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Why do nursing schools and med school mostly teach treatment based information rather than preventive? | As I was in nursing school so much of our program was treatment based, and very little was talked about prevention, for example so many people have never had a full lab test that shows all functions in the body. With the human body being so complex it feels like we arn’t taking advantage of all of our resources to keep our patients healthy. | Preventative healthcare is taught as part of public health and health promotion. You probably had a short module on that as part of your course but it’s a separate profession. Things like education and environment are more important to preventative health than lab tests. Have a look at Michael Marmots work for more info. | 148 | 114 |
ELI5: How did hydrocarbon lakes (oil and gas) form on Titan if Earths formed from broken down biological material? | Titan is one of Saturn's moons. There are more hydrocarbons on Titan than there is on the earth. All of ours (or so I believe) formed from broken down biological material. How did Titan come to be with so much hydrocarbon material present without ever having life? | Hydrocarbons, especially the simpler ones prevalent on Titan (methane, ethane), can be produced geologically as well. Titan also has a lot of nitrogen in its atmosphere (most of it is nitrogen), and the interaction between simple hydrocarbons, nitrogen, and sunlight/radiation gives rise to more complex hydrocarbons. | 19 | 36 |
ELI5:Why does the sound of a knife/fork screeching on a dinner plate sound so terrible to us humans? | I almost want to cry after having heard it - but why? | The two main theories are:
1) The sound reminds us of the sounds/calls a lot of primates and apes make when they are scared, in stress or alarmed. It could be hardcoded in our DNA to react to this sound with negative emotion, stress and fear
2) The typical frequencies produced are the same that can give rise to resonance in the ear canal, thereby amplifying the sound to unpleasant or even painful levels. | 26 | 52 |
What area of social science do you work in? How did you get to that job/position? | Hello - read the sidebar and I hope this is OK to post! It didn't seem to fit well in r/sociology.
I am wondering if you work in the social sciences, how did you get into your position? What schooling did you go through, what kind of job searching?
I have a BS in Sociology and currently work in Human Resources. While I enjoy what I do, I am curious about what else is available to me. My college professors all said there are so many things you can do with a sociology degree, but I'm having a hard time connecting the dots between my education and real life work! | I spent around 15 years working in educational research and evaluation as part of non-profit institutions. We'd do everything from curriculum development to program evaluation (how well are kids learning from XYZ) to policy analysis (what is the impact of giving teachers bonus pay for high student test scores).
I was a more senior level researcher with a PhD in educational psychology. But our junior researchers often had master's degrees in education, with undergrad degrees in any of the social sciences. We've hired people straight out of undergrad, and the expectation is that they'd get a few years of experience and probably go on to graduate work once they figured out what they were truly interested in.
In the non-education-specific world, there are research outfits like the Public Policy Institute of California that tend to hire economists.
There are also sometimes large university research projects (I recall a fertility project at UCSF) that need junior social scientists for labor-intensive data collection (interviewing families, administering surveys, etc.). For example, if you peruse Stanford University's job postings, you'll often see postings for "social science researcher I" or some similar title. | 12 | 52 |
ELI5: What are surveyors doing when I see them looking through that tripod? | How do they use that to figure what/how they are going to build? | First year surveyor here. The tripods which surveyors use are just devices for holding instruments level. There's many instruments which surveyors use, but the most common would be the total station. This has a telescope on it which is used to sight a target or point, from which the angle and distance to that point can be calculated. Other instruments include; levels which are used for calculating heights, gps systems for positioning and prisms which are used as targets for total stations.
Basically surveyors are using various instruments to find the spatial position of different points on the earth. | 45 | 142 |
[Star Trek] Why the swap between Red and Gold/Yellow Uniforms? | Two part question: Why did the uniform colours change for Command and Security between the Original Series and Next Generation?
Would like to know on two different levels, namely the real-world television-studii answer (i.e. Patrick Stewart didn't like the colour) AND the in universe thought process... what was Starfleets reasoning.
(If this has already been answered, by redditing is rather weak, could someone point me in the right direction.) | Gold, or yellow, was originally chosen because human eyes see yellow faster. It was thought that in a crisis the yellow uniform would "pop" a bit more lending a CO a bit more authority.
As the Federation and Starfleet expanded more and more species came into the fold that either couldn't see the color gold well or confused it with other colors.
Red was chosen because it can be differentiated by a wider number of species and still carries the weight of authority. | 40 | 37 |
How might one go about learning deleuze? | You might want to start with his Dialogues, a collection of short exchanges that gives some good insights into his thought, his article on "Societies of control", and also his books on Nietzsche, Kant, Spinoza and Bergson if you are already familiar with those authors, as Deleuze uses them to expand on his own philosophy. In general, of you want to understand his project, it is good to have some notion of those authors, as well as some Hegel and Marx.
Then, if you want to learn more about his own metaphysical thought, you can read Difference and Repetition and Empirism and Subjectivity.
If you want to learn about his work with Guattari, I'd argue it'd be best to read a little bit of Marx and Freud before delving into Capitalism and Schizophrenia. You can also read their book on Kafka or What is philosophy?
Hope this helps! | 22 | 28 |
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ELI5, What makes stocks rise/fall? | I've been granted stocks by a company I work for, and I really want to know how they work! I understand it's net worth, but there are some things that happen that affect the stock market that seem totally unrelated to me.
Specific stock I'm interested in happens to be a video game company, what would affect that as well? | Stock moves for a lot reasons. Taking some common examples from a gaming company:
* Company specific news - say your example gaming company announce they are developing a new game. That information could affect the price positively or negatively depending on whether people think it is good news or bad. If enough decided it will add value to the shares and try purchase them then the price is driven up, if enough think it will be bad for shares and sell the price will drop. What can seem strange to some people is that stocks can drop even when companies announce large profits.. This is because a lot of assumptions are made by analysts and investors and if what really happens is below what they anticipated it can affect the share price.
* Sector specific news - say Sony announce they have sold 10m more PS4s than people expected. Your gaming company might get a 'bounce' because the market thinks the general gaming market is better than people thought and so your company might be undervalued (given it now has access to 10m customers previously not anticipated)
* General Market news - the wider air of confidence or concern in the general stock-market tends to spread around and if the general markets are down it can drag down good stocks too as people look to other investment mechanisms to try get a return on their money (thereby suppressing demand for the stock)
* Political / economic activity - anything major going on in national or international politics can have a big impact. Maybe it's specific activity about the sector (e.g. a party wanting tighter rules on what games can be sold in a country) as can wider political activity
* Major events - things like war, terrorism etc. often have an impact on the markets as markets change and people move investments to 'safe havens' (e.g. gold) during times of uncertainty.
Basically publicly traded stocks can be affected by pretty much anything, because they can be bought and sold by pretty much anybody. | 13 | 29 |
Does economics still assume that people are perfectly rational or does it acknowledge that rational choice theory has shortcomings; it's just that we don't know how to fully interpret the (probably incomplete) information from behavioral economics to change the current models just yet? | One of the foundations of modern mainstream economics is the concept that people behave in the market as rational agents who choose what's best for their self-interest, but clearly, there are some goods and services that may still keep being demanded even if they're not in the best interest of the consumers. For blatant abuse, economists would say that the government can step in and regulate it, such as opioids and other drugs. However, there are some cases where the abuse isn't clear, such as companies that uses child psychology to better market their products to children, or social media features that keeps you hooked even though it has negative effects on your mental health.
It's fair to say that, sometimes, people are unable to weigh opportunity costs rationally. What's the current consensus in economics about all of these? | There are many papers and models in mainstream economics that analyze or take into account deviations from the rational benchmark.
For example Daniel Kahneman and Herbert Simon are Nobel laureates in economics. Kahneman was awarded the prize for his joint work with Tverski analyzing deviations from the expected utility model. Among other things, they are credited for prospect theory. Herbert Simon’s work in industrial organization had many behavioural features. Among other things, he is credited for the creation of search and satisficing models.
Behavioural economists also has many applications. For example there is a literature in finance studying how nudges and reminders help people have more healthy use of credit. There is also a literature examining why people buy memberships to the gym that they never use.
Recent empirical work on demand usually considers the fact that consumers have limited attention.
There is a large literature in game theory that considers people with limited memory.
So yeah, we teach perfectly rational consumers in core economics classes. But we often consider more general models.
There are for sure some professors and even departments that don’t like behavioural economics, but every top 10 department (MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, Yale, Penn, Princeton, NYU, Columbia, Northwestern, Chicago) has large behavioural groups. | 58 | 55 |
ELI5: How are we able to see through glass and other solid transparent objects? | And water too, please. | Some materials don't interact with light at certain wavelength ranges. Those materials that don't interact with light between 390-700nm we humans call transparent because our eyes see that range. However water is not transparent at other wavelength ranges, it blocks. other wavelength of light, like radio waves, are blocked which causes a problem with submarines trying to communicate with radio.
Other materials are not transparent to 390-700nm range but are mostly transparent to radio range, like say...drywall, which is why your WiFi works | 13 | 15 |
ELI5: Why is Atheism in the US associated with Science? | First of all a little background. I was born a Moroccan Muslim and grew up to be an atheist, now living in Canada.
Whenever I see American atheist subreddits/forums etc., the content seems to be 95% science instead of religion (or lack of).
In Islam, there's that thing where you're always supposed to be researching science ("*Seek learning from the cradle to the grave*" and such...). Given, you end up with weird interpretations of the religion, but there isn't much opposition to the science (except of course when scientists say stuff like there's no God).
Now, I do understand that in Christian history, church has always been a roadblock to science. However, I do not understand how being an atheist seems to be 95% about science. To me, these are totally different things!
So... ELI5? | One thing that you see a lot in the US, maybe also in other countries: Some religious people try to change science to fit their views. The big one is that the book of Genesis has a narrative of the creation of the Earth and the life on it over the course of 7 days. Now, there is overwhelming scientific evidence to show that over the span of billions of years, the earth was formed from space matter, and life evolved from there. However, since that doesn't fit into the box that religious people have subscribed themselves to, they'll try to manipulate the evidence to show that their preexisting notions are correct. In that sense, science being anti-religion is kind of a reaction to religion being (in this case) anti-science.
However, strictly speaking, science and religion don't have to conflict, as long as you accept that science deals strictly with facts and physical things, whereas religion primarily deals with philosophy and the metaphysical. | 24 | 41 |
Why is the Local Interstellar Cloud (still) so hot? | According to Wikipedia "[...] The cloud has a temperature of about 6,000 K,[2] about the same temperature as the surface of the Sun. However, its specific heat capacity is very low as it is not very dense, with 0.3 atoms per cubic centimeter [...]
1. How come it's so hot?
2. How does it stay that hot considering the small density and the matter being surrounded by cold vacuum?
3. Is our solar system "swimming like an ice cube" through the cloud? | 1. Don't confuse heat with energy. Heat is simply the speed at which molecules are moving - the gas molecules are zipping around in the cloud at a pretty good clip, thus it is hot - but the actual energy density is very small.
2. It's not despite the vacuum, but rather because of it. There is no convective cooling in a vacuum, leaving emissive cooling as the only method in play. There's simply nowhere for the energy to go.
3. Swimming like an ice cube...I haven't heard that one before. Our solar system is a mostly empty vacuum and what does not exist is not interacting with the cloud. Large masses (planets, stars, etc) will collect the matter that becomes trapped in their gravity wells a bit like a cosmic vacuum cleaner (there's a pun in there somewhere) but other than that, the intersections of the cloud's matter and the solar system's matter are relatively minimal.
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I believe that parents who force their children to forgo medical treatment for illnesses and instead opt for prayer are irresponsible and should be charged with child endangerment. CMV | It's simple, anyone who puts their child's life at risk on a whim of prayer is irresponsible and putting their child at risk of death. I agree that parents should also be charged with homicide if their child dies because they refused treatment. I believe that like intercourse, minors cannot consent to something that could drastically change their life, or end it, and they do not fully understood what forgoing medical treatment could mean to them.
I am not necessarily interested in debating how this type of law would be enforced, only that parents who purposely skip giving their child medical treatment should be charged with a crime. If a minor believes that this is what they personally want, I think it is brainwashing on the parents' part and that a minor doesn't know any better. | It's very easy to understand why religious people make this choice. For non-religious people as yourself, life is the single most important thing in the universe. They want to protect, value, and cherish life at all costs. Life must be protected and continued no matter what the situation calls for. Without life, any other action is pointless. Life can be given up under no circumstances
For religious people, life is just a small part of a bigger picture. They want to protect, value, and cherish life, but not at all costs. They believe in something that is more important than life. Life as we know it is a brief, passing phenomenon that could be enjoyed if circumstances were right but doesn't have to be if circumstances are not great. Life is not the end-all-be-all of the universe. Life can be given up at the right circumstances.
It might be hard to imagine, but think of it this way. Religious people refuse treatment for their children for the exact same reason why you want treatment for your children. If your child was at risk of losing his Life, wouldn't you want to do everything you possibly could to save your beloved son/daughter? In the same way, if your child was at risk of losing his God, wouldn't you want to do everything you possibly could to save your beloved son/daughter? Who are you to tell me what's more important between God and Life?
Think back to the people at Jonestown. If your child was one of those people who was going to give up everything he had for some crazy cult, wouldn't you at least try to stop him or her? Same way, religious people are trying to stop their child from giving up everything he/she has for that crazy cult of living a Life-centric life. | 90 | 371 |
ELI5: Why is malt liquor significantly less expensive than beer? | The first malt liquor was an attempt to deal with a shortage of materials in WW2. Barley, that you would normally use for malt, was rationed. Experiments started taking place to replace the use of malt with materials such as sorghum, corn syrup, etc.
So, how alcoholic a beer is depends on the amount of sugar that yeast can't convert into ethanol. More sugar= More booze.
After the war, some breweries decided to take their experiments to market. The most famous, of course, is Colt 45. At first it was marketed as an upscale alternative to beer. It never captured the buying public, until they discovered a whole different market.
People, mostly inner city, who wanted more "bang for the buck" in an affordable form.
Now, up until the craft beer revolution (made possible with Jimmy Carter legalizing homebrewing), the quality between malt liqour and beer was pretty equal, really. If Colt 45 really worse than Budweiser?
With the resurgence in craft brewing, however, malt liquor was left to languish in the cheap section of cheap liquor stores...it's quality never having gone up.
So long story short, malt liquor uses cheaper ingredients, hence the price difference. | 150 | 258 |
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What does Marx mean by the following passage in his Paris manuscripts of 1844? | “ If man’s feelings, passions, etc., are not merely anthropological phenomena in the narrower sense, but truly ontological affirmations of essential being of nature, and if they are only affirmed because their object exists for them as an object of sense, then it’s clear: .............only through developed industry, i.e., through the medium of private property, does the ontological essence of human passion come to be both in its totality and in its humanity; the science of man is therefore itself a product of man's establishment of himself by practical activity. The meaning of private property liberated from its estrangement is the existence of essential objects for man, both as objects of enjoyment and as objects of activity. “
P.S. Can someone also clarify what is the difference between ontology and metaphysics? Thanks in advance. | This passage by itself is quite dense if you are not familiar with the larger body of Karl Marx's work, particularly his earlier writings.
In essence, he's trying to demonstrate how the concept of alienation emerges under capitalism. It also rebukes the counterargument that private property is necessarily (or essentially) a property of the human condition. It's also a good restatement of a few key themes of Marx: historical materialism, the theory of alienation, and Marx's concept of humanity (or human "being-ness"). Finally, he suggests what it would mean for mankind to exist outside of capitalism ("private property").
To do so, he first has to explain the importance of materialism (in a philosophical sense): that our reality (or at least our relation to it) is determined ("affirmed") by the external world ("the object"). The external world is known to us through our senses. The senses, influenced by external objects, excite within us "feelings, passions, etc." If we assume that these feelings and passions are at the root of our experience ("ontological affirmations of an essential being of nature"), then it follows that the external world of objects in some sense determines how we feel. What's being implied — and what is very important — is that the external world is contingent, or historically rooted. While the feelings themselves (how feelings make us feel) are timeless and ineffable.
In other words: Different objects in different times or in different places can you make you feel things differently, but the feeling itself, as it is experienced, is timeless and eternal. All men know happiness and sorrow, even if they live with different objects (which determine the happiness or sorrow).
Thus, Marx posits that if this is the case (which he has sought to prove), the way in which objects of our world *come into being* specifically in our time ("developed industry") in some sense constitute *for us* what it means for us to *be* human (for good or bad). (If objects influence our passions, then the way in which the objects come into being must also influence our passions ).
When Marx speaks of the essential nature of man's "practical activity", he's furthering the materialist claim made earlier, advancing from a metaphysical claim to a socio-political one — and showing them to be one and the same. If objects constitute the way in which we perceive the world, then so must the way in which we act within the world of objects (i.e., the way they are produced and the way that society is constructed around this production). In other words, the way in which we occupy our times (often producing objects) determines who we are and how we interact with the world.
Importantly, he's reaffirming his definition of "mankind", or what "mankind" might mean outside of the historically constituted man — what in German he calls elsewhere *Gattungswesen,* which means "species being".
Remember, feelings of all sorts are at the root of our experience of existence, as he proved earlier. If man is defined by what he does, then shouldn't it follow that we should be *happy* or *proud* of what we spend our time doing?
Consider then,
*"The meaning of private property liberated from its estrangement is the existence of essential objects for man, both as objects of enjoyment and as objects of activity."*
What he's suggesting in the final sentence is that objects exist for man in some historical contexts as fundamentally "estranged". To make sense of this, we have to consult the larger body of Marx's work:
Throughout this passage, he's implicitly forming an *ethical* or *moral* component to his argument, which we must consider when talking about any particular form of social arrangement and production, which is what Marx is hinting at here. In other words, that a particular form of social arrangement — one determined by private property — estranges man from the objects of his making.
Lurking outside this specific excerpt is his one of his earlier critiques of capitalism: that capitalism is fundamentally *alienating* ("*Entfremdung"* is the German word used in the *1844 Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts,* which more literally means "estrangement", as used above.)
The younger Marx seems to be a bit more of the "humanist" Marx, in that he seems to suggest that there is an essential human-ness always at play within man. Because capitalism forces man to work (to labour) and produce objects not for his consumption, but for the consumption of others, there is something "unnatural" about this.
To produce something for another's consumption which you yourself might not enjoy is not, in itself, the problem. A blacksmith who works for himself no doubt "works hard" to make a fence for another to enjoy, but he is paid for his labour upon completion. He also probably enjoys being a blacksmith, or takes some degree of pride in his work. When he's paid for his labour, his labour reaffirms itself: he can be proud in the time he spent with his practice (interacting with the material world, as discussed earlier).
However, under 19th century capitalism, this wasn't the case for most men (nor is it the case for mankind today). A man works in a factory to produce a component of a machine that not only will he never enjoy, but that he will never be paid for the full cost of his labour (this is where Marx's theory of surplus value emerges, which isn't strictly relevant to this passage). Thus, he is estranged, estranged from the moment he beings to produce an object, and forever estranged from the product of this labour that he spends his time working to produce.
Such a man spends the majority of his waking life, from adulthood until death, always producing objects that are never "his". As a consequence, not only is he alienated from each product, but his whole life is itself alienated from his true species being because he cannot spend his time as he likes. He must isntead endlessly toil to simply survive.
Surely this is no way to live, as it is a miserable existence (we are defined by our matieral world, recall)...
Thus to return to the powerful conclusion of this passage:
*"The meaning of private property liberated from its estrangement is the existence of essential objects for man, both as objects of enjoyment and as objects of activity."*
He's suggesting that if we liberate mankind from private property (that is, all men as historical beings under capitalism), the external world of objects — both as physical products as well as the time spent making them — will cease to be alienating. Man will be made whole again.
As for the difference between ontology and metaphysics, Marx means "ontology" or "ontological" to mean the way in which something (mankind, an object, etc.) is constituted (usually in the context of other things). We might say that the ontology of an individual man — you or I, say — is the feeling of being human, which itself is largely defined by our material world, which is historically constituted (that is, exists within history).
Metaphysics is a form of philosophical enquiry that seeks to explain the relationship of things in the world to one another, us included. Marx's materialism is a metaphysical analysis of the world: external objects act upon our senses, which influence our passions. This inscribes a hierarchy between the thinking subject and the world of objects (or the external world).
Hope that helps. | 60 | 40 |
Why is Turing completeness the criterion for determining whether a given computer language is a "programming language?" | It is a criterion if it is a _general purpose_ programming language, not if its a programming language (which might be special purpose like a DSL) or not.
And it is because "general purpose" means you can do everything (even if it might be a pain), and turning completeness guarantees exactly that (in fact iirc it is the smallest set of requirements that you need to do everything) | 22 | 20 |
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What causes the air to smell when a rain storm is moving in? | Bacteria living in the soil and on surfaces such as pavement and vegetation react with the water and produce that distinct odor. The scent is more pronounced when there is a longer duration between rain events and is scientifically referred to as 'petrichor'. You may smell it before a rainstorm because winds transport the smell over large distances. | 441 | 458 |
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ELI5: Why are humans more interested in planetary travel/discovery rather than fully exploring all of Earth first? | There is interest in exploring all the unknowns. There are teams studying the ocean floor and atmosphere and finding what they can on earth.
But earth is still local and a limited space, and when considering the pace of humanity, space is where we will continue to expand. And like the many nomadic tribes before us, we always are looking out for the next possible place to settle. | 34 | 27 |
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ELI5: How do machines that accept cash payment determine that a five dollar bill is a five dollar bill, etc? | Optical scanning. An optical scanner looks at the denomination Portrait, and other parts of the bill to reduce fraud. Optical scanning is a follow-on from magnetic scanning developed and commercialized by Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) for bank check clearing automation. Look at the font at the bottom of a bank check (or cheque). It was originally developed to be printed with a high iron content and read by magnetic arrays (early 1950s). As computer processing and digital imaging progressed, better optical recognition was developed. Some currency scanners also read the metal strips put into US currency starting in the 1990's. | 80 | 263 |
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Why, on a molecular lever, are metals shiny while nonmetals are not? | My chem teacher is...not the top of her field, and she says, "They just are." But I don't understand why metals reflect light better than nonmetals. What properties of metals specifically cause this? | The defining property of metal is that it is a sea of free electrons. These electrons create a plasma. A property of a plasma is that it will reflect EM waves that are below it's "plasma frequency", which is a function of the electron density. Since metal has a lot of electrons, it's plasma frequency is in a ultra-violet, and thus it reflects visible and lower frequency light very well. This is also the same reason the ionosphere reflects radio waves. Since the density of electrons in the ionosphere is much lower than a metal, it only reflects radio waves and not visible light. | 24 | 16 |
What do you believe you do as a programmer that others don't do, that you find worthwhile doing? | The writing process can be pretty personal, and whenever I discover something interesting about how I can improve the way I write, I am always met with the thought that there's likely so, so much much that I'm not attuned to, that other programmers have found helps them.
What things have you incorporated into your workflow that actually is really worthwhile, that you don't see enough people do/mention?
Here are a few of mine:
* I try to re-read code that I wrote, so that I can get a sense of what others have to read when they read my code. Most people I know just move on once they wrote it.
* I try to enjoy algorithms (they are like little design patterns to me), while I see that the prevalent view of algorithms (at least those practicing for FAANG interviews) is that they need to be grinded.
* I actively try to write code only once. If I need a function in C that does network packet reading, I'll typically try to refactor/generalize/document it until I can re-use it in future projects, because I believe it'll be less work in the long-term. I'm actually not sure if others do this one.
* I use Vim, and I always try to evolve my Vim skills. It helps me think of my code in a nonlinear fashion, which actually adds to my ability to perceive what the program is doing as a whole. I also have no idea if others are doing this, but it is possible that a lot of do-it-all IDEs (VScode, CLion) may have different results, or give a different kind of benefit. | Writing README.md files for modules. Basically what you see on the main GitHub page for a repo that includes basic examples of how to use it and why you would want to. So many organizations I've contracted at have had multiple modules doing the same thing with no explanation of how or why to use them.
Writing said documentation accomplishes a couple of things... It forces you to understand how your module works, because it forces you to do an ELI5 explanation, and it allows others (and your future self) to get a high level understanding of what's going on.
Bonus points if it goes into a wiki or something that has up to date and accurate documentation that everyone knows exists. | 21 | 38 |
ELI5: Why do we send millions of dollars of aid to Saudi Arabia, one of the wealthiest countries in the world? | The US provides about $1.5 million in the form of International Military Education and Training (IMET), which is joint military training in order to advance our common interests in bilateral security operations. Basically it is training Saudi military officers to work with US military forces in the event that is required.
This is pays off in other ways such as the Saudis purchase things like $30 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets. | 15 | 22 |
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CMV: A second EU referendum for the UK is objectively more democratic | People who think we should have a second EU referendum are often accused of not accepting the will of the people, being "remoaners" and being "anti-democracy". I'm going to explain why I think that is not true and why I also think it isn't even subjective to say that having a second referendum is more democratic than not.
The starting point for my argument is that a more informed electorate will make decisions that better reflect their views, therefore the better informed an electorate the more democratic the vote. In the 2016 referendum it was clear that voting to remain in the EU meant keeping the same deal that was currently in place(with Cameron's minor negotiated changes). However, leaving the EU could have meant, and could still mean, a wide-range of outcomes. Would we remain in the customs union and single market? Would free movement of labour remain in place? ?Would we still pay fees towards the EU? These are all still unanswered questions. I think many people will have voted on the issues that mattered to them: immigration, powers over regulations and free trade being key issues for different sides.
This is analogous to people being asked to vote on whether or not we should have a cut in the marginal tax rate as pointed out by others before me. However, if the electorate voted for a 25% cut in their taxes, but were later startled by the fact that there was a 25% cut in funding for the NHS, schools and infrastructure that they were unaware would occur and no longer found this tax cut worthwhile, you cannot argue that this more democratic than if they had voted fully aware of these and had rejected the tax cut. Likewise, if it turns out the unexpected consequences of the exit deal struck between the EU and the UK is unpopular among voters, then it is undoubtedly unfair to impose this upon the population and claim it is the will of the people. Therefore, it is undoubtedly more democratic to have a second referendum than to not, once people are aware of what the terms of leaving the EU are. This should be encouraged equally by both leavers and remainers.
Sorry, this is quite UK-centric. But change my view!
(Edit: If you think I'm being stubborn please tell me, I am trying to keep an open mind, just yet to be convinced by any points raised)
EDIT 2: There's been similar arguments coming up so I'm going to do a quick response.
1. Is what I see as Reductio ad absurdum: It would be more democratic to have a 3rd, 4th, 5th...when does it end? This is beside the point that the second is more democratic, crucially because the choice that was preferred in the first was such an uncertain choice, whereas the second would be between two certain choices. A 3rd ref. is a very different debate and would be under different circumstances as it would be a vote to rejoin, and is less justifiable in the near-future. Also it definitely is uncertain since we still don't know what the terms will be for trade, free movement of capital, human rights, immigration etc.
Edit 3: Message me if you have had your opinion changed, this thread will die soon and I'm still as of yet to have seen a valid point that holds enough weight to it. This is a minority opinion and I want to see it truly tested.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | How often or how many times is enough?
Do we vote every day to make sure we still like the deal?
By your argument, why is two votes enough?
At some point, you'd have to just say, that's the will of the people and do it. You can't be changing plans every week.
Would one vote against be enough? | 15 | 32 |
ELI5: Why did Hitler honor Switzerland's neutrality? | Switzerland was not a threat to Germany (it remained neutral for centuries), it has few natural resources, it was not in the way (you can go around it), and capturing it would be really hard (population is armed, trained, and motivated, and mountains perfect for defense)
In addition, Germany was buying Swiss optics for its weapons (and so did Allies), all the Nazi leadership had money stashed in Swiss banks, they were a useful as a diplomatic channel and spy waypoint. | 99 | 24 |
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What exactly is included in the "birds and the bees" talk? We've all seen it used to refer to the sex talk but I've never actually heard it in use. | Bees were used to describe fertilization by the male (carrying pollen and depositing it in a flower), birds were used to describe ovulation by the female. These examples in nature were something that kids would be familiar with which is why they became euphemisms when parents wanted to explain human reproduction.
It's from a couple hundred years ago. These days parents are more straightforward. | 29 | 48 |
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ELI5: Why does a companies stock price matter to the company itself? Why does it benefit them to have a higher stock price? | 4 main reasons(in no particular order):
- Raising capital by selling more shares of the stock
- Using the stock as compensation and incentives for attracting top talent.
- Using the stock to aquire other companies.
- All the investors/owners of the company, want their investment to grow.
Keep in mind that it isn't specifically the share price that matters, but rather the market cap of the company. 2 companies can have the same value, but drastically different share prices. | 406 | 536 |
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[Star Wars] How often did a space craft catastrophically fail and crash into a major population center of a planet? | With all the different kinds of craft and units of measurement/standards of quality, shouldn't craft be crashing into planets on a daily basis? Especially major population centers on heavily populated planets? How often did this happen? | Most planets have some form of local government who is responsible for coordinating landing times and zones , much like our Air Traffic Control at airports.
In the Legends EU, arrival at any civilized planet is preceded by a comm-link with the local government who provides an orbiting trajectory, approach coordinates, and designated landing zone based on your purpose of visit and your socio-economic status.
One simply enters this information into their NavCom (Navigation Computer) and the system determines the necessary speed and velocity for a safe approach. These systems will convert any non-Standard units into the necessary units to maintain safe approach. In some ships where the NavCom hasn't been properly maintained or that are too small to carry an onboard NavCom, an astromech droid would have the same responsibilities.
So really, unless the NavCom/astromech is non-functioning, a crash is highly unlikely. In the case where one may occur, a highly populated planet would also have a dedicated anti-crash system, some combination of ships with tractor beams, or planet-side tractor beams, as well as a rudimentary forcefield that may be enabled when a crash is unavoidable.
Crashes are more likely on unpopulated planets who cannot afford a proper government control over approach, but this is not always true as many large-scale pirates (ie. Those capable of settling on a dense scale on an otherwise underpopulated/uncivilized planet) will also have similar approach coordination. | 18 | 25 |
Why is it taking so long to fix the issues with Flint Michigan's drinking water? | The root of the issue comes down to the age of the pipes and the change in pH of the water after a change in water sources.
Flint has a very old water system, much of which was made out of lead pipes. In the right conditions, this isn't as bad as it sounds, as the pipes rapidly develop an inert later of corrosion that basically passivates the interior walls of the pipes. This keeps the water from absorbing the lead, and thus polluting the water supply.
What happened in Flint is that as part of a money saving efforts put in by a state appointed commissioner (ie someone who wasn't elected), the source of water into the system was changed. The new water supply had a lower pH and different mineral content than the old supply.
Normally not that big of a deal, but in this case it had the effect of dissolving the passivation layer on the pipes, preventing it from forming again, and leeching lead into the water supply.
At this point, the only viable solution is to replace the entire system, but that is obscenely expensive. Given the current political environment, it's unlikely to get resolved. | 20 | 25 |
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Do Sea creatures (whales/dolphins/fish) need to drink water like we do? | Or do they have some kind of water absorbing mechanism that humans don't have? | Different sea creatures have different ways of maintaining their osmoregularity (aka staying hydrated and keeping a good salt balance) Drinking water or not drinking water is usually done in the interest of maintaining this balance.
Fresh water fish encounter the problem of too much water, not enough salt so they have mechanisms of retaining salt and getting rid of excess water.
As you may have guessed, sea creatures have the issue of too much salt, not enough water. Different animals have come up with different ways of dealing with this.
Some animals are called osmoconformers, this is similar to the way that cold blooded animals deal with heat, they just match their environment and go with the flow. Just like lizards getting too cold, if it gets too salty they could die. Invertebrates, animals like sea stars and anemones and crabs usually employ this method. You could say they have a water absorbing mechanism that humans dont really rely on, lots of these animals absorb water through their skin
Then there are osmoregulators, animals who spend energy actively adjusting the saltiness of their bodies to stay hydrated and maintain a good balance with the water in their bodies. Theres a few different methods, fish drink salt water and excrete excess salts through chloride cells and urine. Marine mammals have super globular kidneys that are excellent at concentrating urine. they use a mixture of metabolic water (the water made as a product of creating ATP) and water from the food they eat. | 57 | 120 |
ELI5: Why are some vaccines administered in the arm, while others need to be administered in your backside or stomach? | Doesn't it spread through the body wherever you put it? | Basically, it's to maximize effectiveness. Some require intramuscular, subcutaneous, or intradermal to be most effective. Also, a certain mass is required to be effective. This is why babies get vaccines in the anterolateral thigh as opposed to the deltoid like adults | 150 | 516 |
Should I ask my professor for a letter of recommendation if I don’t have a job or grad school lined up? | I took a class last quarter, and I really enjoyed it. I went to office hours once and had a good talk with the professor and asked him for some career advice. At the end of the quarter, he emailed me and asked me if he can use my final project as an example project to show to future students. It’s been around a month since he emailed me, but should I ask him for a letter of recommendation? I will be applying to jobs soon, and I’m assuming the letter will help me. Also, I might want to go to grad school in a year or two. I have never asked for a letter before, but should I only ask if a job or grad school application is asking for it? Or can I proceed to do so without having anything lined up? | No. Wait until you are asked for a letter of recommendation by a potential employer or academic institution. They will instruct you as to where the letter should be sent, or whether they want other contact information, like your professor's phone number.
You should not have letters of recommendation in your possession, because letters of recommendation are confidential, and are sent directly to the employer or university. In most cases, applicants never see them. | 74 | 41 |
ELI5: Why is light considered analogous to time? | In every video I see about time relativity, they explain it by showing that light bends due to gravity. But why does that imply that time bends as well? Isn't light just a collection of photons? | The light is just there as an example. If the light were not there, space itself would be bending. Space and time are part of the same thing:spacetime.
By having the light be present, you can see the path and curvature of spacetime. The speed of light is the speed of all causality (it’s just that light is the most obvious thing that always goes at the faster possible speed). If the path of light is disturbed due to the warping of space, then time in inherently changed. | 68 | 64 |
ELI5: What are toll roads or "turnpikes" used for? | Where does the money collected by toll roads go and what is it used for exactly, entering a new country is understanderble but they have toll roads on highways where there is no border so what is the purpose of these stops which take unnecessary fees?? | In a lot of cases the state or city has decided that they need a new highway from A to B to alleviate congestion on some existing roadway. But building massive highways is expensive. So they go to a highway building consortium and say "we want a highway from A to B and we want YOU to build it (and pay for building it). In return we'll let you charge $x per vehicle for the first 10 years the highway is in operation then we'll take it over or buy it off you".
Then the highway corp goes, builds it and makes money off it. Then some toll roads become free (once its been "paid" for), or sometimes the state or whatever takes it over and continues to charge for it. In that case the money is used to maintain the toll road itself, or to help maintain other roadways under the same department of transport or roads or whatever.
The 407 toll highway here in Toronto was to have become free once it paid for itself, but one of the provincial governments chose a quick cash grab, sold it to a private corporation who continues to milk $0.50/km out of people - it turns out that people are willing to pay $20 a trip to avoid sitting in the 401 parking lot for 3 hrs. | 31 | 16 |
ELI5: Proof of Stake and Proof of Work | Proof of Work is a system where miners compete to validate transactions and add them to the blockchain by solving complex mathematical puzzles. The miner that solves the puzzle first gets to add the next block to the blockchain and receives a reward for their work. This system is used by the Bitcoin network, among others.
Proof of Stake, on the other hand, is a system where the creator of the next block is chosen based on the amount of cryptocurrency they hold. This means that the more cryptocurrency a person holds, the more likely they are to be chosen to add the next block to the blockchain. This system is used by the Ethereum network, among others.
The main difference between the two mechanisms is that Proof of Work is based on computational power, while Proof of Stake is based on a person's stake in the network. This means that in a Proof of Stake system, those with more money have a higher chance of adding the next block to the blockchain and receiving a reward, while in a Proof of Work system, it is the miner with the most computational power who has the highest chance of adding the next block. | 34 | 34 |
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How does a Black Hole lose Mass because of Hawking Radiation? | I understand what quantum fluctuations and virtual particles are but how does the Black Hole lose mass when a particle or antiparticle that comes into existence at the event horizon falls into it? Wouldn't this require negative energy?
**Follow up question:**
How does a Black Hole "shrink"? Matter falls into the Black Hole all the time and the mass that it loses because of Hawking Radiation isn't really that much, does it only "shrink" at a really low speed when there is no Matter around it anymore?
**And finally:**
What happens when it finally disappears? Does the event horizon just get really small until it "poofs" away?
Sorry for all the Question, but I hope someone can educate me! :)
| Hawking's heuristic "virtual particle" comment works due to the way space and time (and thus momentum and energy) switch roles inside a black hole. In a black hole, your future is the singularity: the distance between you and the singularity decreases for the same reason that in normal life, the space-time distance between today and tomorrow is always decreasing.
This exchange in space and time is what allows the virtual pair to not violate energy conservation. The negative energy particle crosses the horizon where having negative energy is normal for a real particle (for experts: w.r.t. the Killing vectors of the observer at infinity). Then the positive energy particle becomes Hawking radiation, and the negative energy particle decreases the mass of the black hole.
Please heed Hawking's warning though; this is not a rigorous proof of anything:
> It should be emphasized that these pictures of the mechanism responsible for the thermal emission and area decrease are heuristic only and should not be taken too literally... The real justification of the thermal emission is the mathematical derivation given in Section (2) for the case of an uncharged non-rotating black hole.
For your second question, the area does decrease with mass in the usual way, but for stellar-sized black holes, this is *extremely* slow, so you're correct that they would mostly be absorbing way more than radiating. However, the rate and energy of emission increases with decreasing mass, so small enough black holes emit way more than they absorb.
The final fate of a black hole is not known exactly, since the derivations of Hawking radiation require it to be "large enough." There might be unknown physics, such as the black hole leaving a small remnant behind. However, most sources seem to prefer complete evaporation. The black hole becomes extremely hot at the end, and it would go out with an incredible burst of gamma rays. | 22 | 48 |
Is reason a western concept? | Reason seems to have been consciously employed and studied in western thought since the Enlightenment, and I would say has featured as a sort of distinguishing element of it since Socrates (and arguably since the pre-Socratics).
My question is, does Reason (capital R) hold such an overt and well-defined role in other traditions (Chinese, Indian)? Or is Reason, as the western canon understands it, a purely western phenomenon?
(Obviously other traditions can be said to be rational/reasonable to varying degrees; but are they Rational as western philosophers would understand that word, and do they consider Reason to be the sort of essential ingredient/valorised end-in-itself that western philosophers consider it to be?) | Can't say about Chinese or Indian philosophy.
But I've read Islamic philosophy. The early mutakallimuns (people who practiced Kalam or Islamic theology) emphasized on reasoning. Basically there were two formulas developed in the Islamic theology - Aql (reason) and Naql (revelation).
This was back in the 7th or early 8th Century when they weren't exposed to Falsifa (Greek Philosophy). But then it follows great debate and ...... | 18 | 15 |
ELI5 : 0K (Kelvin) is supposed to be the lowest temperature reachable but it's only theoretical. In definition it means there is absolute zero motion. But why is that, that some elements are still not "solid" in this temperature? | Like helium which never turns into a solid block on normal pressure? | The protons and neutrons in atoms are made up of particles called quarks. Quarks have a very low mass and what is ultimately giving a proton/neutron most of its mass is that fact that the quarks inside of them are spinning at close to the speed of light.
There are three quarks in a proton. Two of those quarks have a charge of +2/3. One of them has a charge of -1/3. The quarks themselves are arranged in a sort of triangular shape. At large distances these charges cancel out so that a proton appears to have a net charge of about 1, and for nearly all applications we can consider that charge to be 1. But its not *exactly* 1 - it varies depending on the position of the quarks relative to you.
When the negatively charged quark is on the opposite side of the proton you experience a charge that is very, very slightly stronger than 1. When it is on the side of the proton facing you, the charge is very, very slightly less than 1.
Neutrons work the same way, except the one of the quarks in a neutron has a charge of 2/3 while the other two have charges of -1/3. So depending on the position of the quarks in a neutron, you will experience a charge either slightly higher or lower than 0.
This extremely slight net charge is sufficient for a proton or neutron with "0" energy to, nonetheless, cause other nearby protons and neutrons to wobble a bit, resulting in them having some very minimal amount of energy. This, in turn, causes atoms to have a constant, slight wobble (which will also result in the wobbling atoms very slightly "bumping" into nearby atoms).
We can't stop this wobble because on a very fundamental level we don't have any mechanism to influence the quarks inside of proton/neutron, so we can't slow them down. Also, because the speed of the quarks is, itself, responsible for most of the mass of the proton/neutron, if you did somehow manage to slow those quarks down they would stop being a proton/neutron and start being something else, which doesn't necessarily solve the problem if what they turn into can't be measured, like dark matter - or if the energy in the quarks ends up getting liberated, such as through the transformation of a quark into high energy electrons or positrons. | 754 | 394 |
How to look for an open PhD position with a specific idea in mind? | Hi!
I'm looking for an open PhD position connected to the labour market innovation. I would like to work on how to remodel the whole employment system.
I have been browsing websites for open positions. Most of the time they are pretty vague and it takes a lot of time to check everything. Not to mention, I find it quite confusing that sometimes I find relatable topics in different fields, such as economics, business and management, politics and social sciences departments.
Should I contact professors directly for some recommendations?
The university I graduated is not that helpful about it as they don't have anything similar.
Any recommendation or tip is welcomed. Thank you! | Hunt around in journals and academic books, and make a list of people whose work is, or is close to, what you want to do. Find their *current* home institution and see if it has a PhD program. If so, email them introducing yourself, and explain your interest. Ask them if you can do that work in their program, and if not, if they would recommend a program that *would* support the work you want to do.
Good luck! | 46 | 29 |
ELI5: From the POV of the bank, why is a mortgage considered an asset and a client deposit considered a liability? | I'm having a hard time visualizing this, as I thought it was the other way around.
How does this appear on the tax statements? | An asset is something of value that you have. And the bank have a piece of paper saying you owe them a certain amount of money and detailing how you should pay it back. This piece of paper have a value and it is therefore considered an asset. A liability is when you owe something to someone else. In the case of a client deposit the bank owes you your money and have to pay it back when you ask for it. So it is considered a liability. | 64 | 46 |
At the hardware level, how do computers multiply numbers together? | I was learning about [adders](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adder_(electronics)) and I tried thinking how computers multiply numbers together. I haven't seen anything like an adder that works for multiplying, and the only way I could think of was looping the number through the adder a ton of times, for example, 5x3 would be 5+5+5. But trying to do that with two numbers that are both 10^15 wouldn't really work whereas my phone can do it instantly. So how do they do it? | A simple algorithm works by using the binary representation of one of the numbers (which is easy because numbers are already stored in binary inside the computer). For example, if b is 00100011 in binary then:
a * b = a * 00100011 = a * 00100000 + a * 00000010 + a * 00000001
Now, multiplying binary number a by a binary number of the form 1000.…0 works by adding zeros to the end of a:
a * b = a00000 + a0 + a
And now you have a simple addition.
| 14 | 17 |
ELI5: why does my radio have signal in an underground parking lot, but the second I pass under a bridge on the highway it goes all static-y | Your radio works by receiving radio waves, which are a form of light that you can't see. The light you can see can go through certain things like glass or water or air to get to your eye. The radio waves can go through even more things, but they can't go through metal. This is why the antenna for your radio is made of metal, so it can "see" the radio waves - otherwise they would pass right through it like light through glass.
Now if you could see radio waves instead of normal light, you could see through almost everything except for metal. It would be like the whole world was made out of glass, or clear plastic. The radio waves sent out from the radio station would shine through everything, and you would be able to see them from anywhere - unless there was metal blocking the light.
Underground parking lots are mostly made out of concrete. They have some metal in them, but not much. You would still be able to see the light from the radio station through the concrete. Many highway bridges are made mostly out of very large pieces of steel with only a small layer of concrete on top. When you go under these large metal bridges, they block the light from the radio station. | 405 | 219 |
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[Overwatch]Why do buffs/debuffs work on omnics but not on turrets? | I mean Zenyatta's discord orb can target a bastion but not Torbjörn's turret? Same goes to heals - Lucio can fix a complicated self-awere robot without even looking, but he cant fix a ball that shoots laser? | Onmincs are state-of-the-art, high-tech machines - yes, even Bastion - that incorporate nanobiotics into their machinery. As such, things that affect nanobiotics can affects omnics, both positively and negatively.
Torborn's turret is a bunch of scrap he's cobbled together. It's not going to be affected by high-tech stuff.
Symmetra's constructs are solid-light, nothing in their physical form can be affected.
(by the way, in-canon, the game is actually just a game, so saying it's just a game would be acceptable). | 32 | 39 |
ELI5: why mammal females often are smaller than males? | Females have to carry fetus and protect themselves and babies, why are they often smaller than males? | Mammals typically live in groups, and males typically compete for mates. Both this competition and the need to defend territory and protect the group leads to natural/sexual selection favoring typically larger males. A larger male can defend against threats better, can fight other males for mating rights better, and females who want to choose the best mates will favor them.
Females don't have as much luxury in being able to grow larger/stronger/etc., because their bodies' effort goes more towards rearing children. A male only has to survive long enough to bang, basically, so his body can be large, energy-hungry, and shorter-lived. A female has to be able to devote a significant chink of her effort and nutrition and time into raising young.
(Note this doesn't hold true always, or as a blanket rule. It's how it works out for many species, but the ins and outs of sexual dimorphism go way deeper than this.) | 156 | 121 |
ELI5: Why are most librarians required to have college/advanced educations? | As a frequent library user, I always found it curious that librarians required bachelor’s and/or masters degrees. From the end user perspective, they mainly sit at a front desk and answer basic questions or help customers find books.
What exactly do they do that requires a four year degree? | A library technician (the job you described) usually does not require a college degree. A librarian’s job is different. A librarian curates and manages a collection, organizes resources, and manages finances among other things. | 49 | 22 |
ELI5: Why is it so hard to get rid of toenail fungus? | The difficulty is mainly due to 2 factors: the treatment regimen and physiological factors.
Treatment for nail fungus is over several weeks for oral treatment and about a year for topical (nail polish) treatment. This makes proper treatment almost impossible to do perfectly as it requires tremendous patient involvement and discipline.
Physiologically, the fungus is hard to kill because it lives between the nail and the nail bed. Meaning all topical (nail polish) medication need to penetrate thick nail to reach the desired location and oral drugs need to go super far in small blood vessels to reach the zone. Both are difficult and explain why the duration of treatment is so long.
Source: am family doctor
Addendum for everyone commenting to rip out the nails:
Removing a nail is a lot bloodier than you could reasonably expect. We do it (partial nail removal) for things such as recurring ingrown nails but not for fungus. Most likely this is because nail fungi are super benign (no danger to your health and no symptom/pain) so undergoing such an invasive procedure for that is definitely overkill. Also damaging the nailbed can produce onychodystrophia which sadly looks a lot like a case of nail fungus lol | 1,269 | 918 |
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ELI5: What determines the light-absorption properties of atoms and molecules? | I know it has to do with electrons dropping and raising energy levels, but what determines the energy levels that are changed and how does it work in molecules? Would all (outer) electrons in a molecule change their energy level at the same time or is there another thing at work here? | In a molecule, you have many possible quantum states. There is the lowest energy, the ground state. At fixed energies above this, you have various excited states. When a photon of just the right energy to match one of these gaps hits the molecule, it is absorbed and sends the molecule into a higher energy state.
So how are these higher energy states described? There are many possible options. As you said, it can be excitation of the outer (valence) or inner shell electrons. It can be a vibrational mode of the molecule, such as bending, stretching, or wagging. All of these will correspond with different energies of light. Generally, molecular vibrations absorb in the IR, valence electrons in the UV-vis, and inner shells in the x-ray. This affects the type of spectroscopy you can use to ID a molecule. | 16 | 39 |
ELI5: Why do some languages have masculine and feminine nouns? | I'd like to understand both from a historical perspective, and also how it is decided for new words?
Being English I've found this the most difficult aspect of learning a new language such as Spanish. | It's important here to distinguish between grammatical gender and biological gender. Grammatical gender describes what rules a specific word follows in the grammar of that language. Biological gender describes living things that reproduce sexually by splitting in two separate genders. Despite the name the two aren't strictly related.
Grammatical genders are more akin to word classes: words in the same class will behave in similar ways, such as declining and conjugating after similar rules, using similar adjectives when described in a sentence (i.e all blue masculine words in Icelandic are "blár", all blue feminine objects are "blá", all neuter blue things "blátt"), or take a specific determinate forms (i.e la vs le in french).
So grammatical genders are a description of how a word behaves, not the other way around.
> Historical perspective
We frankly don't know for sure. Some theories suggest that genders initially started as classes to separate inanimate and animate objects, Later feminine and masculine split due signify a group of things, and words that didn't properly fit with the other two classes.
There are some evidence that genders slightly increase comprehension and comprehension speed of a sentence, as well as slightly reducing ambiguity, but research seems to be situational.
> How is it decided for new words.
By observing how people use the word. Remember: Gender isn't imposed from on high by an absolute authority. it's a handy box that we use to group similar words together. If the new words is displaying characteristics of either gender we put it in that gender. People will morph new words so that they fit in with the grammar and don't sound stiff and unnatural, and during this morphing process people decide if the new word sounds better as masculine, feminine, or neuter (or other genders some languages might have). | 98 | 153 |
ELI5: Why we can record sight and sound but not smell? | Sight (light) and sound are energy in different forms. You can convert energy between forms and therefore record and reproduce it.
Smells are particulates in the air. You'd have to somehow convert molecules to an energy pattern, and then to "play back" the scent convert the pattern back to matter.
We can analyze components of scents and come up with a similar chemical composition that mimics it, but that's as close as we're going to get without fundamental leaps forward in physics. | 370 | 315 |
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[Star Wars] If you're force sensitive but don't become a Jedi, can you still use your powers effectively? | If you were a force-sensitive but somehow didn't end up in the Jedi order or as a Sith, could you train yourself in the ways of the Force? Like, could you just become a freelance force-user who goes with the flow without picking a side and use your powers to make your average life better? | To an extent, yes, depending on how strong your potential is.
Would you be able to pull off what Jedi and Sith could do? Very unlikely, however it could still help in life.
Most commonly, your reflexes would be much faster. You'll instinctively know what will happen in some way, similar to Spidey Sense. You may also be able to sense others around you and what they are feeling, so you might be able to tell if someone is sad, angry, even hateful.
Those abilities are often instinctive among Force sensitive. It tends to just happen. But active ability, actually using the Force, that's possible to. It is unlikely to ever be on par with a trained Jedi, but you might discover if you concentrate you can make small objects float or move. You might find that you have an easier time persuading people and talking people down. Not necessarily a full on Mind Trick, you likely won't be able to get them to do whatever you want, but more subtle influence. With practice these can become better, but again won't be on par with Jedi.
Some of these you may be able to live of off. Being a pilot is certainly a popular one. With your faster reflexes you can become a known pilot. You might also become an entertainer. Most people have never seen a Force user, so making boxes float would bring a crowd. If you've become persuasive you might be a businessman, or, if you have low morals, a con man.
Of course this is assuming that you aren't in a location where using the Force might get you labeled as a Jedi and call the Empire on you. | 73 | 71 |
ELI5: What is that tingling/itchy/hot/pain that dots across our body when we enter a warm building after being in the cold while wearing really warm clothes? | When you're cold, blood moves to more needed areas, like your chest, head, and anything else more vital than simple areas like your hands and feet. When you move from cold to hot, the blood rushes back to these smaller areas. Think of it like a traffic jam. Blood is rapidly rushing back to your hands when you put them under warm water after being cold, and there is a lot of pressure, causing that "tingling/itchy/hot/pain." | 12 | 20 |
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Exploitation of foreign postdocs | (Crosspost from r/labrats)
I'm a freelance science journalist doing an investigation on the exploitation of foreign postdocs for Nature.
I realise that postdocs are often under a lot of pressure, work long hours, and often have a tough time generally, however I'm looking at early career researchers have moved to a country in which they were not born, and believe they have been treated worse that other "native" postdocs, perhaps because they are expected to work harder, they are paid less or other forms of discrimination.
I'm aware this is a big issue in the US, and there have been a number of well documented cases. I'd like to hear from anyone who can tell me whether this is an issue anywhere beyond the US, especially any postdocs who believe they have personally been discriminated against in a foreign lab outside the US because of their nationality.
I'd also be interested to hear from anyone who has personally experienced this in the US, as my article will hopefully includes cases both in the US and elsewhere.
Thank you,
A Nature freelance | A big problem is that most postdocs are on a work dependent visa. If they lose their job, they have to leave the country within 60 days. That's typically not enough to find a new job. Thus, postdocs are basically beholden to their employer - better than indentured servitude, but not by much. | 61 | 62 |
ELI5: When someone loses their memory, why do they not forget the language they speak in? | There are different parts of the brain that handle different jobs. The part of the brain that handles long-term memory is different from the part of the brain that handles language. So, if someone's long-term memory part of the brain gets damaged, that doesn't necessarily mean that their language skills are impacted. | 18 | 19 |
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Do humans have any intrinsic value? If so, what? | Many philosophers have argued that they do, but not all philosophers agree to this thesis.
Here's one kind of argument (a basic form of a kind of argument that has been influential): the value that we're talking about here is what is valuable for us in relation to what we are willing to occur, but other humans are unlike other factors in the world we're willing about (like eating cake or buying a Lexus) in that the other human is not only something that might have value for what we are willing to occur, but is also an instance of the agency that is willing things to occur, and as such is not only something that might have value for us with respect to what we will, but is also an instance of that activity which is the basis of anything's having any such value whatsoever (i.e. the human is an instance of the activity of willing), so that human beings accordingly have an intrinsic value which other things lack, on the basis that they are not merely what has such value but also the condition of any such value whatsoever. | 13 | 15 |
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ELI5: What is it about french fries in particular that make them nearly impossible to taste good once reheated in the microwave? |
Microwaves cook by heating up water molecules inside your food. When the molecules warm up they are drawn to the surface and tend to make the food soggy on the outside and dry inside. That is the opposite of how you want french fries. Try reheating french fries with an oven. It will keep the outside cooked and the inside relatively moist. | 168 | 315 |
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CMV: If I'm ever on a jury, police testimony will hold no more weight to me than any other witness. | I believe police testimony is no different and no more reliable than any other regular citizen's testimony. People can lie, and people can recall incorrectly; the fact that someone wears a badge doesn't change that fact. If it comes down to a cops word versus someone else's word without any other evidence, there is IMO no basis for a guilty verdict.
Also, in the same vein any police testimony on what a defendant told him during an interview means nothing to me as well. Rules of evidence be damned. It is quite simply unfair that anything you say to a cop can be used against you but not for you in court; and that there is an actual exception to the rules of hearsay that a cop can testify on what you said to him. I will believe what a defendant says on the stand over what a cop says he said in an interview.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Here's the difference between a cop and a civilian in court-- a cop has been in the same situation many times and is trained to be a good observer. A cop reporting his side on a shooting has been in shooting situations before and knows what to expect. It's not new to him so he can be more calm than someone who has never been there. A random person is going to be more panicked and less able to observational. | 47 | 47 |
CMV: There's a lot more online activists could do about Xinjiang | I want to start by stating that I believe that Western “woke” activists are a net positive influence on society. Yes, they can be pompous and sanctimonious and obnoxious but social media movements supporting LGBTQ, #MeToo and BLM are having a profound impact on how the average person grasps systemic bigotry, sexism and racism. I am confident that we are on the path to a more equitable and just future.
Having said that, I wish that there were more attention and energy directed toward the government of China, especially the ongoing repression in Xinjiang. If you are not aware of what’s going on[, you should be](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide). A lot of people are calling it a genocide. Setting aside the semantics of what constitutes an actual genocide, you should know that the hundreds of thousands of Uyghur people are being incarcerated in camps where they are forced to work as slaves, tortured and subject to forced abortions and sterilization. What’s happening there is abominable.
Now, some people might say, that sounds awful but what can we do about it here is the U.S., or Canada, or Europe? Isn’t this a bit like people who troll feminists by asking them why they don’t campaign against female genital mutilation in the Middle East and Africa instead of crying about “mansplaining” or some vague feeling of societal misogyny?
No, it’s not like that. Because first of all, there is a lot of societal misogyny in the west but secondly, because, as horrible as female genial mutilation is, it is mostly perpetrated by people who are extremely poor and undereducated. There is not much that we can do to influence this practice without actually being a member of the societies where female genital mutilation is practiced.
But there is a lot of impact we can have on China. Here is an extremely short list of high-profile companies that do a lot of business with China: Apple, Coca-Cola, Disney and the NBA. There are hundreds if not thousands more, but I’m picking on those four because these are organizations that are intensely image conscious and who would be forced to react to a sustained social media campaign for them to cease their activities in China. Their products are also extremely popular in China so there would be a reaction from the Chinese population if there were a boycott by any of those four.
But…despite the best efforts of the U.S. Congress (no, I’m not being sarcastic), some pretty powerful U.S. companies, [including Apple and Coca-Cola](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-uighur/) are lobbying Congress not to prevent them from benefitting from actual slavery going on in Xinjiang. Disney went ahead and filmed a fairy tale in the region and then [publicly thanked the Chinese Communist Party](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/apr/28/disney-unapologetic-over-mulan-credits-thanking-chinese-communist-party). And the NBA, a stalwart supporter of BLM, [has not really risen to the occasion](https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/nba-china-forced-labor/) when it comes to calling out what’s happening in Xinjiang.
I suppose it’s the behavior of Disney that really irks me the most. Is there a more image conscious company on the planet? Does anyone [remember this story](https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/the-transphobic-anti-mask-holocaust-tweets-led-gina-carano-getting-fired-disney-s-the-mandalorian)? A D list celebrity was fired for making idiotic statements comparing alleged persecution of conservatives to the actual genocide of Jews during the Holocaust. I really don’t care about that person, whoever she is, but just think about the abject hypocrisy of this. Making ignorant statements about genocide is grounds for termination, actually committing genocide and enslaving people though…well, here’s a quote from a Disney executive about their relationship with China:
[*“Disney will be committed to long-term development in China and is willing to further expand its investment in China and play a positive role in continuously deepening the economic and trade cooperation between the two countries”*](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3135626/china-looks-disney-help-improve-ties-us)
There’s a lot of money to be made in China. So, it’s not hard to see why this is happening. But, come on! Why is this blatant injustice and complicity in a horrendous crime not getting more attention and action from online activists?
Here’s why in my opinion:
1. **China is too far away** – Very few woke Westerners have been to China, fewer still to Xinjiang, and they just can’t be asked to care about a people and a place that they know nothing about. This is probably the biggest reason.
2. **Republicans are yucky** – Republican politicians, especially Trump, like to complain about China. No one wants to be seen making common cause with bigots. I get it. But it doesn’t change the fact that a massive crime against humanity is taking place.
3. **The impact of not doing business with China would be huge** – Showing support for LGTBQ rights, #MeToo and BLM is largely sacrifice free. It doesn’t cost anyone anything really. That’s why businesses and media organizations flocked to those movements. Divesting from China would have a giant economic impact. Prices would soar, there would be even bigger supply chain problems then we have now, and businesses would push back hard.
4. **The backlash would be intense** – When you think about the great woke victories you can see that the people on the other side were usually declining in power. The people who opposed LGTBQ, #MeToo, and BLM, religious conservatives, creepy men, and cops, seem really powerful but there are like ants in comparison to the Chinese Communist Party and the executive boards of powerful corporations. Leaders of social media campaigns to publicly shame companies doing business with China would likely find themselves subject to harassment, identity theft, doxing and more.
Anyway, rant over.
TL;DR – The government of China is committing unspeakable crimes in Xinjiang, if we wanted to, a social media campaign to shame giant Western corporations into divesting from China could gain a lot of traction and influence. But we probably won’t for the reasons I just listed above. I’d like for something to change and/or develop my view.
Thanks! | > But there is a lot of impact we can have on China. Here is an extremely short list of high-profile companies that do a lot of business with China: Apple, Coca-Cola, Disney and the NBA. There are hundreds if not thousands more, but I’m picking on those four because these are organizations that are intensely image conscious and who would be forced to react to a sustained social media campaign for them to cease their activities in China. Their products are also extremely popular in China so there would be a reaction from the Chinese population if there were a boycott by any of those four.
I think you grossly underappreciate how valuable China is to these countries.
Let's judt say for a moment that the entire of the Europe and US can put together a boycott of any of these companies, which is obviously impossible to begin with.
They would lose approximately a billion customers, compared to China's 1.4 billion customers. Even if that were to happen, it would make more financial sense for them to placate the Chinese market, as opposed to the western one.
These companies aren't image conscious at all. They're profit conscious. If everyone thought they were disgusting companies but still purchased their products, they wouldn't care at all. They only care about image in so much as it effects their profits. That's why they continue to support China despite that being a blatantly bad image. They gain more money than they lose by doing so.
The same thing would happen here. If this boycott had the absolute *maximum* effect, it still wouldn't be enough to make it worthwhile to cease business in China.
Now let's look at it realistically, how many people actually care about the Uighur situation to begin with? And of those that do, how many care enough to boycott those industries?
I would say you would do incredibly well to get even a quarter of the population of Europe and the US to boycott these companies. 250 million people against 1.4 billion? None of these companies would even bat an eye. It simply wouldn't be in their best interests to do so. | 19 | 37 |
ELI5: What do the Catalan Numbers represent, and why are they so important? | I'm struggling to understand this sequence. Checking on here, there's only [one post](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ajtskj/eli5_what_are_catalan_numbers/) which explains that the Catalan Numbers are a simply a useful series. What does this sequence, 1, 1, 2, 5, 14, 42, 132, 429, 1430, 4862, 16796, ..., actually represent?
I know vaguely that it's related to the number of ways to select from 2 elements such that there's "more" of the first than the second in the beginning (for 6 with 1 and 0, for instance, you get 111000, 110100, 110010, 101010, 101100). If that's correct, why is the idea so broadly applicable/important? | Given an event which can only occur if another event has occurred to allow it the catalan numbers show the number of different ways you can order those events...
So... you have tasks that you can start or stop... you can only stop a task if it has been started... there are multiple tasks..
you can start a task, stop a task, start a task, stop a task...
you can
start a task, start a task, stop a task, stop a task...
​
you can't
stop a task, start a task, start a task, stop a task.
​
And you can't
start a task, stop a task, stop a task, start a task...
​
if you have one task, there is c(1) = 1 orderings that make sense (open/close)
with two tasks there are c(2) = 2 orderings that make sense (open/close/open/close), (open/open/close/close)
So, if you have three tasks... there are C(3)=5 orderings that make sense starting and stopping tasks. | 12 | 16 |
ELI5: Why are places like Japan experiencing extreme heatwaves of 40-45 degrees celcius while equatorial areas such as Malaysia and Indonesia are not experiencing such high temperatures even though they are closer to the equator? | Weather is a complicated subject. Mainly so long as you are south of russia or north of new Zealand then your weather is a lot more dependent on your local atmosphere than solar intensity.
It depends on how much water is in the air, how much cloud cover, what pollutants are there in what concentrations... all of which are local factors. Which is why areas north or south of the equator can be hotter than the equator sometimes. | 832 | 2,404 |
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ELI5: How do you properly use ";' and "-" in writing? | The semicolon is properly used in at least two ways.
First, it can be used to separate items in a list when some of those items contain commas. For example, a normal list would go like this: Apples, pears, bananas, and kiwi fruit. (Note: that last comma is not used by everyone. It is called the "Oxford comma", and people actually argue over whether or not it's necessary.)
But suppose the second item is "pears, but not Williams pears". Now it contains a comma; and so to make sure people can read the list easily, you have to write it like this: Apples; pears, but not Williams pears; bananas; and kiwi fruit.
Secondly, the semicolon is used to separate contact clauses. This is when you have two sentences and you want to join them into one sentence, but without using a conjunction. For example, if we start with these two sentences:
Mary likes beer. John prefers wine.
We can join them up with a conjunction:
Mary likes beer, but John prefers wine.
Or we can join them up with a semicolon:
Mary likes beer; John prefers wine.
Words like "however" are adverbs, not conjunctions, so if you want to use "however" to join these two sentences, you still need a semicolon:
Mary likes beer; however, John prefers wine.
How can you tell the difference? Well, you can move "however" next to the verb and it still makes sense:
Mary likes beer; John, however, prefers wine.
As for the hyphen, that's a much more complicated thing. Perhaps the most important use is to combine two words into one single concept, but it's much tickier to get this one right. In the sentence:
He was five years old.
we have "five" and "years" and "old" as three separate words; but in this sentence:
He was a five-year-old boy.
the three words are combined into a single unit, an adjective. | 54 | 27 |
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Why do hallucinations so often tell you to kill yourself? (In people with mental issues) | Right now there's at IAmA of the girl with Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. She mentioned that the hallucinations would try and get her to kill herself.
From other AMAs and TV/Movies I've seen that it's quite common for your hallucinations to try and get you to kill yourself.
Is there any reason for this? Is this actually something common, or is it rare? | There is probably an element of selection bias; a hallucination telling someone to hurt themselves or others has a better chance of manifesting itself in a very dramatic way that's impossible for other people to ignore (suicide, shooting spree, etc) whereas a hallucination compelling you to eat cupcakes is going to have much more local (and harder to notice) effects. | 19 | 15 |
ELI5:Why do Newtonian physics break down at a quantum level? | It's not so much that they break down, rather it's that Newtonian physics is an approximation of how the world works that is not totally correct, but in many cases is accurate enough to be incredibly useful. In such circumstances (like the ordinary motion of a baseball), the inaccuracy is so low as to be practically imperceptible, though it is still there. When things become very small, very large, or very fast, however, the Newtonian model is very inaccurate. | 156 | 149 |
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Thinking about getting a PhD to make a career shift | Hi all. So title says it all: I need a change and am thinking about going into academia.
I’m currently an attorney but I just can’t do it anymore. I’ve always loved writing and reading and classes based on literary analysis. Basically I loved school. I want to teach and learn and all the good stuff. Obviously I’ve done law school and the attorney thing for a few years, so it’s not like I can’t handle hard work.
Anyone out there get a PhD after being out of school to a few years or making a career shift? Is there anything I should do to be more prepared and make myself the best candidate I can? I’ve always had excellent grades and went to a top law school so my academic credentials are fine. I was thinking of maybe auditing some classes or even taking for credit some classes to give myself a stronger foundation and get back into school mode. My BA was in history and political science, so not english. I want to make sure I’m prepared as best I can be.
I don’t know anyone with a PhD (except one person becoming a psychologist so a bit different) so I’m going in blind. All I know is I can’t be an attorney anymore and am willing to do literally anything to finally have a career I don’t hate. I spent too many years doing what I thought I was supposed to and I’d like to start studying my passions.
Any tips or advice on either getting a PhD generally or applying after being out of school for a while would be super helpful. I’m planning on applying for Fall 2022. | It’s likely going to be better to pivot your law degree into something you want to do.
Tenured professor with a criminal justice PhD here. Many CJ departments hire JDs to teach legal skills classes to undergrads. At some institutions, those jobs are tenure-track. Look for legal studies programs.
You should know: COVID has utterly destroyed the academic job market. And, you’d be looking at a pay cut in the neighborhood of 50-70%, depending on geography and what sort of law you’re practicing. | 26 | 15 |
Is there any research regarding the impact of white children having witnesses lynchings carried out by their elders in the American South during Jim Crow? | In case you don't get many responses, perhaps a reworded version of this in /r/AskHistorians could get you closer to some sources. Maybe something like "Can you recommend any first-person histories from individuals who witnessed lynchings as a child and wrote about them later in life?" | 29 | 73 |
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Why did Nietzsche think so highly of Tragedy? | My question is in the title, but I can elaborate if necessary. | I recommend reading the Birth of Tragedy, he talks about why the Greeks built their theology like they did, as a justification for all the suffering and that a contrast was a necessity to enjoy life at all. The Greeks created a spectrum of comedic, tragic and romanic stories to envelope their world with meaning. | 25 | 32 |
ELI5: basic beliefs of Taoism | Taoism can be summed up pretty generally as it all focuses pretty much around nature and being a natural and forefilling person;
Daoism (Taoism) 道統 (Daoism and Taoism are the same thing)
- A way of life (in China may be referred to as a religion)
- 'To go with the flow', be positive, to agree with most things, to enjoy - life to the fullest, to life the high-life.
- Dao - translates to Way/A Way
- Daoism is Chinese because it originates in Chinese culture and it is most clearly understood through the Chinese language and views of being.
- Daoism is considered a 'religion' because it involves an orientation towards and relationship with, 'the sacred'.
- Fundamental Daoist ideas/concerns include:
~Wu wei : Effortless action, to behave in a completely natural and uncontrived way
~Ziran: Naturalness
~Zhenren: realized/perfected person, to be enlightened and aware of the world
~Dao: Way, path, route, such as choosing the right path to take in life
| 24 | 61 |
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I don't think that employers should be forced to accommodate religious attire, even in cases where they don't negatively affect job performance. CMV | So I was watching some clips from that show "What would you do" on Youtube the other night. Normally, I like the scenarios that the show creates but one of the clips rubbed me the wrong way. A man (Sikh I think) was wearing a turban to a job interview and the boss said that he had to lose the turban if he wanted to get hired. The guy made a big stink about religious discrimination and honestly, it kind of pissed me off.
I don't think there's anything wrong with what the boss did, especially since I live in a country that considers itself secular. Religion is a choice, and so is wearing that religious attire. Nobody would care if I didn't hire somebody because they had a pink mohawk, were covered in tattoos, or had ear ear gauges, even though the particular subculture that they belong to may be just as important as a religion is to somebody else. Why should employers be forced into accepting religious attire if it doesn't meet company dress policy?
I mean, I have nothing against employers who *do* accommodate that kind of thing, in fact, I encourage it. But I think it's wrong for employers to be shoehorned into accepting attire from something that is ultimately, a choice. | Clarifying question: People choose to get married and have kids as well. Are you arguing that employers should be allowed to discriminate against people who are married, or people who have children?
Should employers be allowed to discriminate on anything that is a choice, or should some choices be protected, while others shouldn't?
| 25 | 24 |
Mentoring a student in a lower middle income country | I am a female postdoc in the US, and a student from a lower middle i come country lately reached out to me via authoraid website asking for mentoring. I have little mentoring experience but stayed long enough in academia to share my experience (i believe), so it would be great if both my prospective mentee and I can benefit from this experience. From her message, my only concerns include our different majors and how frequently she wants to meet, but I am sure we can sort these out. While I need to reply her to make sure if our mutual understanding of mentoring is similar, any advice on this situation? Any reasons not to do mentoring? Btw, I think our mentoring sessions will be held via zoom if they happen | I would recommend that you structure it highly.
First, decide for yourself how much time you are willing to allocate to this (e.g. 30 minutes every month for 10 months, or whatever.)
Next, give her an assignment before every meeting, so that she "earns" your time. Start with short answers and work up to mini-essays. This will help her present herself and write well. The first one should happen before you commit: ask for a personal statement: a CV, what are her goals, what inspired her to follow this path, and what she wants help with. | 46 | 37 |
ELI5: How can a half-built house be left in the weather with no issues? I’m talking about a wood frame with plastic in the rain type of thing. | Edit: this really blew up but i can’t read 200 essays about wood treatments so thank you to everyone who contributed ❤️ | Construction materials are typically rated to a certain amount of exposure to the elements to allow for construction time. Thats why construction scheduling is so important, so that sensitive things arent ruined before the building is up. Ive seen thousands of dollars worth of material discarded because it sat too long in a building that wasnt sealed
Wood framing can go quite awhile exposed before there starts to be a real concern. But it depends on climate and whatnot.
Source: work in architecture | 6,157 | 17,608 |
What is a bose-einstein condensate? | I've long since wanted to know what a bose-einstein condensate is but even after looking it up several times (I've wanted to know for a long time) I still have no clue. I just can't wrap my mind around it. I can't visualize it and even after trying google images, I just find graphs and unrelated stuff. Like plasma, and PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, I imagine as a sort of goop or runny slime consistency but generally in a ball. Also, I know it's a superfluid, does that also make it a fluid? Is a superfluid just a sub-category of fluid? Please help. | A Bose-Einstein condensate is a collection of atoms that all occupy their ground state, exhibiting quantum phenomena on a large scale. You definitely could not hold one or really even observe one with your naked eye since they tend to be very dilute, *very* cold, and need to be confined in some way. This is why you can't find pictures of one, just illustrations and density graphs from experiments.
Bose-Einstein condensation is related to superfluidity, but they are not the same thing, Bose-Einstein condensates are not necessarily superfluids. | 16 | 18 |
ELI5: Do atmospheric oxygen levels have an effect on gigantism in vertebrates? | Someone recently suggested to me that high atmospheric oxygen levels were a factor that allowed dinosaurs to grow as large as they did. I'd love to properly understand the matter and haven't been able to satisfactorily google an answer yet. (Answer doesn't need to be about dinosaurs, that's just how I stumbled upon the question.) | The main scientific theory agrees with your friend there, though is more commonly mentioned in relation to giant insects. In tests they found dragon flies grew much bigger in high oxygen environments. | 16 | 24 |
CMV: Where possible, picking up items with your feet is superior to picking up items with your hands. | There are a bunch of benefits to picking up items with your feet:
* Can be a lot more convenient when since your grabbing appendage has to travel less distance
* Your hands can be used for a lot more than grabbing things that are below your waistline
* Great for when your hands are full
* Is a lot more fun as you can pop objects up in the air and catch them with your hands (this is a lot more boring to do with hands)
* Improves body spatial awareness (I don't know this for certain, but it seems obvious)
* You get more efficient the more often you do it as you can multitask
* You can do cool tricks like flicking a sock or piece of clothing over your head and catching it
* Its just more fun than using hands
I know this is a bit of a light CMV, but I'm curious to hear what people think.
Happy CMVing! | While maintaining balance ability in one's old age is critically important, picking up items with one feet in old age may cause unnecessary risk of falling or twisting a joint poorly. At least for the elderly picking things up with hands or with the aid of a grabber is considerably safer. | 15 | 46 |
ELI5 Why school systems don't divide students based on ability rather than age | Edit: so many karmas but no karma added :( thanks for all the great responses and front page! | They already do to an extent; most honors and AP classes will have students from a couple different grade levels.
However, the reason that this isn't done all the time is because school isn't purely for academic learning. It is also important to learn social skills too. For school age children, there is lots of growth between each year. It would be harmful for a 14 year old to spend the entire day around 12 year olds just because he isn't good at schoolwork. | 2,132 | 1,922 |
ELI5: How do we know universe is approximately 14 billion years old? | The first method is to use the current expansion rate and work backwards to find out how long it took for the universe to expand to its current size.
The second method involves looking at stars. Imagine there is a stopwatch somewhere in this universe that says it has been running for 13 billion years. The existence of this stopwatch means that that universe is at least 13 billion years old.
The oldest stars act as this stopwatch, by finding out the age of the oldest stars we can find, we can find out the youngest age the universe can be.
Since both methods depend on different things, if both methods give roughly the same answer, we know that it's likely to be correct. | 26 | 22 |
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ELI5: How did some animals (lizards etc.) get an ability to regenerate limbs evolutionary? | I mean what was the process to aquiring that ability? And maybe the best example is Turbellaria for their amazing ability to divide.
| All species have the capacity for regeneration, some to a higher extent than others.
What you are referring to is called autonomy (self amputation) and in most cases it was developed as a defence mechanism that allowed an animal to escape by sacrificing a limb and then regrow a substitute one (albeit imperfect one in most cases, as they can and do regrow differently to the natural ones, e.g. Deformed in some way).
A good example of this are certain lizards that will leave a part of their tail as a decoy (it will continue moving after becoming detached) to flee from a predator. The tail will grow back, however it will not have the same bone structure as the original one as it will be mostly replaced by cartilage.
Edit: a very good example of this in humans is liver regeneration. A human liver will regenerate back to its original size even if 80% of it is removed. | 11 | 25 |
ELI5: How do water towers work? | When you pump water from point A to point B, sometimes everyone wants more water than a pump can handle. Say everyone flushes during a commercial break during the Superbowl. The water tower holds a bunch of water high up in the air so when there a drop in water pressure, gravity pulls water down and keeps the pressure up so everyone gets water. | 36 | 35 |
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Why is fusion energy so challenging to achieve? | Fusion is a really rare process for a given collision. To get relevant amounts of power you need a big volume, a high particle density and a high temperature (~100 million degree). In addition the material shouldn't lose its energy too quickly, otherwise heating power needs to be too high.
The most promising approach is a big hot plasma. To keep it away from the container walls you need giant electromagnets - superconducting coils, otherwise they need too much energy. That is really expensive. And then you get all sorts of problems from the interaction of the plasma with the magnetic field and from the plasma with itself. | 27 | 19 |
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ELI5: Why are some programming languages better for certain types of projects than other programming languages, when they can all essentially do the same thing and they all seem to work the same way? | Let's take some extremes. MATLAB is designed to do math. Scientists and engineers love it because it allows them to do some very complicated high-end math very easily. It also natively does 2D and 3D plots of the data. Contrast with SQL, which is designed for databases. It's strengths are input and output of data, and manipulation of it. Doing math stuff on SQL, or database stuff on MATLAB, wouldn't be very efficient. | 21 | 22 |
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ELI5: How did the Chinese succeed in reaching a higher population BCE and continued thriving for such a longer period than Mesopotamia? | were there any factors like food or cultural organization, which led to them having a sustained increase in population? | You might be familiar with how the Nile River in Egypt works from school. If you aren't - for 9 months out of the year the Nile has a moderate flow rate that is sufficient to support human settlement and agriculture. For the remaining 3 months the Nile's flow rate increases dramatically and it floods a huge area around its river banks.
That flooding might sound bad but its not. Using soil for agricultural purposes will deplete it's minerals within about 100 years. That's a long time compared to a human life, but not compared to a civilization. When the soil runs out of minerals you can't grow anything in it anymore, and it turns out that this is the limiting factor for most civilizations. IE, a civilization will begin intensively farming its soil, deplete the soil, then starve to death.
In the modern world we're able to replenish the soil's minerals with fertilizer. They were sort of able to do this in the ancient world as well, but this involved transporting huge amounts of animal manure which is difficult to do and, in practice, if an ancient civilization had to manually fertilize the soil it would result in very low agricultural yields.
This is what makes the Nile's floods so good for the development of civilization - every time the Nile would flood it deposits a huge amount of new soil in the areas that got flooded. The source of that new soil was hills and mountains in Central Africa, so it was filled with minerals. Or to put it another way - every year the Nile naturally dumped a huge amount of fertilizer on Egypt.
This natural fertilizing allowed Egypt to be by far the most productive agricultural region West of India for thousands of years - everyone from the Pharaohs to Alexander the Great to the Roman Empire fed themselves using the food that the Nile was able to grow.
How does this relate to China? The Yellow River in China is the same type of river as the Nile. It spends most of the year with a moderate flow rate, then has massive floods for a few months that deposit a bunch of new soil along its banks.
Where the Yellow River is different from the Nile is in its size. The Nile is a single, small river with practically no tributaries or lakes. The Nile's floods only cover a small geographic area located immediately adjacent to it.
The Yellow River, on the other hand, is a massive system with hundreds of tributaries and lakes. When it floods, it covers almost the entirety of South East China - which is an area thousands of times the size of that covered by the Nile.
The Yellow River basin has been among for the most productive agricultural areas on Earth for much of human history. Because the only limiting factor to population size is a region's ability to produce food, this also means that the Yellow River Basin (and by extension, China) has managed to maintain a huge population for the entirety of human history. | 8,354 | 7,168 |
What are some criticisms of Jungian personality types (INFJ, ENTP, etc.)? | 1. MBTI types are not empirically derived, and as such, might exhibit bias in dividing individuals or miss capturing key types of variation.
2. MBTI types are bases on Jungian theory of the psyche, and some implied assumptions may place unwarranted types of bias in the system of typology. For example, it is assumed that strong explicit functions will have as their complement poorly understood shadow functions.
3. Related to 2, the array of the 16 personality types assumes that the preferences for cognitive functions only group together in certain ways. If individuals could prefer any possible set of top 4 cognitive functions, there would be 8!/4! possible personality types, not 16.
For example, you could have someone whose preferred functions, rank ordered, are:
1. introverted thinking
2. introverted intuition
3. introverted sensing
4. extroverted sensing
No personality type in the MBTI captures these preferences. | 16 | 24 |
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ELI5: How do scales that are capable of measuring incredibly tiny amounts of things actually work? | I believe that most scales contain a piece of metal with a precise thickness/strength (called a load cell). Placing an item on the scale bends that piece of metal *very* slightly. By measuring how much the metal bends, you can figure out how much the item weighs. *How* that measurement is made is a little beyond ELI5, but it's done electrically by passing voltage through a set of resistors attached to the metal whose value changes when they're bent. By precisely measuring the voltage changes across those resistors, you can measure the distortion of the metal and thus calculate the weight.
To measure smaller things, you need a smaller load cell (that will bend more from less weight) and very precise calibrated electronics capable of accurately detecting equally tiny changes. | 130 | 215 |
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ELI5: How do they know what the possible high and low for the day’s temperature will be? | When a weather forecast says there is going to be a high of 18 and a low of 12 for example, how do they know the temperature range or possibility, especially over a weekly forecast? | It is done with mathematical models that use observational data from all over the world that including ground measurement and satellite observation. The calculation is done by supercomputers to predict the future.
The models are not perfect and the data you input is limited so the farther you go into the future the lower is the accuracy of the prediction.
Another reason for the error is that the calculation is done in grids that might be 2.5x2.5km in size. The weather is not identical in each grid and it might rain in part and the other side has sunshine but the weather models assume the same weather in all of the grid. The terrain is not the same in the whole grid and it can have an effect too. | 12 | 17 |
How did we know about human reproduction before modern medical science? | Today we think it is "obvious" that sex leads to the *possibility* of pregnancy. But how did for example people in the middle age knew that sex led to pregnancy? How did people even know that there is such a concept as fatherhood? I mean they could have believe that staying in the same room for a long time or that marriage leads to pregnancy how did the connection between sex and pregnancy happen before science? Because it's only a *possibility* to get pregnant it must have been much harder "to know". | If they weren't able to glean that information from observing themselves they could certainly observe it through the maintenance of livestock populations.
We know that they were able to make the association because antiquity is filled with virgin birth stories. | 15 | 20 |
How small and detailed could we make a Fresnel lens? | Seeing them in the wild, you either look at it from a distance or they're quite grainy, I know they're cheap.
So, probably the image might look slightly like the way insect-vision is portrayed in movies, segmented like, but if we can make the tiny tiny little mirrors and sensors in DLP projectors and smartphone camera sensors, (I don't know if the features are smaller on phone cams or pro 16k cams or what) is there any way, expensive and convoluted it may be, to manufacture a super small scale fresnel lens that would provide a clear picture.
I understand this would likely never be profitable in a smartphone or anything but I just love the idea of a telescope that's much wider than it is long, or a pair of binoculars that's scarcely thicker than some thick glasses.
In case you can't tell I don't know how optics work.. I flaired it for Engineers because I suppose that's closest? Rather than physics?
I also just imagined a microtelescope could be made using a DLP mirror module as the collecting mirror with a little sensor in front of it, the uses however, escape me, aside from proof of concept or just messing about. | In an ordinary Fresnel lens, the step changes in thickness are not especially damaging to their performance; you can mostly ignore them. But as the steps get closer together, they start to really matter. You end up in a regime where the device would be considered a diffractive optical element (DOE).
The steps should have a height that depends on the wavelength, and on the angle of incidence. A "blazed grating" is an example of a diffractive element that has a simple sawtooth pattern. The main use of such a device is to disperse different wavelengths into different directions, and to do so with a high efficiency into one direction in particular.
DOEs are very useful devices, and they can be cheaply manufactured. You heat up a soft material, and you press a hard stamp into it - that's a form of nanoimprint lithography (NIL). It's not out of the question to find a DOE in a consumer product. (For example, many credit cards have a plastic hologram.)
Unfortunately there is a catch to making a diffractive lens: the exact shape of the DOE has to be tuned to the wavelength of interest. A DOE that efficiently focusses one wavelength to a tiny point, will be unlikely to focus another wavelength to the same point. So that's a challenge to using them in a colour camera. | 19 | 91 |
To what degree can the safety of previous vaccines be generalized to the Covid-19 Vaccines? How generalizable is previous safety data to a given new vaccine? | If it’s the same type of vaccine and uses the same dosage of adjuvants, the safety data from an older vaccine could give you a very good idea of what to expect safety-wise. More often than not, adjuvants are the cause of negative side-effects. That being said, there is still a chance that the antigen used can cause toxicity as well, especially if the antigen’s native function is to subvert your immune system or have some other physiological affect on your body. Usually vaccine researchers go out of their way to pick an antigen with very little likelihood of having such functions, like the covid spike protein.
Definitions, if needed:
Adjuvant - the compound in a vaccine that stimulates your immune system.
Antigen - a compound, usually a protein, derived from the pathogen you want to building lasting immunity to. This is the target your immune system will recognize when you get infected with the real pathogen. | 12 | 51 |
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Is there a job I can travel with? | Hey Economists
I'm a 20 yo second-year student studying economics Bsc at a Russell Group (Top 10) uni in the UK. Most of my friends here are looking into investment banking as a career, with many of them securing internships at big investment banks. I don't really want to punch numbers and examine companies bottom lines, and the whole large corporate feel feels a little too uncanny for me.
Are there any economics graduate jobs out there that allow you to travel, meet new people, have different interesting days, while allowing you to earn an above-average salary? Or is that too good to be true?
Thank you! Am a bit lost as to what to do with my degree. | You could manage micro lending programs to support potential entrepreneurs and farmers in developing African nations. If you’re about making a difference you’d change lives profoundly, and even if you’re selfish, chicks would dig it. | 14 | 101 |
How is "progress" achieved in the field of philosophy? | That there is such a thing as progress and, in particular, progress within philosophy is, in itself, a philosophical contention, to which many would disagree or would have nuanced views about. Wittgenstein would probably think that any philosophical progress that doesn't outright dissolve philosophy is progress in making language traps (excepting probably logic), or Benjamin would say that progress is a catastrophe.
In at least the most basic of senses, progress in philosophy is, at the minimum, achieved by making the philosophical canon (the set of works that are accepted as philosophy and placed within a hierarchy of importance) bigger. That, at least, is more or less indisputable (that there is more philosophy as time advances). If then you want to call this progress qualitative or merely quantitative, positive or negative, you're gonna find literature going to all sides of this. | 18 | 30 |
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ELI5: Why can bones heal but teeth can not? | Your bones are surrounded with blood veins that can transport the nutrients necessary to repair your bones if they break relatively quickly. Your teeth lack this surrounding vein structure, so to repair holes on the surface they would need to transport the necessary nutrients through bone. Since bone is too rigid to do this at any perceptible pace, the acid damage from the bacteria will outpace any repair that does happen. | 179 | 216 |
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ELI5: By what process did the first electrons, neutrons and protons to form into atoms? | Different atoms formed through different processes.
The lightest atoms (hydrogen, helium, and lithium) were formed immediately after the big bang in a short window where pressures were still high enough to smash these particles together but high energy light had dispersed enough to not blow them apart.
All elements heavier than lithium but lighter than iron and nickel are formed in the cores of stars. Pressures and temperatures there are high enough to force light atoms together into heavier ones in a process that releases energy and fuels the star.
Everything heavier than iron and nickel *consume* energy when fused, these atoms only form when massive stars implode under their own weight and briefly crush heavy elements together before destabilizing entirely. | 32 | 81 |
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If the voltage id high enough, would electricity be able to arc in space? | What we see as an arc is the effect of molecules in the air being excited by the impact of electrons that are accelerated by the voltage. These excited molecules then fall back to a lower energy state and emit a photon. This is the light we see when there's an electric arc.
In space, without air, there's nothing to excite and emit photons. Instead, if you'd apply a voltage between two electrodes in space, you will have any free electrons (or electrons emitted by the negative electrode) being pulled towards the positive electrode.
But that's it. There'll be no visible phenomenon and the electrons simply follow the electric field lines toward the positive electrode, instead of flowing through clearly defined thin channels as is the case with an electric arc in arc. | 13 | 26 |
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How exactly do Lagrange-4 and Lagrange-5 work? | I feel like I understand L-1 through L-3 pretty well. L-1 is just where gravitational "forces" subtract perfectly to slow down orbits to geosynchronous, L-2 is where they add perfectly to speed up orbits to geosynchronous, and L-3 is on the opposite side of the sun as L-2 but has the same effect. However, no matter how many explanations I hear or how many diagrams I see, I still can't figure out what is so special about +/-60 degrees in the orbit, or why these are actually stable instead of metastable. | Using L4 and the Earth/ Moon system to be specific. At L4, the distances to Earth and Moon are equal. So the gravitation force from them adds up to point toward the barycenter of the system, and also has the correct magnitude for stability. The barycenter is the center of mass AND the center of rotation for the 3-body system, so any object at L4 is in 3-body equilibrium as it orbits. If the object moves away from L4, there is a Coriolis effect that brings it back. | 17 | 37 |
Should I still read old economist? | Should I read books from Milton Friedman, Hayak, Keynes and Von Mises in 2022? Or are these something I shouldn’t read an instead spend my time on newer books in the past 10-15 years? | Reading the old-guard economists is a good exercise I’d say if you want a truly well rounded understanding of the different schools of economics and how they evolved overtime. Is this super necessary in industry or policy work? Not really if you ask me, but it’s a step along the way of becoming an economist. | 40 | 28 |
What does "right is prior to good" mean in deontological ethics? | Can anyone explain what is meant by right? I know good being prior to right means that the ultimate justification of our actions is maximizing good. | People use this phrase in a few different ways, but usually the idea is that either the right or the good has some kind of logical or metaphysical priority.
That is, if the good is prior to the right, then we mean something like rightness, as such, substantially depends on or is derived from goodness, as such. If consequentialism is supposed to be such a system wherein the good is prior to the right, then it is a system in which we can't know the right until we work out the good because it turns out that the right *just is* something in relation to the good.
So, if we're thinking this way, saying the right is prior to the good is the supposed reversal of this. That is, the good, as such, is derived from the right. So, if something like Kantian Deontology is such a system where the right is prior to the good then, perhaps, we mean that good, as such, (like the Good Will) is conceptually dependent upon the right, as such (i.e. Duty).
Beyond this, though, these distinctions sometimes have a tough time being maintained. | 32 | 56 |
(ELI5) What is it about Taiwan that makes it a good spot to produce computer chips? | Intense prior investment.
High tech manufacturing really relies on having an experienced workforce and well developed facilities. Both of those require time and money.
Many companies offloaded their electronics manufacturing into Taiwan due to cheaper labour and utilities in the past. Now Taiwanese companies have the people, the knowhow, the facilities and the money to both do what others do but cheaper (due to economy of scale and experience) AND innovate beyond that.
To catch up, others need to put in exactly as much human and monetary investment as Taiwan already had to this date, but most likely without seeing profit for decades (because they can buy from a cheaper, trustworthy source, i.e. Taiwan).
Of course, it still is worth doing by nations for matters like supply independence etc. But business-wise, it makes sense to buy from Taiwan. | 67 | 26 |
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Why is the speed of light the universal speed limit? | Title says it all | I could give you a lot of different answers or explanations, but it would all be circular. The reason is this- it's taken as a postulate, or assumption, in the theory of relativity. It's a very good assumption that agrees with every measurement ever made, but it's an axiom of the theory, which we take to be true from the beginning.
| 91 | 137 |
As modern humans, we spend a significant percentage of our lives wearing shoes and other related footwear. How does this affect the development of our feet and legs, if at all? | There are definite morphological implications. People who grew up barefoot (ie native tribes in South America, Africa, or Australia) tend to have significantly wider feet. This is because the confinement of shoes, while slight, is enough that it alters the shape of the foot. In addition, the intirnisic muscles of the foot in shoe-wearing populations tend to be relatively weak and/or underdeveloped, as the shoe structure replaces many functions of the foot. The weakness of those muscles tends to lead to over-pronation, which in turn can lead to increased tibial rotation during the stance phase of gait, and tibial rotation can cause a misalignment of the tibia/femur/patella complex.
That being said, feet are very unique so you may not see all of those things or even none of those things in any given person who usually wears shoes. Things like 'barefoot' shoes are also primarily marketing gimmicks meant to prey upon ignorance and utilizing psuedoscience. | 10 | 16 |
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ELI5: During the 07/08 financial crisis, what would have happened if the US government had not committed to the bailout to save private financial institutions? Doesn't saving inefficient companies have a negative impact on the economy in the long run? | I've been reading up on the financial crisis and the government's decision doesn't seem to line up with the conventional economic logic that in a free market, inefficient companies will dissolve and efficient ones will remain (or new ones will emerge) creating a market equilibrium. So why not let these big private organizations fail when they were clearly no longer able to make profitable decisions on their own? Why feed them tax payer dollars to remain in operation? | The difference is that other companies rely on large financial institutions for their investments and finances. There is also the issue of investor confidence - you aren't going to invest money or take out a loan if the money starts evaporating. So if a big bank goes down, it takes out lots more with it.
Back in 1929 when Wall Street crashed, the government followed the free market rules and liquidized the failing companies. It resulted in a knock-on effect and more and more companies collapsed. Welcome to the Great Depression. | 12 | 18 |
[Warhammer 40K] Which warp entity is fueled by love? | The Ruinous Powers feed of almost every emotion imaginable. Khorne feeds off of hate, fury, anger, and martial honor; Tzeentch feeds off of the quest for knowledge, the desire for change, and psychic powers; Slaanesh feeds off of pain and pleasure; and Nurgle feeds off of decay and the desire to survive.
However, there is one major emotion left out of this list: love. Love is a powerful emotion, and despite the grimdark nature of the setting love is guaranteed to still be present. Yet love helps none of the Gods of Chaos.
This begs a question: could a Lord (or Lady) of Love be the savior of the galaxy? Love is pure, and loving another does not help evil. A Lady of Love would be truly benevolent, helping people without asking for anything in return.
I am referring to selfless love. Putting another before oneself. Being willing to die to save the ones you love. Helping others, without hoping or expecting any reward.
None of these seem to be characteristic of any Chaos faction. The best example I know of comes from *Harry Potter*, not Warhammer 40k -- Lily Potter sacrificing herself so that her son may live. | What type of love? Self love? Romantic love? Parental love? General adoration?
For both Self Love and Romantic Love, i would say they're more Slaanesh's territory than anything... They can be very obsessive emotions, which is right up the Prince of Excesses... Excess.
Parental Love is more Nurgle's bag, i think. Part of Nurgle's domain is the rebirth of life through decay, and he is a very proud and nurturing diety. | 44 | 29 |
If you take any colour and made it dark enough, would it eventually just turn black? | There are two ways of constructing colors—additive (e.g., RGB) and subtractive (e.g., CMYK). Additive colors are “added” to black, and for them, the answer is simple: you make them “darker” by reducing the amount you’re adding, and when you reach zero you’re at black.
For subtractive colors, the answer is a bit more complex. The bandwidth of light blocked by each of the primary subtractive colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow) is narrower than the bandwidth the corresponding cone cells in your eye are able to respond to—this is necessary in order to create fully-saturated primary colors that trigger a single type of cone without “crossing over” and triggering other cones as well. But this means that there are some frequencies of visible light *between* the primary subtractive colors that aren’t blocked by them and will still be visible no matter how “dark” you make the primaries. (That’s why it’s necessary to add black to cyan, magenta, and yellow for CMYK printing.)
At least, that’s the case if you have a full-spectrum light source. If your light source were only emitting pure red, green, and blue frequencies (like the light from an RGB monitor), then you could indeed make black using fully-saturated subtractive primary colors. | 24 | 50 |
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CMV: There is no good reason other than medical obligation to put your pets/children on a gluten free/vegan/whatever diet. | In most cases, it's very unhealthy for them without special supplements. Even with the supplements, why force a special diet onto someone else? Your kids probably don't particularly want to be vegan, let them make that decision for themselves once they're old enough to understand what being vegan means. Don't just keep them from eating animal products, give them whatever they need for a balanced diet until they make that choice. Same with your pets minus the choosing to be vegan part. If your pet is a carnivore/omnivore, don't force it to eat only fruits and veggies. I cannot comprehend why anyone would force that onto someone else. I understand why people would do it themselves, but not why they would make anyone else abstain from animal products.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | It is a parents job to teach their children what the parents believe is correct and moral. Parents do this for all sorts of things - they take their kids to church, make them do volunteer work, force them to study in school, etc. Every day, forcing _the parent's_ views on what is right and good on to the child in an attempt to make the child learn those values.
If a parent believes that kill animals for food is wrong and forces their kids to be vegetarian/vegan, hows is that different than the thousand other moral choices the parent forces on the child? | 32 | 23 |
ELI5: Why television and media cameras are so big, despite the same level of picture detail being achievable on much smaller devices? | What's all that 'extra camera' used for? | Much higher quality sensors and optics. In order to fit a small camera on the back of your phone, there's a lot of compromises that need to be made so that it will fit in that limited space. That will affect the sharpness, clarity, and detail of the image, and when you're getting paid for top quality shots, a camera phone just doesn't cut it. | 247 | 383 |
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