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[God of War] If Kratos has such immense strength, why does he seemingly struggle to carry a body? | 23 | one theory ive seen is that his strenght is, due to being a god, set to the task at hand. he is as strong as he needs to be, to a point. so his strenght isnt static, it depends on what he is trying to do.
or mabye he is just grunting becasue of it. it aint fun carrying a dead body around. | 50 |
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CMV: The Blair Witch Project isn't even remotely scary, and its current position as the gold standard of the American horror genre is a farce (Warning: Spoilers) | **EDIT: View changed.**
I saw an advertisement for a horror movie today, claiming itself to be "the best American horror film since The Blair Witch Project."
This left me wondering: why is Blair Witch so widely exalted in the horror genre? When I watched it a few years ago, I was underwhelmed, bemused, and did not experience a single fright.
Here's my breakdown of the film:
-Daytime: hikers wander around and find creepy little things made by the witch. Trite--we've all seen something like that before.
-Nighttime: Hikers hear a noise, take the camcorder outside to investigate, see *something* (we can hardly see what scared them because it's nighttime and the camcorder quality isn't great at long distance), camera gets pointed at the ground, person filming takes off running and screaming.
This cycle repeats several times until the end of the film. The end was somewhat disturbing and left me wondering, but it still wasn't scary.
TL;DR: Blair Witch is a horror movie in which we see people get scared, but never really get to see what exactly is scaring them. How is it a horror movie at all, and why has it received so much praise within the genre? | 132 | It was completely surprising and original when it first came out. 1999 was before everyone carried around devices that could record video all the time. The vast majority of horror movies at the time were sequels or remakes of Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm St. etc.
While the film had a lot of weaknesses, the concept was original. And as opposed to the "mad slasher" who kills the kids who do stupid things, this felt slightly more "real" and possible.
But, no, it's not the gold standard by any means, just a pretty good film for its time. | 155 |
[MCU] How much money did Ultron give Ulysses Klaue? | 18 | I don't think there's an exact number out there, but in the scene Klaue looks at his phone and we can see multiple payments in the billions and hundreds of millions, so it was probably something like 3 or 4 billion USD | 17 |
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ELI5: What's the big deal about Half Life? | Yes, I'm talking about the game. | 47 | In 1998, a young game development studio called Valve released Half-Life. Half-Life is a first-person shooter about a scientist, Gordon Freeman, working on an experiment in teleportation that went horribly wrong, allowing alien monsters to enter the facility. Armed with his trusty crowbar and an increasing array of other weapons, he must close the rift and escape. The game was acclaimed for its gameplay and immersion, including the reasonably novel replacement of cut-scenes with scripted sequences where the player retained control of Gordon.
In 2004, Valve released Half-Life 2. In the aftermath of the previous game, the world has been dominated by alien overlords known as the Combine. Gordon must evade the rulers of City 17 and eventually take the fight to them, leading a popular uprising against the invaders.
In 2006, Half-Life 2: Episode 1 came out. Valve had decided to release smaller, less expensive "episodes" to continue the story in lieu of an all-in-one sequel. In Episode 1, Gordon must sabotage the Combine citadel and escape the city before it is destroyed. In Episode 2, released 2007, he must make his way to a base outside the city and aid the resistance in preventing the Combine from bringing alien reinforcements. It ends in a dramatic cliff-hanger.
Since 2007, fans have been anxiously awaiting the release of Episode 3. Valve more recently announced that they would be instead releasing a full sequel, Half-Life 3. Valve has remained characteristically silent on the status of the game, but expectations are high. Gamers are willing to put a lot of faith in Valve because of the consistent quality of its releases. Valve has a history of extremely long dev cycles that culminate in excellent releases just about the time that everyone had given up. Team Fortress 2, for instance, spent 9 years in development, and it was spoken of in the same breath as Starcraft: Ghost and Duke Nukem Forever. Unlike the former, it actually came out, and unlike the latter, it didn't suck.
Over the years, given Valve's silence, fans have tended to jump on rumors of the game's imminent release. After so long, this has become a joke, where ordinary events are "interpreted" nonsensically as coded messages that Half-Life 3's release is imminent. | 86 |
Why is heart cancer so rare? | Edit: Thank you all for your thorough answers. This is something I've wondered about for a long time. | 383 | Heart cells are not rapidly dividing and regrowing.
Cancer is usually present in areas where there is rapid regrowth and rapid dividing.
Also a person with heart cancer would not live long, it would cause conduction abnormalities and improper pumping.
For cardiac cancer where it is a met, the heart is a difficult organ to colonise, blood flow is quite fast and its difficult with all the turbulent flow to 'sit' on heart tissue. | 201 |
Why is Kant's Critique of Pure Reason more well known than the other two Critiques? | I'm referring to Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgement. As a layman interested in philosophy, I rarely ever hear about the other two. | 18 | Both of those texts are very much talked about and studied by professional academic philosophers. One reason they aren’t spoken about as much is that the *Of Pure Reason* is hugely comprehensive. The issues discussed in *Of Judgement*, for example, are in depth expansions of issues touched on in Pure Reason. Additionally, Pure Reason is the most historically significant and influential.
That is not to say the others are not influential— just to say Pure Reason had a massive and lasting impact that overshadows the impact of the others— which are also seen as important texts for philosophy. | 14 |
What does Derrida mean by 'Logos'? | In 'Of Grammatology', Derrida writes:
'from the pre-Socratics to Heidegger, (metaphysics has) always assigned the origin of truth in general to the logos'.
Does this mean there is some 'underlying truth' (from which all other truths are derived) that he will go on to argue against? A cursory look into what 'logos' means gives me this impression, but I can't find a solid definition. | 42 | *Logos*, in Greek, means "speech," and is derived from the verb "to speak." It also can mean "account," especially a rational or scientific/philosophical account, and "ratio" in the mathematical sense of a proportion between numbers.
In this work and others, Derrida will emphasize the privileged place of *spoken discourse* over *written discourse*. Written discourse, he will argue, often gets placed in a subordinate place to spoken discourse. He especially identifies this theme in Plato.
[Edit: The idea is that when a person is speaking, they somehow have more control over the meaning of their words, insofar as their physical presence allows them to animate the meaning of their words with an "intention." Written discourse, by contrast, lacks this animating intention of the speaker. So by "metaphysics," Derrida means "the metaphysics of presence" (following Heidegger), an understanding of being/truth in terms of *physical presence* in the *temporal present*. "Logocentricism" (the privileging of speech over writing), for Derrida, is part of the metaphysics of presence insofar as philosophers have attempted to stabilize the meaning of their texts by appealing to the physical presence of a speaker, the animating intention of their thoughts when speaking, etc.] | 40 |
[WH40K/WoW] A wire gets crossed and instead of the Dark Portal opening to Draenor, it opens to Macragge. | And for the sake of argument lets just say the Warhammer side is just a regular portal hanging in the air and not an elaborate structure like the Dark Portal itself is. Also this takes place just before Legion, for whatever reason.
How do the Ultramarines handle a planet that is CLEARLY drenched in the Ruinous Powers of Chaos?
How do the denizens of Azeroth handle technology and faith they've never even conceived of? | 26 | Azeroth get a purging, the planet is completely overwhelmed by Xenos.
There is yet hope for the planet however, it is very clear the planet is blessed by the Emperor. The humans that do make their living there might be tainted but they show power that is clearly miracles by the Emperor in one of his many forms, he is the guiding light of this world.
Also, abhumans? And some Humans are cursed? Even allied with some Xenos? Are those Eldar?
There is hope for this world but a great crusade to purge it must commence. Thankfully, the planet appears to be in the most early stage of industrialization with minimal amount of military vehicles. They run on steam even.
The unfortunate part is the fact there is a great amount of psykers on the world.
The PDF of Macragge is organized in to an invasion force while the local Space Marines starts to scout out the planet so they can perform deep strikes on enemy command structure, this "Horde" faction is by far the largest and most dangerous and thus, their cities are bombarded by Thunderhawks.
Some Space Marines commanders and Imperial Diplomat alongside priests are sent to the Human capital city, they will be explained that they have finally been found, the Emperors guiding light have been with them all this time but the time to cleanse the enemies of man is on us.
Why is this human king, who is clearly a warrior and general, so keen on preserving some of the Xenos? Clearly, this world, while still have hope, it is a frail and weak hope, it must be reinforced by fanatic zeal. | 40 |
[The Truman Show] How did the producers convince the city of Burbank to sell off all of its land to let them built giant dome housing Sea Haven there instead? What implications did this have on the Los Angeles economy? | As you can see [here](http://i.imgur.com/fdzd4gE.png), the dome was constructed directly behind the Hollywood Sign, which is mostly the city of Burbank CA, and some of North Hollywood.
Surely this had a huge effect on Los Angeles county, if not all of the United States. Over 100,000 people would have had to be re-located. Not to mention that ~~three~~ two of the 5 major studios are located all within the perceived diameter of the dome.
At least the Burbank name lived on with Truman.
Edit: Another unrelated question: How much did it cost to keep Philip Glass on retainer? | 36 | History played out differently in the Truman Show universe. For one, the world appears to be a single governmental juggernaut, facilitating the construction of absolutely massive projects, something none of our countries could manage.
That much being the case, it's possible that there *was* no Burbank CA to remove. | 40 |
ELI5: Where did the Avogadro's number idea come from? And how come a 18th centruy scientist came up with this precise number? | I mean without electronic microscopes how did the man came up with such a precise number? And where did his ideas came from? | 43 | First off: It's named after Avogadro, but Avogadro didn't actually provide an number. He just proposed the idea that the volume and number of atoms in a gas are proportional, all other things (namely, temperature and pressure) are constant.
It was first calculated in 1910 when Robert Millikan, and American Physicist, managed to determine the charge on a single electron; which is doable by reacting very small amounts of things, and looking for the LCD in the charge. Because the charge on a mole of electrons (measurable by arranging a chemical reaction using moles of atoms) was known, it's just a division problem from there.
And it wasn't that precise at the time, but has gotten more precise over the years. | 37 |
Just how much more expensive would eggs and milk be without subsidies? | 21 | That depends on the market structure of the place where the subsidies are used.
In a very competitive marketplace, the subsidy will transfer to consumer surplus -- the closer you get to the theoretical perfect competition, the closer you are to 100% transfer to consumer surplus (likely in the form of lower prices).
In a very uncompetitive marketplace, the subsidies will be more likely absorbed by the producers.
Take an extreme case: there's a monopoly and the subsidy is a flat "gift" every year. We know a monopolist produces where his marginal revenue equals his marginal cost. Since a flat gift doesn't affect his marginal cost, he will produce and price exactly the same and pocket 100% of the subsidy.
So places like Canada (which have a dairy cartel acting closer to a monopoly) in all likelihood have large parts of the subsidy pocketed by producers (the subsidy is effectively a very economically inefficient political mechanism). | 14 |
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[Watchmen] What is the public perception of the heroes throughout Watchmen? | I must post a disclaimer here saying I haven't had a chance to read the graphic novel so there may well be clearer answers there I missed in the film.
In Watchmen the heroes are shown to not be the pinnacle of humanity and do a heck of a lot of shitty things but given the period when the film takes place I didn't get a great idea of how people perceived them. I believe Nite Owl I said that superheroes were a national passtime in the 40's and Silk Spectre I's status as a sex icon and Ozymandias' merchandising empire suggests they managed to keep their reputations but Comedian was a part of a lot of sketchy political acts, assassinations, excessive force and behind closed doors he was even a rapist and cold blooded killer, so what was his image in the public eye? Likewise what about someone like Rorschach who even his friends seem to think is kinda nuts? | 21 | Really poor. Most people don't trust the idea of a crazy person in a mask running around.
Because masked heroes became a thing they fell out of vogue in comic books; Pirates are what's popular now.
Masked Vigilant's became a hot button issue after people like Rorschach ended up using extreme methods to 'fight crime'. This came to a head in 1977 when The Keene Act was passed, banning all Masked Vigilantism except for The Comedian and Dr Manhattan.
| 31 |
Could there combinations of elements we have not yet discovered that are harder than diamonds? | 236 | There are materials harder than diamonds, but most of those are quite specific combinations of elements which are difficult to create or maintain outside a lab. Industrial grade diamonds are cheap and easy to make, so diamonds will remain the go-to material for industrial needs. | 82 |
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If the farthest known object is observed as 13.1 billion light years away, how far is it really? | since it is 13.1 billion light years ago as well. how far is it really?
light took 13 billion years to get here, so 13.1 billion light years away 13 billion years ago. | 48 | So if space wasn't expanding a stationary (with respect to us) object that emitted a photon 10ly ago which just reached us today would be 10ly away. Since space is expanding how far away an (stationary before metric expansion) object is when a photon that it emitted reaches us after a certain amount of time depends on the expansion of the space that the photon that was emitted had to travel through. Hubble's constant is currently believed to be about 70(km/s)/Mpc so the farther something is away the faster it is moving away and the more space a photon would have to travel through even if it were moving at the speed of light. | 16 |
I believe that Creationism is the only explanation for the existence of such diverse life on Earth. CMV | Hello, here's my two cents before everyone gets started. Please let me know if I have any information wrong or if I could be posting this in a better place:
* I am a Catholic, however, I would like this to be a discussion of pure science. I realize evolution does exist to a certain extent. I am questioning that extent.
* From what I understand, the commonly accepted theory of evolution *(please tell me if I am using the incorrect word)* is that life, not necessarily as we know it, but life nonetheless was a happy accident due to faults and fractures from rocks.
* From that, it is my understanding that these fractures formed the simplest of life--that of a single-celled organism. I would find it harder to believe that rock fractures could create a multiple-celled organism that was on the surface of the planet (above the crust, underwater counts as surface)
* Continuing, I find it incredibly hard--if not downright impossible--to believe that this single-celled organism was able to survive, let alone reproduce and become populous enough to evolve into so many different classes of animals (from birds to fish to insects).
* In essence, I suppose my question is about how a single cell was able to evolve into so many different types of things, or why it would be bothered to evolve, because single celled organisms still exist.
Thanks to any reponses.
Edit: I unfortunately have been called in to work. I will be back in about 5 hours.
Edit2: I have returned and read through many of your responses. I'd like to thank you all very much for taking the time to respond and provide me with some great information on the subjects I was questioning; this is exactly what I was looking for. As of now, my view has not been changed due to much of this being over my head. However, as I read and research more, you fine people may well accomplish your goals. Thanks again to everyone. | 16 | I don't think evolution talks about life coming from rocks. Evolution talks about the origin of life being self-assembling proteins and amino acids that were able to induce copies of themselves. It started with self-forming lipid micelles that went on to absorb these proteins. The longer proteins increased the osmotic pressure of the micelles, making them larger. Larger micelles "eat" smaller micelles when they come into contact. This were the first "cells." Eventually, the proteins that were larger and "coded" for longer proteins were selected for, and at some point the replication mechanisms became more and more complex.
Once we had the first single-celled organism, it continued to spread and replicate. As it spread to different environments, different traits were selected for. The first colony-type cells began to develop. Herd behavior as well as signaling developed as cells that shared genetic material helped each other survive so that their "brothers" would pass on their genes. This is the origin of altruism.
Eventually colonies evolved into the first complex organisms, with cell specialization. Each cell had the same genetic information, but signaling affected which genes were expressed in an individual.
From there, the multicellular organisms also spread throughout the world and all the environments, and as they were separated by huge distances, diversity began to appear. Since evolution is a random process, there were millions and millions of adaptations that occurred in one organism but not another. This is the origin of the great variation we see today.
Your last point is interesting--why evolve into an animal if being a bacterial cell seems to work out just fine?
Well, its about niche. The way things are now, there really isn't any more room for bacteria. The "microspace" is all filled up, and in order to break into it, you'd have to be a more efficient bacterial organism. So instead, bigger organisms are favored for their ability to gather resources and survive. However, as these new organisms moved into "unclaimed" ecospheres, they filled these up too. Its why we have insects, birds, fish, plants and humans. Each is able to survive because for the most part, they do not compete with each other for the same resources. Think about it, plants primarily consume sunlight, but animals do not. So both an exists in the same square meter of earth without getting in each other's way. They can even work together to survive better. Just like humans and the bacteria in our digestive tract can work together for mutual benefit.
The bacteria don't exist because its "better" to be a bacteria, they exist simply because they can. | 23 |
How does the body know which allele is dominant and which is recessive? | 31 | The simplest explanation usually for how alleles are either recessive or dominant is based on whether the protein they express has a higher than average function (gain of function) or lower than average function (loss of function).
Think about it through the lens of genetic disease. Oftentimes dominant genes are gain of function mutations. In Huntington’s disease, patients express a version of the protein huntingtin that is toxic to neurons and causes the condition. If you have two copies of alleles for huntingtin, but only one of them makes a toxic protein, you’d still have the toxic effect even though it represents only half of the expressed protein. That’s because this toxic effect is a “gain of function.” That’s what makes this allele dominant.
On the other hand, cystic fibrosis is a recessive disease. The gene for cystic fibrosis encodes a protein that transports sodium across cell membranes. Defects in this gene, called CFTR, can cause non-functional protein to be expressed and decrease the transport of sodium leading to a whole bunch of systemic effects. This is a loss of function. However, if you only have one mutant copy of the allele, then the other allele expresses a functional protein that can still do what the gene is supposed to do. This makes the disease recessive, because you need two “broken” alleles for a complete loss of this protein function.
Edit: punctuation | 41 |
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[Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny] Would Dio have been able to beat Bealzibub in a rock off? | 86 | Well if you believe Tenacious D themselves they beat The Devil during their confrontation but he still got pissed, said their jams suck, and was gonna take Kyle.
So Dio might have been able to beat The Devil in a rock off but he'd still throw a fit. | 49 |
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CMV: Almost all the pain that patients feel when visiting a dentist is unnecessary, and is often the result of dentists not taking the time to make it painless. | It is extremely rare for me to visit a doctor and have the treatment cause me pain, yet this seems to be the norm for dentistry. Why? I see them using new equipment but it's like the basic techniques haven't improved in decades.
For me, I have never sat in the dentist's chair and not have his 'treatment' be anything less than painful. The alleged nitrous oxide I'm being fed had literally no effect on the pain of his ministrations. This has been true all my life for every dentist.
I've talked to many of my friends about visiting the dentist, and they all say just shrug and say that's how dentistry works. I call bull on that, or at least, it needn't be that way.
I feel there is no reason that dentistry, any form of it, must require a painful cure. Surely with today's medicine, all dentists should be able to help their patients without causing them pain.
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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!* | 33 | > Any procedure that cannot be done without pain, should have the patient drugged to the point where they cannot feel the pain.
There are certain unscrupulous dentists that will knock out patients for cleaning. However, drugging people unconscious runs that obvious risk of complication. Human error, or equipment failure, or allergic reactions, can be dangerous to the point of fatal. This is why the medical industry does not support the practice of putting people under unnecessarily.
This is also why anesthesiologist is among the highest paid, but also highest risk, medical professions in the world.
The challenge with dentistry is that dentists often face patients who have achieved an existence almost entirely devoid of discomfort. Because pain is a relative thing, experiences that would normally be considered painless will literally become "the most painful thing in the patient's life." Of course, if dentistry became painless, the "most painful thing in the patient's life" would just become something even more minor, like subtle room temperature variation or ambient noises. There's no limit to human sensitivity, so you might as well draw the line at what's best for the patient's health. | 24 |
Is google scholar enough? | Taking my first steps as an undergrad in academia and research (looking into an internship) and I have quick question. I need to know if Google Scholar works like I think it does.
Let's say I want to research topic X. If I go to google scholar and search for X (and any other relevant tags), will it search for X on every (or at least most) journals or most of them aren't indexed and I should go to their specific sites and serch for X there (after using GoogleScholar then go to Cell, Elsevier, Journal of Whatever and search X).
How do you do your bibliography research? Any tip that might help me is welcome.
| 15 | Google scholar indexes a lot of stuff, and in life sciences at least the problem with it is that it indexes too much: phdf and master theses, presentation abstracts, not-peer-reviewed books, etc. So the problem with GS is usually that it give you too much stuff, not too little.
Therefore if you want to have more pure results, you could also try pubmed. Some people only use pubmed for this reason.
Searching journals directly is only useful if the paper was published a few days ago and isn't yet indexed. | 14 |
ELI5: Why was the world so shocked at Edward Snowden exposing the NSA and its practices? | I ask this question since the majority of the world knew on some level from previous acts and sources before Snowden, that there's a high probability of the U.S. devoting programs like the NSA to fully unrightfully spy on citizens. | 40 | In the United States, most people didn't realize (more like not pay attention or didn't care) of the scope of surveillance that was done on citizens in the United States, in the name of security.
The governments of the world realize that the United States spied on them (maybe not on the level of scope that they did) and it's nothing new. The same is done by the Russians, Chinese and even our allies, the British, Germans or Israelis on the United States.
it was *tolerated* because there wasn't much else you could do and they were doing the same. When Edward Snowden revealed to the media what the United States had been doing, the governments couldn't just ignore it because of the political backlash it had created. | 27 |
ELI5: What are Microplastics? How did they spread everywhere? Can they harm animals/Us? | 23 | Microplastics are just tiny bits of plastic. They are the result of plastic breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. Sometimes they are created intentionally, such as when they are added to hair products. Imagine this: Almost everything made of plastic slowly releases this dust. This dust is scattered by wind, people, and water. It spreads to oceans, lakes, rivers, and pools. It also appears in sealed plastic bottles, since it is formed of the plastic the bottle is made of. Is it bad? Maybe. We don't know, but we sure hope it isn't, because it is inescapable at this point. | 26 |
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ELI5 what happens when we get headaches and why does a glass of water sometimes cure it? | 22 | There are a lot of reasons for you to get a headache, but the one that pertains to the glass of water solution is that your brain needs water to survive. Your brain runs on various chemical reactions which require a balance of salt, and many other things, to stay regulated. If you don't have enough water, those chemicals become unbalanced, and your brain stops functioning properly.
A headache is your body sounding the alarm bells that "something is wrong up here," and if the problem is dehydration then drinking some water will make it go away. It doesn't mean your brain is actually in pain, because your brain doesn't have pain receptors. You can poke someone's brain with a stick and they won't feel it.
Incidentally, this is why dehydrated people hallucinate, because their brain is chemically unbalanced from lack of water. | 24 |
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ELI5: How does a company know if their TV commercial has been successful? | It seems like companies spend so much money on TV commercials. But how do they know if a commercial has been successful or not? | 46 | It depends.
Some commercials that have phone numbers use a special one just for the commercial. Thus, any calls you get to that number are attributable directly to the commercial
For others, they will look at purchase behavior before and after the commercial airs. If it goes up, it can be assumed to be due to the commercial
Sometimes they air commercials in specific markets. Like the previous example, if a market with the commercial spikes, it's probably due to the commercial. | 19 |
ELI5: Why doesn't the federal government just fix the American internet problems by breaking up the oligopolies and actually make the ISP's compete with each other? | they wouldn't need to intervene as much, they would just give the companies a run for their money, forcing them to give the best possible service for the lowest possible price | 68 | The government cannot make companies compete with each other. If company A doesn't want to expand into area Z because they will need to invest a lot of money into doing that and they aren't sure it will pay off, what can the government do? Force a company to go? | 37 |
ELI5:Why is cold water more thirst quenching then warm water? | 58 | The blood vessels around the roof and base of your mouth, and the lining of your esophagus, are extremely thin and sensitive compared to most parts of your body, making it very susceptible to temperature. When you take a mouthful of cold water, the cold water rapidly cools off the blood passing through the vessels around your mouth and throat, and that cooled blood then circulates throughout the rest of your body.
This process provides a faint cooling sensation to your whole body, not just your mouth. Thus a cold glass of water seems more "refreshing." Although it may cool you off a little, you actually digest warm water faster than cold water. Thus, if you are suffering from dehydration and have not have a drink in several hours, warm water will actually help your system recover faster. | 32 |
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Is it even theoretically possible for everyone to be wealthy and goods and services be cheap? | 45 | In the short run, no: trying to make everyone wealthy will only result in inflation (expensive goods and services), because of real constraints on the economy.
In the long run, yes: increases in productivity could result in higher real wages, which would make everyone wealthier even with cheap goods and services. | 18 |
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ELI5: Where does oxygen for astronauts come from? Are we just constantly sending rockets with tanks of oxygen up to the ISS? | 46 | It's pretty self sufficient. There's no way they could keep running up everything they need constantly so the ISS recycles a lot.
Oxygen can be made through electrolysis. This is where using electricity you can turn water into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can then be combined with the carbon dioxide the astronauts breathe out to turn back into water...... and some methane.
The air filtration systems remove the moisture from the air (from the astronauts breathing and sweating) and recycle it for either drinking or turning into air.
Water is also reclaimed from the waste that the astronauts produce. Shower water is also reclaimed.
This severely limits any resupply runs they may need. | 60 |
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CMV:Pacifism is stupid and does not work | Pacifism, nonviolence, whatever the ideology that says "violence is *ALWAYS* wrong" is called literally does not work.
When bullied, kids are recommended not to fight back, instead to report the bully, brush it off, pretend you don't care etc. even though fighting back would almost guarantee the bully is going to pick another target and leave you alone.
Some people have no moral compass. They don't care about respect, goodwill, honor, compassion or that something is bad, unacceptable, disgusting or pathetic. They see that you're not fighting back, label you an easy prey and continue to take what they want.
Then there's rape, murder, home invasions, and other fucked stuff you can't reasonably apply pacifism to. I think that women *should* be recommended self-defense weapons, you *should* defend your home with firearms, and you *should* apply violence to people who continuously engage in destructive acts. And don't get me started on wars.
We have police to take care of bad actors but there seems to be a modern pacifist movement that calls for defunding their forces and instead using these resources to provide education, healthcare and poor region development which is supposed to eliminate most crime but again, I believe that *a lot* people are born with little moral qualities and the only thing that's stopping them from causing damage to their communities is fear of physical punishment so change my mind I guess ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ | 24 | You seem to be a little confused here. You even accurately describe the point of pacifism, namely the idea that violence is always wrong in an ethical sense, and then completely ignore it for the rest of your post. The question of pacifism isn't whether or not being a pacifist will somehow prevent you from being harmed or produce some kind of material benefit for you. Any serious pacifist knows, or should know, that being a pacifist will not protect them from physical harms or difficulties. What they believe, however, is that being a pacifist is a moral obligation of sorts. If violence is always wrong in the ethical sense, then they cannot engage in it if their objective is to be ethically good individuals. Same way you would never tell a Christian that giving to charity is ineffective because it's not about efficiency. It's about their ethical standards and keeping to those. | 48 |
How do we establish elevation on another planet that has no ocean, ex. Mars? | Do we pick the lowest point on the planet and call that zero? Or what do we use for "zero" elevation, when there is no ocean? | 105 | On Mars we use atmospheric pressure to determine at what elevation water molecules would no longer be stable if they WERE present (6.105 mbar) and use that as a reference point that’s similar to our sea level. It’s called the Mars areoid. | 92 |
ELI5: What is DRM, why is it hard to crack, and how does it prevent third party programs/apps to make use of the DRM-protected item? | 58 | DRM stands for **D**igital **R**ights **M**anagement. There are many, many different types of DRM, and many of them (in fact, the vast majority of them) *have*, in fact, been cracked - that's why people are always coming up with new types and methods of DRM.
How exactly each DRM works varies from case to case. In the Olden Days there was a certain type of copy protection which required that you have the original floppy disk in the drive, and the program would access a section of the disk that would appear as damaged to other programs.
Nowadays many programs attempt to contact a server on the internet to validate permissions to run. | 28 |
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ELI5: When trying to carbon date an ancient man-made object, how do you differentiate between when the object was created and the age of material that was used to create the object? | Example: An ancient sword can be made out of cast iron. When you carbon date it today to find its age, are you finding the age of the iron or are you finding the age of the sword? | 295 | > When you carbon date it today to find its age, are you finding the age of the iron or are you finding the age of the sword?
Carbon dating is only used on biological material in comparison to the levels in the atmosphere at the time. So in your example we would date the leather wrapping on the handle to see when the cow died and assume they didn't use leather from a cow who died hundreds of years prior.
The reason it works is that some carbon is radioactive and when it is tied up in an organism it rotates through them regularly. Once they die it doesn't go anywhere and the radioactive atoms decay at a known rate, so by looking at the different proportion we can know when the organism died. | 154 |
Why is there no "electron radiation"? | As I understand it, there is radiation that is made of particles (protons/neutrons/neutrinos(?)). But I have never heard of a radiation that would be made of electrons. There is probably an obivous reason for that, but I can not see it (yes, I tried google). | 25 | Electrons are emitted by beta^(-) decay of nuclei. They are also emitted by other kinds of nuclear decays like internal conversion, internal pair creation, and electron capture (via the Auger effect). | 28 |
[Portal] Why are portals elliptical? | Given that circles appear everywhere in physics, but ellipses appear relatively rarely, why do portals turn out elliptical?
Is the elliptical shape a product of the phenomenon used to form portals; or could portals be any shape, so long as both sides match? | 19 | Circles are generally the most energy efficient shape. However, much of that energy would be wasted because of the general humanoid shape of being taller than we are wider.
There may have been a net gain energy efficiency to make the overall area of the portal smaller even by using a less energy efficient shape. | 15 |
ELI5:How Google can search the internet in a fraction of a second but Windows takes five minutes to search for a file on my computer? | How Google can search the internet in a fraction of a second but Windows takes five minutes to search for a file on my computer? | 54 | Google doesn't search the Internet. At least not directly. Google operates by searching their locally-stored, highly-optimized index that they slowly construct by having their bots crawl the Internet 24 hours a day. So your search results are based on what Google has seen over the last several days/weeks/months, and not on what is currently there.
Your computer can do the same thing. Windows can index files to make searching faster. | 55 |
How fast would i have to throw a hot dog to have it be cooked by wind friction when it lands? | Lets say I could throw anything at any speed, how fast would a hot dog have to travel to end up cooked by the time it hits the ground. | 65 | The energy generated by air resistance will be the same as the energy lost by the hot dog. It'll need to be well above terminal velocity to cook, so we can ignore gravity, so the energy lost is basically the same as the KE it starts with: 0.5mv^2
Let's say m=100g.
If you put two in an 800W microwave, they'll (kind-of) cook in a minute. Esimating 33% efficiency, that means each one absorbs something like 8000J when it cooks.
If we put 0.5mv^2 = 8000J, we get v=400m/s, which means you have to throw it at 895mph. Round it to 900mph, because it's all very rough.
I've assumed that all of the energy generated by air resistance goes into the hot dog... in reality this won't happen. More of it will probably heat the air than the hot dog. If we guess that a quarter of it heats the hot dog, then we need to generate four times as much energy, and we'll need to throw it at 1800mph.
Of course it won't be cooked very evenly. It'll be scorched on one side and a mess on the other. If it's in a bun, the bread will ignite, so that'll give the meat a bit more cooking... it ain't gonna be pretty. | 92 |
[General Horror] If I refuse to leave the bed to investigate a strange noise, would the ghost leave me alone for the night? | I'm really tired. | 936 | In most horror settings with ghosts, the ghost feeds off your fear to become more powerful.
This is why they do escalatingly creepy things before they can kill you.
If you just ignore the weird bumps, the ghosts power will never grow beyond that. | 654 |
ELI5: Where do shells come from? | 34 | There are animals that lived in them at one point (or still do) and they create the shells around them out of minerals they consume the same way you grow hair. Sometimes those animals move onto bigger shells later, abandoning the small ones, and sometimes they stay in them till they die and the shells just keep getting bigger to accommodate them. | 45 |
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Why did Plato despise Democracy? | I understand he thought it would always regress into mob rule, and he held the people of Athens responsible for the death of Socrates. But surely, it was not the fault of Democracy itself, but a poorly educated mass and the rich privileged demagogues who excercised immense power through manipulating them. | 81 | Plato does use the ship / captain analogy in the *Republic* - a criticism of mob rule, wherein all the more aspirational crew members
>spend all their time milling round the captain and doing all they can to get him to give them the helm.
\- Plato, *Republic*
Another way of considering his distaste for democracy is through his craft analogy, which goes a little something like this:
>Ruling, like medicine, navigation, or even farming, is a skill. A special training is necessary, and not everyone is naturally capable of even acquiring the skill. Just as medicine should be left to the experts, and a medical training given to those most suited, so should ruling, and a training to rule. Any other arrangement will lead to worse results, and consulting the populace will lead to disaster.
\- Jonathan Wolff, *An Introduction to Political Philosophy*, when discussing Plato's views on who should rule.
Plato also lays down where he believes these rulers will come from. He proposes a system of education for 'guardians': people that are trained their entire life to eventually rule. Educated in literacy, music, maths, military and physical education. Philosophy is taught at the age of 30 for five years, followed by 15 years of military service, before a permanent return to the study of philosophy, a repose interrupted only by taking one's turn in the 'weary business of politics'. | 74 |
I think unmarried fathers should have the right to absolve themselves of responsibility to their offspring. Please CMV. | In many countries, non-custodial parents can be sued for child support - and in the majority cases, the plaintiff is a mother seeking payment from the child's biological father.
An unmarried mother has the option to absolve herself of responsibility to the child by postcoital contraception, abortion, or adoption; in many cases without the consent of the father. In contrast, the father has no such opportunity.
I think it's only fair he be given the option to absolve himself of responsibility to his offspring (perhaps by signing away his rights as a biological parent).
***
As a pre-emptive retort to the idea that you 'reap what you sow', and that the father has a responsibility to use contraceptives:
* Contraceptives are not 100% effective. Whether through malfunction or incorrect usage, mistakes do happen.
* The mother has those same responsibilities, but has the *extra* option of absolving responsibility after conception.
Unwanted pregnancies do occur, and in those situations the father should also have the opportunity to absolve himself of responsibility.
***
Please change my view. | 50 | The reason why noncustodial parents have to financially support their children is not to punish them or to equalize the contributions of each parent, but to ensure that the child is adequately provided for.
In many instances, the financial resources of a single parent will not be adequate to raise a child. In those cases, there are only a few options: 1) let the child starve/go without clothing/schooling/etc. 2) have the state provide assistance 3) have the absent parent provide assistance. We have decided that it is better to require the absent parent to provide assistance than to let the child go without or to require the taxpayer to assist. In both of those cases, a completely innocent party has to suffer.
In essence, you should ask not whether it is fair that the father has to provide support while the mother can choose to abort/adopt, but whether it is fair to make you and me support the child instead of the father. | 79 |
ELI5: What is "hard" water, and how does adding salt to it make it "soft?" | 43 | Hard water is caused mostly by two common positively charged minerals, calcium and magnesium. These minerals can react with soap and detergents in such a as to precipitate (fancy word for remove it from solution) and make the soaps less effective.
Salt water is used in water softeners. Water softeners contain a resin that can bind with the sodium in brine during charging. When in use, hard water is passed through the the resin. Calcium and magnesium bind more strongly with the resin then the sodium and as they bind with the resin, sodium is released into the water while the the calcium and magnesium are removed.
Unlike the calcium and magnesium, sodium does not bind with nor precipitate soap or detergents so they remain just as effective and the water is considered softened. | 18 |
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[Star Wars] So, why exactly did the Senate blindly believe the evil looking man declaring himself dictator after murdering all the Jedi as traitors without a trial? | The Jedi who had served them loyally for thousands of years, mind you. | 205 | Unseen in the movies there is a whole propaganda war going on which painted the Jedi as warmongering psycho-monks with magic powers who used the war against the separatist to grab control of the newly established military arm of the republic without any correct oversight.
People were getting tired of the war and Palpatine was manipulating that in to a resentment against the Jedi. The only Jedi the public still liked and saw as a war hero was Anakin but the rest were seen as stuffy old geezers grabbing for military and political power through the war.
With that as a basis, it was easy enough to spin the Jedi attack into a traitorous action. With the populace against a continuation of the war to Palpatine could push through a formalisation of the Empire by promising that with his sweeping new powers and authority he would get as Emperor the war would end. Which it actually did only hours after the Empire was made official, so people were happy to live in a dictatorship, at least in the beginning.
Also, not to forget that at this point Palpatine didn't need to hide his force powers anymore with the Jedi gone so it isn't completely out of the question that he simply manipulated the minds of the Senators as he was speaking to them. | 191 |
[Bioshock] Will My Plasmids Pass On To My Kids? | So, I just found out im going to be a father. Which is great! Honest. I've got a great job at Atlus and even got to try some of them Plasmids out for free.
But... well, I don't have much of a head for science but working around eggheads enough I get that all these Plasmids and Tonics change my DNA. And I pass my DNA onto my kids, or half of it? Again, don't got the best head for these things. All I know is that kids look a little like both thier mom and thier dad.
Anyway, seeing all these guys with messed up faces from too much of the stuff is getting to my head.
Is my kid going to be alright? | 23 | Plasmids in bioshock are modified stem cells. As such they should only cause a somatic change leaving your germ line alone (unless they are specifically tailored to do so). So your kids won't inherit them. | 23 |
ELI5: How do they deal with dead skin in the air, cough spatter and other small flying things in space stations? | 9,355 | They have a fully functional ventilation system just like any office building. More serious then dust is the risk from pockets of stale air which can build up with dangerous gasses. The ISS is first and foremost a research laboratory and does therefore deal with some potentially nasty chemicals. But any gas can cause suffocation even if it is not poisonous. The problem with space stations is that hot air does not rise so you do not get any natural air flow. So the ventilation system have to provide all the air flow and can not miss any spots. This does also collect any dust and other particles in the air. The air vents have filters in them that collects most of it. They do have a regular vacuum cleaner that they use about once a week to clean the vents. There is also regular filter changes to make sure all the dirt gets removed from the filters and that no mold starts to grow on them. | 5,948 |
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ELI5: To whom did the shares bought by the public during an IPO originally belong to? | I understand that the public is able to buy shares of a company during an IPO. What I don't understand is to whom did the shares bought by the public during an IPO originally belong to.
I know that at each point in time in the history of a private company there cannot be non assigned shares which are reserved for a future IPO and the pie chart of the investors always totals 100% so are IPO really just a way for founders, VC and intial investors to cash out? Wouldn't that prevent them from having skin in the game in the subsequent phases? | 37 | They didn't exist.
What happens is you take the value of the company and break it into chunks. It might have been owned previously by a single person, a family, a consortium of financiers, or some other type of group. But 100% of the company was once 'owned' by named people or groups, and there were no shares at all, just some sort of legal company definition.
Now you create a whole bunch of little bits of the company that are each worth something, called "shares". These are then sold in an Initial Public Offering to anyone that wants those bits, and the company gets their purchase price. So you sell 100,000 shares at an average price of $10 each, say. That's up to 100,000 additional owners of your company now (although the original owners will probably keep a bunch of those shares for themselves) each having a $10 stake in it, but you've created $1M in cash for your company to use in return for losing some control over what the company does.
On ownership: The previous owners CAN cash out and transfer all control to the Board of Directors, sure. But they often get some shares in return for surrendering part of their ownership, and that they will want to (or in some cases must, for a period of time) hold onto. If a company was successful enough to IPO, stakeholders are usually going to want to keep the people responsible for that success from leaving, so they incent them to stay with extra shares and stuff. | 23 |
ELI5: Why is there such a large distance between the 2nd and 3rd line of the laundry detergent scoop and small distance between the 1st and 2nd line? | Here is an image of a laundry scoop:
http://imgur.com/8IdzOrW
See the three lines that are used to mark the amount of detergent to use? Why are the 1st and 2nd so close together and then such a large gap jumps between the 2nd and 3rd? Why aren't they be evenly spaced? | 96 | The law of diminishing marginal returns applies here. Adding a relatively small amount of detergent (first line) has a large effect compared to a load of laundry without any detergent. As we add more or more detergent (second and third lines) the effects of the additional detergent becomes smaller and smaller, so more is required to make a noticeable difference. Theoretically, we would reach a point where adding additional detergent actually causes negative benefits. This would occur if we added more detergent than clothes. It's probably best to just use an amount equivalent to the first or second line. | 33 |
[Wolverine 2: Wolverine Goes to Japan] We see that depressed forlorn Logan has long hair and a beard. Does this mean his typical scruffy stubble muttonchop appearance is actually the result of careful grooming and manscaping? | 30 | Yes.
Clearly in Wolverine 3: Wolverine Needs Glasses, the evil scientist dudes decided that their Evil Clone Wolverine with the fatal weakness to having most of his head blown off should be similarly manscaped, just for the style of the thing. | 35 |
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[Fallout] What sort of damage can power armor take? | So I just for suited up in this power armor stuff the brotherhoods always using. Cool stuff, but I'm curious as to how big of a step it is over standard combat power armor? What kind of a beating can it take? What sort of weapons are ideal for penetrating it? | 25 | The T-51b is one of the best suits you could manage. It can take massive impacts (2.5k Joules!), the eye slits are bulletproof glass, it's resistant to laser and radiation damage due to a silver layer, and its microfusion pack (with ten THOUSAND years of power) gives you sixty thousand watts of power pumping through the hydraulics of the suit.
In short, you need massive explosives to reliably do damage to it. Otherwise, very little in the Wasteland will pose a challenge to you. | 26 |
ELI5: How do potholes form? | 404 | A roadway is placed on top of compacted soils. Those soils are usually only tested for proper compaction once per 100 linear feet.
Usually the technician testing the soil chooses a relatively compacted ( dense) area to test so they get a passing number.
After the soil’s are compacted they place rebar and concrete on top of the soils.
Once cars are driving on the roadway they cause vibrations that carry through the concrete and into the soil beneath.
Those vibratios, after a while, cause The soils to subside in some areas once subsidence occurs the weight of the concrete does the rest.
Gravity pulls the concrete down to fill the hole left by the soil and voilà a pothole is created!
To remedy this problem a contractor will usually remove a workable section around the pothole (usually 3 to 4 ft.² around the pothole) they will remove the soil and replace it. Have a technician tested for proper compaction and then they place the rebar and concrete back on top.
Source: I’ve been a project manager for TxDoT
Edit: removing apostrophes | 420 |
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[Star Wars] What is "life" as a force ghost like? | 254 | A Force Ghost is like a droplet bouncing back up out of a lake. It takes a lifetime - or a significant portion of one (or, y'know, being The Chosen One) to retain one's individuality *at all* after death, because your personality is just this microscopic blip in the Force as a whole that you return to upon physical death.
So what is it like? It's like momentarily coalescing around a shatterpoint. Obi-Wan wasn't watching Luke take a dump on Hoth, and neither was Yoda watching him jerk off to his own sister in his downtime on Endor. They didn't give a shit because it wasn't important. Rather, they as Force Ghosts would only "coalesce" - which is to say differentiate themselves from the Cosmic Force - long enough to guide him through the most extreme, galaxy-affecting circumstances. Once those moments had passed - to one end or another - they'd reunify with the larger lifeforce of the Universe itself, until another shatterpoint emerged.
And it seemed to get harder over time - or at least Obi-Wan and Yoda seemed to give less of a fuck as time went on. Yoda only ever appeared to Luke once - and that was only after he'd won. Obi-Wan appeared or was heard a few times after Endor by Luke, but pretty much after the Ssi'Ruvi Imperium was knocked out he joined the Cosmic Force permanently.
They are an echo of a personality, something that will inevitably fade with time, but can be amplified momentarily by the most extreme circumstances. They are the entire Universal Force momentarily rendered discrete and the personality of the Jedi who learned to channel that ultimate power.
In short, there is no "life" to that existence. It's just a momentary apparition before they rejoin something far larger than we could possibly imagine.
Followup: it may also be notable that the Force Itself seemed to have realized the cosmic necessity of such a seemingly aberrant occurrence round about -20-0 BBY. The very idea of persisting as a discrete entity post-death was considered absolutely impossibly by the Jedi Order - even by Yoda who'd had 800+ years to have seen such a thing. Neither in the time or Revan, nor Surik, nor any time other than the Galactic Civil War had Force Ghosts ever seemed to have been a thing outside of incredibly localized darkside ghosts haunting the tombs of their deceased corpses. There was no universality to that, only individual will.
But all of a sudden - literally on the eve of the almost-total extermination of the entire Jedi Order and the ascendency of the Sith - the Force Itself divulges the secret to training a new generation of Jedi even beyond death. Convenient, no? | 188 |
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ELI5: how come drinking cold water feels refreshing, but cold water on your skin is shocking like a cold shower? | 77 | Cold water in nature is *generally* cleaner (don't go out drinking water that happens to be cold, please), whereas tepid water has probably sat and may harbor dangerous microbes. Drinking tepid or warm water is unpleasant, likely due to an evolutionary "memory" and preference for cool/cold water.
Conversely, there's never been an evolutionary advantage to jumping fully into cold water--probably a contraindication even. | 48 |
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CMV: Gender as a whole is a concept that should be outright dismissed | I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, as I've questioned my gender my entire life. Society has put so many labels on, and we have so many genders now for so many people with so many different feelings of who they think they are based on how society likes to put us into neat little boxes.
I've considered myself non-binary for some time now, and I've thought more on that. If society can agree that biological sex is separate from gender, then it seems odd that we would continue to invent names and attributes to every single gender. To me, this just seems like a society that is wholly consumed by following labels and wanting to be put into specific boxes in a shallow attempt to feel understood.
Since we agree that men and women can like anything and have any set of personality traits, and that although biology influences us, it doesn't decide who we are, what is the use in having any gender labels on ourselves at this point, aside from our biological ones? What does it mean to "feel like a man" or "feel like a woman"? I'll happily admit this perspective could wholly be my own ignorance as a non-binary person who's felt like both at times, reflected on that, and decided it was all nonsense to me.
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I believe anyone should be who they want to be, and I'm all for the rights to express yourself for how you want. So much so, that I believe gender labels actually are terrible for us; they inherently give people a stereotypical impression on who we are, rather than just allowing us to be ourselves. Pronouns should be relatively pointless in changing, because they say nothing about us. If you call me by female pronouns or male pronouns, that doesn't impact me in the slightest, because neither actually say anything about my character or who I am. They're just words we use that are convenient distinctions when it comes to things like biological reproduction.
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I believe using and inventing new terms of genders (as well as the original male/female dichotomy) and using any terms for genders outside of biological sex is essentially pointless, because either way it doesn't tell us anything about a human being and their gender shouldn't be relevant to almost any conversation anyways.
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Am I wrong from thinking this?
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edit: why am I being downvoted? Isn't the point of this subreddit to talk about beliefs that we recognize may be flawed or wrong? How about changing my view rather than downvoting me? | 28 | Gender and sex are separate, but not all that distinct. Material sex produces ideas of gender; without biological sex, gender has no reason to exist at all. And sex is the most fundamental, consistent and significant difference between individual humans, so recognizing that difference and allowing it to influence how we act is generally useful.
If we erased gender with a magic wand tomorrow, we would immediately begin recognizing and categorizing the broad differences between the two sexes of our sexually dimorphic species and constructing gender all over again. It would be different, but it would be there all the same. Whatever labels or pronouns we discovered would be regarded as valuable additions to language.
Gender exists as an emergent construct across all cultures precisely because it gives us a set of useful heuristics for understanding and interacting with other people. We're not always aware when that happens and we usually take it for granted, and that leads some to erroneously believe it has no use. But why does it happen *everywhere* in *every time* if it's superfluous?
But the proof is in the constant, ever-present use. Gender is not a like scientific racism: backfilled nonsense to justify existing practice and prejudice. Gender has existed and evolved since before recorded history because it has always been useful. The idea that you should remove it if you could - and you can't - is pure hubris. | 15 |
[Sesame Street] Why does the sun rise in the west? | During the introduction, we see what appears to be the Brooklyn Bridge leading to a Manhattan skyline - with the sun rising from behind the buildings.
That's west. The sun is rising in the west. Why? | 18 | It's a result of the universe they live in. Sesame Street is in the same universe as the Daily Show where the earth rotates in reverse. This means that everywhere that Sesame Street makes a cameo the Earth also rotates backward. | 25 |
ELI5: Why are doctors and nurses encouraged to work such long shifts(like 14hrs +) Wouldn't the quality of care be of utmost importance, and decrease as staff get tired? | 94 | To some degree having them work longer shifts reduces the frequency of hand offs which is where a significant amount of medical errors are generated through specific details about a patient being left out and the incoming doctors ignorance of the detail possibly leading to a bad outcome. Its a trade off though as the shift gets too long the work fatigue itself can impair the providers/staff functioning. Also lot of people like the longer shifts because then they can work 3-4 days a week instead of the "standard" 5 days a week from "the prototypical work week". | 71 |
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ElI5: When countries like North Korea spend money on war supplies like missiles, nukes, guns, planes etc. who sells it to them? | How do they get it?
Edit: Obligatory woohoo! Front page! And r.i.p. inbox | 3,521 | The North Koreans have purchased weapons largely from the Soviets/Russians and Chinese over the decades as well as having left overs going back as far as WWII from American and Western manufacturers. They have their own arms manufacturing industry which produces two Main Battle Tanks based on Russian/Chinese designs as well as smaller weapons. Some of the tech was purchased from the Russians when the Soviet Union collapsed nominally as scrap metal, but the North Koreans were able to learn from it to produce their own tanks. The have purchased Scuds (Soviet origin missiles) from Egypt, and now produce their own variant.
As far as nukes they purchased a lot of the know how from Pakistan illegally. The former head of Pakistan's nuclear program is in prison for selling secrets to the North Koreans.
Basically anyone in the world except the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Western Europe will sell to them. And even some of those countries will sell "non-military" items that end up being used in the military (the NKs have a number of German trucks). Depending on how public the deal is, how much U.S. pressures the other country not to sell, and the age/design of the weapons anything could be sold to them. Selling off the last generation of weapons to other countries is a time honored tradition, this is a lot of the stuff NK buys from overseas. | 2,386 |
ELI5: Why don't police in America administer first aid to people they have shot? | In cases like the Tamir Rice one and many others in America, police never seem to offer first aid to those they have shot. Tamir Rice was left dying, no one even attempted to offer first aid. In the UK, a big emphasis seems to be put on keeping suspects alive, even terrorists -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDub9QHZxo.
Any reason for this? | 22 | This is a misconception. First Aid will be rendered with the highest priority, but it cannot be the person that shot the individual because of legal reasons. Usually when an officer has to discharge his sidearm,, there will generally be other officers with him by the time the situation escalates to that level. This fact is obviously not followed absolutely however. Most police departments have their own policies regarding shootings that might differ slightly from this main axiom and they range from full first aid no matter who shot the suspect to complete lack of first aid as seen in the Tamir Rice case.
Source: Former SSDF military police, U.S. Navy. | 24 |
Why do people's faces turn red when they're embarrassed? | Exactly as the title says. The body's natural reaction to embarrassment is to flush with blood and turn red. What mechanism or survival instinct causes this and why? | 16 | Any sort of stress increases adrenaline production in the body. Adrenaline opens up your blood vessels, allowing you to be temporarily faster or stronger, which is usually helpful in the face of a threat. You have a lot of blood vessels in your face near the surface that open up causing your face to get red. | 15 |
CMV: Movies should not be eligible for the IMDb Top 250 list until at least a year has passed since their released | My main reason is that there is a known phenomenon called the recency effect, which biases people for (or against) more recent events. In terms of rating films, you tend to see a lot of films shoot up into the Top 250 immediately after they are released. In recent years this has happened to films like The Dark Knight and the Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Django Unchained, Birdman, Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Avengers, to name a few.
Now, their actual rank in film history is of course up to debate. Certainly people like these films and some of them may without question belong in the list. But I feel the reason they entered the list in the first place is due to the recency effect, that people are biased towards the film having just seen it, and not thinking about these in the context of where they rank in terms of films from all time.
To keep the films in the Top 250 in the context of the history of cinema, as opposed to what's popular right now, I think it would be better to delay a film possibly entering the list until some time has passed. CMV.
EDIT: Sorry about the misspelling in the title. | 176 | Well the 250 is meant to be based off most popular films isn't it? Yeah the Avengers isn't exactly Casablanca but it's a lot more popular these days so of course the list props it up that high, if for a short time | 20 |
ELI5 - How did we verify that gravity has a speed? | Gravity apparently travels at or near the speed of light, but how do we know that? | 26 | It was a theory that came out from general relativity. When people started to apply the new theory of general relativity on different mechanics to see if they could find a flaw it was discovered that the observed motions of Mercury were much closer to the calculations if you used the fact that gravity were limited to the speed of light. This was one of the first big observations that would help make general relativity accepted. | 12 |
How angled will a 251cm wardrobe have to be if the wall is only 248cm? | Hey guys, hope you're all doing well. I'm moving to a new place and my wall is slightly too small for my wardrobe. So I dusted off my high-school trigonometry skills, to calculate how angled would the piece of furniture have to be if we decided to keep it. But my calculations *feel* wrong. First I arrived at around 38cm, then I realized it wasn't right and arrived at over 50... finally I decided the most likely outcome here is that I don't know what I'm doing. Can someone help a fella internet person out, please? Thanks in advance bros!
Wardrobe: 251cm wide, 51cm depth.
Wall: 248cm wide.
Edit: for clarification: the height is not an issue, the horizontal sizes are. | 28 | So whilst you may have used the trig correctly, the problem is by angling the wardrobe back, the top front side would hit the ceiling also, so it would in fact need to by quite far a way to actually fit. Can you cut a carpet away or something as a solution | 10 |
ELI5: Epinephrine/EpiPen is used for treating anaphylaxis, so why is the panic from having an allergic reaction not enough adrenaline to treat the anaphylaxis? | 32 | EpiPens contain a much larger dose of epinephrine than our adrenal glands are capable of rapidly pumping into our blood. This higher dose overcomes the effects of anaphylaxis (lung constriction, low blood pressure) | 60 |
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ELI5:Why do 20fl oz bottles of Diet Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash have 10 calories while 2L bottles and cans have 0? | 23 | Nutrition facts are based on serving sizes. Servings with fewer than five calories can be labeled as having zero calories. Servings with fewer than 50 calories may be rounded to the nearest 5 calories. Servings with over 50 calories may be rounded to the nearest 10 calories.
For your question specifically, the drink contains just a few calories and the serving sizes are different for the different containers, which leads to differences in rounding. The serving size for the 20 fl oz. bottle is larger than the other two bottles and when the calories are rounded to the nearest 5 calories, you get 10. The other two serving sizes have fewer than five calories, so they can be labeled as having zero calories. | 13 |
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ELI5: When you're learning a new language, you translate every word back to you mother tongue in your head. But when you've mastered the language, you don't need the translation anymore. How does this work? | I often watch television without subtitles with my mom, and she sometimes asks me to translate the difficult words or sentences. But since a few years I have had difficulty trying to come up with the right translations, and especially after I studied in an English speaking country. I know exactly what the words means, can describe it, and can think of synonyms, but have trouble with finding the right translation in my mother tongue.
I lately realized that I don't need to translate English in my head, and was wondering if this causes the trouble with translating.
So how does this work? Is your brain just translating it so fast you don't notice it? And if so, where does the trouble with translation of words and sentences in my mother tongue come from? | 37 | Words are a kind of symbolic algebra. When you really learn a word it is a natural meaning. The word represents a native thought.
So when you think the word "cat" it evokes a series of ideas. Furry. Small. Sharp. whatever... Whether you like cats or hate them the word itself evokes and invokes the the ideas and images as a primitive.
So then you start to learn a second language. You learn "gato" is "cat, but in spanish". It's an indirect. It's a step away. You have to turn gato into cat. And you have to turn cat into gato. Each in terms of the direction... new to native or native to new.
Eventually, with familiarity, you stop thinking "gato is cat in spanish" and so gato directly invokes the same things as cat. Furry. Sharp. Small. The two words are proper synonyms. Neither has primacy so both are equally available.
At that point the "is versus are" translator is in charge. You know when to use the word "is" and you know when to use the word "are" based on context. Both have the same meaning, but one is slightly more correct than the other depending on what other words are around it.
Further, in some languages there are unique verbs or tenses or whatever. In one languages it takes one word while in another it takes two. But the same thing eventually happens.
So just like you can learn to use a fork as a spoon or whatever, the interchange of tools, once you can use both tools, is just a context and technique issue.
So basically the difference is naturally-accessible versus takes deliberate thought.
Once something is naturally accessible to your brain then it's naturally accessible to use.
Language is just a tool at some levels. It's an inherent means of information at another. But the brain is incredibly plastic. So the change is a result of that plasticity. | 35 |
[The Culture] Can anyone in The Culture be transformed into a Mind or drone? If so, why wouldn't everyone? | We've witnessed mind uploading in The Culture, so it doesn't seem much of a stretch to think that they could alter someone enough that they could function as a Mind or a drone. As far as I can tell, there are no downsides to being a mind, and few for being a drone - so why would anyone remain human? | 64 | The Culture is philosophically opposed to trying to get "more" - more life, more power, more resources.
The desire to live forever, or own your own moon, or modify your body with a thousand dicks so that you can have As Much Fun As Possible, are all (the Culture would argue) manifestations of a childish type of thinking - usually born from a society that doesn't have enough resources, and so cannot conceive of what to *do* with power or lifespan or intellect once they have it, except to use it to acquire even more.
In the Culture, these aggressive instincts are managed by a combination of the Sapir-Whorf-like effects of Marian, and the simple unfashionability of such a goal - you might eventually *succeed* in persuading a Mind to grant your wish, but everyone would look at you funny while you were doing it.
>Why do you care so much? What's wrong with you that causes this driving obsession to be perfect? It's not as if there's anything you could *do* in your improved form that a Mind couldn't simply do for you.
____
With that said, strictly speaking "human" Culture citizens are only human by the merest technicality, being heavily engineered. It's not really *inferior* to your standard civilian-model 1.0-level Drone, just tailored to different preferences.
And there *have* been periods where nonhuman forms were more in fashion:
>Ulver Seich's had been one of the Rock's Founding Families; she could trace her ancestry back through fifty-four generations on Phage itself and numbered amongst her ancestors at least two forebears who were inevitably mentioned in even one-volume Histories of the Culture, as well as being descended from - as the fashions of the intervening times had ordained - people who had resembled birds, fish, dirigible balloons, snakes, small clouds of cohesive smoke and animated bushes.
>The tenor of the time had generally turned against such outlandishness and people had mostly returned to looking more like people over the last millennium, albeit assuredly pretty good-looking people, but still, some part of one's appearance was initially at least left to luck and the random nature of genetic inheritance, and it was a matter of some pride to Ulver that she had never had any form of physical alteration carried out (well, apart from the neural lace of course, but that didn't count). - Excession
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EDIT:
By way of metaphor, a Culture citizen would view this question much the way you'd view an ancient Greek warrior asking why *you* haven't pursued the earth-shattering martial prowess possessed by modern-day armies.
The honest answer is that our society just doesn't value warrior spirit the same way his does.
The Culture doesn't value *anything* the way he does.
No point improving yourself, Minds are better. No point doing good, everyone is already perfectly happy, and Contact already has all the applicants they need. No point trying to build cool things; we already built it bigger and better 150 years ago, and someone built a VR version 8000 times better. There isn't even any point pushing the bounds of hedonism; here's a drug that makes you feel perfect bliss, your brain can produce it at any time, here's a VR simulation of having sex with 500 supermodels, here's 500 actual supermodels who are bored and willing to have sex with you, here's the form for grafting 500 dicks onto your body so you can have sex with them all at once if you'd like.
There's no such thing as *success* in the Culture. There are popular people and less-popular people, and which is which is determined mostly by fashion.
Right now, it's more fashionable to go skydiving without a backup to revive you if you die than to be immortal.
Who wants to jump out of a plane with me? | 64 |
[Marvel] How do the citizens of Latveria view Doctor Dooms supervillainy? | Are they critical despite how well he runs his country? | 17 | Alright... this is very complicated. Very complicated.
Dr. Doom came into power after a long line of tyrants. The people of Latveria aren't exactly strangers to that kind of thing. And under Doom they've gone from being some little nowhere in the Balkans to a global superpower. So if you asked the average Latverian, they'd tell you he's a great and benevolent ruler... but since they're always being watched, it's anyone's guess how sincere they're being. For his part Doom cares deeply for the people of Latveria (and he's remarkably forward thinking on the Romani people), but believes firmly that living under his absolute rule is better for them than affording them any freedom.
Here are some specific instances you can look to for evidence:
* Supervillain Team-Up #3: Namor arrives in Latveria and is given a personal attendant who speaks of Doom in glowing terms, which stuns him.
* Four issues later in the same title, we learn that Latveria still practices the custom of Droid du Seigneur, and Doom demonstrates this by storming into someone's house and demanding the company of their daughter, who seems pretty terrified by the whole thing (he's interrupted before things go too far, though)
* Loki: Agent of Asgard #7: opens up with some blue collar Latverian schmoes, one of whom is sullen and scornful of Doom (and from his dialogue, it seems Doom's atheism is a point of friction between him and his more conservative subjects) while another speaks glowingly of him but that seems partially out of fear they're being watched.
So... yeah. Complicated. | 29 |
Student asking for a job reference on IG? | I had a former student reach out to me on Instagram for a reference for a job (consent to provide my contact info to the position, not a letter of reference).
I taught this student in two labs, and I have a good idea of their work ethic and skills. If they had emailed, I would’ve provided a reference happily. But the way they reached out - on a social media site that I have more personal things on - and the fact they didn’t spell-check their message before they sent it off (my name was incorrect despite being right there) has put a bad taste in my mouth. It feels unprofessional of the student.
Any advice for how to handle this? Any experience with this yourself? Thanks! | 25 | Send them a reply and ask them to send a formal request via your work email, and then private your ig if you don't want students prying. If it bothers you, gently suggest that you do not want to be contacted on personal social media.
And then write them the reference letter you would have written them in the first place. We all make social faux pas' once in a while. It's no big deal, and punishing the student with a lesser or no reference letter is petty and unnecessary, so don't do it! We're all out here just trying to do our best! | 129 |
ELI5:Why are we still making pennies when it costs 2 cents to make one? | I've heard that in the last year the US Mint lost around 60 million dollars in profitability just from the manufacturing of pennies. I've heard Canada got rid of pennies in their country. If we're so worried about our national budget, then why do we still continue to make these coins when we know we're gonna lose millions of dollars in the process? | 19 | A penny does cost more than one cent to make but it is used more than once, so it that way it has a much greater value to the economy than its one cent face value.
For the same reason the US tries to bring out a dollar coin every ten years or so, even though a paper dollar is much cheaper to make. The coin stays in circulation much longer, because it's reused more roi on a coin is much better(the face value doesn't really matter). Americans just don't seem to like it very much. That's why Canada uses 1 and 2 dollar coins. | 18 |
Does space-time have an equivalent to "viscosity" that affects the propagation of gravitational waves? | I listened to a podcast this morning on the "Sonification" of data. The podcast discussed the techniques to convert the LIGO gravitational wave detector data into sound which the research team used in their analyses. The podcast drew a lot of parallels between gravitational waves and sounds waves, prompting the thought that sound wave propagation and attenuation through a medium is affected by things like the density and viscosity of the medium. Are there equivalents to the properties for space-time -ie some property of space-time that we can derive based on how much the gravitational wave has attenuated over distance traveled? | 251 | As /u/rantonels says, general relativity predicts no attenuation other than the goemetrical spreading out of the wave, and it's true that the waveforms obtained by the detectors do provide good evidence that general relativity is correct even in the strong gravitational field regime.
But as to your specific question: the detections themselves can't show us that there is nothing in space that produces "extra" attenuation, as the detections do not give a direct measurement of the attenuation. Rather, one assumes GR, uses that to determine the kind of black hole merger, gets a value for the amplitude at the source, sees what amplitude we have here, and determines a distance to source from that. So if there *were* for some crazy reason some additional effect attenuating the wave, the announced measurements would have no way of determining that.
If we get an event from, say, a neutron star merger for which we have an independent determination of the distance to the source, then we would be in a position to make an absolute measurement of the attenuation. | 36 |
[MCU] Why didn't people start flocking to major cities after Infinity War? | This has bothered me ever since the movie came out.
After the
>![5 YEARS LATER]
flash forward, New York and San Francisco look like they're still basically abandoned. I've always assumed that after that kind of cataclysm, people would flock towards cities, since, and I could be wrong, there would be a "stockpile" of food and water. And rent would probably be a whole lot cheaper. Am I overlooking something, or did the screenwriters just not take this into consideration? | 21 | Cities don't really maintain a "stockpile" of food. Especially nowadays, with many businesses doing their best to operate on a "just in time" logistics model, most stores aren't equipped to go more than a few days past their regularly scheduled deliveries. During regular disaster scenarios, resources tend to be stripped in short order, with panicked rushes to beat the stocks being sold out creating a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, leaving bare shelves everywhere.
That's during a normal disaster. The Snap affected every square inch of the Earth, took out half of the truck drivers and merchant mariners on the planet, and left every road jammed with 50% of it's regular traffic in abandoned cars. It would take some harsh measures just to get the roads clear enough for emergency vehicles (think less tow trucks, more heavy-duty construction equipment being used to physically shove the cars off the road), let alone restore the critical transport systems responsible for bringing resources into the cities.
If anything, you'd probably see a further drop in urban population after the Snap, as people abandon the cities for what they see as safer locales. Once a few years have passed and things have settled down a but, there'd be some return, but some might hesitate, either because they've established themselves somewhere else or don't want to roll the dice on being stuck in a city again if another calamity happens. | 33 |
Would we see Rosetta like probes on Asteroids (or Comets etc.) that fly through our solar system? | 168 | These probes are very small and faint. Our telescopes are not capable of either spatially resolving them or detecting the faint light from them.
The only way we can "see" Rosetta is from radio signals that it transmits towards us. | 37 |
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ELI5: How do people create these amazingly looking space/Milky Way photos? I can barely see a few stars in the nights sky. | 59 | Long exposure is one way to do it, yes, but astrophotographers also use a technique called "stacking", where they stack multiple layers of shorter exposure pictures over one another.
Some people prefer to use this method over taking a single long exposure because it's usually easier to fine tune your picture. For example, if your camera runs out of battery, or something moves in shot that shouldn't be there, or you accidentally bump the camera, it's a lot easier to edit that in post processing and simply remove those frames rather than have your whole long exposure ruined. Also, this method might cut your shooting time in half.
But stacking isn't better than long exposure or vice versa and it's really all up to the person taking the picture to decide. | 13 |
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[Mass Effect] Are all the races descendants of the Leviathans? | According to what I can gather from the back-story, the Leviathans created the Reapers in order to maintain a balance between synthetic and organic life, but I'm not sure if this implies that xenocide was intended. Perhaps the Leviathans alone expanded across the galaxy and then when the Reapers systematically wiped them out to (near) extinction, the separate Leviathan factions evolved differently based off the environment of their home planet.
This would explain the humanoid similarities between the races, and simplify the existence of nearby mass relays without the Reapers having to do major reconnaissance work. | 30 | No, the Leviathans were the race that created the Catalyst AI to resolve the problem they had of constant wars between organic Leviathans and synthetics (robots/AIs).
The Catalyst created the Reapers, a fusion of organics and synthetics. The Leviathans were the first harvested by the Reapers. Almost all Leviathans but a small group, hidden away, were wiped out.
50,000 years later, new species had arisen and also fallen into conflict with their synthetics. So the Reapers harvested them too. The Citadel and Mass Relays were built to make harvesting of future races easier - if you give species an 'easy way' to expand, most of their population will expand along those lines. Thus their location and tech level are predictable.
The Leviathans stayed hidden away - there aren't enough of them to carry on a population. They are relics - each generation suffering more and more inbreeding damage, if they breed at all.
In the Prothean Cycle, everything went as it had in all previous cycles. One race arose to dominate all the others. In their final throw of the dice, the Protheans meddled with the Asari, intending to turn them into the conquerers of the next cycle. They also closed the Citadel Relay, intending to make it harder for the Reapers to begin the next harvest.
But something went wrong. The Asari didn't become conquerers. They became mediators. The Asari cycle didn't have one galaxy-spanning empire, they had an alliance of dozens of different species - each with their own leadership, own forces, own technologies.
The Reapers's job became much, much harder. But even then, too much was centralised on the Citadel. Too much technology was based on the 'easy way' of the Mass Relays. And ultimately, too much time was wasted after Sovereign's attempt to open the Citadel Relay.
The Asari cycle was also doomed. Until a last-ditch effort by the Alliance and a Special Forces soldier called Commander Shepard managed to attach The Crucible to the Citadel. The Crucible was essentially a huge power cell and processing databank that allowed the Catalyst to calculate a different solution than the Reapers.
| 31 |
[Marvel Cinematic Universe] How did HYDRA maintain its infiltration of SHIELD for nearly 70 years? | I'm not asking how they avoided being exposed in that time (Zola answered that), but rather where all these younger people, like Sitwell, who would have been too young to even remember WWII. was it a chain reaction of "I can trust this guy; I'll recruit him as another HYDRA plant" starting with Zola and continuing to the present? Or was it done some other way? It's not easy to sell a conspiracy that robs the world of its freedom. | 25 | You start by choosing people carefully. Based on their political and moral views. You gain their trust and get to know them and make you and other hydra members most of their social circle, re-enforcing their views by sharing them, pushing them further slowly.
Then get them to agree to the fact that the current system is flawed and that they need to make a change if they are to actually achieve what SHIELD is meant to do. They agree, suggest that there needs to be some sort of SHIELD within SHIELD that is dedicated to protecting mankind even above their own survival, that they don't care about how the world sees them or if they ever get recognition. They are the true heroes, willing to be seen as criminals for the greater good, not like the Avengers who took the easy route of adoration and celebrity status.
Once you have them on board with the idea you tell them whatever they need to know. You don't even have to tell them about HYDRA at this point. They are just a secret group within SHIELD that are willing to break the law and even the rules of SHIELD to see the goals and aims of SHIELD met. Eventually you can reveal that HYDRA weren't as bad as they were made out to be. That they wanted the same thing, but, went about it all the wrong way. They tried to enslave mankind and joined with the Nazis which was a wrong decision. It's not like HYDRA supported the death camps or the extermination of Jews. They just happened to form in the territories of an empire that was led by a man who was elected into power that did have those views.
Just like how we work within SHIELD, not following their beliefs or rules entirely, so did HYDRA work within the borders of the Nazis in the same way. HYDRA do what needs to be done, regardless of our individual desires or concerns. We sacrifice our own ideals, or own souls, our own morality to see that the world survives. We are the heroes the world deserves, just not the ones it needs right now... | 66 |
ELI5: Differences Between Soft Water and Hard Water | ​ | 28 | Hard water: lots of minerals (typically calcium and magnesium) dissolved in the water.
Soft water: less minerals dissolved in the water.
Now, why does it matter? Because minerals dissolved in water can sometimes crystallizes and no longer be dissolved in the water. This process is called precipitation. If it does it in your pipe, faucet, shower-head etc, it can accumulate and damage the pipe and the faucet. | 38 |
ELI5:How do split depth GIFs appear to be 3D | How do GIFS such as [these](http://imgur.com/gallery/fNuq5) appear to be 3D, and what is done to make them? | 23 | Basically, it's forced perspective.
Because the bars that are placed in the GIF that are edited to make them appear as a reference at a fixed plane in space. When something crosses the plane, it appears as if it has come closer to you. | 18 |
During a tsunami, does the energy of the wave in the deeper ocean cause any damage before it surfaces? Basically, does the energy jostle/push fish, whales, etc... or does it harmlessly pass through them? | 3,097 | The energy of a tsunami starts out as volume of water displacing a very small amount vertically. This is different from a normal wave which is a surface phenomenon. In a surface wave the water that goes up in one place is compensated for by water that goes down right next to it. But in a tsunami most or all of the water from the floor to the surface is displaced a small amount as the wave travels. But this can be a very small amount in the open ocean and probably doesn't cause any damage.
As the wave approaches shallower water the energy of the displaced water has less water to displace and so ends up displacing the water by a larger distance to make up for the smaller vertical volume of water available. By the time you see the wave from the shore the water is moving quite a bit, causing a lot of damage to the floor.
If you ever see video of a tsunami hitting the shore, one thing you notice is that unlike a regular wave that sort of hits and slides back, the tsunami just keeps coming and coming and the water just moves on up the shore. That is because a regular wave is water on the surface moving up and down until there isn't any water to move, which causes the last little bit to essentially fall over, washing up to the shore, but with a tsunami there is actually a large volume of extra water in a bump on the surface. This water hits the shore and all of the energy dissipates and the water behind it keeps pushing it further and further up the shore. | 1,660 |
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CMV: Handwriting/Cursive is an important skill that should be taught throughout a minor's schooling. | I spend my summer as a representative of the college I attend and interact regularly with kids between the ages of 10 and 18. In these interactions, I have noticed that - regardless of age and gender, these kids are often unable to write in cursive and sometimes even their print Handwriting is hardly legible.
Now, I realize that we live in the digital age and typing is king (I think touch typing should also be taught), but I believe that learning handwriting from an early age (and throughout even high school) has several benefits including...
1) Improved sense of symmetry and order
2) Improved appreciation for art of different time periods
3) Larger/more diverse vocabulary
4) Prepares users for the business world where signatures and other handwritten items are still fairly common
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I really think good Handwriting is useful even in the digital age.
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The things you describe that would be useful for knowing cursive are born out of cultural and societal expectations which are becoming increasingly obsolete. It's no longer as important to be able to write orderly and in a pretty manner as it is to be able to say for instance, write code on a computer.
You're judging them with ideals you were raised with that now seem ridiculous and archaic to them.
This all coming from a recent college grad with semi-decent cursive ability. | 12 |
ELI5 What exactly is blood pressure | 23 | Blood runs in tubes around your body. These tubes are called blood vessels, and to drive the blood around the heart pumps all the time throughout our lives (the heart is pretty much a glorified muscle).
Where does pressure come into it? If a tube (or a balloon, or anything else, really) is chock full of fluid, it might burst, right? That's because the fluid exerts a *pressure* on the container it's being kept in. It pushes outwards on the container.
The size matters as well. If you have the same amount of fluid in a bigger tube, it would be accomodated better and it wouldn't push as hard on the walls of the tube. Take a narrower tube, and the fluid starts being more constrained and the smaller tube is even more liable to burst.
Blood does the same thing to the blood vessels. The pressure the blood exerts on the wall of the blood vessel is what we call *blood pressure*. The blood vessels change how narrow or wide they are all the time to make sure our blood pressure stays within reason, and when our vessels get trouble doing this it can lead to disease or illness. | 35 |
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ELI5: Why is it hard to wake up at 7 AM but easy to wake up at 10 with the same amount of sleep? | 60 | You always wake easier and feel better if your wake up time is matched to your circadian rhythms and REM cycles. Everyone has a natural circadian rhythm of roughly 24 hours. This is influenced over time by your exposure to light and dark, age, physiology, and habits. Regardless of when you go to bed or wake on a particular day, your body cannot change this cycle quickly or easily. Ever find you wake up naturally seconds or minutes before your normal alarm? That's your natural rhythm that your body is currently tuned too. Even if you go to bed early to try and "rest up", your body may not enter the most restful sleep until it's "usual" nightly schedule, so you don't get the full value of the extra sleep. On the other side of the equation, waking later than usual is almost always a "Bonus", and so it gives you the full benefit of the extra time after your bodies natural restful sleep cycle. You can also find it helps to try and determine your REM cycles. The point in your sleep cycle where you are sleeping lightly, as opposed to the deep REM cycle where you are sleeping deeply and often dreaming. There are apps for your phone or tablet that may actually work reasonably well to help you predict the best time to wake. Surprisingly, waking a half hour earlier might be the best time for you as your body comes out of a deep REM cycle. Wait too long, and it goes back into deep REM again, and waking is more difficult. | 36 |
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[Stargate (all?)] How exactly do the stargates "work" at the practical level? | My s/o has had me watching SG: Atlantis recently, since I could not be arsed to get through all of SG-1. I've seen a fair few seasons of SG-1 already, plus of course the film, if that has any bearing. I don't mind necessary spoilers for explaining points, just try to steer clear of huge arc- or reveal-type spoilers if possible.
We've been idly (and occasionally more fervently) discussing and debating the specifics of what's plausible but just "more advanced tech" (such as various naquada-based effects just being akin to "more potent uranium", unless I'm terribly mistaken) and what's literally hand-waved "the Ancients did it"-type magic that is made to appear like tech.
One of the early episodes in SG:A features a conundrum related to their stargate's operation, re: getting stuck mid-transit. Now, I recall SG-1 and so on already revealed that anythin stuck halfways across the event horizon when the gate powers down gets cut off (at the molecular/atomic level?). But how exactly, point by point, does gate-transit work?
As far as I know, the event horizon has some properties that allows them to open gates into e.g. hard vacuum without the air from their end rushing through the wormhole, and it generally acts like a "wormhole-based fax-machine", not totally unlike the basic idea behind Crichton's *Timeline* transporters, right?
The above-mentioned SG:A episode mentions that the gate only transmits "discrete entities" (as opposed to acting like e.g. the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Gun, where travel is instantaneous and the affected surfaces are just made spatially interchangeable). But what does this actually work? I think my main question is:
- How does the stargate "know" what a "discrete entity" is?
I've some basic understanding of hard sciences, but it just seems so baffling that the gates can "sense" what a discrete entity is, and how it avoids e.g. leaving vacuum in people's internal cavities when they're transported. Like, how is the differentiation between each "entity" handled, physically speaking? Does it act like modern image-manipulation software, where "contrast tendencies" between molecules or something is used to define an outline, akin to how Photoshop can approximate shapes in a complex image?
Of course there's a lot of "the Ancients just made *that* advanced tech" involved, but the physical possibility of differentiating between "entities" feels off, including the plot-convenient transit of whatever gear you're wearing and whatever air you're containing, despite all of that technically being separate entities or non-entities. | 20 | SG-2's Science Officer reporting in.
When the Stargate activates, it creates the unstable vortex, colloquially known as the "Kawoosh". This has 2 purposes:
First, it disperses the excess energy used to establish the wormhole. This is the primary reason.
The other reason for this is the clear the area immediately in front of the gate so the gate can determine baseline environmental conditions. It uses this to determine how much force to exert outward to prevent atmosphere/water/vacuum from entering the wormhole.
In effect, it creates a weak force field at the event horizon.
With sufficient force (generally very little), objects can enter the event horizon. When objects are partially through it, the gate can detect the disruption to the field at that point. When the object has passed through completely, there is no longer a disruption to the field locally and the gate instead senses normal environmental conditions. This is how the gate knows to send data. | 20 |
[Captain Planet] Where did he come from? | 23 | > Our world is in peril. Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, can no longer stand the terrible destruction plaguing our planet. She gives five magic rings to five special young people. [...] With the five powers combined they summon earth's greatest champion - CAPTAIN PLANET!
That's really all there is to it. Captain Planet is a physical manifestation of the five elements that make up our world - Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and Heart. The elements are focused through the rings, and when they combine they form into Earth's hero.
It should be noted that the Captain can actually be partially formed with a few of the elements in certain circumstances. At a minimum, he seems to need Earth to give him form and Heart to give him spirit. His other powers are linked to the other elements - for example, without Wind he can't fly. | 13 |
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[Game of Thrones Novels] You’re a peasant who finds a stack of ancient Gold Bars. The stack is as large as a Walmart. How can you cash in without people simply killing you and stealing it? | you’re a peasant. no royalty or nobleman.
how can you actually get credit for the gold without simply getting murdered? | 27 | Take one or two bars first. Go to a major city, pretend to be an investor from far away who moved here and wants to buy a business. Exchange your gold bar for a small business.
Over the next few years, take occasional trips to your stash, alone and disguised. Bring back a few at a time.
Buy a gold smelting kit (gold melts pretty easily, it is not too complicated a setup), and melt the new bars into more generic gold bars or trinkets.
Pretend that you earned all the gold through your business. Bu more stores and businesses so it's impossible for someone to track exactly where your money is coming from.
Do this for several years, expand your "business" empire and become the richest man in the city. To any observer you will seem like a shrewd businessman who made a fortune by investing into a variety of businesses. | 48 |
CMV: Prince Ashitaka is a poorly written protagonist, and the movie Princess Mononoke (1997) suffers for it. (spoilers) | TL;DR: The protagonist of Princess Mononoke - Ashitaka - has no character flaws, and thus adds nothing to the story save being a device for plot resolution. He is boring.
Before I begin: My view rests on the assumption that Ashitaka actually *is* the protagonist of the film (and not San or Eboshi). He's in it from the beginning to the end, the viewers learn about the world at about the same pace as Ashitaka, and his actions from the beginning drive and solve the plot.
This is a problem in three parts: Ashitaka has no flaws, his curse does nothing, and the love story isn't actually there.
**1: The protagonist has no flaws**
Everything Ashitaka does, he does out of selfless benevolence. Whenever conflict arises out of his actions, it is due to the flaws of secondary characters, not his own. None of his struggles come from the inside.
He's never proud or vain, and cannot be insulted. He's never spiteful, and cannot unreasonably offend or insult anyone else. He's never brutal; whenever he hurts anyone, it's either in desperate defense of someone who's helpless, or in self-defense after having tried to warn the attacker. He's never wrathful, so his anger cannot run away with him and cause him to make mistakes.
He's never selfish or greedy, and cannot be tempted against his better knowing. He's never overconfident, and cannot harm himself or others in error. He's no coward, and will never let anyone be hurt due to his own inaction.
If there are exceptions to any of these rules, they are minor, with no significant impact on the plot or Ashitaka's relation to the other characters.
Ashitaka with just one of those flaws mentioned would have changed the whole story, it would have added an entire dimension of character development and intrigue.
**2: The curse isn't really a curse**
Ashitaka bears a curse that takes the shape of tentacles around his wrist. We're *told* (but never *shown*) that the curse will kill him. Now, one of those clever Youtube thinkers, I've forgotten which one, presents an argument that Ashitaka brings the curse upon himself, an argument I'm not really buying - but that is entirely beside the point. The point is that the curse does nothing to increase Ashitaka's struggle, beyond starting the plot by forcing him on a journey.
Quite the contrary: The curse seems at times more like a blessing. It gives - in addition to his default near-godlike strength, endurance and martial prowess - supernatural strenght whenever he needs it, *without any sense of cost or sacrifice.* You soon forget it's even there, except when the tentacles pop out and Ashitaka makes a statement about hatred, which just feels detached.
As a price for superhuman strenght, the curse could have drained him of some of the energy that allows him to always make the right choice. Storywise, the curse could have been a temporary substitute for the flaws he's missing.
**3: The love story isn't actually there**
Of course, there doesn't *need* to be a love story. It is a very much used plot element, and so many stories suffer from needless, hackneyed romantic interests, it makes an epic story *without* it feel fresh. But the movie sets up a love story. As a viewer, there is a number of sequences that makes me expect one. First, Ashitaka calls San beautiful (while she's about to cut his head off), and we see it has a powerful impact on her. Second, famously, San has to mouth-to-mouth feed Ashitaka as he convalesces in the forest, an action that strongly resembles a kiss. Both those scenes are very powerful, and set up an expectation for a romantic story to follow - but nothing really develops from there, leaving me very unfulfilled as a viewer. Does Ashitaka love San? If so, only because he loves the whole universe. Anyway, it makes no difference for the development of the story.
There are several reasons for having a love subplot in a story. One of them is that love makes people act irrationally. See a pattern here? A love story with San could, like the curse, have given Ashitaka some of those character flaws he's missing.
So: Miyazaki created a protagonist too perfect to be interesting. Twice he gave himself an opportunity to correct this error, and he missed both shots. The result is that Princess Mononoke is a considerably worse movie than it could have been. Letting prince Ashitaka struggle with himself, as well as with his surroundings, would have combined with all the movie's otherwise brilliant elements and made it a true masterpiece.
One final note: I'm viewing this movie with a Western perspective. It is entirely possible that Ashitaka's character qualifies the movie as a well told story in a different perspective - *but I cannot enjoy that kind of story.* I need a protagonist who struggles on the inside as well as on the outside.
To change my view, make me aware of a nuance of Ashitaka's character development that I've overlooked, which makes his role in the story more interesting. Really. Princess Mononoke used to mean a lot to me, but the last time I watched it, I was so bored I couldn't watch past the halfway mark. I'd love to see it again with a fresh perspective (and bonus points if it makes me feel smart).
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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!* | 41 | >1: The protagonist has no flaws
This is the purpose of his character. The whole film is basically an examination of a conflict in which every side is fleshed out and sympathetic. All of them have good reasons for their actions, but their actions can also all be argued as wrong. It makes sense, then, to insert in the middle a neutral character who represents the ideal solution. Ashitaka is, basically, the potential person that all of the other characters (and the audience) should aspire to be more like, allowing the conflict to be resolved. He isn't a protagonist in the traditional sense, with an arc of his own, but a sort of symbolic mentor who inspires others to improve upon their flaws. | 14 |
Where did all the sand in the Sahara Desert come from? | 7,345 | The sand is primarily derived from weathering of Cretaceous sandstones in North Africa. When these sandstones were deposited in the Cretaceous, the area where they are now was a shallow sea. The original source of the sand was the large mountain ranges that still exist in the central part of the Sahara. These mountains are volcanic and intrusive, and the granite rock weathers out to leave behind quartz sand grains that are carried by rivers to the sea. These sand deposits eventually formed into sandstone, and as they were uplifted began to weather and break down into sand again.
Only about 10% of the Sahara is actually covered by sand, and parts of the Sahara are in fact covered by soil. More than half of the area comprises soils known as yermosols, with shallow profiles over gravel or pebble beds. These soils have been developing over the past 50 million years.
| 2,947 |
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ELI5: When someone has hemorrhoids, what keeps fecal matter from entering the bloodstream, potentially causing infection? | 107 | For the most part, your fecal matter isn't particularly dangerous to you. Yes, you generally don't want the stuff that's in there to go anywhere but the toilet, but the real fear behind fecal contamination is that OTHER people's poop is very bad for you. Additionally, poop is very attractive to bacteria and is a great host for growth. Just like if you leave cooked food out, poop will grow bacteria that is all around us and make it get to unhealthy levels.
This in addition to other factors like positive pressure, and the simple fact that it DOES enter the bloodstream sometimes, but your body is constantly fighting off bacteria that you may not even realize. | 75 |
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[Star Wars] Do slaves on Tatooine really have explosives in their bodies preventing them from leaving the planet? | 106 | The Disney continuity seems to treat them as implicitly true via Anakin's line in Episode One; the Expanded Universe showed us more of them explicitly. They were simply referred to "slave tracking devices"; despite the name, they did not actively track the slave's exact location.
Implantation, from what little we saw of it, was a relatively quick and simple process - not requiring an extended surgery or anesthetic to prevent overwhelming pain. It may have been carried out by inserting an intact chip via hypodermic implant, similar to how livestock are given RFID chips today. | 73 |
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Advice on improving Academic Writing! | I'm trying to form a habit to practice academic writing regularly. My experience so far has taught me that I need to focus on following things:
1. Grammar
2. Critical Thinking:to form sound arguments and synthesize material
3. Overcoming procrastination: because I'm absolutely terrified of writing.
I'm brushing up grammar and studying about critical thinking through MOOC courses. (I can link it up in the comments, if anyone is interested). However I've come to realization that I need to practice alongside learning all this. If not, this goal will easily take a backseat for me.
Presently I'm trying to follow Patricia Goodson's Becoming an Academic Writer. (I also intend on going though books by Paul Silivia and Helen Sword)
What I need help with:
1. I'm confused about what to tackle during these exercises (for example, setting aside time daily for writing). Should I work on some specific project or take on any random topic that comes to my mind?
2. What other aspects of writing and practice should I focus on?
(About me: I'm a psychology undergraduate, looking forward to start MSc in Clinical Psychology. English is not my first language) | 117 | You need to write alongside a good writer -- edit and criticize manuscripts together. Your mentor will tell you why your outline is trash because it does not flow logically; why each of your sentences make no sense and are ungrammatical; and why the words you choose are basic or invalid! You are trying to standardize it way too much -- writing is not a Science, you just have to write, then re-write, and have multiple audiences read your writing. Eventually you will have the audience's perspective in your mind and you will become a great writer! | 49 |
What is actual the difference between programming languages? | Maybe it's a very noob question, but in 5y i've never had a good answer. I only really developed for C# and 6502 assembly, those languages I clearly understand the difference, but to me all high level languages appear the same just with different syntax when you strip them of the frameworks and stuff (and I imagine probably isn't the case), but I see some people with very strong opinions about some languages, and doesn't make sense to me, people say "you can do anything with Python", "c++ is messy" and I really don't understand what they are refering to, anything in the same layer of abstraction looks the same to me | 20 | > people say "you can do anything with Python",
you can do anything with any language
> "c++ is messy"
it's nearly 40 years old and the standard has updated over the years such that a lot of the old "right way" to do things have become the "wrong way", but you still have to deal with the "wrong way" cause it being a language of medium age with widespread use means you get a lot of old code you still need to understand
> anything in the same layer of abstraction looks the same to me
honestly just look at some Haskell or, hell, even *Rust* code and try to say the same? at least most C# programmers I've met seem to have problems with Rust's syntax, especially the stuff it basically got from Haskell | 17 |
ELI5: Why do monitors use red green and blue pixels, rather than red green and violet? | It seems to me you could produce a wider gamut of colors if you used a violet subpixel rather than blue. Since our eyes can see at wavelengths below blue, by using a blue subpixel there exist colors of shorter wavelenths that simply can't be reproduced on a display.
Violet is a truly stunning color, and can't be displayed on a monitor. The closest approximation you can get is some hues of "purple" which really aren't anything close to true violet. | 29 | When they originally started developing color monitors and TV's, there did not exist a mass produceable phosphor that produced a violet color. So color TVs used blue. Broadcasts used data streams for red green and blue colors and so storage media (like VCR tapes) also stored RGB data. If we were to introduce a violet pixel now instead of blue , you could color convert the r-b data into r-v data, but you would still be missing the deep violets that you want since that color wasn't stored in the original media. If you wanted to develop this you would need to develop monitors that had a violet pixel instead of blue, cameras that recorded the violet color and storage media that could store it (although todays hard drives are pretty agnostic as far as that goes, so thats a minor issue). So yes, you could do it but you would need to replace all of the infrastructure that now exists, so it would probably remain a niche market like all the things for "audiophiles" but in this case would be for "videophiles" | 12 |
If inflamation is a response of our immune system, why do we suppress it? Isn't it like telling our immune system to take it down a notch? | 7,320 | There are two reasons, one was covered here in the comments, that the inflamation is often an over reaction and your symptoms are a result of the response more so then the pathogen. The other reason is that inflammation can also cause serious problems. The recruitment of the immune cells and the activation of T cells that results in even more cytokines and a stronger response could have lasting damages. it could results in unwanted response to our own cells (Most autoimmune diseases are associated with chronic inflammation) and it could lead to increase mutation rate in healthy cells (yes, cancer is also associated with chronic inflammation). | 2,701 |
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ELI5: If I was safely floating through space in a spacesuit, and a Star Destroyer closely passed by me going 99% the speed of light, would I even notice it? | 30 | It depends. If we consider it to be a perfect vacuum and the ship was just cruising through space, then probably not. However there are some other issues to consider.
If it isn't a perfect vacuum then the ship will need to push oncoming particulate out of the way or smash into it. Either way is likely to result in a sudden burst of high energy particles blasting at and likely through you. This might be noticeable as a flash in your retina, or depending on dosage maybe even heat. The suit radiation sensors would probably have a fit. | 24 |
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Why was Caesium picked to define the second on? | What's special about Caesium?
Wouldn't it make more sense to define the second based on an element more abundant and commonly found around the universe? (Hydrogen, Helium, Carbon - easily found on/in the person who needs it) | 55 | In a nutshell, reproducibility.
Standards need to be reproducible, so that any lab anywhere can re-create the standard on their own. Caesium has a few properties regarding its hyperfine transition that give it advantages over other elements. Additionally, nearly 100% of the caesium found in nature is a single isotope, which nearly eliminates isotopic purity concerns. | 27 |
ELI5: How is closed-source software possible? What prevents the computer from showing me all the lines of code that it runs? | 139 | The lines of code aren't what runs on the computer. Your computer only understands binary commands.
Human readable code is translated by a compiler into machine code wich is just a very long list of basic instructions. (Basic math, jump to line, compare numbers, read/write memory cell X)
You can reverse that, but the result is usually incomprehensible. And it can be deliberately made harder with obfuscation. (Helpful comments are also lost)
It's a bit like trying to reverse engineer a recipe from a finished cake. Ingredients are possible. Instructions are basically lost. | 468 |
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Coming to terms with ex-supervisors unprofessionalism | Basically I left academia a year ago when my PhD contract ended and defended my PhD in September 2021. Over the past year I’ve realised how bad of a person my supervisor was/is:
He frequently said incredibly sexist things like ‘women can’t drive’ and ‘that dress length wouldn’t be appropriate at a conference in Boston (it was knee length FYI, that’s more about him commenting on my appearance than his weird opinions about the US).
Furthermore when drunk at a conference he asked another PhD candidate to sleep with him (she didn’t) and asked her really inappropriate questions wrt her being bisexual (she chose not to report him which is of course her choice).
Also he was just bad at being a supervisor for a bunch igniter reasons.
He was promoted to professor this year.
I don’t work there anymore but might run into him in the future and I just am still really angry about all of the above and more. If you were in my position what would you do? Just leave it alone? Maybe I just needed to vent, but anyway, any thoughts (preferably from non-sexist people) would be appreciated :) | 158 | It seems like the outcome that you want is undefined as yet. If you wanted to vent and be heard, then let me be the first here to say, you are 100% right that the statements you quoted are shitty, terrible, and completely unprofessional. You have very valid reasons to feel that this person is not acting in a way befitting a leader and mentor.
If you want other outcomes, then you may have other options. Many of us have seen people act in awful ways and sometimes we just choose to use these examples as learning lessons that we can discuss with colleagues, friends and students. Other times sanctions or consequences to the offending person seems more appropriate. What do you want to happen to this person? Are you trying to recover emotionally, or protect future students, or retaliate, or punish, or work with and try to inform, educate and change this person's behavior? | 72 |
ELI5 Why are some words, like "mama and papa", similar in many languages? | 15,612 | Apparently it has to do with the fact that M and P are two of the easiest phonemes the human mouth can produce, as well as the phonem A. That make both of those words two of the easiest sound combinations a human baby can pronounce, therefore, really common words that, being some of the first said at such an early age, can be related to parenthood. | 8,622 |
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[Cowboy Bebop] Where did Faye learn how to fight so well? | She wakes up at age 20 with no memory about her life or knowledge of how the world has developed for the past fifty years. By 23, she can hold her own alongside Spike and Jet at shooting, zip-craft piloting, and unarmed combat, and she's a professional card shark to boot. Where did she learn how to do all this cool shit? And how did she do it so quickly? | 16 | A slight re-evaluation of her situation post-coma will reveal the answer: Faye had to climb up from the absolute-bottom of then-contemporary society, surviving and outwitting every dreg and abuser with eyes only for her body. The fact that she *did* manage to break through into some semblance of freedom and autonomy implies that she took self-defense, marksmanship, and cunning incredibly seriously. If she hadn’t she wouldn’t be where we find her.
(Basically, the anthropic principle, but specifically for Faye.) | 26 |
ELI5:If SpaceX founds a Moon colony,whose law applies? Can they simply declare Elon Musk Republic? | 23 | National sovereignty is defined by having the force to defend your borders & getting recognition from other countries. We have some laws about space but it's all very abstract since nobody's meaningfully had the capability of colonizing there.
A huge practical difficulty would be that terrestrial governments who disapproved of the colony would have control over terrestrial launches of resupply missions. If the base wasn't self-sustaining, it would be at the mercy of terrestrial governments to allow those launches.
If you were self-sustaining, you'd be pretty much independent until a planetary government thought it was worth the immense expenses involved in sending a bunch of space marines up to subjugate you. At that point, you'd have to fight something akin to the American Revolution - a war with a superior but vastly distant power. | 38 |
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[Harry Potter] What is the conversion rate between muggle money and wizard money? | A thought struck me, how do muggle born children like Hermione buy their books and school supplies for Hogwarts? | 20 | I'll tell you what it is, for anyone who can move between the Muggle and Wizard worlds: an opportunity to make a *killing*, thanks to a magical power few wizards have ever mastered: the power of commodities trading.
One Galleon is worth exactly 17 Sickles; or, to be a bit more precise, one Galleon's worth of gold is worth exactly 17 Sickles worth of silver. No more, no less. Many wizards assume this is the same as in muggle currency, where, for example, one dollar is worth exactly 100 cents. But there is a key difference. Muggle money, in and of itself, is worthless; it is a medium of exchange, but has no value on its own. Gold and silver, on the other hand, *do* have their own value, and in the muggle world, they are independent of each other. On one day, one Galleon's worth of gold might be worth 17 Sickle's worth of silver; on another, it might be worth 16, or 18, or 20.
So what does this mean for the enterprising witch or wizard? Well, one could walk into Gringotts with 10 Galleons, and ask for change; the goblins there are perfectly happy to provide 170 Sickles in exchange. The wizard could then stroll out of the Leaky Cauldron into the muggle world, and sell the Sickles for *11 Galleons* worth of gold. Or perhaps he sold 150 Sickles for 10 Galleons. Either way, our witch or wizard made a tidy profit with nothing but a little buying and selling. No trickery necessary. And what should he or she do with her profit? Why, turn right around and do it again. | 31 |
What happens within your body for an itch to occur? | 67 | Often there is an “irritation” occurring, for instance blocked pores. The act of stimulating multiple adjacent nerves of the skin (itching) causes the nerves to enter into a “numb” state. This is why scabs often itch, or areas where sweat gets trapped | 30 |
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ELI5: If new Broadband is defined as 25MB now, why is my ISP still offering, (or has me at) 15MB? | So as linked below:
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20150108/08234729632/fcc-to-raise-minimum-broadband-definition-to-25-mbps-further-highlighting-nations-pathetic-lack-broadband-competition.shtml
With this being the case, why (even though I'm in an area I know I can get 300MB [my neighbor has it]), is BrightHoue, (located in Tampa) still offering me and have me at 15MB. If 25MB is now the new standard, shouldn't I be raised up and not have to pay for the upgrade. And if not, how long is it going to take before I can get 25MB. What's the hold up. Even better what do I (or anyone in my position) have to do to get this changed.
Was this not classified as a utility now, and woudn't that be like limiting the amount of water for basic use for me. It's not, like I'm trying to maintain a fishtank or waterbed. (as an example) | 41 | All it means is that they can't call it broadband if it's under 25Mbps. It doesn't mean that there won't be ISPs selling service at lower speeds.
If they were calling it broadband before, they'll need to call it something else -- like "high speed Internet". | 17 |
ELI5: What happens when you melt a magnet. | I know that even if you keep cutting a magnet in half, there is still a north and a south pole. What I was wondering was, what happens when you melt a magnet? Does it become non-magnetic, or does each little molecule in the liquid each have their own poles.
EDIT:**poles** not piles.... Can't believe I didn't catch that.
| 37 | LI5: The magnet will stop behaving magnetically once it hits a certain temperature (sort of). Then it'll simply behave like a piece of metal and melt
LI20: Let me know if there is interests, not typing an explanation for the hell of it, though it's not extremely complicated. | 13 |
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