaft. It is mostly useful for determining if you are in the correct gear given your speed and throttle.
Combustion engines have peak power output in a rather narrow range of RPMs, which is why we have transmissions with multiple gears as they can allow the engine to generate power at its optimal speed and the wheels can be traveling at a different speed. The tachometer informs the driver when maximum power output is achieved during acceleration so that the gear can be changed; a dial display provides more information, in particular how quickly the current acceleration is reaching the optimal time for changing gears.
Additionally, the tachometer can indicate when there is a problem with the vehicle. An experienced driver will expect RPMs to increase according to certain patterns. If it doesn't, then it is usually an indication that something about the driving situation has changed. If the engine's RPMs stay unusually low, the engine can stall and if they go unusually high, it can damage the engine or other powered parts of the vehicle.
The tachometer can also be used to optimize fuel use, as cruising at low RPMs tends to reduce the amount of fuel used. People who are particularly keen to get the best fuel economy will use the tachometer to train themselves to accelerate as efficiently as possible.
Many drivers will become accustomed to the sound of the vehicle, so the tachometer mostly only helps to train the driver to use auditory signals, although some luxury performance vehicles have sufficient sound-proofing that this is not feasible. Vehicles with automatic transmissions and sensors to detect malfunction have very little actual use for the tachometer and, if present, is usually decoration. | 95b580d7-7cb7-4278-a6d7-9a40acfee1f6 |
4t78pc | How does key-hole surgery work? | Key Hole surgery is another term for minimally invasive surgery.
Thanks to improvements in imaging technologies such as MRI's. They can see the tissue that needs to be altered outside the body. And in some situations, a tiny incision is all that is needed to make the correction.
A decrease in the slice, cuts, size of instruments all ultimately means a decrease in trauma to the patient. A decrease in the likelihood of infection, complications, healing time, etc...
In modern medicine it is being used more and more in both back surgery, limb surgery, and heart surgery.
It doesn't matter how many drugs they put you on with open heart surgery. You still had someone saw your chest open and use giant metal clamps to pull your still beating heart out of your body. That is some messed up shit.
But with minimally invasive techniques, they can go right in between the ribs with tiny instruments and you can be back on your feet in days instead of a month or so.
If they have to work on the inside your heart, they used to have to open your chest, open up your whole heart area. Huge chest wound, clamps, machinery to keep it open, and then slice your heart wide open. Do the surgery, then just start sewing that whole mess back together. What do you think the chances of surviving that shit was?
Now they can go through an artery in your thigh and access it somewhere near your but. They send a tiny probe up there with a camera, light, and a little nife or something else. They operate that thing like Jim Henson operates Kermit the Frog, but way tinier. When they are done, they grab the little thing they need and pull it out with them with their little puppet machine and pull the whole thing out.
The recovery on that one is about a week. Then you can limp out. | ea55eb92-4d3b-4355-ac25-952eabef39ac |
qqoqs | The difference between confucianism and taoism | Confucianism and Taoism (pronounced Daoism) were competing philosophies in ancient China. Confucian philosophers thought that human nature was essentially unrefined, and that we needed ordered relationships to better ourselves. Confucians codified 5 or 6 different relationships (parent to child, lover to lover, friend to friend, master to servant, sibling to sibling) and emphasized them in their rule. When Confucians were in power they had a system based on subjective decisions made by judges.
Taoists are similar to Buddhists. They believe that the goal for one's life is just live in harmony with oneself and immediate surroundings, and try to bring peace and balance to your life and family. No matter what happened to you-- good or bad, you should be able to smile and think "ahh, I'm glad to be living life".
Politically, the Taoists were connected to the Strategist and Legalist schools of thought. The Legalists believe that there should be common law that could be applied equally to everyone. Since the Confucian judges gave individualized decisions based on Confucian thought, the Legalists accused them of being effected by favoritism and bribes. The Strategists were connected to the Taoists because of their shared love for reflective thought. The ancient board game Go was favored by the Taoists & their allies, because one had to accept balance against one's opponent, and because of the zen frame of mind it creates in a player.
A great painting comparing Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism is the Vinegar Tasters. _URL_0_
From wikipedia:
> The three men are dipping their fingers in a vat of vinegar and tasting it; one man reacts with a sour expression, one reacts with a bitter expression, and one reacts with a sweet expression. The three men are Confucius, Buddha, and Laozi, respectively. Each man's expression represents the predominant attitude of his religion: Confucianism saw life as sour, in need of rules to correct the degeneration of people; Buddhism saw life as bitter, dominated by pain and suffering; and Taoism saw life as fundamentally good in its natural state. | cfe56050-1857-4969-bf2a-b416e2ca4915 |
2132j4 | The protective qualities of charcoal | It is extremely porous and has a large capacity for adsorption, meaning substances (often organic macromolecules in the situations you describe) can stick to its surface and be bound up. Its doesnt have as high a capacity as some other materials, but is cheap and can be made with varying pore sizes to suit the substance(s) being targeted. | dc95fbfc-a2fd-4697-9ec3-157cccc5615a |
6c66iw | Is there any particular reason beer bottles are brown? Or clear? Or green? Or is it purely aesthetic? | Sunlight causes some beer to get "skunky". Amber and green bottles help protect the beer from light and allow it to be stored longer. | b1cae5e9-b7c0-49b8-8851-f0bf3758daae |
2i0ohz | - Why does Technetium not occur naturally? | It does occur naturally. It's created in supernovas (just like all other elements heavier than iron). But it's unstable, and even its most stable isotopes have a half-life of "only" 4.2 million years. Which means that, 4.2 million years after the creation of technetium in a supernova, only half will be left, and 4.2 million years later, only half of *that* will be left (a quarter of the original sample) etc. So almost all of the technetium that originated in the supernova that created the matter that our solar system was formed from has long sense decayed into other elements. | dfc525a8-c8eb-4d59-b277-23cf3df59c68 |
59mytl | Why arent any saudi royals on the top billionaire lists? are they not filthy rich from oil? | Those guys are also not particularly transparent. Since Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, the country's budget and state investment funds are also the royal family's own wallet, whereas "conventional" billionaires own far more easily detectable corporate assets. | d2a5bb3b-45c6-4bba-94d1-c07eb99f0915 |
2ryf3o | Why don't the media use another term for those extremists who hide behind the Quran? | They are Muslim.
When right wing militias do violence in the US they are labeled Christian fundamentalists.
When Hindus attack mosques they are labeled Hindu militants.
Problem is Islam seems to generate more terrorism than the other religions.
Either way -- they are Muslim and killing for Allah. | 8e5dc2ce-624e-4f08-b5c3-db8978370be3 |
2uozfq | How come when a TV station plays reruns of a show they don't play them in order but instead play the same few that repeat every few weeks or so? | Those episode have the highest ratings and attract most viewers, meaning the station can pull in more advertising revenue | 7e5fd341-47a4-4144-8d31-49d522ab1d04 |
8hgxov | Why do artist still release singles? Especially now that with streaming services, you can buy/listen to individual songs. | Publicity mainly. Big singles generate buzz for artists in the run up to an album release and can pump up sales. | 51597ad5-7350-426b-b3f1-5bd0e0b38b07 |
292sq0 | Why do I experience a drop in volume when I yawn? | In most basic terms - yawning blocks the amount of sound vibrations that are required for the transmission of sound. [This](_URL_0_) does a better job of breaking it all down. | 831738d5-c0e8-4f63-a748-2d11767541f1 |
1qn3sv | If health care plans were canceled because they did not meet new standards of the ACA law (Obamacare), how can the president say that plans can be kept without changing the law? | By fiat accompli, Congress would "own" the problem if they challenge him on not enforcing the law and they'd prefer not to do that. | 404e5795-7332-4ed7-ae80-fdf29cc8afaa |
5y69qz | Why do some exclamations/outcries mention religious places and people? | When Swearing first became a widely used thing, the world was, generally, much more religious than it is now. Swearing was and still is used to demonstrate an emotional state that is unusual or more extreme than the usual. Therefore, when these two things combine, you get phrases that use the terms associated with religion becoming exclamations for an extreme emotional state. Additionally, in Christianity at least, "taking the Lord's name in vain" is a sin, so saying "Jesus Christ" or "Oh my God" would be technically blaspheming, and therefore used to describe an extreme emotion.
Source: I swear a lot | 7234bc0d-b7f7-4bd0-91f7-37f17472636c |
76ir47 | Why is India's garbage/river pollution situation so bad? | Actual indian here...
Our pollution is so bad, because the people in power don't care, and the people who do care can't ever get to power.
The indian government is a carefully balanced pile of bribery and corruption built over a foundation of pure apathy and greed. While sure, there are some diligent workers at the grassroots lever, and some naive men and women higher up, noone with both the power and the means to actually do any good cares enough. Politicians here just aim to stuff as much of the tax rupees into their own private coffers before the are elected out of office.
Further, the common man isn't much better. We just vote for the same greedy pigs over and over again because we cant be arsed to make an educated decision for the good of our own country.
The garbage and pollution are just the tips of the massive trash iceberg just out of sight in the sewage clogged depths. Corruption, money laundering, and just plain ineptitude are so ingrained into the Indian life, that we've begun just taking it as par for the course. If you want anything done from an official stand point at all, you better be prepared to bribe liberally.
And if you think it could get better with a hard reset, think again. Leave alone following meta rules about accepting bribes and ruling fairly, indians won't even follow the basic rule of "don't overtake a vehicle from the passenger's side".
Though I suppose I ought to be praising my country, pride in ones own and all that, fuck it. My country sucks, and if trashing it online is the best I can do, well Imma trash as best I can. | 415e7e37-24bc-4241-8dac-db8dda454fbe |
3rt1qe | Network Cabling | they all do the same basic thing. they transfer 0s and 1s down a wire. repeaters are used to amply the signal as over a long enough distance the signal can become corrupted/unreadable by the receiver.
the differences between different cables is just the physical characteristics. like speed, resistance to weather/damage, etc. | dcc39c29-2ae1-4642-804b-271e155197a5 |
1xt8rd | Why are the letters on a QWERTY keyboard placed where they are? | It is related to how typewriters used to work.
As I understand it, when some keys are pressed too soon after eachother, the typewriter gets stuck, and QWERTY was developed in order to minimise the cases where this would happen. | 1a2c6c9e-de4d-4fe0-ad8c-62dc284579de |
49oz3s | How does Intel physically link together billions of transistor's to work on computer chips? | As others have said, light and chemicals are used to "flash" the transistor pattern onto the silicon using light and chemicals, but do not think this is necessarily a foolproof process. This is why Intel has several different types of chips for each generation of iX. For example, when manufacturing an i7, something screws up and messes up one of the cores. Intel will take it, disable 2 cores, and call it an i3. If the connections are somewhat sketchy, for example they are manufacturing an i5, but the connections are too poor of quality to have a high clock speed for let's say a 6600K, they will down clock it, remove overclocking, and call it a 6500. | 1167c778-6f7d-4b34-9558-d6e842be4ca6 |
8jxsrq | What led to the rise and fall of Ringtone Rap? | Maybe let's start with: what is ring tone rap? | 94b008d8-f652-4cb6-b0fb-e75c5c639cef |
4mq43c | Why do people typically open their mouths when experiencing shock or disbelief? | To take in more information. Mouth gapes open, body hairs stand on end (like when a really powerful scene gives you the chills), eyes widen... all of which help us gather a ton of information really quickly when we see something incredible. | 795bc080-2004-4715-b36f-83647aecc3c6 |
63ppz9 | What do fraternities and sororities actually do? | They do many things.
1) Set up a structured way for people with similar interests to become friends.
2) Provide student housing.
3) Network with Alumni giving professional contact points for after you graduate.
4) On most campuses they provide community outreach with various volunteer activities such as habitat for humanity, working soup kitchens, etc. | f3aa9854-a353-404a-9d1f-da328da81224 |
5pz9kv | Why is the 40-yard dash the magical number for gauging a football player's speed (as opposed to some other metric)? | While coaching Ohio State University Buckeyes football team in 1941, Paul Brown emphasized team quickness. One way to calculate this was for him to time his players covering a punt. At the time, the average punt went about 40 yards from the line of scrimmage and had a hang time of about 4.5 seconds. He would then time his players to see if they would be able to cover an average punt, or run a 40 yard dash in 4.5 seconds. He continued with this strategy after becoming the head coach of the Cleveland Browns. The practice gained popularity from others as years went on and is the standard today. | 02b6722d-8f8f-4c48-bcdf-3775af22b444 |
54dh0c | How is international law actually enforced? | International law isn't technically enforced, though you'll become quite unpopular if you do break it. The UN is a diplomatic channel first and foremost. It's not and has never been anything even close to resembling a world government. | 6508fb2a-0e7a-4835-8591-eca2045309d2 |
2r81lz | Why do black people and white people have distinctly different voices? | The great majority of differences between how people speak is cultural. Grow up without access to a culture and you aren't going to develop that culture's speech patterns.
A smaller factor is that the structure of the organs which produce our speech does vary a bit between people with different recent ancestry (e.g. West African or European ancestry). Even then, the differences within these groups is usually greater than the differences between them. | ba8e564b-a338-4047-ac98-6b39afe0d5b7 |
6l4nhv | How is a fan able to keep a ball floating above it with the ball flying away? | You're referring to Bernoulli's ball. There's not really an ELI5 explanation for it, but I'll give it shot. Bernoullis principle says that if you have two streams of air, which ever stream is moving faster will have a lower pressure.
In the case of the fan blowing on the ball, you can think of the air divided into two parts. Theres the part of the air stream that's coming up directly beneath the ball and another part that runs by the side of the ball. The magic here is that because the part coming up from beneath the ball gets pushed around the ball, it ends up moving faster than the other part, even though they were both the same speed when they left the fan. It may sound counter intuitive, but you'll have to take my word for it since explaining why is probably more like eli15.
Anyway now that the air being pushed around the ball is moving faster, it creates a low pressure pocket around the ball (because of Bernoulli's principle from earlier). When the ball moves to either side of the pocket, the high pressure on the outside of the pocket pushes it back in.
**Edit:** If you want to read up on the ELI15 part, it's called the continuity equation (for fluid dynamics). | 12f4e7c4-4d61-4d51-99e2-88a4120a9bac |
nn38b | Network Ports | Imagine you want to send a letter to your friend Mary.
You know where she lives, because you have her address. For some people, a simple address is enough because their letter is being sent to a single dwelling, but Mary lives in a large apartment building with many units and shares her address with many other people. The obvious solution is to include the apartment number with the address when sending it.
* Mary's address is equivalent to an IP address
* Mary's apartment number is equivalent to a port
* The letter is equivalent to a packet of data being sent over the internet | 692dd63f-c433-4228-97e6-3d9d4aa173b9 |
3md0ph | Why do lightning strikes leave a branching pattern on whatever they strike? | In the air, lightning initially [branches out all over the place](_URL_1_) searching for a path to the ground. Air is normally a bad conductor of electricity, but once the electricity starts flowing the air becomes a plasma that conducts quite well. So all the lightning follows the first path that made a connection.
Once it strikes, say, a tree however, the opposite happens: Normally, a tree is a better conductor of electricity than the air. But once electricity starts flowing, it burns the wood, increasing it's resistance. So path of least resistance keeps changing as the electricity flows through it, [creating a branching pattern](_URL_0_). | e66cd1f7-1cee-4c9a-969b-b51649563ee3 |
2c26a9 | The history of the situation in Ukraine, beginning with the coup earlier this year. | This goes back to the formation of the USSR, but let's look at really modern history for purposes of the ELI5.
- Since 2004 Ukraine has been swinging back and forth between pro-Russian puppet leadership and pro-Ukrainian leadership.
- In 2004, there were mass protests, and a forced re-election after the Russian puppet (Yanukovych) won under a highly questionable vote count. The pro-Ukrainian candidate (Yuschenko) then won during a "fair" election (or as fair as it could be).
- Then in 2010 the pro-Russian puppet (Yanukovych) won after 6 years of, well, corruption perpetrated by the pro-Ukrainian leadership.
- The pro-Russian puppet then proceeded to be even more corrupt than the previous leaders, and was outright acting like a puppet of Putin. This all culminated in 2014.
- By this point the Ukrainian population was really sick and tired of mass corruption (by everyone), but the degree to which Yanukovych stole from the people was just plain over the top. **The boiling point came when Yanukovych rejected a deal from the EU** which would bring Ukraine into the Eurozone along with a lot of trade, job, and travel opportunities. It would also give more oversight (theoretically) of the Ukrainian government, and hopefully limit the extent of corruption.
- Rather than accepting a deal from the EU, he took a deal from Russia. This prompted mass **peaceful** protests urging him and parliament to accept the EU deal rather than Putin's deal.
- After months of peaceful protests, and time running out on the ability to accept the Russian deal, Yanukych instituted draconian laws against protesters, such that you became eligible for several **years** in prison just for coming out to protest. This was the last straw and Maidan began.
- It started small, a group of really, really disgruntled Ukrainians calling for Yanukovych to resign in light of a) not taking the EU deal in spite of the general public's best interests/desire, and b) creating draconian laws severely limiting free speech.
- Then it grew, riots happened, people were hurt, tortured, killed. Controversy. More riots, etc, and then eventually Yanukovych was just forced out.
- Then the fun began. After Yanukovych was ejected from Presidency without any official procedings, Ukraine was in an interesting situation. Things got worse when basically all members of parliament that were pro-Russia leaving a very nationalistic Ukrainian gov't (with the main party having neo-Nazi ties, whilst not necessarily being a neo-Nazi party). The first thing they did was eliminate Russian as an official national language, an action which marginalized a huge chunk of their population in Eastern, and Southern Ukraine.
- Southern Ukraine - a.k.a. Crimea.
Crimea is an ethnically Russian majority area. After the toppling of the gov't, they decided to have a vote to secede from Ukraine (which was illegal). It is widely believed (and blatantly obvious) that Putin helped orchestrate this, and the voting choice was between "Secede from Ukraine" or "Secede from Ukraine and join Russia".
- They voted to "Secede from Ukraine and join Russia". And Russia begrudgingly accepted /s. Thus, Crimea went from being a part of Ukrain to being a part of Russia.
- But it didn't end there. Now, immediately after the toppling of the Ukrainian gov't these secretive armed forces began to appear throughout Eastern Ukraine. At first in Crimea, but then in other regions. They took over gov't buildings, and wanted to copy the Crimea action of "voting to secede and join Russia".
- Ukraine didn't want any of it, and started attacking these forces. More of them grew. No one knows for sure who they are. They claim to be Ukrainian separatists, but high likelihood of Russian soldiers and special forces being present.
- And so that's where we are today. Ukrainian separatists are trying to gain as much control in possible in Eastern Ukraine, likely in order to facilitate further territorial acquisition for Russia. However, Ukrainian army and volunteer forces are actively trying to kill them/get them out of Eastern Ukraine in order to restore order. Oh, and Russia seems to be actively helping the separatists both financially and as of this week by live artillery fire. | f133a786-0d8e-4a4b-97c2-9126d1a13ccc |
lr4nm | Why I Hate Waking Up but Some People Love Mornings | Some people love mornings because they're fucking insane. | 37891aa7-348a-420f-9221-592f26d8e0e7 |
2nix0a | Why, in virtually every picture of the Earth taken from space, is North shown as being at the top of the picture? | Just by convention. That's what most people are used to seeing. Same reason why when you take a picture, you hold your camera so the top is on top. Nothing's stopping you from holding your camera upside down when you take the picture, or from showing people your upside-down pictures. It's just that by convention, we orient our pictures so that "up" is at the top. | bbb3c246-cbdd-4381-babc-4637b5f9159e |
1gpxcf | Can you explain second and third sounds? | Second sound isn't sound at all.
When helium is super cooled (to about 2 Kelvin), heat is transfered in a wave-like motion rather than the more usual methods. It's called the Second Sound becauase the heat is transfered in a wave-like motion, similar to houw sound propogates through air.
Third sound isn't a sound either (in case you hadn't guessed that already).
It's another wierd quantum effect of super-chilled fluids, where waves propogate in a thin film that can creep up the walls of a vessel.
[Second Sound.](_URL_1_)
[Third Sound.](_URL_0_)
**TL;DR:** They're not sound, but rather names given to strange quantum mechanical wave-like effects (that look a bit like how sound propogates in air) noticed in super-chilled fluids. | 02d3009a-1e81-4c0f-adb8-9f5ff818a1a0 |
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