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6y5ocb | why are humans the only animals that have periods? | Humans are not the only animals that have menstrual cycles. Other primates, some bats, and these little mammals called elephant shrews have menstrual cycles. But most of the time, all the uterine lining is reabsorbed if there is no pregnancy. Humans reabsorb some of the uterine lining as well, but not all of it.
Most mammals have seasonal fertility cycles called estrous cycles. Sometimes the estrous cycle will result in bleeding, but it's not the exact same thing as a menstrual period.
The reason we lose blood each month is because our uterine linings are much thicker than any other mammal's. There are a few hypotheses about this. One is that it helps shield the mother's body from the fetus burrowing too deep into the uterus. Another is that shedding the uterine lining instead of reabsorbing all of it helps "flush out" any miscarriages that get stuck. Humans seem to have a lot of miscarriages compared to other animals, but it's difficult to pin down how many because a lot of miscarriages happen before the woman knows she is pregnant.
[More info](_URL_0_) | c373da97-c08f-43d4-9a03-45b48a74a158 |
4168m8 | Why can't Flint just switch their water back to their old water source to fix the problem? | That's pretty much what they're going to do, but right now, there's still a bunch of lead-y water soaking in the pipes, and no good way to scrub it out. | 565161bc-8fa3-4645-b5ad-f28c8588f6c3 |
3yjojf | How can pro gamers stream music while playing without getting in trouble? | IT would take the copyright holder of the music to go through the effort of trying to sue them or take legal action, etc. And that would be only if they didn't think it was a good thing for their music (they may like the publicity and not care about charging mere pennies to broadcast it)
So you can go through a massive legal effort to deal with this, for pennies in return and bad PR, or just enjoy that people may find your music and possibly buy the albums etc.
No copyright holder is going to bother with these niche people streaming a videogame. They have better things to do with their lives. | a2d318af-a00b-4866-824f-03cc2b29344f |
1z25y7 | Making money on a falling stock market | I believe you're referring to "shorting" or "short selling".
Let's say that you think that a stock will drop in value. In that case, what you might do is *borrow* some stock from me, for a fee. But it's still just borrowing, and you have to give the equivalent number of shares back to me at the end of the loan period. See, I'm betting on the price not changing much, and so I'm just out to make a quick buck by lending my shares, but I ultimately want to keep them.
So back to you. You take these shares that I loaned you, and you turn around and sell them. You're anticipating that the price will drop, and you will then be able to buy the equivalent number of shares back for a lower price before the loan period is up. Your goal is to sell those shares at at a high price, and buy them back low enough to offset the fee I'm charging you and make some extra money in the process.
So if the stock falls in value, you make money. But f it *doesn't* fall in value, you're kind of screwed, because you still have to return the stock to me, and now you're out the fee *plus* the lost value from having to to-repurchase the stocks at a higher price. | 1699068d-233d-4859-af5c-9073e8250931 |
2g7h22 | How do reality tv contestants afford to be on a show and still pay bills at home? | Those shows are not filming everyday like you might think. My family had one season on TV. The film crew would come into town for a weekend and they would give a very strict itinerary for the events. Many events and different places for each day they were in town. My family would have to bring a completely different outfit to each time slot in the day to give the illusion that the show films over many days.
Oh and they would take pictures of every single item in everyones complete attire for each time slot. They would then give you pictures and tell you what outfit to bring to film those "behind the scenes" one on one interviews. I forget what they call them, but you know the little clips that look like you are talking about what just happened minutes ago? Those take place at completely seperate dates and are mostly scripted. | 02a9feeb-6975-4a36-a71d-db10e9aa8376 |
356orx | Why don't the Palestinians push for enfranchisement within Israel instead of a separate state? | Historically the, Israelis have been more opposed to a one-state solution than the Palestinians. This is because Israel is the "jewish state" and it is perceived that creating one state for both Israelis and Palestinians would compromise this identity. Furthermore, Palestinians have higher birth rates than Israelis, which prompts the fear that they would eventually become a majority.
Furthermore, it's not very tempting for the Palestinians to submit themselves to an authority that is currently brutalising them and illegally seizing their lands. It'd be like India pushing for equal status in the Commonwealth as opposed to independence in the 40's. | 7d07f947-9f3e-417f-8cf2-9db697033ada |
23ymng | Aside from ethical reasons, why don't citizens physically take over a corrupt government and start a new one with new legislation? | > What's stopping people exactly from physically taking over the government?
Two things, one immediately practical, one more abstract (but no less practical).
As to the first, the US government--for all its problems--is *incredibly* well organized compared to the government of Ukraine, and it's got a *lot* more people with guns it can deploy in its own defense. Popular uprisings only really work against weak governments, and the US government is anything but weak. Not to put too fine a point on it, but what with the National Guard and federal military units on standby, US authorities can probably deploy no less than several thousand highly-trained troops, all armed to the *teeth*, to multiple locations within US borders in less than 24 hours. That's just not something rational people want to tangle with.
Second, the US government--for all its problems--actually does a good-enough job that most people would rather deal with those problems than risk their lives in an attempt to overthrow it directly. I mean, sure, there's inefficiency and some degree of undue influence at all levels of government in the US, but that notwithstanding. . . life is still pretty danged good for the vast majority of the population. Even the very poor aren't generally starving to death. And not to minimize reports of excessive force and police brutality, US law enforcement is downright domesticated compared to some other countries'. In short, when you compare what we might stand to gain by violent revolution with what we stand to *lose*, even the revolution is successful, most people just don't seem to think that it's worth it. | 4264bf16-0da7-43dc-9888-f0737fda4e2a |
2dseqn | Why is it that negative emotions can feel...nice? | When you are feeling down, your body does two things.
1 - It tries to reverse this with happy feelings, caused by dopamine and serotonin. People who can't do this suffer from clinical depression.
2 - Because you feel sad, your happy moments feel nicer. If we never felt lonely, then being with friends wouldn't be as nice. If we never felt anger, then compassion wouldn't be as great. If we never felt sad, then laughing would not leave us feeling good. You have to go through valleys and canyons to recognize how tall the mountains truly are. | 1c3ddb6e-7eed-4834-b68f-cfb53c556f38 |
2801dd | Why can we take hi-def photos of galaxies light-years away, but yet can only get little pixel pictures of Pluto? | With a pair of binoculars you will be able to view huge skyscrapers from miles away. But you can't see a gnat on a car just 50 yards away. Same idea basically. Galaxies are massive objects lit by the billions of stars within them. Pluto is just a speck reflecting a tiny bit of light from the sun. | 3341799d-1650-49cc-b547-59f4d1e7ceda |
1jkbth | Non linear systems | In mathematics, a linear system takes a input and returns an outout that proportional to the input. So if you take a input x and output y of the system, and than you take a twice as large as x, then your output is twice as large as well. This makes these kinds of systems easy to handle. Non linear systems have no such rule. For an input 2 as large as x, you might as wel get an output that a thousand times larger, or a million times smaller. This makes problems involving these systems harder. | 1bc824a6-c641-47a7-a378-74904506f932 |
90xm9q | So what exactly are Hilbert's Problems? | The problem here is that you're asking for a layman's explanation for something that really doesn't have one. In order to understand this specific problem you need to at least take a short lecture in the basics of group and field theories.
Some of these problems however can be explained quite simply (for example #7 and #10), while others cannot. | cf500869-7a27-4a4c-8ac3-542f70c33df7 |
pmnpl | What's the difference between a theory, a theorem, a postulate, a law, etc? | I'm no scientist or mathematician, but here is my understanding:
A **postulate** is a basic fact that we assume to be true when we build a theory. For an example, one of Euclid's postulates is that for any line and a point not on that line, there will be a line parallel to the first line that runs through that given point.
A **theorem** is something that you prove using postulates. Using Euclid's postulates, we can figure out that if two triangles have 3 congruent sides, the triangles themselves are congruent.
A **hypothesis** is a proposed explanation for an observation.
A **theory** is a general and relatively confirmed explanation for a set of observations. Evolution and general relativity all fit in this category.
A **law** is an ~~analytical~~ statement that has been tested and confirmed many times. They contain constants and are usually expressed as an equation. Theories often contain laws. Ohm's law and the ideal gas law are both examples of a law.
EDIT: Whoops; Euclid != Euler | f7eeb922-b521-420b-903d-258709013df5 |
j436v | Can someone explain to me how Formula One works LI5? | > Why don't just they use the same car every season?
The short answer is; tuning is a complicated art. A five year old probably wouldn't understand some of the following but here goes;
All F1 cars have pretty much the same engine and transmission to start with; but the speed of the car both in the straights and the corners is affected by MANY different things; type of tyres, tyre pressure, downforce, tranmission ratio (this changes how fast the car accelarates compared to it's top speed, shorter gears mean a faster accelaration time, but a lower top speed in each gear) and weather makes a HUGE difference. The list of factors which will affect a car's lap time is basically endless, and each driver will have their preferences. They're always trying to find a way to beat the other cars without just putting a bigger engine in the car (that's against the rules obviously) and so each season one car *may* have a clear advantage over the others *if* they've got everything tuned just right.
So this season, the red bull car may well be the fastest in the straights, but will it be any good on tight bends? Will they pick the right tyres for a wet weather race? Will the driver like the changes his team have made this year?
This is what F1 fans (including myself) love about the sport, how mind boggling complicated it is; it's also the reason my girlfriend thinks it's a dorky sport for anorak wearing car geeks.
TL:DR. F1 cars are really, *really* complicated. | 9a8e2706-a3ed-44ba-8ebb-99623f03353c |
5qaqz8 | why do humans perceive numbers in a logarithmic way instead of a linear way? | Going from $1 to $8 is a 700% increase, while going from $501 to $508 is less than 2%. It's more about percentages than raw numbers. | a2552154-443d-43f6-b844-35f44a1f714d |
7h45xw | In cases where people die of an allergic reaction, why is the reaction the body chooses one that kills you rather than letting in whatever its trying to keep out? | Allergies are a *defect* (like a software bug) in the way our body's immune system works. Because having an extra-powerful immune system mostly kept our ancestors alive against many *real* threats, evolution didn't weed these people out, so we inherited this problem. | 287d3ea4-b7d9-4c21-a52d-56dd9ec06801 |
6ry8uh | with taxes on almost everything, how is it that governments don't eventually end up with most of the money in the economy? | > How is it, that the receivers of this tax money, don't just eventually end up with most of it, and the rest of us end up broke?
The government spends a huge amount of money on goods and services. All those people working for the government get paid, all those things the government use are bought from suppliers, etc. In the US we have fairly consistently been spending more than is taken in with taxes. | e273ff27-8d3f-45c7-a191-4d78a6fdb8c5 |
1ydvze | How do game designers fix glitches in their games when the cause of the glitch makes no sense? | Debugging is among the hardest parts of programming.
Suppose that you have found a glitch. The first thing to do is to figure out under what circumstances the glitch is triggered. In a video game, a glitch might appear in a certain place, after a period of time, when the player has certain equipment, and so forth. A video game studio will have a legion of dedicated testers trained to identify the key components of a bug:
- What were you doing before the bug occurred?
- What specific action produced the unexpected result?
- What result did you expect?
- What result occurred?
Then, you use your knowledge of the code to figure out what parts of the program contribute to the behavior you expected. One of them is probably doing something wrong. You may use a tool called a "debugger" to peek into the program's internals while it was running. You might write a few conditions ("at line 2398, the value of x should be 42") and let the debugger notify you if those conditions are violated. Once you've narrowed it down, you might use the debugger to "step" line-by-line through the program as it is executing, until you see the exact point at which the error originates.
Once you've found the source of the bug, you figure out what that part of the code is supposed to do, and correct it if it's not doing that. It may also be that the flaw is in the interface between different parts – two different areas of the code (perhaps written by different people) may have different expectations for how a particular piece of functionality should work. Then, you have have to revise one of them significantly.
Once you think you've fixed it, you send it back to whoever is testing it. They will verify that under the specified conditions, the expected behavior occurs. | 288bfb96-9c2f-4479-98c3-683d36835446 |
3nnwpi | What does each wire in a Cat 5e cable actually represent? | In 10Base-T, each cable is either data receive or data transmit. Signaling is slightly different in 1000Base-T. The unused pins below are used in PoE (power over ethernet) implementations.
Which color is used for which pin isn't super important--they are more or less arbitrary, as long as pins 1/2, 3/6, 4/5, and 7/8 use the same color pairs, but there are standard terminations (TIA/EIA 568A and 568B) that specify which colors are used for which pins. Here are the pin functionalities for each (in 10Base-T):
1 Data (TX +) (white/green for A, white/orange for B)
2 Data (TX -) (green for A, orange for B)
3 Data (RX +) (white/orange for A, white/green for B)
4 Unused (blue for both)
5 Unused (white/blue for both)
6 Data (RX -) (orange for A, green for B)
7 Unused (white/brown for both)
8 Unused (brown for both)
The two standards exist so that crossover cables can be created (T568A on one side and T568B on the other). | ebc470ba-0d76-4101-9c1e-04bc11b76c1a |
2n42nh | How do showers get dirty if water and soap run through them all the time? | 1) water drops evaporate and the dissolved minerals are left behind
2) soap scum is left behind. It sticks to surfaces and doesn't wash off with just water | b3196126-bba4-4b99-bcbc-a05f29f3ea9d |
1wlg7q | I have always been told that it is bad to go outside in the cold when your body is warm or after exercising or something. if it is true, what actually happens? | As for general warmth of the body I can't really comment, but based on years of experience with sport (predominately baseball) it's a huge deal because when you're muscles are warm and fully stretched the cold can shock the muscles and cause them to constrict leading them to be very tight and sore the next day regardless of how well you've stretched.
In baseball it's a big issues because the players take the condition of their throwing arm very seriously, which considering its a huge part of the game is understandable. This is why many players will have a cool down routine which often consists of light exercises like throwing a ball while moving closer to their partner, and a light run. After all this is done, they'll most likely wear a jumper to let their bodies cool down even slower to reduce the risk. | 702a3bfe-b9f8-4ba2-b422-e5ac324656ee |
2b5f6h | Eli how is it that a company like Comcast can change the terms on their residential package contract midway putting a 300gb cap on internet usage without customers re-signing new contracts and still get away with it? | The contract with you probably allows for specific unilateral changes to certain aspects of it. This is quite common in these types of service contracts.
You don't read the contract anyways, and if you want service from them then you need to agree to the contract. So agree or no service. | 79a3e547-e96b-4bc0-b689-a15b7f4cb22b |
3nxino | How do they color black and white photos from before color photography was invented? | Before modern day colorization techniques, my Mom grew up in the 40's and 50's, and she said when they got their black and white photos, they would use make up and color the photos just a little bit. I learned this when we were flipping through an old scrapbook and my Mom had a slight pinkish tone to her lips and cheeks but it was obviously just a b & w photo. I just thought that was very interesting and strange. | 627f35ec-8437-4a34-bef9-db4c656ed4c7 |
j40oq | How literally are we taking the "like you are talking to a 5 year old" thing? | I think this reddit would've worked better if it was called explainlikeimtwelve. | ca2137c3-e6c0-4674-8baf-c9798951457b |
2g1jc7 | Why is everyone bringing up net neutrality all of a sudden? | To see this response, please pay $19.95 to upgrade to the Web + Social Sites package. For a total of only $99.95 per month you'll have access to all of your favorite standard sites (_URL_1_, _URL_2_, _URL_0_) plus the hottest social sites on the web, including Reddit and Myspace.
And don't forget about this month's deal on a streaming pass. For a one time activation fee of $215.49 only $12.95 per gigabyte after that, you can stream data, which means you can use Hulu, Netflix, and play some of the games in our Online Gaming Access Package (not included). Exciting games like Microsoft's Minecraft! | 71c46eff-16af-4eb6-bf44-c3c54123e272 |
188rc5 | American Housing mortgage & loan system and what happened in 2008? | First, I have no idea what the housing system is in India. So, take it for what it's worth :-p
A mortgage is just a loan like any other loan. Someone gives you money, in exchange you pay them back the money they gave you plus some more. A highly simplified example (using really small numbers because they're easier to work with):
Say you want to buy a house. The house costs $100. You don't have $100, but you want to buy the house. So you go to a bank and the bank says that they'll give you $100, but only if you pay them $10 for the next 11 weeks. This means:
* Week 1: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $10 to the bank
* Week 2: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $20 to the bank
* Week 3: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $30 to the bank
* Week 4: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $40 to the bank
* Week 5: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $50 to the bank
* Week 6: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $60 to the bank
* Week 7: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $70 to the bank
* Week 8: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $80 to the bank
* Week 9: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $90 to the bank
* Week 10: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $100 to the bank
* Week 11: you pay $10 - you've paid a total of $110 to the bank
After week 11 you own the house "free and clear". You get what you want: to live in the house immediately, and the bank gets what they want: to give $100 and get back $110.
It's just like any other loan. But there are some minor differences. Like, some people think buying a house is a good investment because the $100 house might be worth $120 by the time you own it "free and clear". Some people think buying a house is good because it's what society expects. Some people think buying a house is good because it's part of "the American dream". But the bottom line is that a mortgage is just a loan.
-----------------------------------------
I recommend you use the search function for terms like "housing bubble" or even "2008" or "financial crisis". There are a lot of answers better than I could give. And the housing crisis - or housing bubble - isn't the same as the financial crisis. (Although they are connected in complicated ways that are hard to understand clearly.)
I'm seeing some good answers from the search function. Hopefully they can help you out, if not 1) hopefully someone else here can answer, or 2) hopefully you can narrow down your question and someone can answer that. | b8d31155-0cca-4a8d-a39a-10e0c77ea79e |
2ze72u | Why does my iPhone say I have 4.4 gigs of memory used in pictures and yet I have no pictures on my phone | It's photos saved in messages, possibly cached photos. Delete some conversations, or (I highly recommend) jailbreak your phone, install iCleaner and it will clear ALL that crap out. | 546bdffc-e3a1-43e4-86ce-b412a0828ee9 |
3a86fi | Why is there an increase in the number of insects and other critters in my home in the summer, vs in the winter, shouldn't it be the other way around? | Because there are more insects. Most insects will hibernate or simply allow most of the species to die off in the winter and let eggs hatch in the spring.
In the summer you have all those insects able to live easily and therefore they are growing and creating new colonies and laying more eggs. | 825efb17-aa3a-4893-9d51-16bdc17c55cb |
7w72hq | How do Venus flytraps digest pray? | The head of the flytrap seals itself and essentially becomes a ‘stomach’ of sorts
Once the pray is trapped and sealed inside the head, it begins to release enzymes and chemicals which break down the prey and digest the essential nutrients.
It can’t always digest everything and often you’ll find parts of insects dropping out after it’s finished eating
Mostly the external carapace of the creature which again will eventually break down and add nutrients to the soil around it ☺️ | a530fd23-9528-4100-b584-c10e10b3445e |
4cmfn9 | Since Edward Snowden has been out of the inner circle for so long, how is he still relevant and threatening? | What I have understood from [Citizenfour](_URL_0_) documentary, the information he released wasn't nearly everything he had access to. He simply decided to inform public just about the mass surveillance. Imo the argument that he can't do more damage now is false.
Another thing is that he hasn't been charged yet thanks to asylum in Russia. | a5bb6498-6651-4596-b373-59a63bc5605a |
2vqvco | How do celebrity's nude photos get "leaked"? | Modern phones have cloud technology that saves content on servers owned by the provider. Gaining access to an email and password is relatively easy work for a serious hacker and it would be all you need to access those photos on said servers. | 7cf8f848-0e23-4fad-8f6d-7eed6494958b |
2mqq35 | You know when you crack open an egg to fry and its a double yoker, if that egg had been kept alive and grown would the chicken(s) have been conjoined or...? | I think this is pretty rare, but it's one possibility for a double-yolked egg.[half-sider parakeet](_URL_0_) | c342669f-cdd2-490a-a3d0-c53df888ade0 |
307h8z | Why do our teeth fall out at such a young age and grow back? Wouldn't it be more beneficial for this process to happen at like age 50? | Evolution doesn't care how long you live; it only cares whether you have children. So no, it would not be more beneficial to wait until age 50 to replace your teeth. | 56ddc965-325a-4616-95bb-140d2c6cf45a |
5me209 | How can a touchscreen project black in a power saving way (details on the screen inside)? | An LCD element is made so it is transparent unless you apply a voltage. When you apply a voltage to the element it is going black. It does not take much power to do this as you only need a voltage and no current. The electricity does not pass through the elements but still affects it. You can get window sized LCD elements that runs on tiny solar cells. | 2c4ba214-01d7-4615-99c2-ff3dc6b99dc1 |
44jhls | if insects do not have lungs, how do they drown? | They still absorb oxygen from the air through spiracles. When the spiracles are submerged, they can't absorb oxygen.
Drowning has less to do with having lungs and more to do with not having gills.
EDIT: Just to help out people too lazy to read through the whole thread:
Insects breathe through tubes in their bodies called trachea - the openings are called spiracles. The trachea branch from large central tubes from the spiracle openings into thinner and thinner tubes that permeate the insect's body, essentially giving their tissues direct access to air. Breathing is, for the most part, passive. The oxygen diffuses throughout the tube from the air, and CO2 diffuses out. *Some* insects, especially larger ones, have mechanisms to drive air flow to increase the amount of oxygen they get.
Many insects ([and spiders](_URL_1_)) can trap a bubble of air around their abdomens, which is often enough for them to breathe long enough to escape the water (not to mention giving them greater buoyancy), but that supply will not last forever if they stay submerged. Because the direct access requires air, which exchanges gasses much more readily than water, if water gets into the trachea the insect will drown in pretty much the same way as animals do when water gets into lungs - both mechanisms are poorly adapted to exchange O2 and CO2 in water, and can't do it fast enough.
A surfactant (like soap) lowers the surface tension of water, which will collapse the bubble around the insect, drowning it much more quickly. Some insects can close the spiracles and trap *some* air inside their bodies, but that oxygen won't last long.
There are many arthropods that live in the water, including some insects. Some use the method mentioned above (trapping air around them), but many athropods do, in fact, have gills (like [crayfish](_URL_0_)). Those with gills have the same problem in reverse - gills are poorly adapted to exchanging gasses without water, so they suffocate out of water.
Edit: several comments have mentioned book lungs. They are organs that many arachnids have, which are unrelated to true lungs like ours, but do a similar thing. Those species can drown in very little water if the cavity that holds the book lungs (which should be empty) fills with water.
Another point I glossed over is the gas exchange between the bubble and water when insects are submerged. Depending on the surface area of the bubble and how much oxygen is in the water, the bug may be able to stay submerged forever, since oxygen and CO2 will dissolve across the bubble's surface into and out of the surrounding water.
Thanks, /u/Pr00Dg for the gold! | baddfc48-e0ee-454b-b791-525fee1989ab |
qf99b | How can a dollar of subsidy create more than a dollar of GDP? | The 5 year old answer would be
The simplest way to think of it is let's say you give a company a dollar to buy wood. They buy a dollar worth of wood and then make it into a statue. They then sell that statue for two dollars. Technically that one dollar of subsidy was used to make 2 dollar of GDP.
The more complicated answer if you actually have to tax subsidies into effect when your calculating GDP. But if these subsidies have a high ROR then it's possible to get more money then you put in. | cc29b8a7-8f4e-4fbf-b6d2-331b43737a68 |
5gkqqy | Does anyone want to explain the Bohr Model of Hydrogen atom to me? | De Broglie, a physicist from France, ~~had just discovered~~ was about to discover (thanks /u/restricteddata) that particles can be described as waves. The wavelength of a particle is λ=h/p where p is the momentum and h the Plack constant.
Bohr proposed that electrons orbit the nucleus. But he furthermore proposed, that the matter wave of the electron around the nucleus had to be a standing wave. That means, the circumference of the orbit had to match the wavelength of the particle multiplied by a whole number like [this](_URL_0_). (Instead of the wavelength not matching up with its initial starting position after one orbit.)
However, this meant, that electrons could not orbit at any arbitrary distance from the nucleus. Rather only distances where this criterion was fulfilled are possible. This is the origin of the discrete Bohr radii and Bohr energy levels.
Since the nucleus attracts the electron, it takes energy to lift it into a higher radius. Thus, we can assign energy to each of the possible radii. The SI unit of energy is Joule, so you can describe any given possible orbit by its energy in Joules.
eV or electron Volts are just another unit for energy. 1 eV is equal to 1.60218*10^-19 Joules. It is sometimes more useful to use eV instead of Joules, simply because eV are much smaller units. And in particle physics we typically deal with tiny chunks of energy. | d5403d86-b6d0-47ca-9bba-d710c79293b7 |
5hb8q7 | What do bears do while they're hibernating? | They sleep, and that's it. They live off fat stores, just like you've heard, and they also convert that fat in to water. Hibernating mothers can even produce milk for their young from those fat stores.
They don't pee, their body converts their urine in to proteins, IIRC. They develop a [natural fecal plug]
(_URL_0_) that keeps them from shitting themselves. (*Edit* - *to flesh this comment out some: the plugs are made from partially digested brush, and whatever they clean off of themselves while grooming - even bits of the pads of their paws*) | 103d0b16-c0dc-49a6-9f5c-61944ea783af |
28mmr7 | What makes UNIX/Linux more stable and secure than Windows? | In UNIX/linux, the default security model has always been that normal users cannot mess with the system configuration. In windows, the default security model has long been that any user could do anything they desired to the system, and had access to all critical system configuration and other resources. Admittedly, this has changed in recent Windows versions, and the reputation continues.
A second point of stability is that in UNIX/linux, the operating system and the graphical desktop are two completely separated systems. To the operating system, X (the window system of linux) is just another application running in user space. If X behaves badly, a sysadmin can kill it and restart it without having to reboot the system. In Windows, the graphical shell is integrated very closely with the operating system and run with admin privilege. This means that anything going wrong in the graphical shell has the ability to bring the whole system to a screeching halt, requiring a reboot.
Yet another consideration. UNIX/linux has traditionally been developed as a community effort (open source) and usually by people who knew what they were doing, because the roots of both the linux kernel and GNU lie in academia where the brightest minds competed for karma and not for money. Linux being open source means that the community as a whole is well equipped to research any bugs or strange behaviour encountered in the usage of it. In contrast, Windows has been developed traditionally by wage slaves and with the specific purpose to make money from it. It is closed source, and many of the techniques and protocols it uses are proprietary, meaning that if something goes wrong, you are unable to investigate and must rely on Microsoft to fix things. In general, the solutions and enhancements for Windows are decided from a cost/gain point of view, while solutions and enhancements in UNIX/linux tend to be chosen on the basis of technical excellence. | 1ff35c51-19b4-4490-a077-4354205af0f3 |
45bf2t | SoFlo vs H3 H3 Productions | H3h3 is a channel that calls people out on their shit, soflo doesn't like getting called out on his shit. Idk the details, and idc. | bb7da7e8-4fd9-47e1-b05a-52058302404b |
2ibomy | Where do the guys who sell oranges or flowers on the side of the road get their supply? | My father used to sell fruit and vegetables like this when he was laid off from his regular (seasonal) work. He would often go to the same distributors as the local grocery stores, buy at wholesale and almost double the price. He could still sell for less than the regular retailers, sometimes 1/2 of their price, because he had few overhead costs.
During school breaks, I would sometimes be the guy at the roadside stand, while Dad went off to sell door-to-door.
I've often seen articles saying that the grocery business is very competitive and that the margins are razor-thin. However, from what I've seen, this isn't always true. During some times of the year, the prices from farmers are very low, but the prices don't come down as much at the retail stores.
Dad was big-rig driver so, if he had access to a truck during the harvest season when farm-gate prices were lowest, he might drive to a farming region and bring back a big truckload to our city for higher profits. This wouldn't be worthwhile using a small vehicle or at other times of the year. | 69b175f7-6038-4b5a-bf3c-7dc48d03b3d6 |
7to6lg | Why can't Social Security Numbers be like credit card numbers where they get renewed (new number) every couple of years and if they get lost or stolen the old number can be cancelled and you get a new number? | The problem is that your Social Security Number is widely used as a *unique identifier* for a person. The whole reason it's worth stealing is because everyone uses the same number to reference a person.
If you just get a new number every few years, it'd either be worthless for a credit report **or** somebody would just have a list of all your previous SSNs matched up against your current one and you'd have to tell everyone who uses it to update to your new number anyways.
The fundamental issue is that the SSN was never intended to be a general purpose citizen identification number, it was just meant to be used for a single government program. Security was never even a concern in designing the system. If you want a safe & secure system for identifying a person, you'd need to approach the problem completely differently. | c63432dd-d294-4832-bc16-c6d2d25a5e83 |
5sf085 | Why does shutting your eyes when standing on one leg make you lose balance? | Balance is based on your centre of mass and many senses communicating in the brain. While you might think that your eyes have nothing to do with this, your vision helps the brain understand what position your body is relative to the world around you.
When you close your eyes, your brain loses that sense of relativity, and can no longer base the bodies slight adjustments based on the relativity contributed from your vision.
The adjustments your body has to make is based upon where your centre of mass is situated. Your centre of mass has to be above the contact point between (for example) your foot and the floor. There are much more to know about balance (like how to influence the centre of mass or how to calculate it), but this is the basics! | a6f9bc41-b487-4666-bd42-a4c90754c571 |
1pbixw | How do some insects survive high velocity impact during flight without immediate fatalities? | A beetle's body does not have too much mass, and the velocity of the beetle is not too high either. Therefore, the momentum of the impact is not enough to cause significant damage to the beetle. Velocity X Mass = Momentum. If the mass or velocity of the beetle was increased, damage to the beetle is more likely to occur. | bc306b70-8d8f-405f-a60b-3cf38eb01a45 |
2w8y2u | How is it possible for the universe to have no starting point or end? | "The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." -NDT | 8a83cf62-4ada-43a1-a7cc-e78f7f1bdcb5 |
2578df | in the year 1AD, what year did people of that year say it was? | There have always been a variety of calendars in use at any given time. (Also, Jesus was probably not born in 1 AD, but a few years before.)
----
*In Rome:*
At the time, the Roman calendar in use was the Julian calendar, which resembled the modern calendar for its months. The year dating was named after the last set of consuls of Rome to take office; consuls were basically a pair of people who acted as the Republic's chief executive together for a year.
Whenever there was an interruption in the selection of consuls, then they started counting from when the last set had been chosen. At 1 AD, it was the year of C. Iulius Caesar* and L. Aemilius Paullus. Consuls had less power, but still existed for a while, in the Empire. After several centuries (around 500 or so AD) the only consuls were the Emperors, so the year dating was calculated since the current Emperor was throned. Rome had been an empire for a few decades by 1 AD.
Under the Roman Republic, there was an alternative numbering scheme that counted back to the mythical founding of Rome, but I don't know if that numbering scheme was still in use by the time of the Empire. (AUC, Ab Urbe Condite; it would have been 754 AUC).
^^^* ^^^He ^^^was ^^^named ^^^after ^^^the ^^^famous ^^^Iulius ^^^Caesar, ^^^but ^^^is ^^^not ^^^the ^^^one ^^^you're ^^^thinking ^^^of, ^^^probably.
----
*In China:*
At that time (as well as most of the countries it dominated), they counted their years based on eras declared by Emperors. Prior to that, they also had dated their years based on the years since a given Emperor took the throne. It looks like it would have been the first year of Emperor Ping, though as he was a child Emperor, he may not have declared an era at all. So I can't say for sure. Some Emperors declared an era every year, and I'd need to look at a specialized source to find out.
----
Dating since a monarch took the throne was a very common thing, and spiritually sort of persists in the AD/BC numbering system; AD literally means "In the Year of Our Lord (Jesus Christ)". It was created in the 500s, but not widely adopted until the 800s.
Many other calendars were in effect and counting at this time and I'm too lazy to find out all of them. If you want to know for a specific civilization, though, I can find out. | 98d4d2be-6ec5-4c5d-b300-38e540c26a64 |
np4aj | Why Valve aren't in trouble over Dota 2 | DOTA doesn't actually belong to blizzard, it was a custom map made by ice frog, this person owns all of it apart form the fact that if blizzard never made warcraft 3 it wouldn't exist. so valve then hired ice frog(that owns all of DOTA to make a sequel under valve.
source: _URL_0_ | 2310c86d-ca58-4816-a278-8905fd67c44e |
oonfo | How time was invented? | Did we invent distances? or did we just invent ways to measure them and units to count them?
Same goes with time. Clocks have existed for several thousand years (many civilizations had them as early as 2,000BC, in the form of water clocks and sundials). The passing of seasons has also been observed and measured for about as long. | c111aa54-a7a4-4cfb-bde5-12d5c2969b48 |
77nh5w | Why can we get sick of what we're currently eating but able to then eat a bunch of different things until full? | Same reason you like to play more than one game in a day - your taste buds get bored. You like different flavors because it's your brain's way of tricking you into eating a balanced diet. | ed432b3e-259e-46bc-8422-b8cd6ebe1f80 |
3pnnf4 | Is it true that disproportionally large numbers of Syrian refugees in Europe are young men? If so, why is this? Where are all the women and children? | They are waiting for the man to get asylum/resident permit, so that they can safely travel.
Basically the guy risks his life going with human smugglers and once he lands on his feet he can bring the children and wife to the new country through lawful means. | e6ad3b1d-478f-42c6-973f-fdcc452b8502 |
7nci67 | Why is it that, in most major sports leagues, some teams will represent whole states(ex. Utah Jazz) while others will simply represent cities(Ex Cleveland Cavaliers) | It depends on the owner, and it usually done for marketing reasons. The owner chooses a name they think will resonate better with the potential customers (fans). In the case of the Jazz, the Utah Jazz sounds better than the Salt Lake City Jazz (that's a mouthful). The NFL Panthers and the NHL Hurricanes are from Carolina. Having the team named *Carolina* gathers fans from both North and South Carolina. Also, in the case of the Hurricanes, I don't think many people know where Raleigh is, so saying they are from Carolina makes it easier to know where they are from. The NFL Jets and Giants are teams from New Jersey, but are named after New York because New York is a more popular spot. | 8dce5393-5229-47a5-88e3-ab6606e52cd3 |
3xunpc | Why do we heal quicker over a night's sleep than awake? | When you sleep, you're lying in one position pretty much motionless for 5-9 hours. Your body is using very little energy on your muscles or other activities, so it can devote itself to healing. And with no motion, there's no risk of further aggravating your injuries.
Theoretically you would get the same healing effect if you spent eight hours lying in bed awake watching TV. But you would really have to stay *in bed* for all that time - no getting up to get a drink, or go to the bathroom, or anything. | b18ad0d4-97f5-444e-a89f-4d032d8377bf |
5x2k7h | With the recent information on Session's on Russia, why do we have to wait for him to resign? Can't we just go after him for treason or whatever and give him the harshest punishment for lying under oath? | Resignation is the preferred method because it's the quickest and least politically messy.
With a refusal to resign, a formal impeachment process would have to be initiated in the House of Representatives, beginning with a Judiciary Committee investigation, articles of impeachment being voted upon and presented to the House as a whole, their approval leading to sending them to the Senate for trial, and then the Senate would have to convict on the articles of impeachment to remove the official from office.
There is also a danger that a complicit President could pardon an impeached official to avoid what might be uncovered in an investigation, so legislators may prefer to avoid that danger altogether by having an official resign voluntarily and preserve the possibility of future prosecution. | d51e3833-07d0-4f36-bc31-b913c456567e |
2qr1kh | Why do some cars keep headlights on for a few minutes when the car shuts off? What is the point? | It's to allow you to see your surroundings. For instance, so you can see the inside of your garage garage at night without having to fumble around in the dark for a light switch. | b2c9e8e7-fd7d-4c6f-af89-fc3ea311e11c |
3i5teg | Do gas pumps really measure dispensed gas to the thousandths? And if so, how? | Gas, fuel, diesel etc is typically measured using a special flowmeter called a turbine meter. Basically, the fuel is pumped through the turbine meter on the way to the nozzle. The turbine meter contains funnily enough a turbine which spins as the fluid passes through it. The spinning spindle of the meter has magnets on the shaft which trigger pickups on the outside of the meter which allows the number of rotations of the turbine to be counted. The turbine meter is carefully calibrated so the amount of fuel per revolution is known and thus the amount of fuel passing through the meter can be calculated.
The meters can be extremely small so the volume of fuel per revolution is extremely low allowing for very high accuracy. | 9a388b6a-751c-4825-8956-b0e6bc3bdae0 |
3jukai | Why do 'modern' flags tend to have stars? | First of all, that cross is only for Scandinavian countries. Look at the flags of Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Spain,...
And many of those flags are more modern than others. The star spangled spangled banner was made in the 1770 or something. The German flag of today was made in 1945...
The stars of Australia and NZ are there, because those stars are only visible from those countries.
But normally, **the stars are a sign of excellence and perfection.** | 3992c460-bac4-4d1c-80e9-5ce19ca82e93 |
4az6uu | How do poor/third world countries support such high populations? | > Is the standard of living so low that everybody can just barely get by?
This. Not only that, but in many places, people DON'T actually get by. People starve to death every day on this earth.
The fact is, many of these countries CAN'T sustain the population growth that they have. | 4ddaa479-fee4-41b9-84b3-a137a4977653 |
1e7es3 | What is steampunk? | It substantially involves combining modern(and even futuristic) technology with the Victorian aesthetic.
What if they had rayguns in 1880, what would they look like? What would computers be like? What would modern jets be like?
It draws heavily on the writing of people like Jules Verne.
Most modern things have eschewed artistic beauty in favour of practicality. The Victorian era was a time when both practicality *and* beauty were celebrated. Let me give you an example, this picture:
_URL_0_
It was officially opened in 1865. When you look at that photo, what do you see?
I see the most spectacular and beautiful iron work. It looks like the entrance to a majestic cathedral. But it's not a cathedral. The Crossness Pumping Station was built, as the name implies, to pump. It did not pump just anything, however. It pumped sewage. That's right, this magnificent, majestic, stunningly beautiful ironwork adorns a sewage pumping plant!
Today, naming a sewage plant after a ruler is seen as an insult. The four engines at Crossness are named the Prince Consort, Victoria, Albert Edward and Alexandria. Those names were seen as honouring those in power, not insulting them.
There is something deeply satisfying about doing things this way, and I think that is perhaps steampunk's greatest appeal. | 7fbb5c65-47ef-4636-a1dd-292985dca2a4 |
8x0nzp | Why does the camera pan to Dikembe Mutombo when a suns player makes a block? | Because while he was in the NBA, he used wave his finger after he blocked shots.
_URL_0_ | 14200320-76b7-4d0d-bd70-27a863a15651 |
s099a | Why do non-hearing people sound "that way" when they speak? | They can see how lips move, but they can't see how throat, tongue, windpipe, etc move. Observing mouth movement is not enough to recreate all the sounds, you need to be able to hear it in order to accurately replicate what others are saying. Not to mention you can't get the tone or pacing correctly either by just looking at mouth movement. In addition some of them can't hear their own voice either, which makes it even harder to know if they pronounce something correctly or not. | 8fea0e6d-e7e1-4da8-9049-f191f3f96f5f |
2dc2gy | How do you text in Chinese? | Pinyin and knowing the tones.
Chinese has a writing script based on roman alphabet which is what kids and beginners use when first learning the language. This is called pinyin. This is basically the phonetic transcription of the language.
There are then 4 corresponding tones in Chinese. Flat (1), Rising (2), Falling-Rising (3) and Falling (4).
The word 'train-station' in Mandarin is huǒchēzhàn. So you type it out like that but add the tones by adding a number after the corresponding character. (But not every character has a tone.)
So huǒchēzhàn would be huo3che1zhan4 and this would type out as 火车站 | 18e9302e-a583-4ba4-93a2-b3cd14ebcabd |
8kulsw | When we become overly emotional our chests/throats tighten up, why? | We’re not totally sure, but this article gives some suggestions:
_URL_0_
But how do emotions trigger physical sensations? Scientists do not know, but recently pain researchers uncovered a possible pathway from mind to body. According to a 2009 study from the University of Arizona and the University of Maryland, activity in a brain region that regulates emotional reactions called the anterior cingulate cortex helps to explain how an emotional insult can trigger a biological cascade. During a particularly stressful experience, the anterior cingulate cortex may respond by increasing the activity of the vagus nerve—the nerve that starts in the brain stem and connects to the neck, chest and abdomen. When the vagus nerve is overstimulated, it can cause pain and nausea. | 9f564c9c-6fb6-43fd-a442-7155cbf11965 |
4y4p91 | How come some people claim to only care about personalities and not physical properties yet aren't bisexual? | Because this is a lie mostly, its just more of a statement of
Personality > Looks, so even if they look like crap they wont date them its just lower standards than average, no one actually completely doesnt care about looks | abe052c3-1d14-455f-bcbe-79a563489a0d |
240oj0 | What is the definition of a moral absolute? | Metaethicist here!
Moral absolutism the view that certain actions are absolutely, categorically right or wrong regardless of any circumstance - even intentions or consequences. So for example, if I thought murder was absolutely wrong then it would be wrong in any form - capital punishment, euthanasia... etc.
The existence of any moral absolute is very questionable, and a very big question at that! If you're interested in the existence of objective morality - or the existence of morality in general - a good place to start would be either the metaethics subreddit or [here!](_URL_1_).
If you think objective moral facts exist, then check out [moral realism](_URL_0_). | f04d9cd8-d25f-4dd1-97a0-627343ace976 |
38y3vu | What actual crimes did the "villians" from Scooby Doo commit? What could they be tried for and what would be their punishment? | Generally harassment, theft, fraud, and trespassing. Realistically you could add attempt at murder and kidnapping to most of the monster charges, because of what they general do to the mystery crew. Also in a lot of places wearing masks for nonreligious or holiday reasons in public is a findable offence, but that is very dependent on location. | 6ecb546f-079a-426d-816a-e1fc6d832a4d |
mv36x | Why everyone hates Bono | Because everytime he claps his hands, a child in Africa dies. | abfefe77-2a15-4e5b-a380-38693af19255 |
1vyb0u | Before I put my contacts on I almost mistaked a white "push" thumb tack for the vitamin I had set out last night... What would happen if someone swallowed a thumb tack or nail? Would it pass regularly, or shred your insides during digestion? | I doubt it's large enough to cause any harm. | 69679fc8-4be5-4944-b4a8-0405af989909 |
8a4oyl | The difference between Subvocalization (inner monologue) and "thinking" | They're the same thing from my understanding. I believe it's more commonly referred to as 'inner speech' when we're thinking, and 'subvocalization' when we're reading, but subvocalization is what we do whenever we hear a voice in our head, whether its reading or thinking.
Auditory hallucinations actually cause movement in the larynx, too, just like thinking. Born-deaf people have a visual inner-voice. They think in images, like seeing sign-language, or visualize lips moving, instead of hearing a voice in their heads. I believe deaf people who have learned how to talk can 'hear' a voice (mimic the throat movements), and their inner voice may switch between speech and visualization depending on how they're communicating, much like bilingual people.
If reading books feels more like a movie to you, its because you're visualizing, rather than subvocalizing what you're reading. According to Wikipedia 30% of people primarily think visually, 25% primarily in words, and 45% use both. | 5a561c8c-9c73-4524-bafa-82e43001955c |
1x10ej | Why is backwards video understandable while backwards audio is incomprehensible? | It is because in a video we can see the actions leading up and proceeding from that action, while audio, the sound is laid out in a very specific way. (English phonetics are very complicated) When a small thing is changed, it becomes nearly impossible to understand. | ef84080d-8da0-4f01-9893-0c884d792b1a |
521x1u | How can you have a hologram on a spinning surface? Example is in comments. | Ok, so these particular kinds of holograms are called "Scratch holograms" or "abrasion holograph" I believe.
And they're made by putting curved scratches in glossy plastic.
You can easily make your own with a two needle compass, and some softish glossy plastic.
[Here's an example of making a simple one.](_URL_0_)
The way it works is that when you put a circular scratch in glossy plastic in direct sunlight, there will be two points of light created where the sunlight strikes the curve just right, and theses points of light are always opposite each other on the scratch, and they change angle based on the angling of the plate of plastic.
With the right pattern of scratching, you can generate a system off moving points of light that mimics the effect of a 3D object.
[Here's a lecture video discussing the process more.](_URL_1_) | 3b2391e1-4242-4f68-9308-3fa3ec9c5bf3 |
21pgsv | what is the point of the 9/10's of a penny on gas prices? | They are not the same. $4.999 != $5.000 -- even though you don't have a coin to represent the difference, there is a difference.
9/10ths of a cent adds up to some real money over thousands and thousands of gallons of gasoline. | 9787264d-6a50-4f24-90ce-b5d25e2cfb27 |
6hgnld | How likely could a baby or young child survive from e.g. the 10th floor of a building in an emergency situation if wrapped in thick layers of towels, blankets, and duvets, and the "ball" was somehow wrapped together with rope/belts/etc? | How thick are the blanks around the baby I'll guess you used every duvet in your house so 12 -16 inches thick below the baby. The younger the baby the better as the lighter the baby the better the blankets will do. If the baby on its back not head or feet first lands on the thickest part of the blankets on soft soil not hard packed or concrete then I would say the baby will live probably injured though. | b693ef32-d910-4a2b-9140-d27aadb5e708 |
1xr3kt | What did people use before lip balm? | People used goose or other animal fats on their lips and faces, especially in cold areas to protect against windburn and cold, dry air. Also, beeswax and oil. The Burt's Beeswax brand that I use now is essentially just that. | f4871200-5ef5-468b-ba10-d6b3f3929893 |
2ru8up | Why can we make fun of Muslims under freedom of expression but speaking anything against Jews will bring up Anti-Semitism? | i don't know where you live, but in most countries you can easily make jokes about Jews without bringing up antisemitism.
from the other hand in many countries you can't make jokes about Holocaust. | 5637da0a-54e1-44f7-8da4-535ef3ccfe09 |
29rums | How come solid butter doesn't taste salty? | It likely isn't salted.
Butter is sold in both salted and unsalted forms. The salted form, well, tastes salty. The unsalted form, obviously not.
On the other hand, it may be that you consume a high-salt diet and have become less sensitive to salt. In this case, you may not pick up on the salt in salted solid butter. | 07b2aa73-ad23-48af-9f11-23cf45100a7f |
6quj0f | Why is it that some people need to adjust their sitting posture every 2 minutes but some people can sit in the same posture for one hour? | I was actually thinking about this the other day because I'm the kind of person seems to never get comfortable. I found out if you stretch and loosen up your muscles you'll have an easier time sitting still or even falling asleep at night. | 905e9341-2d87-4701-8823-ad6a48b320e7 |
1xonyr | - Why isn't there a universal currency | To allow different economies and their respective government bodies to inflate and deflate their individual currencies.
On a macroeconomic level, this allows for proactive monetary policy that can curb the effects of a stagnating or expanding economy.
If the world operated on the same currency...well, just look at Greece. It can't print more money and bail itself out because the central euro bank (ie rich Western European countries) don't want the euro to drop in value. | 536eb21b-9ef3-498c-82e8-ddbe64ab47e7 |
3ya64k | What is String Theory? Has it been proved wrong? Whats the current replacement theory/idea? | There are four fundamental forces in the universe, gravity, the electromagnetic force, the strong force, and the weak force. We can describe so of these forces with two models, general relativity can be used to explain gravity, while the standard model explains the three remaining forces. These theories are immensely successful, however they are both incomplete, and we would like to have one theory which explains all for forces.
Actually combining these forces turns out to be really difficult. For one thing, gravity is incredibly weak compared to the other forces and we have no clue why. Another problem is that if we attempt to describe gravity using the same math as we do for the other three forces we end up with a theory which isn't predictive. We want theories to be able to make predictions, so if a theory isn't predictive this is a pretty big problem.
String theory is one way of having a theory which explains all four forces. However, it's incredibly mathematically complex, and so far we don't have any way to test it using current technologies. | 024cffbb-a7bc-46c4-94ea-86568184aac5 |
4fgwua | Can ducks count? | They can't *count* as in 1, 2, 3, 4... their counting skills aren't that advanced. But they do understand that if they had 10 ducklings following them before, and only 6 now, they need to find the rest. Plus, their animal maternal instinct and social abilities are involved, it's not just about counting.
Research shows that many birds have limited counting abilities, varying from species to species. Ducks are more basic in their counting, whereas crows, for example, are more advanced. | e57bbfe5-2e22-4bfe-ba0e-e527762a8aff |
1w5cwr | How do different accents of the same language develop? How come in the US, for example, there's such a drastic difference between the South, New York/Jersey/Boston, and the "no accents" of the Southwest/West? | Language gradually changes over time as people start developing slang and shortening words. It's facilitated by distance and ease of travel as other languages influence it. So in early America, you saw different cities developing with travel being difficult, resulting in different dialects. A great example of this is actually France and Quebec. Quebec was completely disconnected from France and as a result they speak who entirely different versions of what was the same French. | aff90297-3886-4ffc-a6a5-c9aa42584d6e |
2g37k4 | How did the U.S manage to (mostly) eliminate the intense corruption common at various points in the 19th century? | Well I'm no expert on it, but my personal theory, derived after a grueling 30 second debate with myself, states that "when democracy works correctly corruption is stamped out by the people". Thomas Jefferson said, and I'm paraphrasing slightly, "There are two boxes with which to change the way a governing body works. The ballot box and the cartridge box." (The cartridge box being basically an ammo pouch)
Thus: if you don't like that your gov't is corrupt, vote someone else into office who won't be corrupt. If they won't leave, shoot them. Or thereabouts.
But that's just my theory.
Side note: this is (IMO) the most important reason for the second amendment. Otherwise someone could abuse the power bestowed upon them by the people by signing hundreds of tyrannical executive orders superseding congress while simultaneously working to disarm the people, ultimately making their rise to tyranny smooth sailing. Checks and balances are needed in the US gov't. The second amendment keeps all those checks and balances in place.
P.S. the above scenario is actually happening.
Hope that helped somewhat?
Edit: Grammar fixes | 9b683be1-bd9c-4328-8dbb-73553c9fba68 |
oyq9j | Why do I lose all of my tabs when Chrome crashes even though each tab is a separate process? | I have had issues with the youtube tabs crashing the entire chrome as well.
The issue is that while each tab has its own process, they're all tied to the parent "Chrome" window process. Some bugs/crashes are so severe that they cause the main process to crash, which results in every tab going down with it.
Thankfully, Chrome is pretty good about crash recovery and usually saves tabs. | 3445dd58-fce6-4473-a973-61ffbcc75f53 |
2mo68f | How incorrectly typing in a website address takes you to those random proxy sites that advertise random things. | There's two things that can happen. First, someone may have bought the mistyped domain and put up a bunch of ads on the page, just for that case. Second, and far more annoying is that your ISP may be directing you there to get some extra profit. If you ask for a web site that doesn't exist, they're supposed to return a "doesn't exist" message. Instead, a lot of places say "sure it exists- it's the ad-filled page over here" | 723a122b-893e-458e-a1d6-56d8eb924f56 |
60oty3 | how are competitive eaters able to eat so much? | They typically "train" for 1-2 weeks before a competition by eating a lot of low calorie food to stretch their stomach, they will eat things like oatmeal and watermelon. They also drink a lot of water.
This training also helps them get over the sick feeling you get when you're too full and helps them learn to control their gag reflex.
I think there is probably a certain amount of "natural talent" involved too. Some people can just eat more than others.
I read about a competitive eater who said she only competes around 6-8 times a year so she has plenty of the rest of her year to maintain a more healthy diet. | 76e32345-2895-46f0-aad1-26c3d8f17037 |
6dvgy7 | Lost City of Atlantis | Atlantis is mentioned in two of Plato's works, Timaeus and Critias, and serves as a hubristic enemy to Plato's ideal of a perfect state. Plato's perfect state defeats Atlantis, thus proving its superiority and soon after, the gods submerge Atlantis in the sea as punishment.
Most historians and scholars dismiss Atlantis as pure fiction, entirely made up by Plato, however others have searched for possible kingdoms that Plato might have drawn inspiration from. One of the most convincing locations is Santorini, which was almost entirely sunk by a volcanic eruption. | 1c5e32ff-0a10-458e-89d0-6958ca4425e4 |
354rkj | Why do people have to wipe their butts but animals don't? | I know the answer to this from the last time I saw it posted.. Animals prolapse their cinnamon star when pooping, which means the poopy part retracts right back in so no mess! | 7c8b70ad-531e-4216-bcb0-5f9b881ab132 |
364v9j | How does soap clean stuff? | Soap acts as an emulsifier. An emulsifier is an agent that allows the mixture of oil and water. So the dirty oils on your skin mix with the water and it is washed off. | 3cfb182b-9097-44d1-a1d2-256c3efc043a |
7e1wqr | If I lift a pile of book and carry it towards another table, is work being done on the books? | Yes- not from any force in the vertical direction unless you move the pile upwards.
The work done comes from the force x the direction of movement- meaning when you move the books horizontally work is done. | f5683e48-7cca-49fe-84a6-b5c212e0cb6d |
2ap33h | What would happen if the US heavily taxed the wealthy? | The flaw in this logic is that you have to understand what happens with the money of people in the top tax brackets. People in the top tax brackets usually reinvest that money so that they can receive larger gains from that money, instead of sitting it in an account when they have no intentions of spending all of it.
So, if (for example) I make $10 million a year, I may decide to use the first million for my regular personal expenses (say: house payment, food, travel, whatever), basically my living money. With the other money, I would want to put it into mutual funds, stocks, investments in startups, etc, so that I can earn more money off of that income.
What happens with that money is it gets put into new small investments, or further research and development in certain industries. This helps the overall economy quite a bit.
Alternatively, if I were taxed at 70% on the income earned about the initial $1 million, I would only be left with $2.7 million to put into those types of investments. This severely stifles the market's ability to grow. It was demonstrated in the U.S. during the 50s-80s when our progressive tax system did increase to those levels. At one point the top tax bracket was taxed at 94%...
**Disclaimer:** I was simplifying the numbers here to make things easier to visualize and because there's not much difference between comparing our current tax brackets as opposed to comparing a 0% system. Just assume that I was giving an example where I didn't pay any taxes at all, vs paying 70% on all income above $1 million. | 05e8862b-cf86-4e5b-8bc6-edcfd102f136 |
2y9cqt | Why is pizza in Northeast USA so much better than the rest of the country? | _URL_0_
If you look at the map, and know that pizza is a dish that originates in a certain boot-shaped country in the south of Europe, I think you'll find it easy to understand. | cc2ca412-1c4a-4cf4-bdf9-2328a700927a |
2f3oxn | Why are the bellies of starving children always heavily swollen? | It's a disease called Kwashiorkor, which is caused by a deficiency in protein intake. Sufferers are getting enough calories, but usually almost entirely in the form of carbohydrates.
_URL_0_ | 335ec526-fbbf-4d48-bcff-ff9eb0161622 |
1zvw81 | How does a laser speed gun work to measure a car's speed? | Light moves fast. Really, really, fast. But it still has a measurable speed, so as long as your timer is quick enough all you need to do is fire a laser at something and start counting until the moment the reflected laser light comes back.
Because we know the speed of light is a constant, by counting the (very tiny) amount of time between when we fired the laser and when we get the reflection, we know how far away something is.
So that's how a laser measures *distance*. How does it measure speed?
Well it's the same idea, only instead of firing a single beam of laser light it fires lots and lots of very short pulses. Each of those will reflect off the car and reflect back, and so we can calculate the distance the car was when each one reflects back. All that's then required is to calculate how quickly that distance decreases and that's the speed of the car. | 64c0776d-1f9d-4612-bcf9-bc4439e7d988 |
13yn5v | PC Gaming Jargon. | FXAA and MSAA anti-alias the graphics in a game, removing the jagged edges which exist in 3D graphics.
MSAA tells the graphics card to render the graphics at twice the size as required (e.g. if your monitor is 1920x1080 it renders at 3840x2160) then scales that image down, reducing the appearance of jagged edges.
FXAA basically just blurs the image very slightly.
Both make the graphics look less jagged, but MSAA does it better whilst needing more GPU power and FXAA does it less well but with less GPU overhead.
Anisotropoic Filtering basically improves the quality of the textures in the game by changing the way they're rendered, which compares to bilinear/trilinear filtering which just blurs the textures slightly.
Ambient Occlusion is a way of rendering light sources in a more realistic manner than is otherwise used.
Tessellation breaks the rendering down into smaller chunks, which means instead of rendering the whole thing in one burst, your card will do it in specific sections.
If you want games to look great, enable MSAA, SSAO and Anisotropoic Filtering. For faster speed, MSAA and Tessellation. | 17c5bf32-135b-49dc-8ee9-9c4f85aca388 |
3ensj6 | If police officers are not required to tell us when they are undercover, what stops all police offers from just wearing normal clothes and always being undercover? | Why would they?
Clearly marked police presence is a crime deterrent. Very few police activities involve being sneaky and doing undercover stuff (though that's what you see on TV and the movies). A lot of what police do, like helping people, really isn't possible if you don't know who they are. | 62791511-6f20-417a-a8e4-d25db802b4f0 |
6auxfp | Does our vision have a limit? | Can you see galaxies however many light years away? Sure.
You don't really see distance. You see the light particles contacting the back of your retina. So if there's light bouncing off of the wall on the opposite side of the hallway and its been in existence long enough for the light to reach your retinas, you'll see the light. If not... you won't.
Where vision breaks down with distance is the loss of focus and refraction as more light particles bounce and scatter the farther away you are.
Source: I wear glasses. | a69a6084-f005-4739-b960-8da8327db7b5 |
6phpsp | why do files when you change their format gets either corrupted or oftentimes changes into a different and oftentimes readable file format. | It's not so much that *changing the format* corrupts it (because the data remains unchanged). All changing the extension does is change what program your computer is going to open the file with. If you switch something to .txt, it's going to try and open it in Notepad, which can only read plain-text files.
Now if the data within the file is stored in plain-text, Notepad will probably be able to read it. But if it's not, it'll will become gibberish like you saw. | 63fb86a3-96ba-405b-8043-589b404345f2 |
599f5d | Why do we get skin tags when we're older? | At the risk of sounding young, what are skin tags? | d18edd40-4023-4880-9bda-a8c0b5d6a66e |
152oy3 | Why do magazines have pictures that cover their name/title? | Magazines know that people who really care about one particular magazine will get a subscription to it; so the cover is all about trying to influence someone at newsstands to make an impulse purchase of that particular issue and that that decision-making is largely based on who/what is on the cover. The color, the sexiness of the cover model, and/or the celebrity on the cover all play a huge role in influencing someone to buy that issue. | ad62ceee-ec21-48dc-9578-a1e02c1c9f9c |
4tl4rw | When a device needs multiple batteries, why do they always have to face different directions to each other? | The design of the battery holder is cheaper that way. Ultimately, the batteries always need to be end to end + near the - on the next battery. By requiring that one row faces one way and the other row the other way, one side of the battery holder can be made with a simple metal plate to connect the two halves and the output from the entire thing is at the ends of the two batteries at the other side.
If they were all facing the same direction, they would need a wire going from one end to the other to connect the two halves and would need a second wire for the other side of the output again going the whole length of it.
So the answer is opposite directions keeps the + on one row near the - on the other, which means they don't need big long wires to connect them, saving money. | be2b535f-3642-4d45-8e6b-0cf00e772b1b |
2ceeqq | Why do people fear autism? | No one is afraid of it in a classic sense.
It's like any other abnormalities, everyone wants their child to be normal. It can cause serious lasting personal issues unless treated early and properly.
I'm not a afraid of sheep but i don't want my son to be born with a sheep's head | b2ac7e3f-ddac-4879-a529-25dcc11e4c39 |
2l5h9a | Why is it that when you swat a fly with your hand, it either appears to be completely unharmed or it dies/becomes seriously injured? | So you swat a fly and you're wondering why its either:
Unharmed, injured or dead? What the fuck other options are there? What would you expect to happen? | 4b4658ba-1a6d-4cd0-a6fd-c7c0cbc7c680 |
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