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2y12lj | When an artist/band's "Greatest Hits" or "Best Of" album is released, how does the process take shape? | A Greatest Hits album is common in any record deal. After so many releases, the artist and the label (to varying degrees, of course) will get together to assemble the track listing and many times, the artist will be required to produce a number of exclusive tracks for the release. All of this will depend on the artist and their deal. | 10efcbe4-3a9a-4562-8bc2-365d8ab372ba |
2fgs6s | What would happen if Coke stopped advertising for a year? | I'm assuming you mean advertising as in media (TV, radio, billboards, etc). You should note that Coke advertises EVERYWHERE and you may not even realize it. The soda machine with a giant coke bottle on the front? Glasses with a coke logo at TGIF? That's all advertising too. Even if they stopped all "ads", stopped endorsing NASCAR and sporting events, etc, there would still be Coke logo's in your face all over the place.
Lets look at 2 scenarios:
1. Coke stops advertising but Pepsi does not: Pepsi's market share increases, as people get bombarded with Pepsi marketing and try it out. However, there's only so far they can go because restaurants with existing Coke equipment aren't going to switch because of TV ads. Coke's revenue decreases more than Pepsi's increases because without advertising, some people will just drink less soda.
2. Both companies agree to stop advertising: People drink less soda in general. Would it offset the amount that they each spend? Who knows, my guess is not because if it did, then the companies would already have stopped advertising.
Advertising at that level is not about "making people know about Coke" it's about having Coke be the first thing you think of when you think "I want a drink" | 47a18028-9cb8-4f73-8371-acb2f64090e4 |
1llia5 | Why are multi-billion dollar companies able to file for bankrupcy and why does the government bail them out? | Some companies (e.g. banks, car manufacturers etc.) may be considered 'too big to fail' because so many hundreds of thousands of people (e.g. employees) fully depend on these companies operating that it would arguably do more harm than good to the greater society to let the company fail as opposed to provide bail-outs to get them back on track. In other words, letting some of these companies fail may be seen as more disastrous and disruptive to the economy than the expense of providing financial assistance to prevent the company from failing. | 6b467f8e-6dbd-4843-b4b3-7c0ee6e3a431 |
74gq8e | why do your ears ring after loud noise and have been damaged? | The cochlea in each of your ears is a spiralling organ that contains a bunch of tiny little "hairs." When sound is transmitted from the air into your cochlea, it travels through the cochlea and depresses hairs corresponding to different frequencies.
[The hairs further and further in the spiral](_URL_0_) correspond to lower-pitched sounds. The hairs right at the entrance correspond to high pitches, and are the most vulnerable as they take the bulk of the "impact." When something super loud hits your cochlea, those hairs are depressed, and they stay that way for a bit. This means that your brain constantly hears a high-pitched ringing noise until the hairs stand back up.
When something is loud enough to permanently damage your hearing, those hairs corresponding to high pitches never fully recover and constantly send the signal to your brain that you're hearing a ringing sound. They persist indefinitely in the "on" position. | 02d1c742-61ad-483b-a689-9bfc583942be |
50v968 | why is it that land that was hit by an atomic bomb (Hiroshima/Nagasaki) is fairly quickly re-inhabitable but sites like Chernobyl and Fukushima take decades to be radiation free? | The atom bombs in Japan were airbursts - they didn't blow up on the ground. This resulted in maximizing destructive potential, but very little fallout that spread radioactivity to debris.
A nuclear power plant like Chernobyl has many, many times the amount of nuclear fuel in them. Then, the plant exploded, spewing radioactive material and debris everywhere. Not only that, but the radioactive core of the plant is *still there*, buried in rubble underground. | a5e9808d-1429-429e-a17b-a188b6eb4b74 |
2mb0by | If weed is a depressant, why does my heart start to beat faster whenever I smoke? | > If weed is a depressant
That's just it. It's not a depressant. At the high level it's a psychoactive compound - it can cross the blood brain barrier and can act on parts of the brain. Depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens are all psychoactive. Weed is basically in a category of it's own since it doesn't fit into any of those categories perfectly but rather can have effects from all three in varying combinations. | 5cae27ec-938f-44f0-a168-da125dcfa370 |
4542t8 | Can someone explain how Super Delegates work and why they exist? | _URL_0_ was answered half an hour ago. Please search before asking a question. | 8b816b25-a4ef-400a-8904-19c8a0849f8f |
1pansb | How do they blur moving things for TV shows, do they have to do it frame-by-frame? | Yes, or some software let you put a marker on the image. Let's say, a finger. Well, a finger is going to be a bunch of beige pixels. So when it moves, the computer only has to track a bunch of beige pixels around, it knows where to censor.
It's a bit harder when you have to track something small, or something that changes color and shape. But even then, it helps, because instead of doing painfully slow frame by frame, you only have to click where to track every few seconds.
(There may be more methods out there, those are the two I know of.) | 29918733-662f-4e11-87e3-860faf3a8050 |
4wpet9 | Why does a battery decrease without being used? | All batteries slowly lose charge over time. This is because all batteries use a chemical reaction to store energy. Over time this reaction breaks down inside the battery.
Without getting too deep into the chemistry the reactions in batteries are non-spontaneous, meaning they won't just happen in the world on their own. They require energy (the charging) to happen. When this energy is not there it will try and get back to the way it was before the energy was there.
Each battery has a different self discharge rate different depending on the type. Here are a few in "normal" temperature range. The higher the temperature the greater the rate.
Primary lithium-metal
10% in 5 years
Alkaline
2–3% per year (7-10 years shelf life)
Lead-acid
5% per month
Nickel-based
10–15% in 24 hours, then 10-15% per month
Lithium-ion
5% in 24hours, then 1–2% per month (plus 3% for safety circuit) | 692fdab1-4d6d-4139-9d60-219074b1f78f |
34oe2o | Would the predator on to Catch a Predator still get arrested if they never ended up showing up? | Likely not since you can't prove they were ever actually going to show up at all. You can't arrest someone for thinking about committing a crime. | 9e545447-22f5-4252-9bf2-0456b2ac2d56 |
1sp2xl | Why when I clean my ear with a Q-tip do I start coughing | It's called the Arnold reflex. I get it as well. | 0021c260-75c1-4f9f-a069-44ca0426d227 |
21qt5m | Why do we still take test and learn the same as how people did in the whole of history when technology has advanced so far? | Learning has advanced a great deal since formal education began. There are some things that have become redundant, and some things may seem useless. For instance, why bother learning that there are 4 quarts in a gallon when I can just look it up? But many people, myself included, would argue that a fundamental understanding of the simple elements is necessary for an understanding of the complex. Albert Einstein wouldn't have been able to come up with the things he had if he hadn't been good at math (he didn't actually fail math, that's an urban legend). Facts tend to rest on other facts in our minds, and rote memorization doesn't lead to understanding; a book can contain all the facts in the world, but it doesn't come up with new ideas. | d3e1bcc6-dade-49e6-adee-4a3df9a41d3e |
2xugfx | why do we lose our appetite when we see/hear something unpleasant? | It's an evolutionary thing. What if every time you saw a piece of poop, it made you hungry? You would be much more likely to eat poop. And people who eat poop tend to get diseases and die. So we're programmed to be disgusted by it. It's the same reason why people like unhealthy food. We're biologically programmed to go for the more calorically dense food because it would keep us alive. | 379c0583-74c0-4ca1-83d0-ae80ad253177 |
1fxfe6 | Cispa vs Prism | Right now, PRISM only gives access to the user data available under the definition of "pen register" or "trap and trace device". This gives them a map for who and where you interact, but doesn't give them access to the text of emails or contents of data transmitted.
If CISPA had passed, they would have access to phone conversations, emails, SMS data... basically they wouldn't just know who you talked to and where you were when you did it... they'd know what you said as well.
[legal stuff](_URL_0_)
And yes, PRISM is the name of a program formed under Foreign Intelligence Service Act legislation related to the Patriot Act. | 7f7bb739-4876-4bae-ac9b-03043e3bc99a |
1mxof5 | What is extreme-couponing | Manufacturers and stores put out coupons to make certain products available at a discount. The typical threshold for someone using a coupon is one of convenience; they'll stick it on their fridge and take it with them when they go to shop.
Extreme couponers save all the coupons they can, categorize and index them, and then change their shopping habits to buy as much of a product for as low a price as they can, resulting in saved money. It's much less convenient than regular shopping, and the vast majority of people wouldn't be willing to do it, though. | 79c78510-23f7-4151-a8d2-083df0d423a8 |
25flze | why does everyone want 60 FPS for games? | You probably know that TV and film usually sit around 24/25/29.97/30 fps. But it's well-known that games need to run at 60 fps in order to achieve the same smoothness. Why is that?
Well, when we film something, the video camera exposes the film (or sensor) to light for a certain amount of time. It's probably in the micro- or millisecond range, I don't know. While the film is exposed, it is picking up light from *moving objects*. So once that frame or bitmap is recorded, if you were to look at it as a still, it would be blurred. When we then play the whole clip back at 24-ish fps, the blur helps to smooth out the video to create the illusion of movement.
3D games, on the other hand, don't pick up blur on each frame because there is no blur to pick up; the frames are rendered, one by one, each like a little diorama on its own, and if you look at it just like that, there's no blurring to suggest that the entities in the frame were moving before or after.
So if 3D games don't fake the blur effect, they must provide a higher number of frames per second for our eyes to be truly fooled into seeing motion. | 5a1083d0-7c18-4265-aafe-328d293ed6fb |
3azk5u | Why do we enjoy watching televisions shows that involve drugs/killing/relationship drama/anything else that we would never want to happen to us in real life? | The same reason we have nightmares. It's emotionally healthy to explore dangerous and upsetting situations in a healthy and safe setting. | 6e80b468-0427-4890-a2c8-2da34f13bbed |
88na6k | Why can't you remember when you were a baby? | If you don't have storage space, where do you put stuff?
The neural structures that store memories and things literally don't exist in a newborn's head. They've got no storage space. They literally don't possess a conscious memory yet. | 20c4fb5f-5b6d-47a4-97a9-1ee78ca9cc7d |
326uj3 | Why do we have to eat and urinate throughout the day, but can make it through 8+ hours of sleep just fine? | During sleep, your metabolism slows. Your digestive and renal systems shift into a slow mode so they produce less waste. | 808589c0-ee79-4f73-91e4-314900cae832 |
2fp2uk | What wars are being fought today and why? | 1. Ukraine - Oil and gas infrastructure, naval bases, ethnic tensions
2. Syria - Extraordinarily cruel regime inevitably led to a complex civil war, which has spilled over into Iraq
3. Nigeria - History of tension between Muslim north and Christian south, plus the difficulty of maintaining control over a huge country, with remote borders.
4. Congo - This is a doozy of a war which can't be explained to a five year-old.
5. Afganistan - No one has united Afghanistan in forty years. Heavily mountainous, difficult to control, lots of ethnic grievances.
6. India and Pakistan - still technically at war 60 years after independence. The partition both caused a great deal of hardship and resentment (as Muslims and Hindus were expelled and forced to move) and also led to conflicts over border provinces. Both sides still claim Jammu/Kashmir.
7. Korea - still technically at war. North Korea invaded the South, intending to unify the peninsula, but failed, and the final battlelines have been a heavily guarded demilitarized zone ever since. | 6e4fb16b-8266-440b-ab98-aae1b4de5936 |
2zqebs | why do a lot of part-time jobs require you to fill out a questionnaire that asks you many questions that are seemingly irrelevant to the job itself? | To reduce the number of interviews. I was in charge of hiring at McDonald's for a while and we would receive dozens of applications a week. Not enough time to conduct 30 interviews every week so you need to narrow them down somehow.
Fun tip: there was a "perfect score" on the quiz. I can only speak for our McD's quiz but I suspect this is the case for many jobs. The quizzes are just graded by a computer and there are no honesty points. The questions would be stuff like, "I always do extra credit work when available: 1(strong disagree) to 5 (strong agree)". The most clever people stuck to only 1's and 5's responses, answering what was obviously the better answer. When we would set aside blocks of time for the interviews, we would just skim off the top ~10 respondents for that week. The poor saps who answered honestly or modestly didn't make the cut. I suggest that whenever you do these questionnaires, unless it's for a professional position, to fuck being honest and instead just focus on trying to give the best answer that the employer wants to hear. If they ask if you like working in groups, yes you love it. If they ask if you think someone should be fired for stealing a pack of gum, yes you do. These responses will be likely reviewed by a computer, looking to eliminate applicants, and not "judged" by a human. | 46bcbbd8-a7b1-4b6b-9190-6b151a3ebffb |
5iw008 | Why do even videos from the 2000's appear to be very old/low quality when we remember viewing them in higher resolution. | You said it, higher resolution. They'd look just fine if you were viewing them in 800x600 or 1024x768, but you're not. You're viewing them in 1920x1080 or higher, stretching the video onto an area several times bigger than intended. | 67a82485-2a04-4494-9b12-7cacb763d8f8 |
2jzo6v | Why don't we experiment with colonizing new worlds by building on the Moon first before going to Mars? | That was exactly the plan with the [Constellation Program](_URL_0_) but then the financial crisis hit and suddenly no-more moon money. | 298f9cff-1dcd-4626-bac4-1379fd713f70 |
8wu3lj | What is the difference between watts, volts and amps? Amp hours? | Watts is power. It's how much work you can do in a given amount of time. Work is energy, usually expressed in Joules.
Amps is current. It's how much charge is going through in a given amount of time.
Voltage is potential. It's how much energy can be released per unit charge.
Volts * amps = watts.
Amp hours is current * time. It's how much charge it can provide before going flat. Multiplying by voltage will get you energy, but voltage doesn't stay constant so it's a little more complicated.
To use the good old water analogy, voltage is pressure, amperage is how much water is flowing. amp hours is the volume of the water tower. | efce86ee-54d1-40c4-b1bc-9b32f51bccaa |
1wfo1z | Why do cats like sitting/laying in cardboard boxes so much? | Paper is a remarkably good insulator. In the second world war poor families would literally rap up their children in newspaper to keep them warm. Cats enjoy having warmth on their stomach (ever had your cat lie on a heating vent?) and lying on paper provides this. | efc44232-526e-42e4-a729-c069dc5c78e5 |
1tpk38 | Why do we sound different to ourselves on camera or audio recording? | Sound reverberates around inside our head through numerous large sinuses before we "hear" it. This distorts what our voices actually sound like. Assuming proper recording tools, what you hear on an audio recording is exactly what you sound like to other people. | 9d3ab4b4-2445-4f86-90c6-a1c630602eb3 |
4fzhk4 | Why do we have to go through US customs in Canada, but not the Canadian customs in the US? | It used to be that you went though US customs in the US, and Canadian customs in Canada. Some smaller airports continue to work this way.
But then the US introduced customs pre-clearing, so instead of checking after you've arrived in the USA, the check everything before you get there. | af16af3f-f866-4f41-ac60-0bd634a9d6e9 |
642mcr | Why do trees have rings? | Trees grow slower in winter and faster in summer. In winter the wood that is grown slowly is denser and has a darker tint. | 1f10f075-735c-4609-a840-582824e9ff39 |
3m09zp | What causes the blacked out eyesight when people stand up to fast? | [Orthostatic hypotension](_URL_0_). The blood literally drains out of your brain as you stand up, before your heart can adjust to your new posture and up the pressure enough to keep you functioning normally. As a result, you go a bit woozy, see stars, and sometimes even pass out. | 9cca4d2d-a7ac-4138-a5f8-194c0eb8e48f |
1mwxhk | Why are some sports teams historically more successful (NY Yankees) than others (Cleveland Browns)? | It's a vicious circle. Teams that do well earn more money (because they have more fans, have higher attendance, sell more merchandise) and have higher prestige, so they can attract better talent. | 4414ef04-b582-4ec5-86c9-3a08fe17bc89 |
3biwjo | What causes the jumping feeling in your stomach when you go down a quick hill while driving? | Your innards/gut is used to gravity. It doesn't have the normal sensory nerves that your skin has.
Upon traversing a sudden drop/hill, for microseconds you experience a "less than 1g" environment.
Your body reacts but bones and muscle react differently than inner squishy, liquidy guts.
They probably rise a bit and rather quickly. The "sensation" is how your body interprets this sudden loss of weight and shifting that occurs in the gut soft tissue.
If you ask men, they also feel it in their testicles and its a much more, um, exhilarating? feeling. :D | 11d158e3-09fc-4a01-85bf-d068b2142a23 |
40wouv | What happend to Apple patent for Multi-finger gestures? | The mobile telecommunications industry is a web of patent holders all licensing each other's patents. Pretty much every software and hardware manufacturer holds a couple patents that are absolutely essential to the experience. Basic stuff, like the concept of nested menus (that one may have expired by now). Essentially everybody in the game has to cross-license with everyone else, because if they choose to silo their innovations, all the competitors will freeze them out of all the other patents they need access to. | 8e186bd9-2eae-429f-be0d-b88e13a91638 |
1y68nk | Why doesn't our vomit contain the strong acids in our stomach and react (burn/melt) with things once it leaves our body. | It does. But the acid in our stomach is dilute, it is not like some kind of super acid you see in movies.
If you vomit on some metal and leave it there/keep vomiting on it, you will see that it erodes.
This is also why people who have bulimia damage their esophagus and teeth. The acid from their vomit is constantly eroding them. | a4d72ecb-dd7f-470a-892a-f142f5adeed4 |
29ragi | Why do grocery stores have paper bags for mushrooms and plastic bags for everything else? | Moisture. Moisture ruins mushrooms. Plastic bags hold the moisture in, while paper bags will absorb the moisture and keep the mushrooms looking fresh. | c74dbc27-29c1-4ced-9af8-bad54fee7809 |
op3fz | What made Ronald Reagan such an amazing president according to the Republicans? | ELI5:
We sonny, the gipper came to DC and gave those useless government bureaucrats the old California one two! He broke up unions, slashed taxes on the rich (then raised them), took a fire ax to business regulations. He ignored those silly gays and their AIDS, he said damn the diplomacy and butted heads with the soviets. He wasn't afraid to kick a tiny Caribbean island's ass (but was afraid to face the killers of 280 marines). Also he liked jelly beans.
Long version:
Republicans up until Reagan had been pretty liberal by today's standards. Eisenhower funded the largest government project ever (the interstate highway system) and Nixon created the EPA. Don't get me wrong, they where conservatives, but they didn't challenge the 'New Deal' framework that started in the depression: that the government could be a tool to fix societies problems. They didn't fight this 'framework' but where conservative on individuality issues.
Reagan was loudly and proudly anti-government, saying that "Government isn't the solution, government is the problem." He challenged the New Deal framework and slashed the government in ways prior republicans never did.
Reagan wasn't the first to say this (Barry Goldwater was the first 'modern conservative' but he lost his bid for president in 1964), but Reagan was the first president like this. Conservative like him because he was the man who turned conservative from a dirty word into a proud one.
Also since it was so long ago and he's dead, people tend to remember the good things, and forget the bad things. Who wants to keep dredging up Iran Contra, when talking about the "morning in America" add is so much simpler and nicer. But trust me, there are still plenty of people who hate him, its all about where your political preferences now lie. Republicans remember the good and forget the bad, and vice versa for dems, its all selective memory. | 0dc01289-5623-437d-872f-81b7fd10aacc |
3yzvrm | 1000 years frozen in Futurama | If you're wondering how he eats and breathes, and other science facts, just repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax." | 01bb1694-7839-4759-bb97-10e088020dbb |
2g7q0i | What led game designers away from Mac as a viable platform for their content? | The most likely reason is market share. If you have a set amount of resources, do you design for the 95% or the 5%. | 39c37863-5271-423c-8b4c-edd0cf0dfca6 |
3l0653 | Why does the right hand rule exist? Why don't the laws of the universe result in a left hand rule instead? | The right hand rule could totally have been the left hand rule. You just need to use different fingers with a different gestures if you think about it. The right hand rule does not define the laws of nature. It is just a way people come up with to visualize the relations of all of those forces and directions of movement. It is purely a product of convention. As to why the relation between all the elements that compose the right hand rule is this way, that really is a similar question to why the earth goes around the sun, and why birds can fly. | 1682043b-b46e-4397-a09a-5ab950df9019 |
u9vzw | Why do people blame the IMF for Argentina default? | ELI5 version (which will be fairly bad because this is **not** an ELI5 question):
The IMF lent a lot of money to Argentina when Argentina got into trouble and couldn't pay all of its debts. The IMF also asked Argentina to change many of the ways that it did things before it would lend that money but a lot of people don't believe that the changes helped; in fact, many people believe the changes made things worse!
On top of that, when Argentina finally did default and couldn't pay its money back, the IMF made sure that it was at the top of the list for any money that could be paid back. Argentinians were pretty unhappy with that since most of the believed that all of the hardship had a lot to do with the IMF's policies.
**Now for a more adult explanation**
This is a very politicised question and (obviously perhaps) not everyone agrees.
However, it all has to do with a set of policies labelled the [Washington Consensus](_URL_0_). These policies broadly fall under the heading of "austerity" and "discipline" and run along the theme of everyone should tighten their belts, knuckle down and work harder/better to get out of the crisis.
The problem is that there are pretty much no examples where such policies have been implemented where they have actually worked. There are many reasons for this but the major one is that countries don't work like households and asking a country in crisis to adopt austerity is like asking a household in crisis to stop working for a few days each week. The end result in both cases is that there is less money coming in and the crisis just gets worse.
The media doesn't follow that narrative though and listens to a lot of economists who are themselves blatantly partisan - the Washington Consensus is a very popular idea amongst a certain set of people.
So we have countries like Argentina being blamed for their failure to adequately follow the austerity measures in much the same way that a fat person who eats a block of chocolate would be blamed for their diet not working.
The analogy is poor because no one is talking about luxuries like chocolate. It's more akin to telling a fat person to diet for 3 months by simply not eating then blaming them for the diet not working. It's not the fat person's fault, the diet was a bad one.
Anyway, like I said, very politicised - I'm sure quite a few people will disagree with what I've written. Moving on:
Argentina got into trouble due to recession and some bad advice that led them to peg the *peso* to the *US dollar* which was a terrible idea because it made them very uncompetitive - Argentinian workers would naturally get paid less than US so their exports should be cheaper. Argentinians pointed the finger at the Washington Consensus policies, the advocates thereof basically said "you did this to yourselves".
In stepped the IMF who lent money to Argentina in the late 90s and then again early in the 2000s. There were strings attached, there always are with IMF loans. The Argentinians did not like or agree with many of the requirements and saw them as leading inexorably to default again. The IMF assertion that they should be the principal creditor under the debt restructuring agreement just poured fuel on the fire. | ded10561-5b01-4d6d-9bae-94e9b067859b |
1vw2s5 | Why are most corporations considered evil? | Most corporations aren't evil and just do useful things like make your bread for your breakfast toast or make wires for your house.
Of those that are evil often their evilness can be often put down to either to outright corruption in management ranks, which is just the human condition.
And secondarily companies often do evil things because traditionally directors (CEOs etc) can be sued personally by the shareholders of that company if they don't act in such a way to make the most possible money. This leads them to make unethical decisions just to make larger profit. Because if they don't. They could potentially be sued by the shareholders for running the business improperly.
Some countries (recently the UK) have passed laws to try and allow the directors more leeway in how they run the company.
I believe in the UK directors of companies are now protected from shareholders sueing the director if the director acted in a fashion that was intended to benefit society or the environment.
A lot of other countries are passing similar laws | 564b78f7-52ca-47d6-93e6-f18364cfa85c |
2zuh9g | How do people get a Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) badge to put by their vehicle's license plate? Do these badges afford preferential treatment? | For the same reason that people put any sort of "I support the police" bumper sticker, license plate frames, badges, etc...
They don't necessarily automatically earn you preferential treatment, and the police certainly don't condone any sort of official policy of preferential treatment, but police officers are human beings just like anyone else, and they will obviously be swayed about their opinion of you if you have pro-police paraphernalia displayed. | c5caf64f-05e7-46ca-ac4b-35fb1eb84e1e |
1pmk8w | I know this is bad but what is karma? (On reddit) | Basically what karma is, is a form of virtual pat on the back or scolding. You post a witty, funny or factual comment or post (depending on the situation) and users can give you karma if they like it. If you don't add to the discussion, or troll or say something they don't agree with (or they are a general ass) they downvote you. From my experience in reddit, don't expect a lot of upvotes unless you can make a really funny comment or post. | 076b9317-a21c-4457-b8c5-bb55699068f0 |
7k973z | why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor if America was minding its own business | The US wasn't really minding it's own business, and it inevitably was going to start minding its business less.
It was supplying arms and finance to the enemy if Japan's allies, it was helping embargo fuel against Japan, and it was unlikely to go very long without entering.
Japan actually was able to temporarily cripple the fleet (if they'd realized how badly and made a second pass they could have made it even worse). They just underestimated how quickly we could devote our resources to rebuilding. | c2e27ef9-284f-4889-9f4a-33edc3fcffce |
3n7arh | What are the key differences between endangered native New Zealand birds and birds from basically every other country that makes them so vulnerable to mammalian predators? | That evolution is exactly what's screwing them over. Not only were there no mammals but a few bats, there are also no snakes, very few poisonous spiders, no lizards that could eat a bird... no natural predators whatsoever. Correct me if I'm wrong, folks from other countries, but that's a pretty unique position for birds to find themselves in.
As a result, a huge proportion of birds here (I think about a third) either can't fly for shit or can't fly at all, and either can't defend themselves for shit or can't defend themselves at all, because they never really needed to do either. Also, many resorted to living on the ground, which is obviously very hazardous now.
The only predator the birds had to worry about was a gigantimongous fucking eagle called the Haast's Eagle, and the best defence most birds could come up with against it was to become nocturnal. Which doesn't help them against rats/stoats/cats today, especially when they live on the ground. | 7c564203-7d09-4c51-a714-00048e973c4a |
3zbuye | Why is 12:00 the beginning of the 12-hour cycle, instead of 1:00? | Think in military time. There are 24 hours in a day. In military time midnight/12am is 0000 time. then from 0 it goes to 1. so in the 12 hour am/pm system the 12 acts as our 0 and is a placemarker telling if we are in the am or pm section of the day. 12:00 AM is the beginning of the first half - am half of the day. 12pm is the beginning of the second half - pm half of the day. | d44fea9f-b861-434f-b15b-13e7c53e45e3 |
39z1oi | if you tell me your name, I forget immediately yet I remember every lyric to 1000 songs on my Ipod? | You have heard those songs 100's of times and the music helps you remember plus the singer is filling in the blanks helping you remember too.
Where as a name is just one word with nothing for you to connect it to, to help you remember it. | 439a38cf-26b2-46c3-a724-318e755e268e |
8otr2s | What are the differences between strategy and tactics? | Tactics are low level small tasks, and strategy or higher level planning. So in war tactics would be how to maneuver your forces to take possession of a hill, where strategy would be that a specific hill is important to winning the battle/war. | 65fedd98-d3ee-4a65-ada4-57157a5017a0 |
34sfm3 | if atoms don't actually ever touch one another - how can we feel things? | We never 'touch' anything because electrons in the outer shells of atoms repel each other at 10^-8 metres. What you feel when the surface of your finger touches another surface is a repulsion force between the electrons from the atoms that make up your skin and the electrons from the atoms that make up the surface you're 'touching'. Your perception of touch stems from your brain attributing a sensation to that repulsion force, whereby every time you feel that repulsion, a signal is sent to the brain which you perceive as a feeling/touch. | f8e38786-f05b-44fe-8e30-63d5c497e37e |
5au0iq | Why do humans, even from an extremely young age, have the predilection to dance? | Hearing music and rhythm moves about the fluid responsible for balance in our ear, and even thinking about a beat can induce the same feeling. We bob our heads and dance naturally because moving the head in the opposite direction of the disturbance to equalize our balance gives us a pleasurable feeling and a dopamine release. | d9446a4f-6970-4bf8-9483-2fc8c5e55111 |
5uslqg | How does rendering a video game at a resolution higher than what my monitor can show make things prettier? | Imagine that you're just drawing something black and white, like text. At low resolution a particular pixel at the edge of the letter is black. But at 4x that resolution, it's a 2x2 square, of which 3 pixels are black, and one is white. These pixels are then averaged to a dark gray, which is what's displayed at the lower res. The result is a softer, more natural edge
Edit: corrected typo | ded76445-9ff6-4f32-88fb-7c9ce86199b0 |
5ef3qx | what makes hybrid animals like the mule sterile, and is there anyway to make a hybrid animal that can reproduce? | Mule is not able to make sperms or eggs on its own, so it is sterile. This is because of difference in number of chromosomes in horse 32 and donkey 31, as they are not of same species. If you crossbreed within species, like in different type of dogs,they would be fertile. Because of the cross between horse and donkey, mule carries copy of chromosomes from horse and another copy from mule with different count .As a result it can not go through meosis, a cellular process that is required to form egg and sperm, hence making them sterile. As far as I know, there are currently no way we can make interspecies hybrid fertile. With advanvlcement in technology, it may not be that far though. | 196d2fb3-38c2-4316-a7b3-476c741b286b |
15yee7 | What is the Trillion Dollar Coin? | The US Treasury has an account with the Fed. When the Treasury writes a check (to someone like Boeing for a plane), that check is cashed with the Fed.
The Fed will cash more checks than is in the bank, based on the amount of credit (debt) that the government is allowed to carry.
We're coming up on that limit shortly, so at some point the Fed will have to tell people "Sorry, I can't cash your US Government check, the US Government is at its debt ceiling based on the amount of money/gold/silver they have in the vault".
This is where it gets clever:
There are US laws about how much paper money, gold, silver, and copper currency can exist, but nothing about how much platinum currency can exist.
If the US Mint prints a $1,000,000,000,000 platinum coin, and they walk it over to the Federal Reserve, then the Fed can cash any check that comes in, because suddenly they have the money on deposit to fulfill that request.
Now, we all know it's fake money, it's a massive sign to other foreign governments that we don't take the USD very seriously if we're willing to create $1,000,000,000,000 out of thin air, but it's fundamentally the same as printing money now with bonds - we're backing it with our word, not the value of the platinum ore. | 34fb0191-d7e2-4490-9b8f-fe60953d0aaa |
24ju8t | Why do we randomly recall part of a dream, weeks or even months after it happened? | I can't provide a full answer but when I was taking a cognitive psychology course we covered state-dependent memory.
_URL_1_
The idea is that memory works best when you are in a similar state to when the memory was stored. This is part of the reason why people can become intoxicated, have very few memories of what they did while sober, but can remember it again while intoxicated again. It is also, incidentally, part of the reason why students who cram for an exam by chugging caffeine can find they draw a blank at exam time.
So, if you store a memory while very drowsy (like when you first awake) you are more likely to be able to reconstruct that memory when you are drowsy again.
I also used the word "reconstruct" because it is more accurate to how memory works. We don't really retrieve and play back memories so much as try to rebuild the events in our minds.
_URL_0_
So the memory snippet that comes back may not even be that accurate but rather an imperfect attempt to sort out some jumbled stimuli floating around in your brain.
Short answer: Later on, by chance, you may be in a similar physical and/or emotional state to how you were when you experienced the dream and something prods you to try to try to recall it. But even then you can't trust it to be terribly accurate. | 2b5ffb8e-9037-4e14-b6bd-1d367fc8c933 |
3z5ijh | Why do some mobile apps require so many seemingly unnecessary or invasive special permissions? | they arent actually invasive, it is the basic requirements for the function of the app.
if you have a small free game then it will often say 'there are no special requirements'
but an app like tinder where you are connecting to facebook, using the wifi or data connection and also sending and recieving pictures and using the camera then the app needs to have permission for all those aspects in order to function.
if you download a free game and it says it wants your location and camera then it might be a little iffy....but it simply means you can use the camera within the app and not that the app is going to be taking photos while you are sleeping | 9e5fea84-8e86-4fbc-8859-d7ab9678ee82 |
1c0ye2 | How does a towel get dirty if we're clean when dry ourselves with it. | Even though we have removed dirt from our bodies, bacteria can still reside on our skin, and when we wipe off the water we are also wiping off the existing bacteria onto the towel. There is also airborne bacteria that can get on the towel, and since the towel is wet and sometimes warm, it allows bacteria to grow much faster than usual, making a towel "dirty" after a few uses. | d6002130-fc53-4ca0-98fd-3c9bac3ad7fa |
63ex05 | How do people that sell instagram/twitter followers and likes create that many accounts? | Many are accounts that post requests for likes and shares. Then, those posts are deleted and the accounts are sold. It's best to report them for spam. | a2495c48-9980-4f59-b89f-93ac9e4f8fc5 |
2x72jr | Why are the biggest burger chains promoting fish sandwiches right now? | During Lent the only meat Catholics will eat on Friday is fish. Thus up until Easter they will all promote fish. | a265916c-89fa-477a-a00f-2a429590979e |
2cpp4l | How can Google offer such superior service with Google Fiber? | Actually Google is not dumping insane amount of money in the project. The cities selected for the fiber project provides Google subsidizes pricing on permits and somewhat pre-existing fiber capabilities.
In Kansas City( the first city to get Fiber), an Internet-only package costs $70 a month. A TV and Internet package goes for $120 per month. Google also offers a free Internet package at "today's basic speeds" for customers willing to pay a one-time construction fee of $300.
So Google is making money. Also, Google can gather more personalized information on preference of TV shows and internet searches that it could provide more targeted advertisement which is core of its business at the end of the day
This article provides some info but I am not sure about the whole verizon fios stuff
_URL_0_ | 8e3b494d-dd2f-470b-82fb-2a0d1c3ddfdb |
5fyoni | Why do so many jokes involve 3? "3 Guys walk..." "3 Women died...." "3 guys find a lamp..." | I actually learned a bit about this. Comedy works on repetition. The two best # of times to repeat something is either 3 or 5. It has to do with audience anticipation.
3 drives the joke the home, and 5 passes through 'overplayed' and into the "It's funny again" category.
Using 3 of something as the baseline of a joke, allows for this same thing. The first 2 are just the setup, but it's when you get to the 3rd that the joke gets innately funny.
This actually works with quite a few things. I learned about it in a computer animation class. The teacher used the Pixar logo as an example. When the desk-lamp comes in from off screen and bounces on the the letter 'I' in Pixar, it does so 5 times, in order to create the same repetition effect. | 937c0b1e-40c9-4751-84c9-fe7289c1b693 |
4dhzss | How does a college foreign exchange student learn the material presented to them in whatever host country's language the classes are in, if they barely speak the language? | There are essentially three levels to understanding a language.
-Reading/Writing
-Listening
-Speaking
I can read and write Spanish fairly well. I know the grammar and a good chunk of vocabulary. It's simple enough to have a dictionary next to me in order to look up a work I don't know.
If I am talking to a Spanish speaker, I can get the gist of what they say, but I will miss some notes. This is why it is important to have a professor that lectures with notes on the board as well. Also some people just learn better that way.
I can speak a very broken Spanish. Not being native, I have to focus on translating what I am saying into Spanish, as well as the correct sentence structure. It will come out as poorly as your coworker.
It would be difficult to do it at a college level, but not impossible. They would spend a lot more time studying the material. | ecfb5592-6697-41ab-8ea3-781a64720fa7 |
1pkoc5 | Inflation. What/who causes it? Can it ever be stopped? Why is it out of control? | OK, two things going on here: US Inflation and other countries:
* The US **is not** experiencing meaningful inflation. This year it's down at < 2%. As it has been for quite some time. The United States has not experienced significant ( > 5%) inflation in the past 30 years.
* Other countries. This is a more complicated problem, mainly because it varies from country to country. So I'm going to take a step back and explain what inflation is:
Inflation is the **devaluation of a specific currency**. It applies to a *specific currency*, not the world, so there's really no such thing as "worldwide inflation." There is inflation in many of the countries in the world, but even if every country in the world was experiencing 10% inflation, it would be worldwide **only** to the extent that everybody was screwing things up in the same way.
Mostly, inflation reflects a disconnect between the amount of money in country's economy (not how much they print - That's usually a much much smaller number) and how much their economy (GDP is the most common measure) is growing. If a country was experiencing exactly 5% growth in their GDP and exactly 5% growth in their money supply, they would experience no inflation at all. *But it never works out that way*. In reality economic growth always lags a little bit behind the growth in the money supply.
Certain countries (usually petty dictatorships that do stupid stuff with their economy) try, for example, to just **print** a gazillion more dollars or yen or whatever currency. They figure they can make money by, well, by **literally making** more money. But the thing is if you double the amount of money in, say, Zimbabwe's economy without actually doubling the amount of goods and services produced (AKA productivity) by that economy, all that happens is that everything you buy in Zimbabwe **now costs twice as much!**
I'm mentioning Zimbabwe because they actually tried to pull this stunt a few years ago. [Didn't work out too well.](_URL_0_)
Now, you may ask, how do we keep *our* inflation so low when other countries can't, and my answer is the Federal Reserve Board. The FRB controls the growth of the money supply by controlling interest rates. It's too complicated to go into here, but basically, the lower the prevailing interest rates, the faster the amount of money in the economy grows because banks make more loans. But the FRB is very careful to *not* allow the money supply to grow too fast without a commensurate increase in productivity. And they've been spectacularly successful for the past 30+ years or so at that. Other countries have other ideas how to control inflation. I can't really speak to those, though I can point out an awful lot of those countries are [great big](_URL_0_), [shitty messes](_URL_2_), [right now](_URL_1_). | 41a8ee74-0e36-40be-bfc3-c2d74ffa7491 |
4d9pg6 | In Games, why are the team colours facing off against each other usually red vs blue? | Because you need two bright, primary colours that can be easily distinguished both against each other and against the environment. In Video games you're unlikely to come across large sections of bright and flat red or bright/deep blues, whereas you will come across a lot of greens and yellows. Red and Blue are highly distinct from eachother, so they fit this niche nicely.
That's my guess anyway. | fdfc9125-a746-4a78-8660-0bec4b6f37f9 |
1gxedh | Why are some people photogenic? | Cameras have only one lens, this is like looking at an object with only one eye, you will lose a lot of depth perception. Photogenic people have faces that are a lot more "3D" so their faces are not flattened by the camera's lack of depth perception.
Back when photos and movies were black and white, it was even more important to select actors and models with angular face since color helped depth perception whereas black and white will lose more of it.
Also it is very possible to find which angle looks good for camera and always pose with those angles. A model friend told me to touch the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth when the shutter goes off so you have a more angular chin and larger eyes. | 64af65c0-93a9-42ac-a4bb-beac70882217 |
2toro7 | Why are new technological leaps so expensive? For instance, it can't seriously cost so much more to produce DDR4 memory than it does to produce DDR3. | It's a couple reasons.
One is research. New technology requires millions and sometimes billions of dollars of research and development. For the first years of a technology's release, its price is higher to repay these costs, as well as the costs of failed designs that came before it.
Another is scale. It takes time to build factories and whatever else to make a new type of technology, sometimes the machine that makes it has to be created from scratch as well. It takes time for the businesses that make the technology to devote the money and resources to make it, especially if there isn't proof that it will be a very popular technology. | 1fd35b87-8226-4ab0-8444-d7cf6871e985 |
85gwwi | How does the sand river in Iraq actually work? | It is blocks of ice floating over water down the slope. Sand on top of the ice might make it look like sand, but it isn't sand all the way through. | 218623b3-2b36-4c98-9553-e72ac3527933 |
5frr3h | Why in Europe you can plug in PC (or any high tech appliance) either way? | It doesn't care, in fact almost nothing cares. Voltage is defined as a potential difference, a difference requires two points. So if side A is neutral and side B is hot, then a device might take power from A-B , if you flip it around, then it takes power from B-A. However, if we are talking AC, then A-B is the same as B-A (except for a 180 degree phase shift). Basically it means your 120V AC socket is 120V plugged in both ways because AC is always negative half the time and positive for the other half. Plugging it in backwards just switches what half is what, and the only things that actually care are things that compare it's input voltage to other things also plugged in (I can't think of an example for a single phase system, for three phase systems it does matter, and screwing it up can make motors run backwards).
So why do we care about neutral vs the hot if nothing care about it? It's safety. Ideally, if you have a metal vacuum cleaner you want the outside of it connected to the earth (literally, a rod stuck into the earth). Since you stand on the earth, you will not get a shock from something connected to earth (no difference in potential). The old solution to this was to just wire one side of the transformer on the pole to a rod stuck into the earth. That side is then the neutral, and you can connect it to the metal case of your vacuum. If something breaks inside and the hot touches the metal case, instead of zapping you it goes into the neutral and blows the fuse, you are safe. That's the way we still wire the home power. But we don't wire the vacuums like that anymore.
It turns out people don't really check that neutral is really neutral. It's really common to wire them backwards, and your vacuum cleaner has neutral connected to the case, then you're going to get zapped even if it's not broken. The solution of course is to add a third prong, ground. This one is always tied to earth, it's green and un-insulated, practically impossible to miswire.
The actual rule for appliances now is you can use just two prongs if you assume that both sides are hot and make sure that if they break inside and touch the case, that the case in that area is plastic and it doesn't short to anything. The output of your power supply (like a laptop charger) isn't actually electrically connected to any wire on the plug (isolated). The ground pin is the only one that can be connected to your metal case, and if it's possible that a hot wire touches a metal case then it needs a ground pin connected to it. With this type of device, from a safety point of view, cell phone and laptop chargers assume both sides are equally dangerous, and may safely be connected either way without a ground because there is a very little chance that it would cause you to get zapped. This of course assumes it follows the standards, which isn't always true for the made in china crap. | 8fad73f2-c6fe-4ba3-a4f0-c79735f07265 |
1ru9te | What is pi and why does it work? | Pi is the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. It works because it's a geometric law - if you draw a circle, c/d = pi. | ff347756-5b19-45f5-bfea-81da9c66dddd |
35n1p9 | How do some digital clocks still know the time after being powered off. | It has a small battery inside of it that keeps the clock running. Your computer, phone, etc. maintain time when powered off in the same way. | 3ac24450-6375-4368-83f8-61f6ca4575dd |
2q4a10 | How can people know millions of digits from Pi? | We can use formulas of things that are equal to pi. For example,
pi = 4 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + 4/9 - ...
This is only true if I use an infinite number of terms in my sum, which is what the "..." at the end means. If I continued to follow that pattern for an infinite amount of time, then I'd get pi exactly.
I obviously don't have an infinite amount of time, so I have to stop adding terms to my sum at some point. However, the more terms I add, the closer I'll get to pi. Suppose I stopped after four terms, so I do
n = 4 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7
I know that
pi = 4 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + 4/9 - ...
so
pi - n = 4/9 - 4/11 + 4/13 - ...
Thus, n, which is my "guess" for the value of pi, differs from the actual value by an amount 4/9 - 4/11 + 4/13 - ....
I don't know what 4/9 - 4/11 + 4/13 - ... is exactly, but I don't need to. I know that it's certainly less than 4/7, so my guess for pi can't be off by more than 4/7.
If I wanted a guess that's accurate up to, say, three decimal places, I just use more terms in my sum. If I do my sum until I reach 4/40001, my guess for pi can't be off by any more than 4/40001 (about .0001). So, the number that's in the third decimal place of my guess *must* be same as the third decimal place of pi.
An interesting question is why pi = 4 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + 4/9 - ... is true in the first place, but that's a lot more complicated. | 7c65fb4f-95a3-4a36-a1c4-3946212165a2 |
5546cn | why do people call Buffalo Wild Wings "BW3" when there are only two W's in the name? | it used to be Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck. Roast Beef on Weck is another traditional Buffalo NY food. But the Weck didn't catch on outside of the Buffalo area, so they stopped serving it and took it out of the name. It is really good though, and if you are ever in Western NY state you should try it. I recommend Charlie the Butcher. | c5e2966a-d8b3-4dce-94ac-76833190f470 |
75y55w | Why can't pilots see when a laser hits them? | Lasers spread out the farther they travel. That "tiny dot of light" isn't so tiny after it travels 1000 feet through the air. If it hits the plexiglas cockpit window, it diffuses out even more. The result looks [something like this](_URL_0_).
You're right that it only flashes for a split second, but that's all it takes. When people say that it blinds pilots, it doesn't mean that the laser is burning out their retina and causing permanent blindness. They're talking about *flash blindness*, the temporary dazzling effect you get when a bright light flashes in your eye. Like when someone uses a camera flash in a dark room, and you have to blink away the aftereffect for a few seconds? Imagine trying to land a plane during that. | b6e6062e-64d0-42af-9dc9-4a0f8f9a09bf |
2mxqen | Why do fiscal years start in April (usually)? Why don't companies just pick Jan like the calendar year? | Depends on where you are. UK fiscal years are based on the old Julian calendar, where the new year started on what is now ~April 5th-6th. Changing it now would mean everyone would have to balance the books over Christmas, which I don't imagine would go over very well.
Other countries like Germany and China do line up with the calendar year.
There's a nice list here: _URL_0_ | 792dd1bd-6c47-4859-9941-32aa10364cbf |
8q3s80 | Why do people say taking antidepressants long term use is bad for you? They don’t repair the imbalance in your brain, so when you stop won’t you be just as depressed again? | This may not be the case for all antidepressants...
Serotonin receptors get up regulated in your brain as a result of increased serotonin caused by certain antidepressents. This would mean that once your off these drugs baseline serotonin levels (which may be low to begin with) are restored and are less effective at binding to serotonin receptors.
Source: Biomedical Science Grad | cbd96d12-47dc-4afe-9bb1-c21507613d47 |
67d25b | If salmon salt water fish, how are they able to survive their famous final journey up rivers to spawn? | Fish do what is called "osmoregulation", and in fact it's something all living things do. It means maintaining the appropriate concentrations of salts and salt ions inside your cells. Those ions are vital to the chemistry of life, so the concentrations have to be maintained pretty carefully. The problem is that whenever you have a *semipermeable membrane* - that is, water can pass through it but nothing dissolved in the water can - the water will be drawn through the membrane until the concentration of dissolved solids is equal on both sides.
More plainly: if the concentration of salt is higher on one side of the membrane, water will flow through the membrane to that side. If one side is completely contained (like a cell), that can cause a problem - what if the concentration *cannot* be equalized because not enough water can fit inside the membrane? Or there's not enough water inside the membrane to equalize the outside? In the former case, the cell swells until it bursts, killing the cell. In the latter, it shrivels and dehydrates, also killing the cell.
Your cells have mechanisms to move salt around and encourage water either in or out of the cell to maintain the concentration desired. With humans, it's pretty easy because there's no source of water constantly outside your body, but fish are always surrounded by water, which means they are constantly fighting to keep the concentrations where they need to be.
With freshwater fish, the concentration of salt is almost always higher inside the cell. That means their tissues are constantly trying to swell up with unwanted water. Freshwater fish don't actually drink water, they *get rid* of water, always. Side note: fish don't pee, they exchange waste through their gills at the same time they uptake oxygen. So freshwater fish are always eliminating excess water out of their gills and have evolved to preserve as much salt as possible, since they will inevitably lose some ions dissolved in the water they're getting rid of.
On the other hand, saltwater fish are constantly trying to suck up water. The water outside their bodies is usually saltier than inside so water is leaving their tissues even if they don't want it to. They have evolved mechanisms to hold onto water as much as possible, and when they eliminate liquid waste (mostly ammonia) it's *super* concentrated. Saltwater fish also do not drink water: it's too salty. Instead, they get most of their fresh water from their food - since everything else in the ocean is trying to maintain an internal salinity lower than the seawater, things eating them get the benefit of ingesting water at a lower salinity.
When you put a freshwater fish into saltwater, they aren't used to an environment sucking the water from their cells. Their cells keep doing the things they're programmed to do and eliminating water, even as the seawater is sucking it out of them. So, surrounded by water, the fish dehydrate and die. Well, they mostly suffocate since the tissues in and around their gills suffer the worst and the quickest. The opposite happens with saltwater fish: they continue holding onto water even as their cells swell and burst. Either way, it's not immediate, and larger animals have an easier time of it than single celled organisms (which is why freshwater dips kill ich parasites on saltwater fish, if there are any aquarium hobbyists reading this). And, at least as far as I'm aware, fish have an easier time dealing with hyposalinity (too low) than hypersalinity (too much).
Which brings us to brackish fish - that is, fish that live in environments between freshwater and saltwater. Brackish fish evolved to have *both* mechanisms. Freshwater fish don't need to waste energy and resources being able to survive in saltwater and vice versa. Brackish do. And most brackish fish live in environments where the salinity changes, like in river deltas and marshes near the ocean. When the tide comes in, more seawater rushes into the river and the salinity goes up. When the tide goes out or there's heavy rain, there's more fresh water and the salinity goes down. Many brackish fish also transition from being almost entirely freshwater fish as juveniles to almost fully marine as adults. The juveniles tend to live upriver where there's less room for large predatory fish, and as they grow they move downstream. Unlike salmon, most don't actually leave the river entirely.
Salmon are born in freshwater. Their cells known how to remove excess water and do so as juveniles. When they become adults and transition to saltwater, chemical changes signal their bodies to stop removing water and start holding onto it. But they still have the instructions to survive in fresh water. They have the proteins, enzymes, and ion channels to balance their salt concentrations, they just aren't using them. When they migrate back to the streams to lay their eggs, they turn all those mechanisms back on, or at least, on enough to survive long enough to spawn. | 3e52cd9c-e4c9-40ea-9dbc-c26786559b51 |
3i680w | why do you go light headed and queasy when seeing a bad cut | This is caused by what is known as the vasovagal response. It's a reaction by the body to certain triggers that causes the heart rate and blood pressure to drop, which in result causes you to feel lightheaded and queasy because the brain doesn't get enough blood. One of the thoughts is that it is an evolutionary mechanism to prevent blood loss when the body is considered in danger, as a lower heart rate and blood pressure slows down blood loss. The strength and triggers of this reaction differs in different people, where for some people the mere sight of blood causes the reaction. | b7d33f5a-3a00-4529-86e5-ee2148a4b19c |
6pila1 | Why didn't America start off using the metric system? | It was actually introduced (by France) after the USA was founded. France introduced the whole system in 1799, America was founded in 1776. Parts of it have been around for much longer, but the system as whole was not introduced until after we were founded. | e4ec6c76-325c-4f43-9061-e92d1196ce0b |
2elngb | How would I find the most downvoted stuff on reddit? | A quick search turned up [this](_URL_2_) gem: Karmanaut removing Bad Luck Brian's AMA since it conflicted with the stated rules of the subreddit (as he interpreted them, or whatever; I'm trying to maintain journalistic neutrality here).
There's also the classic [Geraffes are so dumb](_URL_0_), but that got an order of magnitude fewer downvotes.
Karmanaut's post dethroned [Fucking faggot](_URL_1_) as the long standing champion of downvotiness.
You might have some fun with /r/worstof.
One thread I'm trying to find but can't with a quick Google is one where someone pointed out that the "z" key allows downvotes. *Every* comment was at several hundred downvotes. Not quite the vile post that you're probably looking for, but I found it amusing. | 13737c31-605d-45e5-932d-e6153b043108 |
4us1wf | What made Nokia phones so invincible? And why can't modern phones be built to be indestructible? | Nokia still makes phones, and they're still extremely sturdy. Nokia phones are widely used in Africa, where smartphone penetration is fairly poor.
Smartphones can't really be built as strong because they have a big glass screen, and in the Western world smartphones are the norm. | 13fc6e03-2395-41bb-85a5-d90fe7644874 |
5o0n5u | What makes some people run so much faster than others? | There are really 3 main factors: genetics, experience, and technique. Genetics is very important Olympic runners generally have perfect lungs and muscles for running, one interesting example is in Jamaica. Jamaicans often have several genes that cause them to be naturally more likely to run faster than average these genes are called: the ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme), and the ACTN3 (Alpha-actin-3) genes. Also body type (being tall or skinny) is quite important
Next the experience portion, this bit is obvious, Working out is essential to being a great runner. The average professional sprinter trains 20 hours each week, and consumes TONS of calories in order to fuel them selves. Usain Bolt ate 5800 calories daily leading up to the olympics and in the months in which he trained which was likely around 25-30 hours each week. In addition to this Usain Bolt is Jamaican giving him a genetic advantage. This also includes respiratory and cardiovascular health
Lastly technique, this may not seem important but it can easily give you the leg up you need to win. Posture how high you bring your legs slant relative to the earth arm swing. These are all essential to winning in the major sporting events.
Additionally mentality while not the most important thing is still important. Although hilarious this quote from Usain Bolt is an interesting example "I just imagine all the other runners are big spiders, and then I get super scared" this causes adrenaline to course through him giving his another boost and reason to run. Also people with better reasons for doing things generally perform better. | 31f90592-8f81-4f0e-8c31-67d00c1c0ced |
1nl1o2 | Why is it that my 12-year old dvd player can handle the newest (encrypted) DVD's without a hitch but my 2013 Macbook is unable to duplicate my purchased dvd for a digital backup? | Your 12 year old dvd "Player" ? Playing a DVD and ripping a DVD are two different things. | 4ac16c72-b450-4536-a6d2-27e310889d29 |
8pjzrw | How do movie profits work? What constitutes a film that has "broken-even"? | I don't know *all* the finer details behind this, but the general "Hollywood Math" is that movies need to earn double their production budget to break even. One reason is that the studios don't get 100% of the profits from ticket sales, so even if those profits are about equal to the production budget the amount the studio gets is less than that. Marketing costs also tend to be separate from a movie's production budget, so that can add a significant amount of money to the amount a film needs to make to break even in terms of *overall* cost.
> If "The Man From Uncle" did make a loss then why is a sequel being considered?
If a movie does "good enough" and seems to have a decent-sized audience that would go see a sequel, studios can adjust the budget based on anticipated sales. If the first movie made a decent amount of money but didn't recoup its budget, they can make the next one on a lower budget (the reverse is also true: big success = bigger budget for sequel). Also, some films that weren't very successful at the box office end up becoming more popular over time and make a lot of money off of DVD/streaming sales, and the studios figure these new "late-comer fans" would go to see a sequel. | c1c0959b-9b3c-40da-b4a4-eed01a64c4d0 |
7zqlm0 | Why, when a person is sentenced to death does it take decades to follow through on the execution? | If you're an innocent person and you get put in jail, it sucks, but at least there's a way to fix our mistake, release you, and pay back some of the damages. It happens, and the state definitely doesn't pay *enough* for that kind of mistake, but at least it's something.
If you're innocent and we execute you... that's it. We can't fix that if we find out later that you were innocent. And we've had plenty of cases of people who were exonerated after their executions. So as much as possible, we like to be *really sure* that you're guilty as charged before actually pulling the switch. What that means is many years of appeals - lawyers trying to find new evidence to exonerate the accused, or at least to reduce the charges or the sentence. Only once several appeals have failed do we actually set an execution date, so the idea is that we're trying as much as possible to give them a fair shot at proving their innocence, if they can. | dd05acbf-f479-490a-b4cb-a50194190d9f |
3z8tt4 | How do "entrepreneurs" develop their potentially lucrative ideas without having them stolen by others at any point in the process? | Because an idea takes a lot of time and dedication to implement. If someone's stealing it, they're already late to the game and without the initial motivation (and probably understanding) that started the original idea.
Also, it's very common for successful ideas to be laughed at in the beginning, instead of stolen, because we're terrible at predicting what's going to go big. A website to allow strangers to sleep at your place for a few bucks? Right, like that's ever going to work. | 4af8862c-b951-4621-82c9-215ccd43fa8d |
4cu8k1 | Why Did Martin Shkreli Plead the Fifth? | Because he may some day be accused of a crime, and doesn't want to incriminate himself under oath. Because, give what a douche he presents himself as, is there anything he could have said the would improve his public appearance?
> and the rest is paid through health insurance companies so no one is in fact deprived of Daraprim due to his price increase.
Except all the people who can afford health insurance premium because they have to pay jacked up prices. Their money isn't just coming out of thing air, it comes from you and me. | e517127b-c845-4049-99e1-ae2187c2ae5f |
2m7c87 | Why don't we get E. Coli from plants grown with fertilizer containing cow manure? | Because people usually wash process and wash the plants off, they don't eat plants covered in shit straight from the ground | 2dbfe895-90de-4024-bcf2-6d02be95dd85 |
2o3ta1 | In military strategy, why is securing the "high ground" vital to victory? | The high ground still gives you better vision of the surrounding area, allows you to hide troops beyond the crest of the hill, and moving up a hill is usually slow going, which means being exposed to enemy fire for a longer period of time. | 193de42c-2606-4506-ac5b-cad9414f4e3c |
605e86 | How does Google & Youtube backup my files, videos, pictures and not deal with hard drives failing all the time? | Hard drives are always failing. The drives are in arrays, your data is stored across multiple drives instead of just on one drive. Parity is used to reconstruct data when a drive in an array dies.
For an example of parity we can use addition. We know that 1+ 2 = 3. Let's say you erase one of the numbers so you have ? + 2 = 3. Even though we've erased one of the numbers we can calculate what the missing number is using our old friend Algebra. | c27d1a6c-1bac-415a-a2dc-df7f04433ad1 |
lh51u | Why the Nazi regime was so successful. | 1. germany was in the worst depression the modern world has ever known. their money was worth more as firewood than it was in purchasing power. people were without jobs, secure homes, or basic *reliable* infrastructure. this created a sense of desperation with the german people.
2. germany was being forced to pay for WW1, further injuring their economic future. they were unable to pay most of their bills to the other nations.
3. germany, and a large portion of the rest of europe was already anti-semetic. hitler didn't introduce hatred or mistrust to his people, they already felt that way. he just amplified it.
4. as hitler improved germany, other european leaders were more concerned with rebuilding their own nations and preventing another war. most of europe had thought WW1 was the war to end all wars, and thought if they gave hitler some appeasement, that he would just rebuild germany, make it an economic success, and leave everyone else alone.
5. hitler's initial invasions were of countries that were historically parts of germany. thus, lowering the "care" factor in other leaders.
6. the united states made the decision to say "my name's paul, the shit's between ya'll" early in the european conflict.
7. hitler's economic ideas were actually pretty fucking good. weather or not they were sustainable is a different discussion, but for the time and place, they were outstanding, and there were many national socialist movements in other countries, and these movements actually had some clout. the united states was one of those countries.
8. by the time all was said and done, and hitler had started another war, to much had been done, with to little intervention to stop it all without furthering another major war.
in essence, there was a horrible rainstorm (european socio-economic system collapse) and a single tent with everyone in it (efforts to fix the problems after the great depression of the late 20's and damaged european infrastructure) and a camel who wanted to just poke his head in the tent and out of the rain (hitler/third reich). they let the camel put his head in the tent, but then they couldn't stop him from barging all the way in, and thus tearing the tent down as it was to small to house him. | 0fa51aa1-0cc6-4b94-ba38-afe8cf98ba79 |
662eow | Why do our fingers and toes shrivel/wrinkle when in water for an extended period? | This is actually an evolutionary activity. This is an involuntary reaction by the autonomic nervous system. (heart rate, breathing, sweat) Basically, when we are submerged our skin fills with water losing elasticity and grip. This "wrinkling" allows us to better grip objects under water. | ca81ceb2-72fe-4687-945c-7ada44781b07 |
40ghac | Difference between token and cookie authentication? | I don't know much but ill break it down
Your trying to open a door but it needs a card
A Cookie is like a security card for *you* to get in given by a website or more commonly saved passwords
A Token however is for a service , its for *non-human* access like other websites accessing other websites that have locked doors using a token to access the door
For Example : An App such as Alien Blue has a token to access Reddit Webpage for information and data . Whilst others app that use reddit cant access it without a Token ( Terrible Example Reddit Dosent have tokens but how it works is still there ) | dd56490b-cfa4-4f8e-9b0b-a67d6a6955c7 |
m8hts | What in the world is ferrofluid, and how does it do what it does? | So remember when you were a kid and you played with this [magnetic hair toy](_URL_2_)? Well, the red wand has a little magnet in the end. (Magnets have a north pole and a south pole and have magnetic fields around them). The black powdery stuff is iron filings. These like to align in magnetic fields. You can visualize these fields [if you allow filings to arrange around a magnet like this](_URL_0_).
So, now ferrofluids: let's break down the word. Ferro is Latin for iron - so it's an iron fluid. There are tiny iron filings suspended in oil or water, generally.
So when you apply a magnetic field, there are lots of thing going on that all need to happen in equilibrium. The iron filings want to arrange themselves along the magnetic field lines. The fluid has surface tension (the same thing that makes water droplets bead up on a leaf) and wants to minimize its surface area. (There are a few other minor things happening, too). All these things combine and give you really cool patterns, like as seen [here](_URL_1_). | 8b3b52b3-a9d8-4d1c-9302-1f2a64b5048f |
1d4904 | Why do hackers focus on government institutions and companies? If they're as anarchist as some claim why don't they do a (modern) project mayhem on financial institutions? | Financial institution have too much to lose to leave their systems insecure. Most 'hackers' are just script kiddies that break into soft targets. | d098df0a-38e4-41fa-a9ff-3b3b8b148ab2 |
25aewm | Why are porn tv channels still around with free porn on the internet? | i think that people that are older and grew up without internet porn are just used to those channels and don't want to change to the new fancy free internet stuff | db455fc5-c095-4299-84ce-b840dacc5d41 |
2o2llt | what happens if you're doing payments on your car and someone totals your car? | If the car is deemed a write off (cost to repair is more than the market value of the car), the insurance will pay you said market value.
This has no impact on your obligation to the whoever you bought the car from. So if you owe your dealership 20 grand, but the insurance only paid you 15 grand because that is the value of the car, then you're gonna have to cough up an extra 5 grand!
Also, it may depend on any special insurance packages you may get. For instance, there's one that if your car is totaled within the first 2 or 3 years of ownership, then they will actually get you a brand new car. But you would have had to agreed to it and paid a slight premium on top. | 8c33501e-8253-4f8f-bf8a-2675f50f7b92 |
6tr96z | What was Russia's role in WW1? | What, specifically, are you looking for?
Russia was a part of the initial start for the war. Russia was allied with Serbia, so when Austria declared war on Serbia, Russia was obligated by its alliance to defend Serbia and declare war on Austria. The same thing happened on the other side: Germany was allied with Austria and declared war on Russia. France was allied with Russia and declared war on Germany...And so it goes.
Russia did what it does in most wars: send lots of people to die at the enemy until the enemy stops attacking. Russia had slightly fewer deaths than Germany. WWI is somewhat known for being a slow, grinding war in which no military played a significant role. Everyone sent soldiers in, the fronts of engagements moved a few miles east or west, then back again as more soldiers died, until Germany ran out of soldiers and money.
Russia left the war somewhat earlier than the other nations involved because it also ran out of money. Actually, they ran out of food. Also they were busy having a revolution over the lack of money and food which was caused in part by the war - the Communist Revolution, which lead to rise of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, they contributed a lot in the way of, well...killing lots of German soldiers and also dying in the process, much like every other nation involved. | ebb6d67c-13ea-47b1-9686-67b9b3222931 |
6y5p4n | Why is k-12 a state issue when most citizens look to the federal government? | In the US if the Constitution does not specifically give the power over something to the Federal Government it belongs to the State. Education is not specifically given to the Federal Government so they are only allowed to put a few regulations on it.
And what do you mean by "most citizens look to the federal government"? They look to it for what? | f8b4c6ae-af35-4258-9a4f-7a8fa02f4e04 |
2qtae1 | Why has the USA seen such a dramatic increase in prisoners while most other Western country have seen a decline? | US has jail time for a lot of crimes other Western countries just fine people for. Most of it is a result of the War on Drugs and three-strike laws. | f5daa684-9a4b-467d-8c8d-899443e144f1 |
8xsxql | Why might equality be a better idea than equity, and not vice versa? | (My perspective) It's all to do with the concept of fairness.
* **Equality = equal status** is interpreted to mean that everyone has the same 'opportunity' to achieve things and so it is fair. Of course by virtue of hard-work; capability; determination or just pure good luck some will succeed and others will not. In that instance whilst the outcomes for everyone are not equal, it would generally be considered 'fair' because the success of failure of someone is (primarily) dependent on their actions not their status/background/gender/race/or whatever else.
* **Equity = enforce equality** is interpreted to mean that everyone get the same outcome regardless of individual actions and is (generally speaking) regarded as unfair. This is for the same reason as above - if I put in more work; or if I have more capability or work to develop myself further it would feel unfair if others (who don't do any of that) get the same outcome in the name of fairness. In that case, what would be my (or anyone's) incentive to work harder or try harder or put their skills to good use? | 3f9c0257-391e-47ff-b2d4-a1a7483595e5 |
6w57q4 | if a lightyear is the distance light travels in one year, how do we know something is 1000 light years away? Would we not have to wait 1000 years before we know, or do we use something other than light to measure objects in space? | For distant stars and galaxies, there's some highly educated guesswork based on apparent speed and brightness, but for closer ones, there's actually a really intuitive method called **parallax**!
It works like this: suppose there's some distant object like a mountain that you want to know the distance to. Notice that as you walk sideways, closer objects like trees appear to pass you much faster than the mountain. This is the parallax effect.
To use it mathematically, simply measure how far you walked, and how far you had to rotate your head to keep the mountain in view. Now the start point, end point, and the mountain itself form a triangle, of which you know the measure of one side and two angles. Using trigonometry, this is enough information to determine the remaining sides, which are the distance between you and the mountain!
It would be difficult to walk far enough on earth to see a measurable change in the location of a star, but we can "walk" the entire earth just by waiting 6 months for it to be on the opposite side of its orbit. This enables us to calculate the position of nearby stars, without actually going to them. | 4ad2b53d-348b-4699-89d9-b21500d1e51d |
23fr9c | the meaning of " ! " in mathematics? | It means factorial. Simply multiply the number by every smaller integer down to zero. for instance, 5!=5x4x3x2x1. 8!=8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1. | 16d1b11c-2e55-4efc-8ad5-0a2bde6fdbdf |
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