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2378sa | Why do UK cinemas have advanced screenings instead of just releasing the film? | To get people talking and blogging (etc.) about it, and gauge the audience response. Advanced screening audiences are generally a mix of reviewers and self-selected fans of the movie franchise who are already excited about it, or at least are in the target audience. That's the two groups of people most likely to tell others about the movie.
^^Hello ^^to ^^Jason ^^Isaacs. | b188e5d1-dd62-4628-8ba7-1e1c96d54bc6 |
8as39a | Where does the dead bacteria go once you've sanitized it? | Anything that's dead is very quickly gobbled up by another living thing, such as other bacteria. When you sanitize something and then leave it exposed to the air, other bacteria from the air and the surroundings will start growing on it, using the dead bacteria as food.
This is why hand washing is so much more effective than hand sanitizer. The sanitizer kills the bacteria, but it's all just sitting there on your hands still. Washing, even though it doesn't kill the bacteria, physically removes them and whatever grime or skin oils were on your hands, feeding the bacteria, so less of them can grow. It's like washing dishes versus baking them in the oven. Washing doesn't sanitize, but it removes all the old food. Enough heat will sanitize, but it won't remove what the bacteria were eating, so they can grow to dangerous numbers.
Every surface, all the time, is covered in bacteria. We are not all dead because most bacteria can't cause disease, and disease-causing bacteria often need a certain amount of them to be present in order to infect people. | 288e5ef8-edc4-44e2-8f78-f605f037cb0e |
21z4df | Why Netflix would have to secure the rights to a certain song on a show they've begun streaming, when they're already paying for the show itself. | You're trying to apply common sense to music licensing.
Yes, they got the clearance for the music to be on broadcast TV. Yes, they got the clearance for it to be on the DVDs. But if those rights specifically excluded Internet streaming, then they have to change the song, unless they negotiate that clearance. And, obviously, it's cheaper to use different music. | c6eaaec4-d818-42ee-a4ca-ae3d9915bfe2 |
2olyv4 | Why does the Greek language still use Greek script? | Greece predated Rome as a center of learning by many centuries. The Romans looked up to Greece as a place of culture.
Educated Romans including Julius Caesar learned Greek and spoke it with their educated friends, and young Romans went on tours in the Greek east the same that wealthy young Americans would later take the "Grand Tour" in Europe.
Even after the Romans took over, Latin was never very widespread in the Greek heartlands. The [Jireček Line](_URL_0_) roughly divides the areas of Latin and Greek speech in antiquity. South and east of there, you could get by as a Latin-speaker, but it would have been a foreign language to most common people.
The Roman empire was partitioned after 285 AD, with co-emperors in the East and West (sometimes as many as four senior and junior partners). The Western (predominantly Latin-speaking) empire grew weaker as Germanic tribes and other people invaded. 476 AD is usually given as the date that the Western empire "fell", because the warlord Odoacer deposed the last emperor (a young boy) and declined to take the title of emperor for himself.
The eastern empire, based at Constantinople, was administered in Latin for a few hundred years, but as the Latin-speaking areas began to be whittled away, the empire became predominantly Greek. That is why it's usually known as the Byzantine Empire (Byzantium was an older name for Constantinople) rather than the Eastern Roman Empire after about 600 A.D.
So to summarize, the Romans thought of Greece as a cultural forefather and preferred to learn Greek rather than force the Greeks to adopt Latin, and the Greek component of the empire lasted almost 1000 years longer than the Latin component did. | ae8c4910-8064-41a4-a90a-d940faafb651 |
1vprzw | How does my iPod Touch know what's plugged into it? | There's additional data sent over the headphone jack other than just audio data. A signal identifying the type of device is likely in there. | 217bea07-4e57-4f6f-9d90-279169293fb1 |
7w9oeq | How does after-hours stock trading work? How can you trade when the market's not open? | There are smaller trading platforms and you can trade among others on that platform, rather than the whole market as a whole. So if your brokerage uses one particular platform you might only be able to trade with 5 or 10% of potential traders. The smaller supply/demand pool means more volatility. | 12300b2f-a767-4af2-a5c9-28f19cc890bb |
347242 | What's the point of martial law, and when would it be enforced? | Martial Law is, essentially, the suspension of due process. Police are authorized to do whatever is necessary to keep the peace or to address whatever situation is found, and government, specifically the executive branch, would be allowed to basically make up new rules as they see fit.
Hopefully martial law is *never* enforced, because it's pretty terrible. The only real conceivable time it might be enforced in a modern democracy would be in the case of some disaster so major it threatens the very existence of the country: a massive invasion by a foreign power, some sort of global natural disaster...
But even then, you would hope not, because when your democracy declares martial law it's not really a democracy anymore. | a6eb9ab8-0e8d-469d-a5b0-2e91de89b40f |
k8kmt | Counting Numbers and Numbers | Subtracting is a measure of change. So subtracting the page numbers tells you how many times the page number changed, so you have to add 1 to get the total number of pages. | 804179a6-c73c-4550-b91e-01b339c467b6 |
3p4mkv | if picking at scabs and zits is bad, what explains the irresistible urge to do it? | The reason we have such a nagging urge is because our skin's nerves tell our brain that something is attached to us. The brain interprets this stimuli and responds by urging our hand to scratch it or get it off. The benefit to this response is that potentially harmful parasites or insects can latch on to our skin and transmit disease, so it's better to be safe than sorry. | 5979fb42-4786-4ea1-8619-1251412fa533 |
xph0q | How do magnets break harddrives? | Take a piece of iron and rub it across a magnet a couple of times. You'll notice that it becomes magnetic as well. This is called "ferromagnetism."
Now imagine that you have billions of pieces of iron, each one tiny. Some are magnetized and some aren't. That's how your hard drive stores data. The 1s and 0s that make up digital data are essentially tiny chunks of ferromagnetic material on the disk in the hard drive.
If you take a magnet and wipe it across the hard drive, it will magnetize all the little pieces of ferromagnetic material, erasing any information they previously held. | 7bcfca52-3ab1-453b-959b-fb3bcce3b872 |
3z0wtx | Why did it take up until now (this year), for something like Obergefell v. Hodges (National Gay Marriage) to happen? Why didn't a gay couple try this years ago or throughout history? | It has been tried before, but they didn't win their cases. It took until now for the opinions of the supreme court to change.
Here is a case from 1970: _URL_0_
And from 1986:
_URL_1_ | 68f402b4-61c5-4ce8-921d-5d4349b73552 |
2fis08 | How do supermarket celebrity tabloids work? | So here's the deal, if you're a big time celebrity, basically everywhere you go, photographers are going to follow you around to get pictures of you and then sell these pictures to the tabloids. The courts have ruled this is legal because celebrities are "public figures" and thus don't have the same privacy rights and ownership of their image as normal people do.
Also, yes, these magazines are all owned by the same media-entertainment conglomerates that own the reputable newspapers and the TV and radio channels and the reputable magazines and lots of the Internet too.
They're just gossip. People like to gossip, and gossip about people that everyone is familiar with (celebrities) is something you can sell to the public at large.
The way they profit is through their sales of magazines, but this isn't nearly as big a money-maker as the ads, which is where the real money is. The advertisements can be all kinds of things, but using market research, they determine just who is buying the magazines (which is usually women) and the advertisements will be for things the companies think women want to buy. | d04c11b9-af97-437d-97ab-ec4980b07538 |
936y43 | Why with certain neurological diseases do hands/fingers and feet tend tu curl up? | This is caused by lack muscle control, which could mean complete relaxation or over-use of muscles.
A neutral/relaxed hand position has the fingers slightly curled (you can test this yourself).
So if your muscles can’t get signals from the brain, curling would be the result of them being relaxed. Also, if the muscles that curl and un-curl the fingers were both trying to work at once, this might happen. Fine control of the hands requires coordination of one set of muscles tensing and the opposing muscles relaxing in order to open the hands, and especially to open them in a precise way. | ef3ff4a1-91bd-4bf7-9974-8b72a538eb9b |
6go5zz | How does a Tornado kill you? | As the great sage and eminent drunkard Ron White put it, it's not THAT the wind is blowing, it's WHAT the wind is blowing.
Your body will become part of a random, high speed debris field. Something WILL intersect with you. | f2805059-d48b-41d0-889e-d229666cf409 |
5mahsf | Why do some men experience a greater degree of penis shrinkage than others after exercise or due to the (cold) weather? | Genetics. Our bodies adapted to live in some pretty hostile regions over the ages of humanity. Some bodies bear the honor of having genetics where their base penile nerve has a very strong autonomic sensory recoil. It's a protection tactic. Some people's ancestors REALLY had to worry about their penis falling off from frostbite. Retraction is a way to keep everything able to stay as warm as possible. | b2488c3f-cdb7-485d-ba2f-ed63ee045c07 |
46uizj | If kids are normally taller than their parents, does that mean the human population is steadily growing in average height? | Yes but no. Children are often taller than their parents because people get shorter as they age due to spinal cartilage wearing down. The average height of the population is increasing over time, but that's because height is seen as an attractive feature and more likely to be passed to future generations. | 10cf3900-dd67-4a64-a2ad-6d36b33f533f |
3d3y5w | Why do news anchors and radio personalities talk with a strange, fake voice? | Someone asked this a while ago and I typed up this epic answer, which I'll copy and paste for you now.
Simplest reason: Newscasters have a special voice because if they just talked like everyone else, their broadcasts wouldn't have that distinct "newscasty" feeling. It's a convention.
But where does the convention come from? One scholar who I happen to have just found out about (your timing is brilliant) says it's due to something called the Effort Code. The Effort Code basically says "The more my voice goes up and down, the more I want you to pay attention." It shows up in many parts of language -- when we want to emphasize a part of a sentence, we make the pitch of our voice change quickly, so the other person knows we want them to focus on that part. The newscaster style of speaking is characterized by a wider range of pitches than normal speech, so that you pay attention to all of it.
Now how on earth did "changing the pitch a lot" come to be associated with "pay attention!"? It comes from the idea that when you talk, your pitch is supposed to rise and fall to and from certain pitches. In fast or imprecise speech, you don't quite reach these "targets", and your pitch range ends up being not as wide. So we started associating steep rises and falls of pitch with putting in more effort, which we associated with a higher level of importance, and the rest is history.
Source: Phonology of Tone and Intonation, by Carlos Gussenhoven | 178a6e7f-f342-433a-a0e0-b3e672e96d45 |
5ut4bl | How is it that people (general, public, politicians, scientists) deny climate change? | There really are two parts to the global warming model: First that CO2 (and other gasses) directly cause warming through the greenhouse effect. Second, through positive feedbacks, this warming is magnified several times to reach dangerous amounts of warming. The first part really is uncontroversial, it's easily tested through experiments, and looks to be around 0.5-1.5 C per doubling of CO2. The second part, however, is *not* well tested, it's based on theory and statistical models and is required to reach the dangerous levels scientists warn us of.
Skeptical scientists aren't convinced of the second part of the theory for a couple reasons: First, systems dominated by positive feedbacks are *always* unstable. Positive feedbacks are like a marble on top of a hill, a little nudge and the marble ends up at the bottom. Second, the models and statistics used to develop the theory are far from ironclad evidence of anything. The models require scientists to make guesses and assumptions about different parameters and how they relate to each other, does a have a linear or exponential relationship with b? Does c have a strong or a weak impact on d? Relatively small changes in those assumptions and guesses lead to big changes in the outcome of the model. (Note that this isn't limited to climate science. Macroeconomics, for example, has much the same problem and there is robust debate in the field about which assumptions are correct.)
For politicians and the general public, a lot of the issue isn't with climate change itself, it's with the policies that are being pushed to deal with climate change. However, the rhetoric around the issue has become "Since climate change is happening, we must do < policy > to deal with it." But, there's always going to be legitimate debate over policy choices because there are always tradeoffs required: If we stopped using fossil fuels completely energy would become much more expensive and that would hurt people. So, there's legitimate debate over whether the downsides of different policies balance out their benefits.
However, it's hard to explain cost benefit analysis over multiple policies with decades' long timeframes, *especially* when the costs and benefits are very uncertain. (Remember what I said about the problems with macroeconomic models?) So, politicians being politicians, some of them took the easy way out and instead of arguing policy simply argue against climate change as an easy proxy: If climate change = policy, then naturally !climate change = !policy, amiright? | 7a63d7d3-6b17-4ff8-96e1-94368c49eb16 |
6d71gu | The sharp divide in America between the Christian message (love and peace for all, blessed are the meek) and the Christian practice (hatred of immigrants, ultra-wealthy preachers)? | People are often hypocrites, no matter what they profess to believe in. Christians no more so than anyone else.
FWIW, ultra-wealthy preachers are an exception, most clergy live modestly. Any many Christian organizations and believers actively work to support immigrants. | 057f76f4-fedc-431c-8f0c-325c74f1fc2a |
qly3x | The arguments now being made AGAINST Kony 2012/Invisible Children | Toppling a leader does not resolve the underlying issue (and has the potential to lead to greater turmoil - known evil of Kony vs. unknown evil of the next person to step up).
EDIT: For [this link](_URL_0_) to Visible Children. | 12f92ee4-4169-47c5-b29f-7c9e546876ab |
2e7ftb | How does dumping a bucket of water on your head help the ALS cause? | It's a combination awareness/donation drive.
"Dude, why the hell did you just dump a bucket of icewater on your head!?"
"For ALS."
"What's ALS?"
"The reason Steven Hawking's paralyzed."
"Oh, that thing. Yeah, that sucks."
"Yes it does. Wanna donate for a cure? If not, you've gotta dump a bucket on your head too."
"Well, OK. Sounds like a good cause." | 398025d9-c3b1-413f-a4d7-200cd16d5707 |
25zjn1 | How does something like "one meter," "one foot," or "one second" become precisely standardized around the world? | Metric measurements are defined very specifically by the [International System of Units.](_URL_0_) Before they were founded, many countries had organisations for the purpose of managing measurements. They often did this by having an object that would be the basis of that measurement (eg. a rod that would be exactly a metre long, or a weight that was exactly a kilogram) that would be distributed to other countries that agreed to adopt those measurements.
That said, often many countries didn't have standardised measures (eg. the French foot was longer than the English foot, part of the reason people believed Napoleon to be short).
These days, the International System of Units defines their [base units](_URL_1_) which can be used to derive other measurements based on measurable events. For example, a metre is the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1 299792458th of a second, & a second is how long it takes for a caesium 133 atom to transition between 2 particular states 9192631770 times. Since these are very precise events, it means that a metre will be the same length all over the world. | 1e6a2354-850f-4b39-95b8-c0c67f3e0563 |
15mctq | Why can young kids practically abuse my dog and he doesn't give a shit, but as soon as an adult looks at him wrong he barks? | domestic dogs are social animals, like humans, because we have selectively bred the most social dogs over the course of thousands of years.
However, this selection has been so successful that dogs are not just social with themselves, they also include humans in that social sphere. This means that when a dog sees a child, it doesn't see a small adult human, it sees a puppy in human form. The dog can recognise that a child is a baby human, not just one that happens to be small.
NOW, the dog will automatically place itself somewhere in what it sees as the house hierarchy. This is where how the dog is raised becomes really important. If the dog is raised with love and kindness and given treats and not treated badly then he will see his family like a cooperative pack. The dog will generally be friendly, loyal, happy and confident and they will generally let kids get away with the same goofiness that puppies get away with.
On the other hand, if the dog is raised with violence, anger and intimidation, you will find an anxious animal that sees its family as a competitive pack ... and children better watch themselves.
TL;DR - a dog in a loving family will be tolerant of kids and protective of the property, a dog raised in an abusive family is more likely to snap or be afraid of strangers.
source - pure anecdote from the best dog trainer I ever met | e28ac356-4e02-4de2-a431-f6203c9a353e |
6pt8o0 | Why is internet (a direct connection) only fast enough to stream a few TV shows at once when digital TV antennas can receive hundreds simultaneously? | Just for terminology correction. The antenna does NOT receive and do anything with the channels it hears. IT just funnels the signal into a tuner.
The tuner, which is on a set top box or integrated into your TV can generally only deal with processing and figuring out a single tv channel at a time, not hundreds.
IT's like saying there is a hundred website on the internet you could potentially go to. However, your web browser has only one window, so you can only see one at a time. Thats how an antenna and tuner work. | 497d4e55-4a83-4ff9-976b-1e166803026b |
2e3zwg | Scientifically, what is happening in the body when we experience a "mini heart attack" after missing a step or any other "close call" in avoiding a potential injury? | It's a hormone called adrenaline. Your adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys, release it. It activates your body's fight-or-flight response, which elevates your heart rate, opens up your muscular blood vessels, and in general does a bunch of things to prepare you to fight of a potential enemy or run far, far away. | e073b236-09a5-48a5-8901-a377de1f9dda |
2kfk6e | Why can I exhale for so much longer than I can hold my breath? | The feeling of suffocation doesn't come from lack of oxygen; it actually comes from saturation of carbon dioxide in your blood. Your body needs to breathe *out* as much as it needs to breathe *in*, so a long constant exhale mitigates both the powerful breathing stimulus and more than half of the actual physical effects of simply holding one's breath. | 985d41d8-c5c3-45eb-8552-847b408c0805 |
37yefd | Why do different parts of my body smell different when I sweat? | If I remember correctly, it depends on the type of sweat duct, most only release sweat, which is mostly water and therefore much less smelly, but others, especially in areas like the armpits, also release pheromones and other things that smell. | 9af3563e-69bc-41fa-809a-b19db8a50a65 |
2ydrey | What is the difference between Alternative Rock and "regular" rock music? | IMO, it has to do with how the band is promoted, where they play, and largely what their "message" might be. Counter-culture is a big aspect, and even mainstream bands can be put in this genre. | ef0730c7-dd64-4b28-9849-a9f042bdf01d |
3ys3de | why do we have capsaicin receptors on our buttholes? | > I mean I understand evolving with capsaicin receptors in our mouth because we consume food that orifice
You didn't evolve receptors to detect capsaicin. Capsaicin evolved because it irritates existing receptors in your tissues, making mammals less likely to eat the plant or its seeds. That the receptors exist in other tissues than your mouth is immaterial to the evolution of the substance, they're in your mouth too and that's good enough for the benefit to plants.
The plants that typically have capsaicin are typically distributed by birds, who are not sensitive to the substance and are less likely to destroy the seeds. | 487dd2f4-e052-4bd2-8da2-d3b9e013dbd7 |
1ue1u3 | When I buy a domain, who am I buying it from? | When you buy a domain name that doesn't previously exist, you're not buying it *from* anyone. You're paying a registrar for the right to create the domain name and have it registered to you as an individual or company.
It's not like all the possible domains are sitting in a server just waiting for someone to choose them, any more than all possible English sentences are sitting in a library waiting for someone to write them. | c8af3722-7502-47a8-9249-56f3b32e1f48 |
2qc11o | Why are penises and vaginas considered more taboo in movies then boobs? | Sex is taboo. Penises and vaginas are actual sex organs. Just like butts, which aren't censored either, nipples/boobs are only sexual objects according to circumstance and culture. | 8e32dad5-bbcc-4a1c-b229-0a88b61f6d7c |
3tkiej | If heat rises, why does it get colder the higher up you go? | The atmosphere thins out and cannot hold the heat in. In your house, your roof acts like an impermeable atmosphere. That rule would apply even if your house was in the sky, so long as you had the heat on. | 8b019d3f-e77c-4c95-9911-9c893e52beee |
2gfrpn | Is it legal to take someone off of life support? | It is important to understand that when a person is on life support, it is usually because they are unconscious, in a coma, and will probably never wake up.
When that happens, a guardian is appointed that makes decisions as if they were the person who was on life support. When that guardian decides to end life support, it is as if the person unplugged themselves.
Many people, myself included, have made it clear to my family and friends what I would want if that kind of situation arises. If I go into a coma, there are three people who may speak for me and all of them have the right to terminate my life support if they are told there is no chance of me waking up.
Edit- Just to be clear:
If some random person walks in and turns off someones life support and they die, that person may be tried for murder. In the US at least, if a person gets into this situation and has nobody available to be appointed for them, the state will often send a social worker to evaluate and make the decision. This is usually done after an exhaustive effort to find a family member. | 8d115eed-6868-4c09-9025-716b9146fce6 |
6kqpw1 | Why has the number of scientific breakthroughs and discoveries seemingly decreased compared to the recent past where they were made every several years or so and credited to individuals? | There is only so much out there to be discovered, and the easy things already have been discovered.
It's relatively easy to point a telescope at the sky and discover that Jupiter has moons. It's relatively hard to send probes to the moons and discover what exactly they are all made of. Projects like this nowadays require larger groups of people contributing compared to "simpler" discoveries in the past.
A lot of the "single person" discoveries of the past have some white-washing to them as well. We may remember one person as the discoverer, when in reality there are multiple others who contributed and are forgotten. For instance, Calculus. Newton gets all the credit, but [Leibniz probably had a lot to do with things as well](_URL_1_). Or [Rosalind and others who helped figure out the structure of DNA and were not mentioned on the Nobel prize](_URL_3_).
Or take Einstein and relativity. To most people, Einstein gets all the credit, but people like [Poncaire, and Lorentz](_URL_2_) laid a lot of the groundwork.
It's also worth noting, and maybe I should have lead with this, that it's not really clear that scientific progress IS slowing down. You can see some discussion of this [here](_URL_0_).
It's always easier to look back on things and say "Aha! *That* was a giant important discovery!" Easier to fail to see the importance of things as they happen. | 730d2538-9ee0-4479-9459-70d63d9f6447 |
1xie5w | What would happen to the economy if everyone magically acquired lots of money? | This has actually been one of the biggest disagreements in economics over the course of the 20th century, so it's a great question.
For a long time, everybody thought that "wealth is made of money", so a lot of effort was put into building national piles of gold and ensuring money was backed by piles of gold.
On that theory, if you gave everybody piles of money, everybody could buy more stuff!
But then when our global wealth outstripped all the gold in the world, some problems became clear. We were richer than our money would allow! Limiting the money caused economic stagnation and depression.
So then we realised that "money doesn't matter". It's the real assets and our productivity that make our wealth and income, and all the money just helps it flow around and get stored more easily. So sophisticated!
In this new world, if you give everybody money it doesn't change the real assets or how we work, so our wealth and income just gets split among more dollars - inflation.
Now, in the actual real world, people are a bit complicated, and when you drop ten thousand dollars in their bank account, they do different things than they would have. They might buy a tv or pay down their mortgage or go to a bar.
This means that in the long term, people wouldn't get richer if everybody got $10k. Our total money can't be worth more than our real world wealth - assets, knowledge, productive potential. But in the short term, it can really change our behaviour and do things like bring consumption temporarily forward in time for a short term "boost". | 0fd1e45d-2896-4165-a709-31586177ef99 |
89n8n6 | why it’s good for your heart to get pumping while exercising but it’s not good when your heart beats fast from anxiety or stress. | It IS good when your heart beats faster from anxiety or stress. That is your body’s way of trying to help you prepare for and respond to stressful situations. Now PROLONGED stress and anxiety can have negative effects on all sorts of body functions (I.e. causing high blood pressure).
An interesting topic related to this is adverse childhood experiences (aces) which kinda dives into the long term effects of a consistent fight or flight response on the body. I linked to the ted talk about it below.
_URL_0_ | 07e368ae-ee05-43ac-9fcd-c0bf2897a775 |
30eptj | The difference between isosmotic and isotonic. | Isotonic is the value in which a solution must have the same values as the system it is being placed in so as to not cause a ph or salinity change. For instance isotonic water has a 0.09% (sic) salinity so that it can be administered to human bodies without adverse reactions, swelling or dehydration. A solution that is isomolal is one that has 1 molar substance in 1Molar solvent ie water. Im not familiar with the term isosmotic but i would gander that it is an equilibrium through a permeable barrier with two seperate fluid types ie cytoplasm and blood plasma. | eb146318-2c8c-4d60-b24e-bab4357c7cb1 |
3fce4t | Why do people face the DJ? | "Raves" have changed drastically in the last few years. With EDM being as big as it is, they have changed from the DJ just being there for music to where the DJ is now like the lead singer of a band. All the focus is on him/her.
When I first got into the scene it was like you're describing it. Everybody just danced where they wanted, with whoever they wanted and the DJ just chilled in the corner throwing on track after track keeping the night going. It was ethereal.
Now shows are just about dbags trying to get to the front and crowds mindlessly jumping around. | ea8e96c0-3496-44da-8fa3-2d6a52c9128b |
5ybab2 | Why do certain things "grow on you"? | Well, when you have more time to consider all the qualities of something, you have time to pick out the things you do like.
And if you are mostly focused on the things you dislike about something, eventually you will learn to grow accustomed to these qualities and even reason them into being able to deal with them.
This ends up leaving mostly things you can appreciate to, well, appreciate.
Another example would be something that isn't necessarily something that makes a negative impression at first. Sometimes things are challenging to negotiate/learn/experience. A particularly difficult book, an experimental song, a particularly strong-tasting dish, a challenging idea: all of these are things that can grow on you but are difficult to fully enjoy at first not because they are perceived as bad or less-than-good by you. | f3891d1e-a94c-4fea-a8e2-ba4122eabbd4 |
1xy8z8 | Why have dentists never told me to use mouthwash? | The concern is that since mouthwash is easier to use, you will use it *instead* of brushing and flossing.
With good brushing and flossing, mouthwash isn't that necessary, and mouthwash without brushing and flossing doesn't help much. | c112c7f8-20c2-409d-ba24-e3e2fcbd7e78 |
83emip | why a helicopter can’t drop me on the top of Mount Everest | Because it's too high, at those altitudes the helicopters engine just cannot produce enough power , the blades also just cannot produce enough thrust , the higher the plane or helicopter flies the less thrust and power it has its called density altitude, and it's due to the fact that the higher you go the more spred out air particles become due to the fall in pressure
So if the air is thin it's sucking in less air to the motor which produces less power and the blades have less air to push against so less thrust | 781b9678-be41-4de5-a166-069c667d3317 |
2cbxws | Why do corn ears grow silk on them, and what is the purpose of it? | Corn silks are the silky tassels running the length of an ear of corn. They serve as styles or tubes for collecting the pollen that fertilizes each seed. | 8960ee3e-6fff-4106-ab60-f6d407eb850d |
3fw5nt | Why is Linux not very popular? | It is *extremely* popular. The Reddit server that sent you this block of text is a linux machine. Linux utterly dominates every market in the computer world *except for desktops*. And that is only because linux wasn't totally usable as a desktop until fairly recently, Ubuntu wasn't 100% usable and stable until around 2010, and that means that Windows and MacOS have inertia. That said, the numbers for linux desktop adoption have been rising steadily for the last decade, with a sharp uptick very recently because of the sudden availability of good games. | 40227773-0f0c-4a66-b434-63834c13db60 |
5x45kn | Why is the blue ink very common for writing, but when it comes to printing, black ink is extremely common? | Blue ink is common for writing, at least partially to differentiate wet ink signatures from photocopies.
Black ink is very low cost, because everybody wants the same color. Blue ink is problematic, as Dodger Blue isn't the same as Prussian Blue. | 1e7f48f3-0bda-4237-a727-b3f1cd8c1d96 |
6keo24 | How do passwords obtained from iBanking tokens have a timeout, when they are not wirelessly connected to the internet in real time? | They are based on an algorithm that uses a secret pre agreed key and the clock in the device. After some time has elapsed the code you have no longer matches the current time. | 25a64a08-60f8-45ba-b7ed-ce3b4a2611f1 |
k9ggy | Obama's new job plan | Any major speech like this would get a lot of coverage because the economy is a big issue right now. The country had zero job growth in the month of August so we're hanging on the cusp of dipping into another recession. I copied these points from [here](_URL_0_), if I have more time I will flesh them out. Obama's goal was to come up with a plan that would appeal to both parties so the plan would get passed. That's why you heard him say several times, "Republicans already suggested this" or "Elements of this part of the plan already work in such and such Republican state." That also means that Democrats will be disappointed that the plan isn't progressive enough.
So basically, no one will be super happy with Obama's suggestions about the bill because neither party got everything they wanted, but as long as the plan passes, the economy will be better off. This plan still has to be debated in both houses of Congress (where lots of amendments will be made), passed by both houses of Congress, and then signed by President Obama to become law.
1) Payroll tax cut. The central item is the payroll tax extension and expansion. Let's explain that. Normally, you would pay 6.2 percent of your wages in taxes. In 2011, you paid only 4.2 percent, thanks to a compromise reached in December. But in 2012, according to the president's plan, you would pay a tax on only 3.2 percent of your wages. That comes out to nearly a 50 percent tax cut on work, worth about $1,500 per year for a typical worker.
2) Incentives to hire. The president: "Small businesses will get a tax cut if they hire new workers or raise workers' wages. It's a fine idea, but not revolutionary." Passed in 2010, the HIRE Act already gave tax breaks to businesses who hired previously unemployed workers
3) A tax credit to hire the long-term unemployed. The president: "Pass this jobs bill, and companies will get a $4,000 tax credit if they hire anyone who has spent more than six months looking for a job."
4) Extending unemployment insurance for another year.
5) A tax credit to hire veterans. The president: "Pass this jobs bill, and companies will get extra tax credits if they hire America's veterans."
6) Housing help. The president: "To help responsible homeowners, we're going to work with Federal housing agencies to help more people refinance their mortgages at interest rates that are now near 4% -- a step that can put more than $2,000 a year in a family's pocket, and give a lift to an economy still burdened by the drop in housing prices."
7) Deficit Reduction through tax reform and spending reductions that include Medicare and Medicaid: The president: "In addition to the trillion dollars of spending cuts I've already signed into law, it's a balanced plan that would reduce the deficit by making additional spending cuts; by making modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid; and by reforming our tax code in a way that asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share. What's more, the spending cuts wouldn't happen so abruptly that they'd be a drag on our economy, or prevent us from helping small business and middle-class families get back on their feet right away." | 17004c7d-d4f2-4755-9377-66aa58aab0f0 |
4is5ox | Did those mentioned in the Panama Papers perform illegal actions? | Depends on the country's laws, but the whole point was that they were exploiting loopholes. As in, they followed the letter of the law, but not the spirit. The money they made was intended to be taxed and used in other ways probably, but through a proper but legitimate misunderstanding of the law, they were able to do this. | ecafb624-af99-4c21-83e8-22f1c1601eaa |
shv7u | Blackholes | Black holes are actually just really massive objects. they work for the same reason that when you throw something up in the air, it comes back to the ground.
It's all about gravity. Gravity works like this: the bigger something is, the more attractive force it has on another thing.
SO, say you're standing on the ground, and you throw a golf ball as high as you can in the air. it goes up, comes down, and that's great. Now you take something heavier than that, like a baseball and throw it as high as you can. it goes up, but a little less high than the golf ball, and then comes back down. Now you throw a bowling ball, something way heavier (technically way more massive), it goes up but hardly as much as either of the other two less massive items, and then comes back down.
Important detail - this same affect would happen if you were standing on the earth and kept throwing the same golf ball up in the air each time, but every time you threw it you increased the mass of the earth a little bit (therefore increasing the strength of the gravity on the golf ball). With each throw the golf ball would go a little less high until eventually it would be as difficult as throwing a bowling ball up.
Light sort of works in this way as particles, just little balls of "light". (it's actually technically made up of waves and particles at the same time, but its easier to just think of it as particles.)
So if you have a light gun, also known as a laser, it's just a gun that's continuously shooting a ton of particles in a straight line. if you shoot a laser straight up in the air, it's still affected by gravity, but light particles (called photons) move incredibly fast, faster than anything else in the universe that we know of.
A black hole happens when enough matter collects in one spot so that the gravity that exists there is so strong that if you were to shoot a laser while standing on the surface of this incredibly massive object, the photons would all go up a little bit and come straight back down just like the golf ball.
If you're wondering why photons can be affected by gravity (it's light right? it doesn't have mass), you can look to Einstein for that answer. His equation, E=MC^2 shows that E (energy) is equal to M (mass) times the constant speed of light (C) Squared. Therefore you can always translate energy into mass, and mass back into energy, and mass always effects energy, and energy always effects mass.
So to answer your next questions:
What happens when something gets pulled in?
It simply gets added to the central object, or black hole, and increases its mass and therefore its gravitational strength.
Do they move?
Yes, just like any other physical object in the universe, black holes are made of matter, and have mass, and therefore are affected by anything else that has mass. Side note - it is believed that there is a black hole at the center of our galaxy, and that massive object is the thing holding all the other stars (including ours) in orbit around the center, creating the Milky Way as we know it.
Can they be destroyed?
Technically no, you can't destroy matter as far as we know, you can only change its form. So you can't send a massive nuke into a black hole and cause it to cease to exist. Theoretically if you could find a way to dissipate the mass at the center of a black hole and spread it out, you could in essence "undo" the black hole itself, however this is physically impossible (as far as we know) because of the sheer size and mass of black holes. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light, and light itself gets caught by black holes so I don't think destroying one would be likely, although that's a question to ask a qualified astrophysicist, not just an amateur astronomer (yours truly).
Hope that helps! | b7c0eec5-0527-49ec-aecf-09e80182f9f1 |
3sgoqa | Why did US decide to go for 'Presidential Republic' system instead of 'Parliamentary Republic' system ? | 1) When the US left Great Britain, the monarch still had much more power than they do now, the transition to the modern constitutional monarchy was far from complete. By leaving when they did, and then codifying it in a written constitution, they missed the ensuing European development.
2) Constitutionally, Congress is the most powerful branch of government. There has been a great deal of academic debate over the "Imperial Presidency", the extent that exists, the extent a modern President has more power than they might have been intended, the way a President can make more of less power due to being concentrated in one person with all the symbolism they get to hold, etc. | 2e46e6ae-8c88-498b-963e-936ed71f927d |
1bln88 | the physical difference between a video camera and a still camera. Also, how do the hybrids differ from the single task models? | There's very little difference between the two (for digital cameras). Many still photo cameras can also take video and vice versa. The key is that to do video, the camera must be capable of moving images from the sensor to memory rapidly, and must have the memory capacity to store many frames.
Some hybrids (still cameras that also shoot video) can only take relatively low frame rates, such as 15 frames per second. And some video cameras have better optics (larger lenses, etc.). But there is lots of variation. | 8dc7251b-97bd-42d5-8235-e650f219a8a4 |
6easf3 | What is the origin of the "http://" before a website address, what is its purpose, and why is Wikipedia's "https://" a significant difference? | Back in the early days of the internet, you had to directly connect from computer to computer, and know the computer's exact address. As the internet grew, some computers started acting as servers that you could access through various protocols. You can tell a protocol is being used because there is a :// between the protocol and whatever comes after it.
One protocol is HTTP, which stands for hypertext transfer protocol. When you connect to a server such as Reddit with HTTP, your computer is saying, "Hay, Reddit server, I'd like a webpage pls." Reddit replies, "k here's your webpage thx" and delivers the usual text/images/video/etc. that we usually expect from web pages.
There are other protocols out there besides HTTP. For example, FTP, or file-transfer protocol, is used to directly download/upload files. So the owner of Reddit might decide that instead of browsing to the Reddit home page, they'll use an FTP program to access Reddit's files. Instead of seeing a pretty web page, they'll see a group of folders much like the file explorer on your home computer. And then they can manipulate those files in much the same way, such as by replacing all the site images with lolcats.
So let's say you see a cool link on Reddit to the Mooby's Swag Shop website, and while on that website you see a REALLY COOL HAT! Of course, you must buy it. So you enter your credit card info, and click send. However, you fail to notice that Mooby doesn't know what he's doing and he let you send your credit card number over the HTTP protocol. This is unfortunate for you, because your next store neighbor Nosy Nancy has been watching all the information you transfer over HTTP, and as soon as she sees your credit card number she logs onto Amazon and goes on the shopping spree of her life. Whoops!
What Mooby should have done is change his Swag Shop to HTTPS protocol, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. With this protocol, the computer you contact gives you an encoder to scramble up your message, and it can only be decoded with the decoder kept secret on the other end (it uses a nifty mathematical trick where the encoder can encode the message, but it can't actually decode the message back without the decoder!) This way, when you type in your credit card number and hit "send," your computer encrypts it up, sends it to the Swag Shop, and then the Swag Shop decodes it. If Nosy Nancy listens in, all she gets is gibberish - she does not get your credit card!
It used to be the case that HTTPS was a much slower protocol than HTTP, so it was only ever used for credit cards. But nowadays the speed has caught up, and the criminals have gotten smarter. Many of the big companies have raised concerns about even your logins for websites being snagged by the Nosy Nancys of the world, since they could theoretically snag your username and password off Reddit and try it on every major bank's website (since at least some people will use the same combo for both.) So in recent years Google, Firefox, and Apple have started pushing website owners to switch any page with a login screen over to HTTPS (with an eventual role of getting the entire internet to switch to HTTPS).
Also, it's important to note that there are different levels of HTTPS. If you look to the left of the HTTPS on a given web page in your browser, you'll see a lock icon. Clicking on that icon tells you what level of security it has. The most basic level of security is, "This website is encrypted, but we have no idea if it's legit." The highest level of security is, "This is a real world business that's registered in a specific country and has submitted all its paperwork to prove it's the real deal."
For example, on this website, I can click on that icon and view the certificate to see that _URL_0_ is owned by a company called Reddit Inc., and has been verified to be the real Reddit by DigiCert Inc., but I can't see the real world owner of the company. On the Bank of America website, I can see that it's the real Bank of America site and that it's owned by the physical Bank of America company based out of Chicago, Illinois. Why is this important? Well, if you're on someone's blog, just being encrypted is good enough, you don't really need to trust the person who owns the blog. But if you're directly depositing all your paychecks into a bank account, you want to make sure you have a ton of trust that the website you do your banking on is actually owned by your bank, and not a scammer trying to get your bank account number.
TL;DR: HTTP lets you view webpages. HTTPS lets you view webpages securely. HTTP is becoming outdated, and you can expect to see most major sites switch to HTTPS over the next couple of years. | b29feca3-5317-4330-9b86-ce5785cdcac4 |
2t4cyj | You know that feeling when you're drinking something, and there's like a pause almost i'm not sure how to put it, a throat-cramp of sorts when it's going down your throat? Sorry if nobody knows what i'm talking about | Yes. It hurts. I think it's an air bubble so there's not room for the liquid and the bubble so it feels like a trying to swallow big lump. | d2be0a20-0e49-49c6-ba81-0ad412d52d3f |
lwgjp | How do these 8/16/32/64k-demos work? how
can you put all that information and animation in
such a small file? | I'm ignorant of the general computery stuff involved, but it's like this: the file doesn't actually contain the stuff which is to be shown. It contains HOW to MAKE the stuff which is to be shown.
ELI5 analogy time. Say I want to have an awesome home video of me driving across the country. I could get a video camera, set it up on my dashboard, and then drive across the country. I would then have an awesome home video of driving across the country.
Say, though, I'm too lazy for that. Instead, I print out a google maps and give that to some other sucker, make him set up a video camera, and then drive across the country. At the end of it, I have an awesome home video of driving across the country.
These files = google maps directions. Some other poor sucker = graphics processor. | bb9465de-ad4a-42be-9595-9be3f9e6f9c0 |
3ey27o | how did generals in ancient battles send commands readily and accurately I the battles? | Quite simple: they didn't.
Commands could be given by pre-arranged signals, via drums, bugles, flags, etc. You could send a courier to deliver orders to a commander, or something similar, but getting commands delivered in a timely accurate fashion was a major issue for a lot of history. There are multiple battles and even while campaigns where failures of communication had disastrous consequences. | 24170fb8-8b91-4069-9727-3a9880a263ef |
4zxp1a | The green frog-guy meme I keep seeing from r/The_Donald in /All | It is Donald Trump photoshopped together with the meme [Pepe](_URL_0_).
No one really has any idea why Pepe got popular in the first place, it originated on 4chan years ago and quite frankly is probably the most long lived meme in meme history. As for what it means... no one knows.
As for why it is on there, well, r/the_Donald is known to shitpost and meme a lot, while I personally do not necessarily support what they are pushing for, I have to admit, their memes are on point.
And it seems that the r/the_Donald mods have announced it is "Pepe Weekend." | eac8bb57-b0f2-4dcc-be2c-4e9b430919d0 |
3u3m8h | Since the Earth is so hospitable to life, then why isn't there multiple origins of life/ multiple coexisting trees of life? | The conditions on Earth at present are very conducive for sustaining life, but not for life to originate.
The theory of life that is well accepted is primary abiogenesis and then biogenesis ever since. The first molecules of life originated from non living substances then these living molecules started self replicating and evolving.
The most important condition required for primary abiogenesis was a reducing atmosphere. Or an atmosphere that does not have much oxygen which will oxidize the organic molecules.
Once the planktons and other small celled photosynthetic organisms evolved, they produced oxygen as a by product and slowly the atmosphere became an oxidizing atmosphere.
Once atmosphere became oxidizing, the original condition in which self replicating aggregates formed was changed. Hence now new life cannot form from non living substances when exposed to the atmosphere. But living organisms can arise from existing living organisms. | 0541918f-d6e6-466a-b259-5d5f5f875adf |
6jtwvm | How do multi-room audio systems sync music? | Imagine that you want to tell a lot of people in different places in the world to say something out loud at the exact same time.
"Exactly at noon, start the speech."
Networked audio systems work kind of the same. The control unit sends out a message to all of the sound producing devices saying "this is what I expect you to do for three seconds, starting at exactly 12:13.42." And during those three seconds, it sends another message saying "this is what I expect you to do for three seconds, starting at exactly 12:13.45". And so on.
It's really not much more difficult than that. if you can sync the time between devices (and you can easily, as /u/bazmonkey stated) you can make them work together.
My example is a bit flawed because I don't really know if they send three seconds of data in one go, but it doesn't really matter if they send half a second or ten seconds worth of information, the principle is the same. | 9dfbb49d-f3d6-409c-a773-421381310ea5 |
722lpi | How come ICBMs can’t be shot down? Are they undetectable or are they just going to fast? | They can be shot down... sometimes. Test under ideal conditions are ok-ish at shooting down ICBMs but it's never been done during an actually attack so we don't really know how effective missile interception would be when it mattered.
Missiles are small and moving very fast. Intercepting a missile is like trying to shoot a bullet out of the air with another bullet. | 57282db7-0913-49d1-97bd-35ca7be483c3 |
qdovj | How do they make unique signals for car alarm/lock remotes | The "key" emits a series of timed pulses. The car recognizes only one pattern. | 976c0856-dec1-4429-b5ed-55f199eafd58 |
75bfac | How do you safely get rid of nuclear waste? | Put it in strong barrels, put barrels in a cave that isn't near a water source. Hope the barrels don't leak for many many many many many many years. | 3a8d5108-0285-4101-ae4a-5a061ff96dcf |
50mtkj | What is the biological purpose of blue eyes? | Pro tip: not every trait we have had a purpose. There's no rule staring that just because something evolved, it's useful. Blue eyes are merely a mutation that wasn't detrimental enough to be selected against. | 822ad742-30e7-4366-af38-ac12971d424c |
z6rqi | how to best use my credit card to build credit. | Unless you have bad credit and are trying to turn it around as quickly as possible or if you are trying to eek out those last 5 points to put you over 800, the only thing you really need to worry about is make sure you aren't late paying your card. It won't really hurt (or help) to carry a balance or to not carry one. Also, it doesn't matter in the slightest how you pay your bill as long as it is credited on your account before the due date. | 4822a012-c42a-4274-998c-e805efe05753 |
45fs3d | Why does practically every website still have trouble handling high traffic volumes even when they're expecting it? | Servers have a finite amount of processing power. The only way to increase your capacity is to get MORE servers or upgrade the hardware of existing servers. This is an expensive proposition and takes work to do. It doesn't make much sense unless you're expecting to have to handle this sort of volume a lot. | f1dec487-10dc-4a37-bfa2-411e40da2062 |
2v2d02 | How are male gorillas so strong? | Animals with low-protein diets can still get bulky...this has to do with total caloric intake and the way individual species process and synthesize nutrients.
Different species are able to synthesize different nutrients themselves through cellular processes. Nutrients include carbohydrates, fats, proteins (or their building blocks, amino acids), and vitamins. This means instead of the body having to "eat" the protein containing a particular amino acid, the cell itself can make that amnio acid. This of course requires energy and work by the cell. Conversely, "a nutrient is said to be "essential" if it must be obtained from an external source, either because the organism cannot synthesize it or produces insufficient quantities". So there are two kinds of nutrients, those that we can make through our own cellular processes, and those we must obtain through our diet.
[Proteins](_URL_1_) are made up of different [amnio acids](_URL_3_). A good analogy is that a protein is like a train, and the individual cars are amnio-acids. Different combinations of cars, in different orders give different trains. In the same way, different amnio-acids, in different combinations give different kinds of proteins. Digestion, be it in animals or humans, results in the breakdown proteins into their amnio acid components. The intestine absorbs the individual amnio acids and the body ships these amnio acids to the cells. Cellular processes rearrange the amnio acids in new ways to make new proteins that are used by the animal or human for various bodily functions. So think of the cell as the railyard where new trains (proteins) are made but reassembling the cars (amnio-acids) into new and different combinations. "Proteins perform a vast array of functions within living organisms, including catalyzing metabolic reactions, replicating DNA, responding to stimuli, and transporting molecules from one location to another."
There are [nine essential amino acids](_URL_2_) that humans must consume in their diet because our cells cannot make them through cellular processes. The rest we can make ourselves in our cells. This means that our diet must meet these minimum essential amnio acids requirements in order for us to survive. We cannot make the nine, we must consume the nine. The nine are found in all kinds of foods, from plants to meat which is why humans can have such a wide variety of diets (e.g. vegetarian, vegan, allergen-accomidating) and still function normally.
However, other animals have different essential nutritional requirements. For example, [cats, unlike humans, cannot synthesize the amino acid taurine so it must be added to their diet](_URL_0_). Some species are able to synthesize Vitamin C and do not need to consume it in their diet (e.g. mice), whereas humans cannot synthesize Vitamin C and thus are required to consume it in our diet. These differences in essential nutrient intake creates different dietary requirements for different species and results in different types of foods being consumed preferentially by different species. This is why a gorilla is able to survive and thrive just on plant material, whereas we are required to consume a more varied diet. They obtain all their unique essential nutrients from their herbivore diet.
So other species have different combinations of essential nutrients in order to sustain a balanced and healthy diet. This makes perfect sense, if all species had the exact same requirements there would be a lot of competition for the same food resources. By diversifying what is essential to consume, there is less competition. Remember that it is costly for the body to produce its own nutrients through cellular processes. It is much easier to just consume an amnio acid than produce it. Thus, if a particular amino acid or nutrient is abundant and easily available in a species environment it makes more sense for natural selection to select against the cell's producing that nutrient, and for the individual to simply consume it. For example, most primates - including humans - do not synthesize vitamin C. This makes perfect sense since vitamin C is easily acquired through our collective diets by consuming fruit. Fruit is abundant resource in most primate's environments thus vitamin C would not be hard to acquire. So each species is balancing what they need to eat, and what they can produce themselves, along with what is available to them in their environment. | 1db7c61a-7d7d-4948-a1a7-f6e1586dd83b |
615h69 | Current transfer | According to [Wikipedia](_URL_0_):
"Jump start procedures are usually found in the vehicle owner's manual. The recommended sequence of connections is intended to reduce the chance of accidentally shorting the good battery or igniting hydrogen gas."
Using Google search terms: `jump start battery sequence` the top result is a Google Books of a textbook called *Automotive Electricity and Electronics* by Al Santini which states:
"Make the final connection on the discharged battery's side of the circuit. This final connection will produce a spark. This spark should not occur anywhere near the charged battery because the spark might cause the battery to explode."
So basically the concern is the last connection producing a spark, which you want to keep far far far away from either battery, especially the charged one. | 9e19c011-f47f-46ac-ad3c-72e5c0433c82 |
1yrlba | How do you use bobby pins? | Coming from someone who used to have issues myself i'll give you my best knowledge.
Usinig the pins is pretty simple. All you have to to is take a section of hair you want to pin ad lie it flat in the direction you want it to go. Gather it into a point and plunge the pin as close to your scalp as possible. Place the pin over the point where you gathered it together. If the pin bulges you've put too much hair in it and it won't hold. Similarly not enough hair won't keep the style.
Sometimes you'll have to use more than just one to really hold things in place. Depending on your hair type, length and thickness a simply pinning bangs back could take several. I have thick, naturally curly hair it takes me at least two to pin the left side of my hair behind my ear.
Keep trying to find the right balance of hair to pin and the metal can and does warp, avoiding over stuffing them helps hold your style in. All you need to do is experiment to find the looks you like best. Keep practicing and it will get easier.
You can pin a small section underneath a large portion of hair. Simply pick up the section you want to lay over the pinned section, get as close to your scalp as you can and tightly pin another smaller section once you have your hair laying the way you want it. Flop your unpinned hair over where you can no longer see the pins to create the look of one layer under another.
There's a ton more and I could go on forever but I don't have a good camera at the moment to do tutorials. You tube should be useful. Or I could do some for you when my ipad comes in later this week.
Sorry if this wasn't as helpful as I hope it is, I'm waiting on the nyquil to kick in and feeling a little loopy from my terrible sinusitis I'm fighting.
You won't like everything you try but keep experimenting and have fun. | 43dcbfb2-25d4-4970-86f4-219fc2f9ca8b |
9128la | Is our moon moving away from Earth? If so, what's causing it? | The moon recedes from Earth at about 4 centimeters per year. In other words, Apollo 11 would need to travel about 2 meters (6.5 feet) farther if it were launched today.
It has to do with tides. Earth's gravity pulls on the moon, but the moon's gravity also pulls on the earth. So the moon doesn't really orbit the earth: both bodies orbit around a center of mass. This center happens to be inside the earth, but since it's not directly in the middle of the planet, Earth "bulges" as it rotates. This makes the oceans slosh around, which is what tides are. It also has the effect of slowing down the rotations of both the earth and the moon: the moon has already slowed down so much that it's "locked" with Earth...it still rotates, but at the same rate it orbits, so we always see the same side. This is happening to Earth too, but at a much slower rate.
The other effect of this tidal dance is that the moon is pulling so hard that it's pulling itself away from Earth...again, very, very slowly. It'll be a couple hundred million years before it will no longer be able to cover the sun during an eclipse. It will never break free of its orbit around Earth, however...the sun will have expanded to engulf both our planet and our moon long before then. | f066f1e4-68f9-436d-976e-3eabb9d141a9 |
2b75cq | Airport management | This varies from airport to airport, and from country to country.
In the UK, airports are all privately owned. It's down to the individual airport's management to work out a business plan, but as you suspected, this will include charging airlines to use the airport, and charging shops to operate in the airport.
At larger airports, the shops will be the biggest source of revenue. A common trick used by Ryanair (Irish low-cost airline which operates mainly out of the UK) was to go to a very small airport with few, if any, jet movements. They'd say to the airport management "we'd like to operate 6 flights a week out of your airport. Each of these will have up to 180 passengers, who are each paying for car parking and using your shops. That's a lot of extra revenue for you, so if you want that recent you'll not charge us any fees for using your nearly-dead airport, and you'll arrange cheap fuel for us. That will get your airport known, so other airlines may move in soon too."
As for gates and terminals, airlines have to appoint a "handling agent" to do this for them. Most airports have a choice of handling agents, but typically there'll be one for airlines and one or two for private flights. Smaller airports might only have one handling agent, and very small ones may handle the aircraft themselves. Check out Servisair, one of the biggest handling agents in the world, for an example. | ee2c019f-79dd-4aeb-a6d2-415884b39f51 |
27s8jw | What's going on with Netflix and Verizon? | Verizon has a lot of pipes. Netflix traffic uses a large portion of those pipes, because HD video. [A US Appeals Court](_URL_0_) recently ruled that Verizon can charge Netflix more because it uses more pipes, which makes a lot of tech people upset, because it allows ISPs (the guys with the pipes) to decide what content is worth having on the internet. Verizon went into negotiations with Netflix for Netflix to pay them more, and during the negotiations, used mafia-like tactics to tank Netflix's speed to Verizon customers, as if to demonstrate what they could do to Netflix if they wanted. Netflix capitulated to Verizon's demands for more money, but retaliated by putting a message on Verizon Netflix subscriber's screens telling them every time that Verizon's network was slow enough to reduce video quality. Verizon got butthurt over this and sent a mean letter to Netflix threatening to sue for defamation. | 1620c03f-9432-4511-a276-8baf6de12b86 |
3iol4d | How is all the debris in space and other stuff orbiting earth not a bigger problem? | Its all super far apart and would take more resources than the objects are worth to collect them and orbital decay HAS already been calculated. | acca0ce4-acb7-4fa1-ab9b-770aafd09e2b |
2d5b3q | Why do we have to cook things with a low flame for a long time. Why not a high flame for a short amount of time? | Large flame means high temperature. High temperature means the outer layer of food might burn before the inside has been heated up.
Low temperature takes more time, but gives you much more even cooking. | 9e4e6d9f-ec2c-4962-8c1a-c2d83f77c057 |
1y1aq8 | Why do people like Warren Buffet continue to try and make as much money as possible, when they have so much that they could never spend it all? | When you control massive wealth you can do things nobody else can do. You get called by Presidents and Potentates when they need help or want your opinion. You get invited to the most interesting secret meetings where the strings that move the world are pulled. You get a seat behind the curtain.
Being an active investor is what keeps you in that seat. If you put your money into a passive investment vehicle and ignored it, people would ignore **you**. Only if you're seen to be willing and able to move the kind of capital that changes markets do you get to be a real "insider".
Buffet loves being an insider (who wouldn't?)
He's also been doing it his entire life. Clearly he loves it on some fundamental level. He is probably really intrigued by what he sees happening over the very long term and wants to remain in a decision-making role as he watches to see if his theories about how the world works are validated or not. | 44400a95-f18b-41d6-ad28-2058ce4ec109 |
2mo5zy | why do they even allow people's cars to go over 140 mph? | Consumers demand acceleration. That requires a powerful engine.
Consumers demand fuel economy. That requires a tall gear ratio that keeps a car at speed at low engine RPM, meaning it's consuming less fuel.
What happens when you combine that powerful engine at HIGH RPM with that tall gear meant for low RPM at highway speeds?
You can always install a governor on the engine to limit the speed, but it's not illegal to make a fast car, and it's not illegal to go fast, it's only illegal to exceed the speed limit on public roads. You can go as fast as you want on private property. | 81dad44e-8292-4eca-a72f-1f38f2e0b364 |
72axwv | How come you can only get bigger muscles on a calorie surplus? | Building muscles is like building a house, you need to build it out of something.
By exercising you are giving your cells orders to build a building.
Proteins are like the bricks for the building, the cells can just stack em together and make a building.
You can turn other things into bricks, but that takes time and effort, it might be easier to just stack it in a corner or burn it right now. Those would be other sources of calories.
If you're are starting out as fat, this would be like having piles of clay you stacked in a corner, send the right orders and you can turn that into muscle proteins.
Eventually you'll run out of fat and need to get more stuff to turn in muscle.
Thus you'll need to eat more stuff than you burn, otherwise there's nothing left over to turn into muscle. | 694923b9-c73b-4eef-8066-87dda0c7d0ec |
60904w | Why do we experience emotions that we consciously recognize as illogical or ridiculous? | Think of it this way. Our body has pain receptors that cause a feeling that 90% of humans hate and can't stand. Pain. They do this so that we realize we need to stop doing something that causes our bodies injury. A defense mechanism, if you will. Our brains eventually become conditioned to avoid things that cause pain because of those pain receptors. So illogical/ridiculous/ ideas or emotions or feelings are kind of similar, we have them so that we know the difference between sound reasoning and illogical reasoning, the difference between ridiculous response and proportional response. To help us better survive the world. | 6a1267fc-9ac7-458b-9132-1aeb0d6d2dd3 |
1ph953 | if there is no sound in space, is there no sound in the shuttle once at a certain point above earth? Tl;dr how does sound in space work? | Sound is vibration in a fluid ( gas or liquid). In space there is no air, so sound cannot be created. In space shuttles, there is an air tank so the astronauts can breathe, and this allows them to talk. | 76cd8184-ee53-40f8-8631-f7a7252bcd76 |
1ilo7t | What makes something louder? | Sound is a "vibration" of the air. The frequency of the vibration (how many times it vibrates per second) gives you the pitch of the sound. The amplitude of the vibration (how big it vibrates) gives you loudness.
To make sound with a speaker, there is a membrane that vibrates according to an electric signal. So let's say it vibrates 2000 times per second (this means it pushes and pulls, then repeats, 2000 times per second). If it pushes 1/8th of an inch, you'll get a certain sound. But if you turn up the volume, the signal is stronger and the speaker will push more, like half an inch. Even if it still pushes 2000 times per second (so it's the same pitch), it now moves more air with each vibration, which results in a louder sound. | 3d5827f3-0ac8-4e72-ac75-1a4e0a4e6b14 |
2bp6o2 | why do people scream when they are in pain? | To warn others in the area of danger, and/or to call for help.
Which such basic instincts as these, think of stone-age hunters in the long grass, hunting gazelle and trying to avoid tigers. | 2bab4985-7bfa-4c6b-bf98-ba9d6e24ff01 |
7nsy1r | Wattage, voltage, amperage, and resistance | Compare it to a bus, with one elektron being a bus and the amount of people in the bus the energy that an elektron carries.
Amperage would be the amount of busses that are driving. Voltage the amount of people per bus, wattage the total amount of people transported and resistance the amount of people a bus would lose going through an area.
In more technical terms, Amperage is the amount of elektrons going through an area/point on a wire. Voltage the amount of energy that an elektron carries, Wattage the total amount of energy going through a point on a wire and resistance the amount of energy an elektron loses going through a part of a wire. | d2b1e368-d876-43a6-bc06-d0bf1176adc1 |
1iw1se | How gravity works | We don't know why, but we think we do know how.
Imagine a corridor that curves gently around a corner. If you walk in a straight line down the corridor, eventually you will come in contact with the wall. If you keep walking, you will be pushed along the curved wall, making you walk in a curved path.
Gravity works a bit like that. All heavy objects, like planets, cause the space (actually, spacetime, but that's beyond an ELI5 expanation) around them to bend. Things normally move in straight lines, but when something passes through the bent space around the heavy object, instead of flying straight past, it is forced to follow the bent path, just as you are forced to follow the bend in the corridor.
This applies to all objects in the universe that have mass, but the effect is very very tiny for small things like you and me. It's only really noticeable for very heavy things like stars and planets. | ee7cc5bb-092d-4212-bd6b-ac6e15a8166e |
2iyzn1 | How do archaeologists know who a certain skeleton in a tomb is? | You know how we place tombstones on graves with inscriptions on them? They did that back in ancient times as well. Only the inscriptions were on and inside the tombs. | 9fed0682-66bb-44a6-9b14-b5b964815687 |
2e9mdf | How data from my doctor visits and prescriptions reach the macro level to improve treatments for other people in the future. | This is currently being done in the health care industry. Health insurers have the information of what illness you have, what treatments you have received, how often you go back to be retreated, and what other symptoms you develop. This is independent of where you get treatment.
From millions of data points they can determine which treatments work best and which work poorly.
Insurance carriers have a financial incentive to identify the most cost effective treatment as they are footing the bill for treatments that do not work.
A well Known example this was in 2004 when Merck pulled Vioxx from the market based upon a study from Kaiser Permanente. - a hospital / insurance system.
"The study, an analysis of a database of 1.4 million Kaiser Permanente members, found that those who took Vioxx were more likely to suffer a heart attack or sudden cardiac death than those who took Celebrex, Vioxx's main rival. "
Since that time most major insurance companies, health care manufacturers s and hospital systems have created departments to study this type of data.
_URL_0_ | 20da842f-2ac4-485c-84a0-eb1f8b832a24 |
3xrql9 | What's the difference between Muslim and Islamic? | Islam is the religion and Islamic means related to Islam.
Muslims are worshipers of the Islam religion
So Islam would be similar to Christianity as Muslim would be similar to Christian | 784a97f7-ed9d-42ea-a844-c027bf64bf7e |
1sj2xz | What is an app/website doing when frozen? Is it reading through lines of code? | Generally it's a software issue. It's not "reading" the lines of code persay, but it is stuck in some sort of time-consuming process and neglecting to respond to your input in a timely manner.
The typical solution is to write code that allows these long-running tasks to be separated from the tasks that handle input and update the display, so that the application continues to respond properly when things get slow. Usually this solution is accompanied by a progress bar or spinner. However, it's not practical to do this for every single operation a program does. Sometimes, a freeze happens because the developer didn't think a particular operation would ever take a very long time, so they didn't separate it like I explained earlier.
It could be hardware-related sometimes, if a hardware glitch causes an unexpected condition that the software can't handle. | 16909967-b0c1-465b-9d19-1fca09cc9215 |
2yqxmu | How does SIDS work? | Typically, there is not anything obviously wrong physiologically with an infant who died of SIDS. That's basically part of the definition - SIDS is the diagnosis when no one can figure out a reason for the infant to have died.
The exact cause is still unknown and there might be a variety of causes. There has been a lot of speculation.
One reasonable speculation that I have read is that the part of the brain that tells you to move when you aren't getting enough oxygen isn't working properly in children who die of SIDS, so, for example, they end up with their face pressed against the mattress while sleeping, don't get enough oxygen, but don't change position the way another infant would, and smother as a result. This ties in fairly well with the fact that SIDS almost never occurs in children more than a year old - the idea being that the part of the brain in question either develops fully in that time or its function is taken over by another part of the brain.
Again, that's just a speculation that has been put forward by some members of the medical community, there is no conclusive evidence that is the actual cause of SIDS. The actual cause (or causes) is still unknown, although risk factors have been identified. | f704ce9b-1245-48e8-826e-d30e17b93506 |
1w12j4 | How do sweets create cavities? | Sweets contain glucose and the bacteria in your mouth digest the glucose and produce acid. The acid eats through the enamel and then you get cavities. | 98cf406f-596b-4a24-b385-ed807edf3ef1 |
8vaos4 | How do long term space projects (i.e. James Webb Telescope) that take decades, deal with technological advancement implementation within the time-frame of their deployment? | A bit of both.
The key component of some things, like the lenses themselves, are pretty much "locked in" at some point. We know we can build them today, and we know we'll find a better way to build them when we actually start manufacturing them. So, how they will actually be made is up in the air but we know the size and precision needed.
The next thing is that no one wants to send the newest tech into orbit - first generation things tend to break, and so when scientists discover some lighter than air nanomaterial, it's not about to make it into a satellite a week later.
But in 20 years, they've definitely improved a lot. Plans would have been generally drawn up, knowing that computers would change over time, and individual components would be tested and swapped out if they can work. Each time, someone would make sure that the weight, format, reliability, and everything else will keep working as planned. | 267f6dae-c353-4330-9161-5d32733ebc11 |
40ec9g | Why are there so many anti-depressants on the market that aren't superior to placebos and why do doctors prescribe them? | It would be wrong to answer a medical question, but this isn't a medical question--it's a statistical question. "Proven ineffective" is a very difficult standard, which hasn't been met here. The key concept is "statistical power," which is basically the ability of a study to find a difference if it exists. This is crucial, because "failed to find a difference" is only meaningful if the study was pretty powerful. For instance, the second study on maprotiline used 58 patients, split three ways, and was complicated by a high dropout rate. Statistically, that makes it worthless.
This is one reason why PubMed, although a vital resource to researchers, is not very helpful to most people. It tends to spit out thousands of studies in a gigantic list, without any sense of which ones matter. The studies we care about most are high-quality systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials, which pool together thousands of patients and ideally smooth out variations in study designs. Systematic reviews have confirmed that standard antidepressants do beat placebo.
It's true that antidepressants tend to offer only a modest initial advantage over placebo, at least for milder cases. With continued dosing, that gulf widens dramatically, with standard drugs cutting risk of relapse in half. As for choosing drugs, trial and error is essentially still the only approach we have. There are ongoing efforts to improve this, but research is expensive, difficult, and time-consuming. Existing research only gets you so far.
All that said, it sounds like you don't have a really great therapeutic alliance with your psychiatrist. That's no good. If you feel this way, be clear that you're not satisfied with the amount of information and control you're getting over your care. All too often, doctors never hear what the problem was in the first place. | 018eae67-ae6d-4705-8032-86addfdb7caa |
31p4nu | Why it can take days for electronic bank transfer to show up or ''clear'' into bank accounts? | the banks are using the float to their advantage and ignoring your convenience. | f599bfd6-ded8-4207-b8fb-2a5b24be7988 |
1w0uab | Why is it that ill have a tone in my head and then when I try and hum or sing it, it comes out completely wrong? | There's a chance you're tone deaf, but there's also a chance you'll manage with training. Tone deafness appears to be caused by some fault in the brain (think dyslexia). | 1849d553-23cc-4f38-8493-56bebb43c633 |
5xmb8t | How come almost everyone trusts their government blindly? | Really? Do they? Any time there is an election, people arrive in droves to either keep their party in or vote them out. Even if they get to stay in, there is still a vast number of people who voted against them. Doesn't that imply there is a huge percentage of the population who *don't* trust them?
Also just because you've voted *for* a party, doesn't mean you trust them either! | ead2b7be-d586-43e8-acaf-5d27026af776 |
2irauy | If a high protein and heavy resistance training is the key to putting on muscle, how do horses and other animals do it ? | Grain has a lot of carbs, but it also has an appreciable amount of protein. It's actually not too uncommon for human weightlifters to eat more cabs than protein, as well. Since horses evolved as herbivores, I don't know that they would be able to digest those high protein sources properly.
Also, while they aren't traditional resistance training, a lot of power can be developed by jumping and sprinting. Since horses are really heavy, a lot of muscle is required to do these things. | ba571949-90a3-455f-98e8-981a5eb50c5e |
8u448u | This might be a dumb question but it just started raining, so I started thinking, why does it start raining slow then increase in speed? Like what is happening in the cloud that's different than before, or vice versa if it starts pouring like there's no tomorrow then slows down? | The cloud moves.
First, the cloud's (thinner) edge comes over you, and because it's thinner there's less rain to unload; then the bulk of the cloud, then finally the trailing edge.
Clouds are water vapor suspended in air (and so is fog), and the ability of air to keep water depends on temperature and pressure. Air is always moving up there, and at some point the air that contains a cloud may hit colder air or different pressure air, and the cloud will start unloading.
But it keeps moving; air keeps moving it along.
So, more rain vs. less rain depends on the thickness of the part of the cloud that happens to be passing above you at any point in time. | 647097b3-a568-4d7e-b106-3316e72b27e8 |
5nee4f | How does charcoal mellow whiskey? | It's very similar to a Brita water filter (they use charcoal to absorb unpleasant smelling/tasting chemicals).
Activated charcoal has enormous surface area for its weight, and it's mostly made up of carbon atoms. Carbon adsorbs many materials quite well, but especially other carbon chemicals. Since most of the unpleasant chemicals found in alcohol are carbon based chemicals, charcoal works very well as a filter for distilled alcoholic beverages.
It's popular among penny pinchers to get a similar effect by running cheap vodka through a Brita filter. | 91f31b48-c8ef-452d-9483-b4de02668d94 |
2izunf | How does the information travel through cords to make sound on speakers? | As electrical voltages and currents. If you put a 1 kHz AC current (current that swap directions 1000 times a second) on the wire, it causes the speaker to move at 1 kHz, which causes the air to move at 1 kHz, which makes you hear a 1 kHz tone. To play more complex sounds, you just put a more complex electrical current on the wire that matches the shape of the sound. | 5ddcb761-b5b6-4737-86a1-5fd2751f00d0 |
1o6byi | When I ssh from one computer to another, what is actually happening? | SSH is sort of a "Command/Text" version of Remote Desktop, allowing you to make a tunnel connecting to your computer, and log in to it and run commands.
After both machines connect successfully (after checking keys and identity), the sshd process on the remote computer connects to a new TTy socket, and runs whatever commands it should run (usually runs the login manager so you can connect to it). All standard output from the remote machine is transferred by the SSH server trough the tunnel onto the client and displayed to you, sort of like a terminal emulator. All standard input is sent back the same way.
Of course, since SSH transfers data between the remote and local machine, it can also act to transfer files and webpages (with an SSH tunnel). | 5def15cc-7074-4744-9f2f-f93d84505b5f |
5d0u21 | What happens if an astronaut working on the exterior of the space station happens to lose grip on whatever they're holding on to? | This is why they tether themselves.
If they were untethered and drifted out of reach of the station then not all would be lost, though. Many EVA (extra vehicular activity) suits include small thrusters that the astronaut can use to maneuver around. These could be used to push them back towards the ship.
Alternatively, if desperate, they could throw a tool away from the station which would push them back towards it.
If that fails then another astronaut could be sent to rescue them using a longer tether or conceivably even by taking another craft that was intended for return to the ground (this would depend on the scenario and would be a last option, but it's better than losing someone who could be saved).
Ultimately it's a much more forgiving scenario than falling just out of arm's reach when untethered on the top of a tall building that's under construction. | 01c6c9b4-ea51-40ed-923a-b1dd641ca880 |
4f0qvs | what are the ways in which money can be pumped into the economy (by Govt.)? | Public works projects are a great tool to re-distribute money into the local economy. It uses taxpayer dollars to fund construction projects across the country. It makes the infrastructure strong as well as providing jobs and work experience to the masses. The Hoover Dam was created doing this. The good thing about this too is afterwords the work still stays around. Road improvement, building important public buildings, schools, firehouses, post offices, police stations. | 59c293f8-b198-4a91-917c-abcbbcf2d8b0 |
46hnl4 | If "Ren and Stimpy" was geared towards adults, why was it on Nickelodeon? | Because no 'adult' stations would pick it up, so they cleaned it up (a little) and pitched it as a kids show.
I think the same thing happened with spongebob | a8026967-590f-4239-9168-938d53bac89c |
j5am4 | What Obama Just Said, Explained | "Our government will be spending less"
We should include here that Keynesian economics recommend *increasing* spending in a recession. So while we will be helping lessen our debt, this might not be the best time to do so. | 52078799-ad41-453c-91cb-25563ce6208f |
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