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ELI5: In instances of large crowds at sporting events, how are all those individual voices amplified to near-deafening levels? | 93 | Constructive interference. When a group of people are all talking/yelling at once. The frequencies at which their voices overlap will be louder due to the sound waves interfering with each other, increasing the amplitude (volume) where the frequencies match, and decreasing the amplitude where they do not match. To a listener, without focusing on a specific voice, all they would hear is a noisy mess. This is exacerbated in a stadium because of the sheer number of people and the construction of the building caused a lot of reflection/reverberation. | 37 |
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ELI5 how do people with hemmoroids not constantly get e.coli infections? | 664 | Physician here. Hemorrhoids are veins that have becomes swollen In the rectum. Occasionally they may bleed which leaves an open communication between the blood stream and the colon but they don't often get infected. Why? Think of it as a small weak fish (bacteria) trying to swim upstream against a fast current. It doesn't get anywhere right? That's the pressure behind the vein. Now imagine the same stream with a bunch predator fish swimming around eating the small fish. This is the immune system in and around the rectum. So we have a two protection systems against infection.
The most common reason hemorrhoids become infected is when the blood supply to the hemorrhoid ceases (strangulated or thrombosed). So now there is a dam, river comes to a standstill and the predator fish can't get in so the little fish (bacteria) can go wherever he likes including right into the now dead tissue of the hemorrhoid and wreak havoc. | 1,239 |
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Why doesn't lactose function like a prebiotic in lactose intolerant people? | Dietary fibers like inulin cannot be digested by the human body and feed gut bacteria instead and that's generally thought of as a good thing. Why doesn't lactose serve a similar function in those with lactose malabsorption? | 88 | It does, that’s the problem.
The presence or lack of certain lactose living bacteria is what determines whether your lactose intolerance is asymptomatic or not.
It’s the bacteria that cause the discomfort for people who experience symptoms. They produce gas when they consume lactose and that cause pain and bloating and your body trying to expel things as quickly as possible.
For people who don’t have those bacteria and are lactose intolerant the lactose just passes right on through. | 117 |
What would a cup full of viruses or bacteria look like? | 3,621 | If your cup only had bacteria and no broth, most bacteria would look like slime with a yellowish tinge to it. Some are slightly more granular than others. There's a few types that would be a little red, pink, or a little green, others a stark white. There's a couple of types that would likely look crusty (like those in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex), because of cord factor, they tend to look more chunky and waxy.
No idea what a cup of viruses would look like. That would be SO MANY viruses. | 2,984 |
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Why is the sea level on one side of the Panama Canal higher than the other? | 1,772 | It's not really - the difference is only a matter of centimeters and basically it's due to currents and weather conditions. There is no significant difference in sea level on each end.
You're thinking about the locks. The Panama Canal isn't just where the Atlantic and Pacific come together - the ships actually travel up to a lake and then back down to get back to the sea. The locks are used to get the ships up to the navigable waterway - they're not equalizing to different sea levels. | 1,579 |
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ELI5: what is the noises our stomach makes? | 43 | The stomach is like a big bag, half full of liquid. It's job is to take whats put into it, mix it all up in it's acid pool, and send it down the line to the intestines. To do this mixing and sending, it uses muscles to squash and stretch itself, pushing food around. When you get hungry, the stomach might get excited and churn early, when you haven't given it any food, and the air being squeezed around makes that gurgle sound! | 32 |
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ELI5: Why does music provoke deep emotions in some people yet does nothing for others? | For example, I absolutely love music, I have playlists for every mood. Some music makes me just completely stop what I'm doing and listen, and music can change my mood in seconds. However, my friend doesn't enjoy listening to any genre of music. She doesn't mind it if its playing somewhere, but she is indifferent to listening to it, and despite listening to many songs me and my friends have recommended, she says she doesn't feel any emotions from it. | 115 | The human brain is infinite in its variation. Some people respond most emotionally to their auditory senses (like music), some to their visual senses (like art), some to olfactory senses (smell), some to written language (reading), some to kinesthetics (body movement). And this is mediated through their life experiences which may push them closer or further to interest in one particular area.
Have you cried, or felt a chill, at a short story or painting ever? Why/why not? Have you ever become emotional because of a smell? Why/why not? Perhaps your friend has an emotional connection with another aspect of their senses that means nothing to you.
| 51 |
[WH40K] Was The Emperor's power armour special in any way, other than the fact that The Emperor was wearing it? | Did it have any special properties other than its colour? If you were to compare it to the latest model of power armour, how would it fare? | 136 | It is either the best armor ever created or the worst armor ever.
The Emperor was a big tinkerer and loved to build and develop new technologies. It is very unlikely that he was wearing a mass produced armor and its was probably created by himself for himself. Considering we don't understand most of the technologies he created, it safe to assume his armor followed suit. It is probably still well beyond the highest tech the imperium has to offer.
On the flip side, it could have been completely ornamental and the Emperor's true armor was his psychic power and intelligence. This made any armor void and unnecessary. Granted he did get killed by a mortal blow from Horus, but this was due to him dropping his guard thinking he could save his fallen son.
Either way, he also loved not telling people about what he was doing with his work and things were on a need to know basis (Horus and that golden throne thing). So he probably wasn't too quick to tell people about what his rolling save was on his armor. | 136 |
[Marvel/MCU] why doesn’t Thor put his hammer on more people? | In the first Thor movie he places his hammer on Loki’s chest and in What If? He puts it on Captain Marvel’s chest briefly to hold her down. Why doesn’t Thor do this more often? This seems like it should be his endgame in any fight. In Avenger’s he fights with Hulk on the helicarrier, why not put a hammer on his chest? | 27 | Because he first has to get that person on the ground long enough to place the hammer on them, which is easier said than done. He never laid Hulk out in the fight on the Helicarrier, for instance, despite trading blows with him. | 51 |
ELI5: What exactly is a "Mhz" when talking about CPU's? | And why does it make my computer work faster when it is overclocked? | 22 | Imagine the CPU is a producton line of people, making a car; one guy lifts the body and puts it onto the conveyor belt, the second guy fits the undercarriage, the third guy puts on the wheels, the the fourth guy puts in the seats etc.
Now, in a CPU, there is a conductor who basically goes "NEXT!" and every time he goes "NEXT!", all the people in the production line move their own task forward, but the conductor can't go "NEXT" before everyone is done, because then one part of the production line wouldn't do anything and that particular car just wouldn't be made.
That conductor is the called a "clock generator" and the "NEXT!" is known as as the clock signal. Each time the clock generator goes "NEXT!" is essentially known as a "Hz", pronounced "Hertz". A Mhz is 1 million Hz.
Overclocking is essentially telling all the workers on the production line to just work a lot faster, so the conductor can go "NEXT" faster and so more work can get done in the same workday. Of course, working harder makes your workers really hot, so you have to cool them a lot better than usual or they'll dehydrate and die, or in the CPU's case, it'll overheat and cook. | 19 |
Keep hearing that we are running out of lithium, so how close are we to combining protons and electrons to form elements from the periodic table? | 6,303 | I work for one the largest lithium producers and refiners. We certainly don’t think lithium is running out. We get a lot of ours by drying brine combined with earth in old volcanic zones. The left over salts have a decent concentration of lithium. This helps avoid so much mining too, but there are a couple lithium mines in America and a big one in Australia. | 9,503 |
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What is the difference between morals and ethics? | 19 | A lot of thinkers will distinguish between the two, often in totally different ways. A lot of thinkers don't distinguish between the two at all. Neither word has some metaphysical ur-meaning that ought to supersede what's useful in the context of a given line of thought. Read for how they're being used in a given context.
One distinction that's fairly common: Morals are socio-cultural. Ethics are personal-universal. | 22 |
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ELI5:Why do we need to install a program/videogame on our computer instead of just opening it. | 77 | It's a couple of things, and it's all in the name of efficiency.
First, to make programs take up less space on the CD or be easier to download, a lot of them are compressed. This is good for space, but it's very slow to uncompress something, so they can't run like that. The installer has to uncompress everything to get it ready for use.
Next, the program needs to tell Windows what it can do. That way, when you install a new sound program, you can click on your MP3 music files, and Windows will know that the new program can play those songs, and will use it to do what you're asking.
Once that's taken care of, the program needs a way to store settings. You can't really store settings inside a program file like an .EXE, because these files are very complicated and require special software to modify. So when you install it, the program makes a special file to store all its settings and temporary information. Since it's not an EXE and it's not actually *running* in the computer, it's very easy to make changes to.
On the same note, the program needs a way to update. Since you can't change the EXE file, you can't really update it without replacing the whole thing. If the program is broken down into a bunch of smaller files, an update can just replace one or two of these little files to make everything work better. With a single file, the update would have to replace the whole thing, even the parts that hadn't changed. That would take extra time and be harder to download, so programmers like to avoid it.
Finally, a lot of the really basic things a program does, like making a window or a dialog box, or certain types of calculations, all require special computer code. But a lot of this code is the same for every program, so instead of making every program come up with its own method for doing these things, the simple tasks are made into what's called a "library." This is sort of weird naming, because they're more like books *in* a library. Each book tells the computer how to do one simple task. So, when Microsoft Word wants to make a dialog box so you can set the font size, the Word programmers don't have to write their own font picker. They just tell Word to go use the library to find out how to do that task. The limitation with this is that not every computer has the same libraries, and even if they're present, the program needs to know where to find them. So when you install a program, it searches through your computer, makes sure it can find all the libraries it might need, and if any are missing it'll add a copy of that library so it can run properly, and so future programs can also use that library.
Despite all this, there *are* programs which run from a single file. They're usually simple programs that only do one or two tasks, where they can be all self-contained and still run efficiently. The more complicated the program is, the more likely one of the above situations will come up. So the complicated programs have to spend some time preparing everything so they can do all the different tasks they're designed to do. | 44 |
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[Back to the Future] How did doc calculate the rotation and translation of the Earth in his time machine? | 21 | His method of time travel didn't require it. The time machine basically only took a small "trip" outside the normal 1:1 timestream (through a relativistic door that was crossed at 88 MPH) and then basically "waited" for the requisite time to pass before re-entering. Travel to the past was accomplished by reversing this "door" causing the wait to basically be -1:1. Relative to the Earth, the time machine was stationary. | 22 |
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What makes some cancer "inoperable"? | what prevents a surgeon from just getting the thing out? | 153 | Sometimes the cancer can occur in places where it would otherwise kill the patient. Like a tumor deep inside the brain might require a surgeon to do too much damage getting it out, or risk breaking up the tumor and causing it to spread in the body (the cancer cells can take up residence in other places, including the wound channel on the way out). With something like lung cancer, the cancer might just be spread in too much delicate tissue (lung tissue is very volumous; they say that you have like a tennis court of area in your lungs), and they wouldn't be able to just cut it out without damaging too much tissue or destroying the organ. | 73 |
ELI5: Do people with Alzheimers know they don't remember anything, or do they just not question it? | 76 | They don't, no. They slowly forget the world around them, to the point where it's not like a vague memory, or they know something happened but they don't know exactly, it's like it never happened at all.
To look at it another way - reincarnation is real. Can you remember anything about your previous life? Would you recognise the faces if you met them in this life? | 42 |
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CMV: Religions never solved the problem of evil and Epicurus argument holds fast. | > Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
> Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
> Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
> Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
I've been reading a lot about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil in my spare time. There are a few theodicies/defenses but not a single one is logical or consistent. Evil and suffering are interchangeable in this argument. We assume discussed god created the universe.
Let's get through them one by one :
Free will defense:
God permits evil because it is necessary for free will:
1. That does not explain natural disasters that cause human suffering which are in no way created by human action (disease/avalanches/the_donald etc.)
2. Omnipotent being could create a world where capacity for evil is not necessary for free will - in Christianity it's called heaven. Alternatively there is no free will in heaven (which contends what Christian theologists say).
The suffering we endure is justified by the heavenly reward:
1. It boils down to is it morally ok to kick a child in a face if you give him a really nice candy afterwards?
Evil is illusory/doesn't exist:
1. For the person suffering it is, and even most of the theologians with Augustine agree that this is a lousy attempt.
Prevention of greater evil (God permits lesser evils to prevent greater ones):
1. Omnipotent being can prevent all evils.
2. Every kid that has cancer is predestined to do something horrible in the future.
3. Free will does not exist in this defense.
I think this is the weakest point of any religion that claims omnipotence and benevolence of god. The solutions that we are left with are:
1. There is no god.
2. God is malevolent/doesn't care.
3. God is not omnipotent.
I'll be bold enough to state that this pretty much proves that god cannot love us as we understand the word 'love'. If it was in your power to prevent a kid you love from getting cancer you would do it. You'd stop rape/war/every single instance of suffering from affecting your loved ones. God does not. Change my mind.
Edit: Added option 3.
Edit: Added implied assumption god created the universe.
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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!* | 678 | I take issue with the first part, i.e.
> Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Sure, that's correct. But there are plenty of religions that do not believe in omnipotent deities. Any religion that doesn't assert an omnipotent being is left completely off the hook by this argument.
What if god is able to prevent \*some\* (or even \*most\*) evil, but not all evil? If a being is able to prevent most evil, and actually does prevent it, may be enough to call the creature "god", even if it is not omnipotent. | 144 |
ELI5: How can something as tiny as a pill or a few drops of poison affect a full-grown adult so much? | Something I've never understood: I can take a pill with, say, 10mg of active ingredient that completely changes how my body operates. I weigh about 100kg (I'm working on getting that down). So that active ingredient is equal to about 1-ten-millionth of my body weight, yet it can profoundly alter my body's workings. Obviously, poison is similar. A tiny drop can kill me, mutilate me, cause no end of pain or changes.
I get how something like a virus or bacteria can have that effect. But how is it possible for a drug, which doesn't self-replicate, to do the same? | 1,297 | Pretty much for the same reason getting shot in the brain kills you; the active component only has to hit the right places. Consider that the poison might only affect 1 part of every cell in only your heart, then you die of heart failure | 809 |
[batman and robin movie] how did batman get a bat-credit card? | Surely he can't prove his credit rating or proof of address, or even that he could afford the repayments as he has no discernable job or income. | 61 | After Batman caught the Joker, Penguin, and Riddler after the infamous Gotham Central Bank heist of '67, the Bank director, Mr. Lehman, was so overjoyed that he awarded Batman an unlimited credit card as a sign of his gratitude. Remember, the thieves stole $63,000,000, so anything Batman could spend is chump change compared to what could have been stolen. And Batman is a cool guy, he's not gonna abuse the card or anything. | 75 |
ELI5: How can you make an emergency call when you have zero signal? | 17 | if you have literally no signal, then you can't. But if your phone can connect to a different provider's tower (roaming) it can place an emergency call and your phone may not show a usable signal. It will usually be able to do this even if you have roaming disabled on the phone. | 16 |
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ELI5: How are LEDs brighter and more powerful, yet use so little energy? | Ex: Police Lightbars, they're so bright but use so little of the cars battery. Much less than the classic rotating lights. | 18 | You know a lot of light is invisible, right? Infrared, for example. You can't see it, but you can feel it on your skin with your eyes closed when you're standing near something really hot.
Take two lightbulbs that consume exactly the same amount of electric energy, but one produces only visible light, and the other products half visible light and half invisible. The second one will look much dimmer.
The old-timey incandescent filament lightbulbs, the ones that burn your fingers to the touch, they produce mostly infrareds! To the tune of 90%!
That's why so much progress has been done. Because there was so much room for progress.
LED lights produce mostly visible light. Do this is it. There won't be much progress anymore. We're there. We can focus on other things now. Cool, hey? | 26 |
Are hormones like Dopamine and Oxytocin exclusively responsible for certain emotions/moods? Is it possible to still experience these emotions/moods with none of these hormones at all? | 300 | A single neurotransmitter (NT) is rarely responsible for something as complex as moods and emotions. Instead, you would be looking at combinations of NT as well as involvement of different regions of the brain or different subsets of neurons within a region depending on the emotion- many of those regions will be able to influence the release of those specific NTs. Without those NTs, it is extremely unlikely that you would experience those emotions or moods in the same way as before, if at all. | 65 |
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I don't believe filibustering should be allowed in any governmental body, CMV. | Specifically in US politics, I feel that the filibuster is often portrayed as one person who felt so strongly on a subject that they stood up against the tides and fought it. A David vs. Goliath story with the lone senator as the hero.
However, I feel that the filibuster is a failure of democracy because it makes the majority opinion irrelevant when any one person, in the minority, has the power to unilaterally derail any legislation. Also, the modern day filibuster is rarely Mr. Smith goes to Washington style with one person standing and reading the phone-book for 12 hours - in the US senate, a filibuster can literally be phoned-in without the objecting senator even being present or talking, they can have their staff object on their behalf, and delay a bill for "debate" for weeks.
To be clear, I object to filibustering always. I will admit that it has been used to stop things I opposed such things as ANWAR oil drilling and the Texas state senate abortion clinic reform; But I would rather they had been approved through the majority-rule system that the senate was founded on, rather than stopped by a method of unilateral blockading.
I may be sheltered to this argument, because until recently I thought that any sensible person would agree. However recently I have seen many people hold the view that a filibuster is a necessary tool and part of the tradition of the American governmental system. I am of open mind, so CMV, why should I approve of filibustering?
EDIT: *I really did not expect this much response! I'll read through these all on 7/24 when I have enough time to give them the individual attention they deserve. Thanks to everyone who took time to put together a response.* | 145 | Since you said that you oppose all filibusters, I'll only focus on the speaking filibuster instead of the modern Senate filibuster.
The purpose of the filibuster is not to stop legislation through brow-beating; it is to have all opposing points entered into the public record. By allowing the opposition all the time they desire to speak on the subject, it ensures that there is no relevant detail missed.
So why does it matter if the public record has a complete opposing argument or not? For one, it shows that certain consequences were known beforehand. For example, let's say that there was a proposed bill for a bridge across some river. One of the opposing representatives points out that the change in waterflow caused by the bridge would result in a dramatic decrease in the fish population. Since that consequence is in the public record, the supporting representatives could not pretend that they didn't know it would happen.
Furthermore, it also helps demonstrate what it is the supporting representatives reject. In the bridge example, those who voted for the bill would be on record as rejecting the importance of ecological damage. Anything that helps better define the motivations of elected representatives makes for a more clear choice at the ballot box and a better resulting government.
In short, the talking filibuster gives the opposition the opportunity to make it clear to the public why they think the majority should not have voted for the bill. | 102 |
CMV: The New York Times's dual endorsement is a cop-out. | The NYTimes has mad a big fuss over their new more transparent process for making "The Choice" for endorsing a presidential candidate. Maybe if they didn't promote it so much with a podcast and an episode of the weekly on top of the whole microsite, I would be less upset about the whole thing. Their endorsement of two candidates with drastically different ideologies, atitudes, and approaches to governing is exactly antithetical to the purpose of a vote and of an endorsement. People will not have the choice to put two candidates down in the ballet box and neither should any endorsements.
Regardless of who you think they should have picked, not picking ONE candidate is a cop-out.
​
The Dual Endorsement: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/19/opinion/amy-klobuchar-elizabeth-warren-nytimes-endorsement.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/19/opinion/amy-klobuchar-elizabeth-warren-nytimes-endorsement.html)
All the interviews [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/13/opinion/election-nytimes-the-choice.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/13/opinion/election-nytimes-the-choice.html)
"The Argument" podcast debating this very question. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/opinion/the-argument-endorsement-klobuchar-warren.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/opinion/the-argument-endorsement-klobuchar-warren.html)
While I rarely agree with Ross on anything, he perfectly nails how this cop-out will only hurt the democrats chances to come together behind one candidate to go up against Trump. | 22 | It’s not a cop out, it’s strategy.
Warren is their pick. Klobuchar isn’t a threat to Warren, Biden is.
They’re not going to swing many votes from the moderate lane of Biden to the more extreme lane of Warren. But they might be able to swing some votes within the moderate lane from Biden to Klobuchar.
By also endorsing Klobuchar, they’re hoping to hurt Biden which helps Warren, their real pick. | 13 |
ELI5: How can somebody like Tom Cruise be so successful in life and yet simultaneously come across as a complete nut? | 35 | Tom Cruise is a talented actor, and he lives in a society where being a talented actor can result in lots of fame and fortune if you're lucky.
But being good at something doesn't mean that you don't have problems. | 30 |
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Are there ocean dead zones where there is little or no life activity? If so why do they exist? | 15 | Absolutely.
Consider a typical oceanic water column of about 3.5 km. The overwhelming majority of living critters are found within the photic zone, which ends at an average depth of about 200 m. Within this zone, all of the necessities of life are present: an energy source and nutriments. However, light from the sun cannot reach beyond this 200 m zone, so biological productivity decreases abruptly. Still 3.3 km to go.
Some critters will spend part of the day below the photic zone and have a daily vertical migration to get to rich food sources from the surface, before retreating to deeper waters where the likelyhood of predation is reduced. A lot of these daily migrators are plankton sized, and stay within a few hundred meter of the photic zone.
Below this, life is scarce. It is not quite a dead zone in the formal sense of the word, but the combined presence of some of the more basic necessities of life (nutriments and an energy source) is not there. Consider this a biological desert. The main source of food is dead organic matter (mostly plankton) raining down from the surface. This may be degraded by bacteria on the way down, which may take a few days. Significant food resources, such as whale falls, are scarce and just "passing through".
Next stop is the ocean floor, 3.5 km down. Here is the final resting stop for that rain of organic matter from the surface. This allows for the (relative) concentration of this organic matter in a single locale. There is more life here than in the intervening 3 km between here and the surface. The food chain for the most part depends of this rain of dead plankton; this is the land of bottom feeders and detritivores, with a few predators which pick upon the benthos.
Very locally, you'll find extraordinarily lush oases of life tightly clustered around hydrothermal vents. These are exceptional, and constitute a parrallel food chain where the input of energy is not from the sun (no matter how far removed) but from chemical energy transported by the Earths heat transfer system. A lot of these critters depend on symbiotic relationships with specialised bacteria and archea, and live off methane, sulphate, sulphuric acid, or some other energy source.
So, in retrospect, you'll find that most of the water column, from a few hundred meters of the photic zone to the ocean floor, is pretty much a biological desert with little biological productivity. | 25 |
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ELI5- why is it so difficult to take a decent picture of the moon on your phone? | Edit: I forgot to add a message. It’s so pretty when you look at it with your eyes but when you take a picture of it through your phone, it is a pathetic white blob. | 37 | The moon is far away, the moon is small compared with the whole area covered by the camera, your phone tries to be smart but it isn't as smart as your brain.
Why is your brain smarter than a phone? When looking at the moon over the horizon your brain will enhance the moon and make you think it to be much bigger than what it actually received on your eyes. Kind of a funky zoom feature.
Your phone software tries to get the object it thinks is important to be non-blurred. It could be possible that when looking at the phone it looks very sharp and big. And when pressing the button the phone moves a bit and the phone tries to refocus. And then boom, your picture is taken sharp close by while the moon is far away.
So get a tripod, lock the phone, disable the smartness and zoom in. | 25 |
ELI5: Why, when my leg/arm/any limb "goes to sleep" does it hurt once the feeling starts coming back to, but if I am given a numbing agent, it doesn't hurt when the feeling comes back? | So, when you fall asleep leaning on your arm and roll over, it starts to hurt as the feeling comes back. But if you go to the dentist and they numb your mouth, it doesn't hurt once that starts coming back? | 83 | Doctor here:
When you lean on your arm you compress the nerves. This irritates them. The pins and needles sensation is not primarily from a lack of blood supply, despite what other have written here, although it can be a contributing factor.
When the compression stops, the nerves begin to work again. They are irritated so they report this to your brain in the form of pain. After a while the irritation ends and things go back to normal.
When a numbing agent is used, it simply blocks the transmission of pain rather than compressing and irritating the nerves.
There’s more to it than this, but this is ELI5.
​
EDIT: some typos. | 84 |
ELI5: How does 'Anti-Paparazzi Scarf' work ? | I just saw the [Anti-Paparazzi Scarf.](http://i.imgur.com/LxxdHSE.jpg) Explain how it works. | 396 | Cameras can be set up a couple of ways. one way to use them very quickly in unpredictable situations (Like paparazzi for instance) is to put a flash on top so you always have enough light, and to let the camera pick your exposure for you so you don't have to take the time to set up the settings.
In that sort of mode, when you take the photo, the camera very quickly does a couple of things.
First, it starts up the light meter inside the camera. Then, it fires a "pre flash" to see how far away the scene/subject is to determine how bright the real flash needs to be, and to set the rest of the parameters in camera (ISO, aperture, and shutter speed)
When that pre-flash hits the really reflective scarf, a LOT of light comes back at the camera, directly off of the scarf, which tells it that the scene is really bright, and doesn't need much extra light. So the camera decides to only put out a little bit of light from the flash, and to only let in a little bit of light from the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, so in the final image, the scarf is exposed correctly, but because nothing else in the scene is so reflective, the rest of the image looks way too dark, and isn't usable.
It's really easy to beat, however, by taking the time to set the camera manually for the exposure you know you'll need, or by not using a flash on the camera (which is how they get the "before" photo in the examples)
TLDR: The scarf reflects the flash from the camera and tricks the camera into under-exposing the image so much that it isn't usable. | 354 |
ELIF: Why do things float towards eachother in liquids? | I first noticed it with cereal in milk, when you put it in there the cereal clumps. I wasn't sure if it was the iron in the cereal so I tried bits of styrofoam in milk, still went towards eachother. I've experimented with this a bit and I'm stumped. I thought it might be something to do with the surface tension in the water/milk/liquid but I added dish soap to the water once to lessen the tension and they still clumped.
Then I was curious about it might be gravity pulling them together so I used two things of known mass and figured out the ammount they should accelerate and in practice they accelerate much faster. I am at a complete loss as to why this is and was wondering if anyone knew. Sorry about formatting weirdness I'm posting this from my phone. | 51 | Try to imagine it this way:
You have a piece of cloth stretched out. If you place a ball in the middle of this cloth, you're going to create a dip in the cloth. Place another ball at the edge of the cloth now, and it's going to be "attracted" to the first ball.
The same concept applies, but you have the milk's surface as the cloth instead, and the cereals act as the balls. Each cereal actually 'dent' the milk surface, but it's just so small we can't see it. The effect is still there though, and thus each cereal would clump together. | 37 |
If rent control is unintentionally counterproductive, how can we keep rent from rising faster than people's wages? | I'm piggybacking off this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/gcoxw3/why_the_hell_do_we_have_rent_control_in_various/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share | 121 | Increase supply.
There are a bunch of factors that limit supply. Building codes. City Ordinances. Tax incentives. Labor costs. All of those trade offs effect supply.
For example: You have a high rise building in Manhattan with a beautiful view of central park. The building in front of it wants to add another hundred floors, obscuring the view. What do you do? You try to block the construction via the city. That limits supply, that drives up rents. | 176 |
ELI5: Why does rabies work across different species and manage to cause the same symptoms? | 24 | Rabies is REALLY old (its on every continent and pre-dates colonization). Aristotle wrote about it, and Mesopotamians had fines for owners of rabid dogs. In the Americas, there is fossil evidence of rabies in bats and skunks - but that particular strain wasn't as infectious for dogs. Viruses that are really old either go extinct or figure out how to be optimally infectious. Rabies is infectious enough to spread, since it can infect any mammal it maintains a reservoir, but it's way of spreading (feces,spit, blood) keep it from becoming an epidemic - so mammals don't develop immunity.
Rabies spreads so easily in mammals because of its shape and target - it goes after the spinal chord. This is also why symptoms are pretty uniform (lethargy or aggression). The virus is attacking the "oldest" (evolutionarily speaking) parts of the brain. Things that are viewed as "older" in this way tend to work similarly across related animals, in most cases. Your fight/flight center of your brain falls into this. Mammals also have similar body temperature ideal for the virus, this is why birds, snakes, and fish can't get rabies, but also why possums don't generally get it (they have really low body temperatures).
As an unrelated, but fun fact, Louis Pasteur (the father of pasteurization and our understanding of germs and diseases) invented the vaccine that we still use today and is the only reliable treatment for rabies. He administered a largely untested vaccine (it had been successful in animals) to a kid who was bitten, and the kid survived. | 35 |
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[The Thing] How exactly does the Thing consume/assimilate/duplicate more than one being at a time? | I.e., how can one "thing" duplicate multiple organisms? | 39 | Genetic code is the language the Thing "speaks". As it absorbs a being, it reads its DNA and assimilates all of the code into its repertoire.
The Thing doesn't see organisms as individual beings, but each as an amalgamation of traits which are coded by particular sequences of codons. It can creatively recombine these traits into different configurations based on its needs, much as a master chef can improvise completely new dishes by mixing and matching components from thousands of memorized recipes.
It is a master artist and life itself is its palette. | 38 |
ELI5: Why has college become so ridiculously expensive | my dad and i talk about this all the time. how college is almost like a life sentence to debt at this point and to make matters even worse, jobs are very difficult to find. being a college grad is pretty tough these days with trying to find a job in this economy with only a short period of time before loans start coming around. one of the speakers at my college graduation was talking about how when he was going to college, paying off tuition was no more difficult than paying off a new car. | 28 | In short, tons of free or heavily subsidized money has flowed into higher education, leading to the thing that *always* happens when a ton of money flows into a certain area: a bubble. However, this bubble isn't going to collapse in the sense of higher educations suddenly becoming worthless, so don't worry about that.
The best thing to do is just be smart about WHAT you study, WHERE you study, and HOW you transition from your education into a career. For example, art major at Princeton? You're going to be drowning in debt. Engineering major at a solid state school? Better choice. | 23 |
[Witcher] Is Geralt a particularly powerful witcher or just average? | 164 | His mother is a Witch so he posses innate magical abilities. This means that he doesn't have to take Witcher Potions just to be able to use Signs.
A normal Witcher is an orphan without any magical abilities yet they still have to use at least the basic Witcher Signs to be effective monster hunters so a normally through mutations and a regiment of regularly ingested potions a Witcher without any natural talent in magic boosts his magical abilities high enough to use at least Signs - the crudest most basic form of magic. | 132 |
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CMV: Minimum Wage Hurts the Disenfranchised and Should Be Repealed | **edit 2: currently working through more responses**
**edit: I'm currently traveling. Will try to respond to all replies.**
**CMV:**
1. Minimum Wage Hurts the Disenfranchised and Should Be Repealed
2. Poor People Would Be Better Off Without Minimum Wage
I'll begin this by saying that I'm genuinely willing to have my views changed. I'm not just going to advocate a simple bootstrap or just world philosophy. Nor do I think we should abandon the poor, but I earnestly think society (**especially** the poor and disenfranchised) more from the repeal (gradual decrease until it's non-binding and eventually at $0) of minimum wage laws than the status quo (or an increase).
**Select Economists**
1\. [Milton Friedman:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPShGzCiXBk) MW discriminates against low skilled workers
2\. [Walter Williams:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyh28HMXuyU) During Apartheid, South Africans unions used MW laws to price blacks out of the market.
3\. [Thomas Sowell:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb9zJJVdUd8) MWLs encourage minority discrimination. Without minimum wage, companies cannot afford to discriminate against minorities.
**My Criticisms of Minimum Wage Laws (MWLs or MW)**
1.) Minimum wage prices low-skilled workers out of the market; they compete against workers with higher skills and are not hired. Jobs at their skill level are illegal (below minimum wage).
* Every worker has a value. There are some workers who would make an employer $5/hr whilst others would make him $15/hr. Of course, depending, on the job, there is a limit.
* A worker who dropped out of school, has a learning disability, does not have a car or good clothes, etc. will require extra training, take longer to be productive, and may make $5/hr for an employer.
* Conversely a young worker who is in high school or college, has average intelligence, owns a used car, etc. will require less training, take less to be productive, and may make $10/hr for an employer.
Every worker has a value; the **amount** of money they would make an employer. Under minimum wage laws, low skilled workers **have no choice** but to compete against workers with higher skills. In such an environment will low skilled workers get hired? Rarely.
**Employers typically are not willing to pay a worker more than the value of the additional product that he produces.**
2.) Law of Demand: When prices increase people buy less; when prices decrease people buy more. Higher labor costs = disincentive to use labor.
Let's look at heating.
* When the cost of heating a home rises, you'll find a way around it. You need it, but when the price rises, you will probably respond. Maybe purchasing firewood or buying sweaters/socks, or using an electric blanket.
* When heating costs are low, you use more heating. Less worry about leaving the AC, changing the temperature, or wearing a sweater.
Labor markets are no different.
* When labor gets expensive, employers will find ways around it: outsource workers, decrease hiring (or fire), switch everyone to part-time, etc.
* When labor gets cheap, employers may hire more workers. If it cost a grocery store $2 to have someone walk around, straighten goods, and dust shelves, they would probably do it.
* For grocery stores, a neater store is easily worth $2/hour. For the low skilled minority worker, $2/hour, a uniform, basic skills training (learning to show up on time, customer interaction, gaining responsibilities, etc.), and a positive environment may be worth an hour of his time.
3\. Small businesses are harmed more
Large companies like Walmart are better able to respond to minimum wage increases. They have:
* More lawyers to study laws and find loophooles
* Analysts to calculate optimal response (fire workers vs. drop hours)
* More savings/capital
When small stores have to raise their prices due to increased labor costs, Walmart can hold prices long enough for these small stores to go out of business.
**Possible Effects of No Minimum Wage Laws**
1\. Unemployment decreases/Jobs increase
More business opportunities and jobs are created. Escalator/elevator operators, kitchen hands, more helpers at a store, etc. Imagine going to a movie theatre, purchasing a ticket, and having an usher take you to your movie.
These jobs aren't particularly difficult, they're simple jobs in which a low skilled person could start and which an employer may be willing to create or experiment with.
2\. Employers are more willing to train
When there's an opening for a ticket agent or snack box cashier at the movie theatre, the manager may be more inclined to promote the hardworking and personable usher than interview multiple applicants and hire externally.
3\. Costs of goods decrease (Long-run)
Imagine a simple burger from McDonald's (for our purposes) only bread and beef.
* Bread used by McDonald's is made by a food productions company.
* Flour used by food productions company is purchased from ingredients supplier.
* Grain used by ingredients supplier is purchased from a farmer.
There are many businesses involved in this: McDonald's, a bakery, a grain mill, and a farmer. Each of which involves numerous workers, some of whom are at the minimum wage.
Decreased labor costs for the businesses -> More goods can be supplied at a given price -> Lower cost of goods/More purchasing power for each dollar.
Businesses won't drop their prices at first; in fact they will try to keep the highest profit margins possible, but they will be unable to do so (in the long-run). Why? Lower wages from the repeal fo MWLs will affects the customer base; less people will consumer their goods or services. Businesses profit more from selling 10 items for $5 than 8 items for $6.
4\. Wages is constantly reevaluated (no default minimum wage)
Without MWLs wages would be constantly evaluated. Instead of just citing minimum wage as being average for the job, wages are constantly evaluated based upon a person's skills rather. Combine this with an increased supply of jobs and you have competition.
A cashier who is well liked by customers can demand higher wages (up until a point of course). Although her skills are lower than a doctor a plumber's, they are higher than most other cashiers. And given an increase in jobs, she has other options. When she asks for a raise of $1 or $2 it will be seriously considered.
**Possible Criticisms of No Minimum Wage Laws**
1\. Firms can pay employees whatever they want
* Only if labor supply is infinite can employers pay $0.00/hr. Assuming constant demand, when labor supply decreases, wage increases. There are limits of course. Industries where labor can be outsourced or automated. Industries with low labor demand, etc.
* Amount of people who **can** (skilled enough) apply to a job =/= People who **actually** apply (compete) to a job.
* There are a finite amount of people applying to a specific job at each wage level. At $2/hr only very low skilled workers (dropped out of highschool, no experience at all, etc.) would apply. These workers would compete against each other for jobs, but so would their employers.
* An employer who pays $2/hr for chopping wood will struggle to hire people. An employer who pays $2/hr to work an elevator and answer questions will hire people.
2\. All jobs should offer a living wage. Jobs that cannot offer living wages should not be offered. Living wages can be achieved by cutting into massive profits of CEOs and upper management.
*24% of people who hold a job at or below minimum wage are 16-19 year olds. Most (not all) of these teenagers do not need a living wage.
* Not all jobs will create a living wage nor are worth a living wage. Jobs like an elevator usher, a shelf straightener, etc. will not create a living wage. Employers will choose to have customers press their own buttons or they will give other employees more responsibilities and have them straighten the shelves. These are also not the jobs people who **need** a living wage would be applying to. These are the gateway jobs teenagers and the low skilled would want to get.
* When you say jobs that can't offer living wages shouldn't be allowed, you are saying that to low skilled workers "Unless you can find a job paying at least the minimum wage, you may not accept employment." For these workers to find minimum wage jobs, their skills need to be, well, higher than they are.
* Minimum wage only cut into CEO or Management salary after every option has been exhausted. Only after people have been fired at every level, hours have been cut, and self checkout installed, will salaries start to drop.
In a world without minimum wage, low wages would be temporary. Skills would increase and so would wage (or workers go elsewhere)
Price controls work best when demand is inelastic. If the government says, companies can't sell water for less than $6/bottle, people will stop buying soda, cancel netflix, and do what's necessary to continue drinking water. If the government says, companies can't offer phone service for less than $100/month, telephone booths will comeback, people will share phones, companies will stop requiring phones, etc.
There is a basic amount of required labor. MWLs push companies towards that basic amount. Where it was once most profitable to have 5 employees, it's best to have 3 employees and marginally increase their salaries.
**Closing notes**
My views are controversial, I've tried to present them from my perspective and how I earnestly see things. Criticize the best you can and I'll respond or capitulate.
**tl;dr**
* "By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it."
* Minimum wage, although well intended, hurts low skilled workers more than it helps them.
* Workers whose value falls below minimum wage have decreased social mobility and struggle to find work so that workers at minimum wage have higher wages.
* Minimum wages disproportionately harm minorities and the disenfranchised
_____
> *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!* | 27 | Except the opposite is true. Stronger minimum wage laws benefit not only workers but everyone in an economy. The reasons are a little more complex than an equilibrium point.
Essentially, we need consumers. The idea that prices will fall in line with wages is simply not realistic, as firms will charge as much as they can (ie. some saving will go toward price cuts, but the rest will be absorbed as profit). The result will be that people will spend a larger portion of their wages on basics and less on luxuries and investments. Less production will lead to a drop in growth, with all that entails.
Here's some research for you: compare a list of countries by minimum wage with one by PPP. | 36 |
How much of sleep is actual maintenance downtime, and how much is just time-killing energy conservation? | The idea of science developing a means of reducing sleep to pure function or increasing the efficiency thereof is fascinating to me. My understanding of sleep in animals is that some maintenance is performed by the mind and body, but animals also sleep to conserve energy during unfavorable periods of time be it yearly hibernation cycles or evolved specialization to periods of the night/day cycle. | 12,834 | Virtually every question on sleep should be answered with "nobody knows". This is one of those. Keep in mind that some mammals, like horses, sleep 3 hours a day while others, like bats, sleep 21 hours a day. Your question will most likely have different answers depending on the animal we are talking about | 8,618 |
CMV: Without foreign military intervention, the Hong Kong protests will fail | **BETTER TITLE: The Hong Kong protests are doomed to fail no matter what.**
The recent security laws set out by China targeting Hong Kong's unrest have earned the ire of protesters and the international community. Noble gestures against a tyrannical, bloodthirsty regime, but unless the West is willing to move past mere economic sanctions and surround Hong Kong with warships, they will be allowing China to enact another Tiananmen Square "incident". The Hong Kong crisis can only be solved through substantial military action - but who would want to do that?
The Communist Party of China will not accede to much more of the protesters' demands. Many mainlanders view the Hong Kong protesters as violent rioters and terrorists, and negotiating with them will be seen as the Party going back on its own nationalistic principles for a united China. Xi Jinping is no Gorbachev, and internal reform on this issue seems extremely unlikely. "One country, two systems" was already a massive concession for Beijing, let alone independence.
Hong Kong lacks a standing army, substantial natural resources, or geographic distance from mainland China (one advantage Taiwan has) to give the PLA any second thoughts of occupation.
The protesters seem unlikely to give up either, due to the Party's stubbornness and the unanimously favorable coverage of them by Western media. Any imprisonments or forced disappearances will be widely publicized unless the Communist Party forces their way into the city and imposes a media blackout. Even if the protesters cease their violence, the PLA will likely institute a violent crackdown anyway.
It seems the only alternative for Hong Kong to retain democracy until 2047 is for more powerful military actors to get involved, e.g. the United States, **which seems unlikely** given the promises set out in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and Hong Kong's current lack of strategic value to other countries outside of diplomatic virtue-signaling. The protests were allowed to happen in order for the Communist Party to be able to portray the protesters as violent secessionists.
In the end, there will be no peaceful solution to the Hong Kong problem. China or the West will inevitably have to send in troops to quell the issue, and one of those possibilities is much more likely than the other. Essentially, in the absence of a new world war, Hong Kong is doomed. CMV.
EDIT: Guys, I'm not necessarily saying we *should* intervene militarily - I'm just saying that Hong Kong has no chance without it.
EDIT 2: What will change my view is someone showing me any potential for peaceful reform. Y'all are attacking the wrong thing - and in fairness I should have made a better title lol
EDIT 3: View has been changed in that military intervention would not be an exception to Hong Kong's helplessness. But so far no one has really come up with an actual solution... | 43 | Who'd be stupid enough to start a war with china? Cause foreign military intervention would be more than enough for a declaration of war.
And the result would be that china would have legal grounds for military actions as well. Right now, HK is protected by an invisible legal, economical and political wall. If you were to place military forces there, they would replace these invisible walls with a military wall, that china could crush much easier. | 10 |
CMV: I believe that school-age children should be allowed to be by themselves. | 119 | I think there's a good discussion to be had, but what people used to do shouldn't really matter. We used to use lead paint and pregnant women smoked, just because a lot of people turned out OK doesn't mean it's safe. Let today's standards be determined by the safety needs of today, who cares what used to happen. | 41 |
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CMV: Universities should have professors dedicated to teaching only | It seems more and more frequently students are struggling with professors teaching poorly despite ever increasing tuition costs, the pandemic and online learning has only emphasized this.
It would make sense to me for universities to hire professors that only teach and do not have other responsibilities such as research etc. This would allow them to focus solely on teaching, providing the best learning experience for their students. Additionally they can have an increased amount of office hours.
This may also mean that they can teach multiple classes so students become used to them and they can relate various classes together (if applicable). Especially for undergrad, you may not even require professors and instead use lecturers (those without doctorates) to teach as the course information is usually not on the cutting edge of the subject and instead is well-planted in history and well known (for example calculus).
As an engineering student, I've had some good profs, one excellent out of this world amazing prof and a bunch that were difficult to learn from. It seems I am not alone in these appraisals.
Thoughts? | 83 | Sounds like what you want is to attend a community college.
What attracts people to programs at university is the prospect of working with researchers in their field of choice. And there just isn't enough work/money to give a very specialized professor ONLY responsibilities of teaching his/her own specialty and research. So each specialist also takes some general classes to help justify their role/salary at the university, since their specialist classes may just be a handful of students.
So the current University approach:
* Makes sure the university has as many different researchers as it can afford to
* Gives the researchers a better work environment because of the plentiful amount of potential collaborators both in their discipline and across disciplines
* Supports an important University mission which is to push research forward
* Exposes younger students to these researchers
* Gives their students the widest range of options in terms of specializations
Your system would not allow the university to afford a larger staff. You'd be replacing specialized researchers with non-researchers. This is a drag on several important goals of the university from pushing forward research to attracting new students with their researchers. | 30 |
[Monsterverse] What were the chains which tied up Kong to the ship made of? | Kong should've been able to break those chains right when Monarch eased up on the sedatives | 15 | Not really those chains were thicker then the chains cargo ships use on there anchors and they also heavily restricted kongs movements so he almost never had the chance to build momentum to break the chains. | 10 |
Do solids and liquids have a sound barrier? If so, what happens when you break it? | is it the same thing as just striking the material in question? would a sonic boom in steel, for example, mean it would explode into shards? | 643 | To generate a sonic boom, you need to have an object travelling through a medium faster than that medium's speed of sound. The boom is the collecting of sound waves into a conical shape along the leading edge of the object.
In the general case, a plane is travelling through air. The air has a speed of sound at a given temperature and pressure.
The speed of sound in water is much faster than air, and the viscosity of water makes it very hard to attain the necessary velocity.
The speed of sound in metal is even faster than water. The trouble with generating a sonic boom in metal is getting an object to travel THROUGH metal. | 563 |
How does my body keep stomach acid in my stomach, but let food and water through? | 17 | The answer is essentially that it doesn't. The gastric acid moves through the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum with the foodstuffs (now broken down into chyme). In the duodenum, bicarbonate is released which neutralizes the acid so that the low pH doesn't go through and destroy the rest of your GI tract. The stomach in response makes more acid. | 20 |
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[JessicaJones/X-Men] Is Kilgrave powerful enough to control Professor X? | 26 | Kilgrave's powers work off of a virus as opposed to pure psychic abilities like Professor X. They work on different mechanisms and neither has a specific defense against the other. That said, as a telepath Professor X has an extremely disciplined mind. That combined with his power not having a verbal component and working faster than Kilgrave's gives him the edge. | 30 |
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Why don't we just keep probes in orbit around objects, instead of doing fly-bys? | We have Cassini-Huygens orbiting Saturn right now, couldn't we have done this with other probes? New Horizons is going to Pluto, why not just keep it there to do science for a while? | 38 | Two reasons, really:
One is that in order to get to Pluto in a tolerable amount of time (~10 years) NH has to move very fast, using a gravitational slingshot. This means that if we wanted to slow it down to orbit Pluto, we'd have to expend a huge amount of propellent (which we don't have) in order to get rid of all this spare kinetic energy in time to go into orbit around Pluto.
The second reasons is a little more technical. Pluto is tiny, with a very small gravity well into which we'd want to drop our spacecraft. In order to avoid overshooting, we'd have to start decelerating essentially immediately after slingshot to the planet, thus burning a lot more propellent and extending the duration of the mission substantially.
In the end, it comes down to tradeoffs. Do you bump up the cost of the mission hugely for these more complicated propellent systems, or do you fire a leaner, cheaper, faster system and try to maximize what you can get as you pass by? In the end, the decision came down on the side of the latter with NH. | 22 |
ELI5: Why can air be compressed but liquids can’t? | 62 | Liquids can be compressed, but significantly less than air (and all gases) can be compressed. It’s to do with the molecule structure. Compression forces molecules close together. In a solid, all these molecules are tightly packed together. So you can’t really compress, because there’s no room. In a liquid, there’s a bit more room, so you can compress it a little bit. Gases on the other hand have a lot more area to move around, and so you can compress them a lot more than liquids. | 102 |
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ELI5: Why is processed food "bad" for you? | Sometimes there aren't many other options for a large section of the population, whether due to affordability or other reasons.
Additionally, how can we make healthier processed food choices? | 141 | When food is "processed" it generally means that it is altered in someway in between its source and when you consume it. Many foods we eat today are "processed".
Juice is processed by taking fruits and removing the fiber (solid bits). The fiber in fruit is like a natural constraint. eg. it would be tough to eat 10 apples, but easy to drink 10 apples worth of juice. The juice is calorie dense compared to the fruit making it easy to over consume and gain weight. Milk and juices are often pasteurized, pasteurization, the heating of liquids to kill bacteria, being the process they were subjected to. So its tough to generalize and say all processed food its bad for you. It really depends on the process its self.
High fructose corn syrup is the result of processed corn products (glucose) that result in the sweet maple like syrup that they put in everything (fructose). Corn syrup isn't necessarily bad for you in small quantities, but it is very calorie dense. So eating large quantities will result in weight gain.
White bread is also a processed food. They process the wheat by removing the tough outer shell of the wheat where all the nutrients and fiber are found. You end up getting all the calories from carbohydrates without any of the fiber or nutrients, and often people refer to this as "empty calories".
TL;DR all processed foods aren't necessarily bad for you and it depends on the process and your diet as a whole.
Edit: Clarified a few things. | 103 |
Are the effects of dark matter and dark energy observable on a smaller scale i.e. here on Earth? | 41 | No, they're too weak to be relevant.
Dark energy is extremely dilute, while dark matter is very uniform.
We possibly hope to be able in the near future to detect dark matter through non gravitational interactions, but these have not been observed yet, and are at the very least ultra-rare. | 23 |
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[ELI5] All of the different graphics options for games? | I know what resolution and texture quality mean, but what exactly does
* Shader Quality
* Lighting Quality
* Filtering
* anti-aliasing
* Buffering
* FSAA
* V-Sync
**Edit:** Also, bloom.
And all the other random ones that you usually find.
| 29 | Each of these settings let's you adjust the trade-off between image quality vs. frame rate and what your system is capable of:
Shader quality: the level of detail of computed textures and surfaces
Lighting quality: detail and softness of shadows and reflected light
Filtering: details in layered textures
Anti-aliasing: the sharpness of edges, makes edges less jaggy
Buffering: better frame rates due to more precomputed drawings
FSAA: Full Scene Anti-Aliasing, draw each frame multiple times and blend the drawings together for even sharper edges
V-Sync: The refresh rate of your monitor. Adjust as needed to reduce image tearing, or just leave it disabled if no there's no tearing issues.
| 13 |
Has there been any investigation of whether the placebo effect applies to animals? | 16 | Most certainly! Though the animal manifestation of the placebo effect may not be the same as you would imagine a human to exhibit the placebo effect. For example, if you give a human a placebo and tell them it is an antidepressant, they often begin to feel less depressed. This would not likely occur in an animal, as they have no expectation about a drug they have never taken before. However, if an animal is repeatedly given a certain drug, then is given a placebo dose of that drug, the animal will likely act in ways consistent with that drug's effects.
To look at a specific example of placebo in animals, let's consider researchers repeatedly administering morphine to rats. Morphine causes side effects such as vomiting and sleep. Rats who have been repeatedly given morphine have been observed to exhibit these symptoms when researchers are merely preparing to administer morphine. Similarly, rats who have been given morphine repeatedly can exhibit placebo analgesia, in which they have an increased pain threshold when placebo morphine is administered.
The mechanisms behind the placebo effect help to understand why this occurs for animals as well as humans. The placebo effect is driven by the anticipatory function of memory. Our brain is constantly trying to anticipate the present situation based on past events in order to guide our behavior. This process occurs automatically in order to conserve conscious resources, which are limited. A good example of this process is driving. When you get in a car, you automatically engage in many behaviors that enable you to skillfully drive, whereas when you were first learning to drive, it was effortful and cognitively demanding. Animals learn in the same way.
The same process happens with substance use. When you use a substance, your body learns to expect certain effects. For example, if you drink alcohol often, you may learn that you become more talkative and outgoing when drinking. Thus, if someone gives you O'Doule's and you think it's real beer, you might act outgoing and talkative, because that's the way you expect to feel. Animals also learn to expect certain effects from a drug, though perhaps not as explicitly as we do.
On an interesting and related note, this process is also responsible for tolerance. Your body learns to expect certain effects from a drug, and it compensates for those effects. If you had a high tolerance for alcohol, but someone injected you with alcohol without your knowledge, you would probably feel a lot more drunk than if you knew you were drinking alcohol, because your body wasn't informed that it had to prepare for being drunk.
Herrnstein, R., Placebo effect in the rat, Science, 138 (1962) 677–678.
Goldman, M. S., Darkes, J., Reich, R. R., & Brandon, K. O. (2006). From DNA to conscious thought: The influence of anticipatory processes on human alcohol consumption.
Kirsch, I., & Sapirstein, G. (1998). Listening to Prozac but hearing placebo: A meta-analysis of antidepressant medication. Prevention & Treatment, 1(2), 2a.
Nolan, T. A., Price, D. D., Caudle, R. M., Murphy, N. P., & Neubert, J. K. (2012). Placebo-induced analgesia in an operant pain model in rats. Pain, 153(10), 2009-2016. | 13 |
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ELI5: How can insects fall from proportionally insane heights and suffer no damage? | 1,117 | Put simply, if you make something twice as big, it weighs EIGHT TIMES as much. If you go in the other direction (making something half as big), then it weighs 1/8 what it did before. So you can see that something that's REALLY small will weigh almost nothing.
Also, for really small things like insects, air acts like it's pretty thick. All those legs and body pieces slow them down, sort of like a parachute.
Insects don't weigh much, and the air slows them down quite a bit. That's why humans fall like a rock and insects sort of don't.
EDIT: More infos, gathered up from the comments.
They say falling doesn't kill you--its the sudden stop at the end. While ants top out at about 4mph in freefall (and humans go on to 125mph or more), what really saves their bacon is being so light. Since they weigh so little, there's a lot less of them that has to be slowed down when their little anty body hits the ground. | 857 |
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CMV:CMV:Social Security/Pension plans are inherently unsustainable. | Hi guys,
I believe that Social Security/Pension plans are inherently unsustainable. Every generation of people reaching retirement relies on a significantly larger working population behind them to provide the tax revenue that will pay for their retirement. Assuming a non-extreme fatality rate, this means that each generation of retirees is going to be bigger than the last, effectively requiring an infinitely growing population to sustain infinitely growing retiree populations.
The human population is still growing very quickly, but the rate of that growth is slowing down and therefore its expected that the human race will "stabilize" around 12 billion people. In other words, this system is not sustainable long term. Even if this wasn't the case, the notion that the Earth will have to sustain infinitely growing numbers of humans is obviously something that will cause issues down the line.
This is already starting to create issues.
In most developed nations, the population growth rate is already slowing down if not outright decreasing. Politicians have used this as a justification to bring in refugees or immigrants to increase the population and protect retirees. Germany is a good example. They brought in millions of refugees, and "75% of them face long term unemployment". Young people will now have to pay for retiree benefits AND welfare for immigrants at the same time, sandwiching them between two dependent populations that no longer contribute anything in return.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/820480/Germany-migrant-crisis-refugees-long-term-unemployment-benefits-Angela-Merkel
In the US, job creation isn't matching population growth already. Young people would benefit from a declining population size because it would balance out this trend and make entry level jobs less competitive.
http://marketrealist.com/2015/02/job-creation-not-matching-population-growth/
I argue that a smaller population of young people with high employment is not a bad thing at all, and it is better to embrace that now rather than pushing the can down the road. Its really hard to find a job out of college now, thanks in large part to the fact that the population has been artificially held up with massive immigration that creates more competition for entry level work.
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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!* | 15 | > "inherently unsustainable"
Suppose the taxable portion of the population earns X, and is taxed at a rate r, of which a proportion w is allocated to social security. Suppose pension/welfare costs Y.
Well, clearly this system is sustainable if Y < rwX. So, there's nothing "inherent" about any alleged unsustainability. If Y is currently more than rwX, you can fix the problem by
* reducing Y (favored by right-wing politicians)
* increasing r or w (favored by left-wing politicians)
* increasing X (favored by everybody, but there's disagreements about how)
NB, even if Y > rwX, it is possible for social security to be sustainable, because inflation. | 11 |
CMV: I believe the abortion debate is being dominated by extremes and practical policies/solutions are being drowned out. | This is a multi-fold view, so let me take some time to do my best to set it up. I am also certainly not a medical or legal expert, so feel free to correct me if I mistate anything.
First, I understand there is a wide spectrum of beliefs and opinions on abortion. There are people who’d fall in the “Pro-Life” category who’d be against the harsh Alabama Laws, and there’s people in the “Pro-Choice” category who find abortion to be immoral. Just because I believe the debate is being dominated by the extremes does not mean I think everyone is falling under one of those extremes.
It seems the extremes on the “Pro-Life” side are using terms such as ‘baby murder’ and ‘infanticide’, which I don’t find to be helpful to the conversation and finding a practical solution. This seems to stem from somebody who’s pro-Life believing a fetus deserves the same rights as a human being, at the expense of the mother’s rights.
I am not sure where I would draw the line of where an abortion should only be done in the case of a health issue (although I’d certainly say late term abortions should only be done in this case, and first trimester abortions shouldn’t be restricted to this case), but I really can’t see how a fetus could be considered a human in the womb, especially within the first trimester. The fetus is still dependent on the mother/host’s body for survival, and its body could not survive on its own outside the womb like a normal human’s could.
At best I could see someone claiming a fetus to be a “potential human”, as theoretically as long as there is not a miscarriage the fetus will develop into a human. But at that same circumstance, a potential human is still not a human. For example, let’s say I take a single piano lesson and the teacher says “You have the potential to be a great pianist”, that wouldn’t make me a great pianist. I could still choose to simply not practice and fulfill the potential. As for the fetus, it’s still at the stage where “it could become a human” but it’s not one yet. Defining something as being human simply because it has the potential to become one becomes extremely problematic. A sperm has potential to become human, so would that mean every man who masturbates commits mass murder? Obviously not.
By that standpoint, I really can’t see a case where you could make a solid argument that abortion is murder. That’s not to say I’m saying abortion is moral, but that it’s not murder and not infanticide. Those charged attacks seem to be major extremes.
Now, approaching the other extreme of “it’s just a clump of cells”, I’m not really sure I could get behind that either. While at very early stages, it certainly appears that way, but by a late enough stage you have a fetus that is deliverable. By killing the fetus you are taking away life, and a potential human that’s one the verge of becoming human dies. Using the pianist example, it’d be like I spent 10 years of practicing piano, and was close to really achieving something special with my craft, then had second thoughts and decided to quit. While I was still only at the verge of greatness in that sense, there’s something a bit more inherently tragic about quitting after all of that work and development was put in.
It’s not a perfect comparison, but I feel like if you asked someone which was more valuable a sperm, an embryo or a fetus, they would almost all answer the fetus. Granted, add a human child into that equation, and your answer would likely be the human child. So in that scale, there is obviously high immorality in killing a child (murder), but you could see the scale of that immorality decline the less developed the fetus is, based on how we’d rank them in inherent value. The amount of that immorality for abortion would be hard to judge and seems very subjective.
So, based on this there’s some amount of moral greyness in abortion (I think each person in this thread would likely have a different answer on how immoral or moral it is). I would think that would correspond with most people, whether “pro-Life” or “pro-Choice”, would likely be able to agree that lower abortion rates, keeping laws and access constant, would be a good thing. There’s a certain amount of moral greyness in killing a fetus and an abortion is a result of an unwanted pregnancy (thus the entire experience is unwanted by the woman, thus if it could be avoided, that would be desired). So I think we could agree that first abortions are linked to unwanted pregnancies, and we could agree that society would be better off if it had less of either or both.
So, why is the policy debate focused entirely on whether we should outright ban abortion or not? Wouldn’t it be more productive to focus on practical policies that help reduce unwanted pregnancies, and thus abortions?
Restricting, or outright banning, abortion seems to be implying either the woman should be punished for her sexual activity or that the fetus is a human being. I’d hope you wouldn’t agree with the former, and I believe we adequately showed the latter isn’t true, or is at least very vague.
So wouldn’t it make more sense for both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice advocates to find policies that help reduce unwanted pregnancies? An example of this could be better sex education, available healthcare and freely accessible contraceptives. Some mix of policies such as these can help reduce unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing abortions, without having to go to the extremes of either banning abortions or denying the moral greyness and undesirability of having a high abortion rate.
It seems to me, things like the Alabama law are political theater, meant to rile up debate and voters to your side, but does nothing at addressing the actual problem. I think you could find consensus that reducing unwanted pregnancies would be positive, and that implies lower abortion rates, and there seems to be more clear and easy to pass and enact policies available to do that. So shouldn’t the abortion discussion be focused on these practical policies, and not the extremes we see in the political realm right now?
EDIT:
To clarify a major point I see being drawn up.
I recognize extremes might not have been the best word choice, as it ends up implying the argument is a “both sidesism” which wasn’t the intention.
The intention is more focused on how the debate seems to be framed around simplistic talking points which draw clear moral lines about a subject where the moral lines are shaky and grey at best. I’m saying, that the argument of “abortion is murder” is way to extreme and leads to acceptance of laws such as the Alabama laws. But also not addressing the nuance that an abortion is morally neutral at best seems to further drive the polarization. Abortion as a topic seems to be more focused on political, semantic theater and barely any of the coverage is focused on practical policies that could appeal to people pro-choice and anti-abortion.
Now, obviously for many politicians making the abortion subject a wedge issue through political theater is the goal. I guess my appeal is to try to push it past being a wedge issue and to focus on the policies that would actually make a difference (while not necessarily being as politically polarizing). | 46 | > So wouldn’t it make more sense for both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice advocates to find policies that help reduce unwanted pregnancies? An example of this could be better sex education, available healthcare and freely accessible contraceptives. Some mix of policies such as these can help reduce unwanted pregnancies, thus reducing abortions, without having to go to the extremes of either banning abortions or denying the moral greyness and undesirability of having a high abortion rate.
I find your viewpoint very confusing. Pro-Choice people have always been the ones who advocated for better sex education, available healthcare and freely accessible contraceptives. Anti-abortionists are the ones who fight against such policies.
You seem to be working under the logical fallacy that both views are of equal value and the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but in fact the anti-abortion viewpoint has become more and more extreme, while the pro-choice viewpoint is just the same as it ever was. | 32 |
Eli5: How can a plants roots survive in a cup of water (root cuttings, propagation), when the same plant planted in soil can be drown if you over water it? | 262 | Overwatering your plants kill them (mainly) for two reasons: lack of oxygen and/or root rot. It's also important to mention that plants breath (absorve oxygen) through both their leaves and their roots, since they aren't very good moving the oxygen through out their bodies: they breath through "pores" and the oxygen only serves nearby cells.
Water (usually) doesn't contain as many bacteria, fungi or small animals (nematodes) as soil does. Fungi loves moist soil, if the soil is damp it will multiply and cause root rot, killing your plant.
Not only that, all those little animals and fungi also use oxygen and will compete with your plant for it. Damp soil means more animals and also less oxygen pockets. Plants breath easier in soil but in water there's not so much competition for the available oxygen, so the plant does not die, it grows more roots to take better advantage of the situation. | 155 |
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What exactly is "weapons grade uranium/any other nuclear element"? What makes it different from other types of the same element? | 92 | "Weapons grade" refers to concentrations of _isotopes_ in _fissile material_ (fission/atomic bomb fuel). Isotopes mean they have the same number of protons (which defines what kind of element it is — uranium is element 92 because it has 92 protons, plutonium is element 94 because it has 94 protons), but different numbers of neutrons.
There are two common isotopes of uranium. So the most common type of uranium (99% of it) found in the world is uranium-238 (92 protons, 146 neutrons). Less than 1% of it is uranium-235 (92 protons, 143 neutrons). Only uranium-235 can work in an atomic bomb. It is just a little bit less stable than uranium-238 and so fissions (splits) more easily, with lower-energy neutrons. So to make weapons-grade uranium, you have to create a mass of uranium that is made up of 80-90% uranium-235. This is very difficult and requires huge factories and centrifuges and lots of energy to do. So "weapons-grade uranium" means "enriched uranium" which means "uranium where the uranium-235 isotope makes up around 80-90% of the uranium." U-238 will also inhibit a reaction, so the less of it, the better.
Plutonium is formed in nuclear reactors. It is created by letting uranium-238 absorb neutrons and then decay over a few days. The isotope of plutonium that is useful in weapons is plutonium-239. The problem here is that the longer nuclear fuel is in a reactor, the more likely that plutonium-239 you have made will also absorb another neutron and turn into plutonium-240. Plutonium-240 is very radioactive and doesn't fission very easily, so it both makes it hard to use plutonium-239 in a bomb and inhibits the reaction. So when you operate a reactor to make plutonium for a bomb, you take the fuel out relatively quickly, so not too much plutonium-240 is produced. If you are running a reactor for power purposes, you leave the fuel in as long as it is possible. Plutonium extracted from fuel that has been used in this fashion will have a large concentration of plutonium-240 in it, and thus not be as easy to use in a weapon. So "weapons-grade plutonium" means "plutonium that has no more than 7% plutonium-240 in it." ("Reactor grade" plutonium can have as much as 30% plutonium-240 in it.) | 67 |
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Can a tornado exist without the cloud touching down? Can it essentially be invisible and still destructive? | 717 | Technically all tornadoes are invisible. It is just the wind picking up dirt, objects, rain, etc. causing you to see the way the wind is moving. Tornadoes happen sometimes without being seen. They can be created in labs with no dirt and be invisible.
As for being destructive that is possible but you would likely see stuff still being moved. | 341 |
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ELI5: When we form scabs that do not heal properly and turn into scars, why can't we rip off that scar tissue and try again to let it heal correctly? | 159 | Okay, when a wound heals, it scabs over the top and heals from the bottom up. It fills in. Unfortunately the tissue it uses to fill in this deficit is fibrous and not very attractive. The larger the deficit, the more likely it will be to scar visibly. A scar IS a wound which has healed "correctly" and "properly".
If you mean to ask why we can't allow scars to heal more attractively, the answer is...we can. It is absolutely possible to surgically remove scar tissue from smaller wounds and align the now perfectly incised cuts up to allow them to heal with less of a visible scar.
If it's a larger scar, this isn't possible because human skin is held to muscle by connective tissue, so it only has so much immediate give in it and larger wounds would not be able to be fully closed, leaving a deficit and leading to scarring again. | 88 |
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CMV: Copyright protection should last 15 to 20 years at most. | Copyright protection is an agreement between society and a creator. The premise is this: If you create something, it becomes part of the culture in which you live. People will share it with each other, add to it, expand upon it, and it will grow along with the culture. However, in order to encourage creators to share their creations with the society in which they live, the society agrees to ban copying of the creation by anyone not permitted by the creator for a set duration. This gives them a chance to sell their copies exclusively. When this idea was first introduced, that duration was 15 years.
Since then, that duration has been extended over and over again, usually retroactively, to become "lifespan of the creator + 70 years" today.
My points:
The extreme length of copyright protection has reversed the desired effect. Rather than encouraging more creations, it has rewarded creators who stop creating for the remainder of their lives. The most popular creations are also the ones that will pay their creators for life. These creators have less motivation to continue making more art.
The vast majority of creations will *never* end up a part of the culture now because they will be lost or forgotten in the century or more that passes between their creation and the day it finally being free of copyright protection. Media is discarded for space, some recording mechanisms fail over time (movies from the 'golden age' of Hollywood are literally rotting on the shelves). And some literally just become so obscure that they are forgotten and never absorbed into the culture.
The extreme power of copyright has spawned abusive tools that are used not only to prevent illegal copying of creations, but also to silence criticism of those materials, or even just to squash undesired speech in general (See the DMCA).
Conclusion: The 170+/- years of copyright protection is completely failing to benefit the society that puts in the effort to protect creators. The law has become lopsided in favor of creators and needs to be shortened substantially (again) to balance the scales.
And yes, this includes Disney.
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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!* | 837 | I would actually say a flat 50 years from the date of first publication. 15 years is a bit stingy if you are the guy who comes up with batman, or windows, or the hunger games (first published 2008 and under your scheme entering public domain in 7 years), harry potter (first published in 1997 and copyright expired the same year the last film in the series came out on dvd), and want to milk that for a while. But at the same time it would let things invented in the 1970's start to enter the public domain now and us to all mess around with them and see what we can do. | 115 |
ELI5: Why are venomous creatures so rare in cold environments? | Perhaps it is just coincidence, but why do venomous creatures seem to be almost entirely confined to the southern hemisphere, or at least warm countries. For example, the UK has only one venomous animal I can think of (the adder), as well as a couple of insects which are found pretty much worldwide. The Arctic meanwhile has no venomous animals at all. Is there a reason for this? | 97 | Cold environments generally have the advantage of less predators to avoid, less population and competition. Thus defensive mechanisms like venom are less useful. The most beneficial traits are ability to find food, attract mates, and survive the harsh weather. | 47 |
CMV: I don't think it's worth discussing politics in public. | I've been trying to figure out where I fall on this, but I don't think it's worth potentially ruining a relationship with another person (a friendly relationship or other) by discussing your political views in person or online.
I live in the South, and recently there have been a lot of stuff going on with the Confederate Flag being taken down everywhere and the recent gay rights ruling by the Supreme Court. I think these are both great things, but the majority of my peers on Facebook/Twitter are aggressively against it gay rights and the fact that the Confederate Flag is now in the spotlight and being frowned upon. A part of me wants to speak my mind about it and tell them how I feel to reason with them a bit, but the other part of me thinks its a bad idea. Being vocal about my views could potentially cut off half of all people from even giving me the chance of meeting them and potentially being friends with them just because of my political views. I know a lot of people I consider friends that have political views that I don't agree with at all, and I don't know if letting everyone know how I feel about these situations is worth ruining that.
I have also heard quotes about how doing/saying nothing is worse than being against it, and that during the civil rights movement most people were silent which was definitely a bad thing, but I'm not sure if it's worth speaking up.
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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!* | 96 | The short answer: Be selective about who you talk with about controversial topics.
Some of your closer friends are probably already aware that you don't share their political views. So choose the ones among them who you think you could have a conversation with and roll with it. If you're sure you do want to discuss it it's a good idea to lay the groundwork and then talk about it in person. I've seen many facebook conversations that get very heated and completely unreasonable when controversial topics are discussed. Discussing it in person gets ideas across very well because tone and body language can be used to guide the direction of the conversation, which is often impossible on facebook. | 29 |
ELI5: Why does lighter skin get sunburnt more than darker skin if white reflects sunlight and black absorbs it? Shouldn't darker skin get sunburnt more than lighter skin? | 29 | What causes sunburn is not just absorption of light somewhere in the skin, but rather absorption of light by DNA spcifically. Damage to DNA can result in cancer, which is why in case of sunburn the damage is detected by the cell, causing cell to commit suicide (to reduce risk of cancer). Dead cells will cause sunburn, but that is far better than cancer.
Dark skin has protein (melanin) that absorbs sunlight (actually, light skin has it too, but darker skin means much greater amount). That absorption results in a far lower chance of light reaching DNA and being absorbed by it. The protein then releases that energy as heat, which can be managed by just keeping the body cool. Even if a given melanin molecule gets damaged, it has no impact - since it is not damage to DNA it does not result in risk of cancer, o no need for cell to suicide, just make a new melanin molecule.
Also, note that sunburn-causing suicide mechanism is imperfect, so someone who habitually gets in situations where they are sunburnt is at higher risk of skin cancer. So, use sunscreen. | 38 |
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ELI5 how wet paper is so weak but if left to dry it returns to the same(or close) to the same strength. | What is the water doing that severely weakens the structure but if allowed to dry it seems to return to the same strength, or at least really close to the same strength as before. | 23 | Paper is made from cellulose which forms long interconnected chains and fibers. These chains and fibers are held together by a special type of bond called hydrogen bonds. Hydrogen bonds are quite strong and provide a lot of the structural properties you see in paper.
Water is also capabale of hydrogen bonding. When water impregnantes the fibers, it interupts the hydrogen bonded cellulose-ceullose network, to create new cellulose-water hydrogen bonds. As a result, the fibers become disentangled and separated. This is why paper is so much weaker when it is wet.
If the paper is allowed to dry, those cellulose-cellulose hydrogen bonds are allowed to reform, and the paper (mostly) regains its mechanical properties. | 31 |
ELI5: If the brain can only survive 4-6 minutes without oxygen, how can freedivers hold their breath for 8+ minutes? | And what about people like David Blaine or Tom Sietas? Sietas held his breath underwater for over 22 minutes (world record). I know they train for it like months and even years, but doesn't holding your breath = no oxygen to brain?
Permanent brain damage apparently occurs just after 4 minutes of lack of oxygen to the brain, so why are freedivers left generally unscathed after 8 or 10 minutes without air? | 499 | The level of oxygen in the body is dependent on two things - how much oxygen is in the bloodstream, and how fast it can be used by the body.
So in the case of David Blaine, he breathed pure oxygen for good period before his record attempt, and through practice increased the time that oxygen could last for by slowing down how much he uses that oxygen.
Free divers also are helped by the body slowing down in cold water their pulse rate, and how their body uses energy. These all slow down so free divers (after much practice) can hold their breath for longer than people on dry land. | 442 |
Can anyone explain stem cells LI5? | 24 | Every cell in the human body has a specific job. For example, the cells that make up the human heart perform a specific function, they make up the organ and pump blood through the body.
A stem cell is a cell that hasn't been assigned to do any job yet. So, what you can do with a stem cell is assign it to do a specific job of your choosing. So, lets say that you need a new heart. Doctors could take stem cells and grown you a new heart that is 100% compatible with your body as if it was grown in your body.
That's a very basic explanation of what a stem cell is. | 12 |
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ELI5: Why do some elderly people move their mouth a lot, as if they're chewing on something? | 18 | The chewing motion is found almost exclusively in people who have lost teeth. On rare occasions, certains tranquilisers or antidepressants may cause a side effect called tardive dyskinesia, an inability to control what are ordinarily voluntary movements. These movements are as likely to involve the nose as the mouth or jaws, though.
In most cases, the chewing motion is a neuromuscular response to the lack of teeth: an attempt by the oral cavity to achieve some from equilibrium. In particular, sufferers can't position their upper and lower jaws properly. With a full set of ivories, the teeth act as a stop to keep the jaws in place. | 18 |
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Why does it take more effort to only close one eye than it does to close both eyes? | 31 | Closing the eye requires the use of the facial nerve, which works in a symmetrical fashion, meaning that it controls both sides of your face. When you close your eyes, your facial nerve acts to close both eyes. In order to close only one, you have to actively keep one eye from closing. This requires the use of more muscles, hence why it takes more effort. | 31 |
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ELI5 what is going on when a server (such as the playstation network) "goes down"? And what exactly are they doing when they're fixing it? | The playstation network is down and it's cold out and well, I'm curious: What exactly is happening when a server is down or "hacked" and what are they physically doing inside the computer (or internet, I'm sorry if this is a stupid way to word it) to fix that issue? Thanks!
| 49 | Imagine your playstation is a phone, and the "server" is like your friends phone. You want to call your friend to play a game of 20 questions, and you call, but they don't pick up. They might not pick up for a bunch of reasons, like
* they're sleeping (planned maintenance outage)
* their phone battery died (unplanned maintenance outage)
* they dropped the phone in a pool (hardware problem)
* some one stole their phone and is using it to do bad things (hackers).
| 73 |
ELI5:Why some people with amnesia can't remember anything about their lives but can still speak their native tongue? | 26 | Memories, abilities, personality, speech and all the other things stored in the brain aren't stored in the same place. Think of it like your computer hard drive, you don't store every single file on your desktop, you keep them in folders. The brain has different locations (folders) that deal with different functions. If one of those folders gets damaged then only those files may be lost and so, only that functionality is impaired. Damage the speech folder and the person may not be able to communicate. Damage the short term memory folder and they have short term memory loss. | 13 |
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CMV: I don't see any benefits in waiting for sex until marriage. | I think it is good to know how compatible you are before you get married, I'm not saying you should have sex on the very first date lol, but if you have a serious relationship on some point you have to have sex in order to know if it will "work". I do think that many "religious" couples marry because the urge of having sex (which is bad) and will end in a bad marriage. It's also common that people put sex on the center of the relationship and I also think that it is bad but I don't want to focus on that right now.
**Edit**: I misunderstood one article that someone post here, lol, thanks for the explanation I get my mind changed. | 141 | I think abstinence is incompatible with our modern society, however, like most religious rules, it has its roots in a different time and culture.
Until recently (last few hundred years) infant mortality and death during childbirth was very high, there was very little contraception resulting in more pregnancies, and at many times, children were seen as more of a hindrance than anything; because the majority of people are poor and a child is just another mouth to feed until they are old enough to work.
I would argue that these all still have merit, except for death during childbirth. Most people still can't really afford kids and contraception still isn't easy to access for many people. However, since our urge to reproduce isn't a logical thing, logical arguments against having kids don't always work. Appealing to faith is a method of giving (historically speaking) uneducated people a reason to adhere to these practices. | 56 |
[Star Wars] Why are there only two schools of the Force instead of many like we see with religions in our world? | 20 | There are many different ways of understanding and harnessing the Force.
Only the Jedi and Sith beliefs has spreading their belief on their agenda, though, letting them grow big, spreading all over the galaxy, as opposed to staying in a few systems. | 29 |
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ELI5: Classes, classism, and social mobility in the UK as opposed to the USA | . | 105 | In the UK we have the generally accepted classes of working, middle and upper. The place you are put has very little to do with the money you earn and more to do with who you are and who your parents are.
For example, most high earning footballers would be considered 'working class' by themselves and others, it is a badge of honour for an actor to speak about their 'working class roots' despite earning millions of pounds. Working class is salt of the earth poor but honest kind of thing, but comprises everything from the unemployed to the plumbers that can earn a hundred or so an hour, so you can have very well off working class, they have big TVs and comfy sofas.
Upper class can be seen as royalty, aristocracy, and people along those lines, they send their children to Eton and Harrow and have large homes that have been passed through family, but don't always have a large amount of money, there are a lot of stately homes in this country that are open to the public as the residents can't afford to run the homes on their own income any more. They furnish their houses with antique furniture and heirlooms which often don't match but are probably worth more than your organs.
Middle class is more complex, they are often categorised as 'strivers', basically people who in the past were working class but seek to be upper class, this category is often massively divided up as it is fairly diverse, and can include anything from a manager of a bank branch to a doctor or above. These are the people who can become massively obsessed with cutlery order or the minutiae of etiquette. The working class don't care because it doesn't matter, the upper class know it, but don't really care if anyone else does. They buy their furniture new from designer stores and their homes look like show homes.
The US system is almost entirely money based and is very different
If you're interested in learning more I'd recommend "Watching the English" by Kate Fox, it is a wonderful break down of british culture and sums up the class system really well. | 25 |
What are the most notable researches or books within social science in the past 5 years? | 47 | This question is way too broad.
One could barely list all the most notable works in a SINGLE discipline in the last 5 years, never mind all the social sciences.
&#x200B;
What field/topic are you interested in? | 20 |
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[Marvel][CMV]: If cops are required to wear on-body cameras, so should the supers. | To make sure that cops don't abuse the powers and privileges given by the law, some argue that they should be required to wear on-body cameras.
I would like to argue that ,if the above statement is valid, to make sure that supers don't use their powers and priviledges given by nature, accident or own capabilities, they should be required to wear on-body cameras while they are off being superheroes. I would also like to that using their powers in cases outside of extreme emergencies should be punished.
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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!* | 17 | We've been there and done that. There's unfortunately very little difference between a body cam and the hero registration act. Heroes wearing a body cam would still be reporting to the government (presumably), and the existence of such data would jeopardize their identities.
There does need to be some sort of limitation on heroes. Or perhaps a weight of responsibility or sense of repercussions is a better way to phrase that. But there's no way for the government to do it. As evidenced from the civil war, any hero who doesn't want to participate just won't. Body cams will never stop the Punisher from using his brutal tactics for example.
The best way to keep heroes responsible and reasonable is to leave it to organizations like the Avengers. They're realistically the only thing capable of dealing with any situations that need attention in the heroic community. | 19 |
Does driving a nail into a tree actually "hurt" it? | Assuming for the sake of argument that it's a rustproof nail (so that infection isn't a factor), does that nail actually harm the tree in any way? Or is the idea that it hurts the tree simply me projecting? | 28 | Driving a nail into a tree (rust proof or not) doesn't cause significant damage, as it mostly pushes the fibres that make up the tree to the sides
A screw on the other hand does cause damage, due to the fact that it digs out a portion of the tree and disrupts the tree's ability to move water and sugars throughout its structure. Bigger the screw, the more the damage
A rope tied around the tree is even worse because it can cut into the outer layers all the way around and disrupt water flow up from the roots. Only the outermost layers of most tree species transport water | 36 |
I think the abortion debate focuses too much on women's rights, and not enough on fetal rights CMV | I believe that the real question when debating abortion is at what point does the fetus have rights (ie to not be aborted). Any discussion before establishing this is idiotic in my opinion. Of course, if the fetus doesn't have any rights the women should be able to get an abortion! Its their body they should be in control of their health.
Therefore, i believe that all this talk about "women's rights" really misses the point. Both sides should be defending why/why not, at a certain point in gestation, a fetus does or does not have rights. Simply saying "its the woman's body she should be able to do what she wants" does not acknowledge the fact that at some point the rights of the fetus needs to be taken into account. And where that point is, is actually the crux of the debate.
Note: I'm very pro women's health, and womens rights. I just believe that the debate isn't really a matter of womens rights, its a matter of at what point does the fetus have rights.
Edit: I'm talking about elective abortion
| 59 | The people touting women's rights are doing so because they generally believe that a woman's rights to her body trumps the fetus's right to her body, that's the whole point. They're not failing to acknowledge the fetus's rights, they're arguing that it's rights don't supersede the mother's. | 72 |
Why do some neutron stars become pulsars while other don't? | Like in a binary pulsar system, why does on the one pulse but the other doesn't? | 54 | It's likely that *every* neutron star is born as a pulsar. Whether or not we see a neutron star as a pulsar depends on 2 things:
1) Orientation. The radio & gamma ray 'pulses' that define pulsars occur because the radiation is being beamed out the magnetic poles of the star. The magnetic pole isn't necessarily the same as the rotational pole though, so every time the neutron star rotates, the beams sweep out circles and anyone in those circles sees the 'pulses'.
Just like a lighthouse creates a constant beam of light but any one location only sees pulses as the rotation beams the light toward you.
However, you only see the pulses from neutrons stars if it's oriented properly. Lots of neutron stars can form and be aimed such that the pulses never point toward Earth and we thus won't see it as a pulsar.
2) Age. Neutron stars/pulsars spin down as they age. Basically they lose angular momentum to the beams of light/material being ejected. When they're born, they're spinning hundreds or thousands of times per second. It seems like pulsars are only able to generate their trademark pulses if they're spinning faster than about once every 5-10 seconds, and they'll slow down below this rate after about 10-100 million years, at which point the pulsar 'turns off'.
**TL;DR** To see a neutron star as a pulsar it has to be young (less than ~10 million years old) and pointed properly at the Earth so you can even see the pulses. Not all neutron stars satisfy both of these requirements, so we don't see them all as pulsars. | 34 |
[DC] Are the New Gods in each universe aware that they’re just a “lesser” piece of their real version? | As I understand it, new gods “refract” through the multiverse like light does through a crystal. Their versions in each singular universe are just different wavelengths of their real, multiversal selves that exist in the sphere of the gods.
So, are the versions in these universes aware that they’re not actually the real thing? Do they share a consciousness on any level? Or are they just limited to their histories in their own universes? | 43 | So, basically, they're aware they're technically connected, but they're functionally independent. Like how your body is technically trillions of cells rather then one organism. There *are* situations where that distinction is relevant...but they're rare. Typically, outside of a doctor's office, you can treat everyone around you as one being.
Same here, just in reverse. Just like you are all intents and purposes one creature, the guy shooting an omega sanction at you is to all intents and purposes the real Darksied. The New Gods are *aware* of the technicalities of that statement. but they can typically ignore them. Each New God is functionally a separate being and continue to think of themselves as one except when the theoretical details of their existence become relevant. | 48 |
Why are supercomputers measured in flops instead of hertz? | 18 | FLOPS (Floating Point Operations Per Second) give you an idea of how much a computing device can do in a second. Hertz is just frequency. While you can measure core speed in Hertz, that doesn't directly relate to the computational power of a piece of hardware. CPUs are actually slower now in terms of clock speed, but achieve more FLOPS due to architectural improvements.
Example: If you have a single core CPU running at 4GHz and you compare it to a Quadcore or a GPU at 2-3GHz the single core, the latter will beat the single core *if* the task is parallelizable. | 17 |
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[Tekken] How did a drunk brawler with no prior martial art training like Miguel managed to enter a tournament consisting of the greatest martial artists in the world? | Brute force? | 338 | He registered. Probably after some bar fight another drunk said, "hey you're tough, you should enter that King of Iron Fist Tournament".
They allow bears to fight, so it's not like it has some super exclusive entrance qualifications. | 344 |
Why did the economic fallout from the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic not cause Depression-level economic devastation? | Right now, the trends and data indicate that Depression-level economic fallout from the covid-19 pandemic is a real possibility. The last time we saw a pandemic of this level was the Spanish flu in 1918-1919. But why did the influenza back then not devastate the economy like we are seeing now? Cities implemented social distancing nearly 100 years ago as well. So why did this not result in 20%+ unemployment rate and cratering of stocks? | 108 | The economy looked very different in 1918. Our modern economy has a much larger share of consumer driven activity, which is directly impacted by social distancing. 1918 had not yet mechanized nearly as much, farming was a much larger share of the economy, where social distancing has less impact on productivity. | 163 |
ELI5: How come the stories about food from McDonalds regarding 'preservatives stop the food from aging/growing mold' keep going around, when I've kept a McD's burger for a week and it grew mold? Is it just lazy journalism? | Let me explain... I just found yet another news article about how some guy apparently [kept a McD's burger for 14 years](http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/mcdonalds-burger-that-looks-the-same-as-day-it-was-cooked-14-years-ago/story-fneuz8zj-1226628424189) and it supposedly looked the same as it did when he bought it.
I don't believe this article and the main reason I don't is because (like I mentioned), one night I ended up with 1 more burger than I could eat about 15 years ago and decided that after hearing this 'McDonalds'/preservative' rumour a few times that it was time to put it to the test.
After a week the burger was growing mold. It was simply placed in the paper bag that it came in and was sitting there in an average temperature room (20-25C/68-77F).
Now whenever I hear the same rumour that 'McD's food never ages 'cos it's full of preservatives' I think back to that 'experiment' and immediately call bullshit on the statement.
So I ask you, my learned friends.... Why does this rumour perpetuate when it is so easy to debunk? Is there any truth to it (did I not perform the experiment properly, lol)? Are they just assuming we're all just a bunch of gullible idiots? What is going on here? | 18 | McD's patties are 100% beef. The burger wasn't growing mold because it was too dry. Even the fungi responsible for this need water to survive. So if you put the burger into a closed surrounding, the water will not evaporate into the air, so the fungi do have water to grow, while keeping it on a simple plate will cause the water to evaporate into the room. | 11 |
ELI5 : Why does science say that humans share 98% of DNA with chimps but human siblings share 50% of their DNA? | Also, explain what autosomal dna is | 15 | You are talking about two different things.
When scientists say that 98% of DNA is shared between Chimps and Humans they are looking at the entire genome. Most life on the planet shares a significant portion of that genome.
When you talk about a sibling sharing 50% of their DNA you are talking about the human specific portion of DNA. | 21 |
I'm scared to move to the US due to issues such as healthcare. CMV. | Background: I'm a 24 year old danish male, finishing my masters degree in electrical engineering.
I've been living in Berkeley for the last half year or so. During this time I've been around California and seen a bunch of this awesome, untamed country. There's so much nice to say about this place - unfortunately also a lot of bad things.
I've seen a lot of things on reddit about the american healthcare system. I understand that this information might be as biased as some of the information americans receive about the "death panels in Europe". But some things keep popping up, such as insurance companies routinely dodging out of their responsibilities and people having to pay to ride in an ambulance.
This is an incredibly scary thought to me, that I could in essence be left for dead or be bankrupted by unfortunate medical events.
I've gotten two job offers while being over here. I'm considering taking one of them, but I feel like it may be better to just stay in tiny little Denmark and not have that risk hanging over my head.
Convince me that i'm being paranoid. Change my view. | 21 | If your job comes with health insurance (which every company trying to hire electrical engineers from Cal will offer) then the best care in the world will be available to you. UCSF and Stanford are in the top 5-10 health systems worldwide.
The US offers the most expensive healthcare in the world. If you can afford it's great. If you can't, then you're totally stuck. | 23 |
[Marvel/DC] What hero has suffered the most over their years of fighting crime? | I’m thinking Batman, what with losing his parents, Bane breaking his back, the killing joke, and jason Todd. | 33 | Jim Corrigan literally died and was denied Heaven. Same for Hal Jordan.
Aquaman's mother was killed, his son was murdered in front of him, and he had his hand chewed off by piranha.
Spider-Man's had dead parents, dead uncle, dead clones of parents, dead clone-brothers, an aunt who won't stay dead, dead girlfriends, dead father figures, bodyjackings, forced comas, near deaths, psychotic breaks...
Nightwing's had dead parents, been raped multiple times, been taunted by one of his rapists and his own friends over his being raped, sidekicks gone bad, dead friends, psychotic episodes, amnesia from being shot through the head, and lived through some of the same losses Bruce has re: The Killing Joke, Jason, and Tim.
Moon Knight has dead parents, sidekicks who die and come back, intense psychotic episodes, been bodyjacked by his own god, broken back, broken knees, and watched a bunch of multiversal versions of himself die.
Deadpool's got cancer, dead friends, friends turned against him, constant pain and injuries, been raped, died, screwed up his own relationships so badly people he'd give his life for walk away thinking he's a complete monster, that whole thing with his daughter, had lovers die.
I mean, compared to the average person, yeah. Batman's suffered. But compared to a random assortment of superheroes, his pain's really only about average. | 54 |
[Star Trek Into Darkness] What is the normal purpose of a cold-fusion bomb? | Putting out volcanoes is surely an edge case, so, why did the Enterprise have one in its inventory? | 15 | They didn't. They're just not hard to make - Scotty whipped that one up in about an hour from materials readily available on the Enterprise.
If they had already had one, they would have had time to come up with a better delivery system than flying a shuttle into a plume of ash and lowering it in with Spock. | 25 |
CMV: The label "Feminism" should be dropped for a much more equal and non-gender label. | Please leave the footnote below the following line, but remember to delete this sentence by replacing it with the body of your post.
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So I'll start with saying that I have long considered myself a feminist. I have found myself an advocate and ally for women's groups, LGBT issues, the non-religious, and the like, for many years. Recently, I have found my way over to /r/menslib and believe there are valid societal concerns also held by men. We could easily chase this down into a debate of which group has it worse, which is the oppressor, and how societal change should occur. But I do believe that every identity, label, and belief system holds with it stereotypes and unique issues which limits equal treatment. I have long felt that feminism is movement of equality for all - between all identities. However, I am lately more cognizant of how important labels and titles are and the impressions they give to others.
The term Feminism, however you want to argue it, does imply females or women. Yes, women started the movement and those brave souls should be held in deep respect and reverence for that, but times change and movements change. If the roles were reversed, where Men's Rights groups symbolized equality for all, I think it would be fair to say that most other identities would have a problem with that term. When I've expressed this hope and desire to friends and other allies, I am often told it isn't a big deal and that you can support the movement without supporting the word. True. But if we are advocating changing terms and labels for other issues "fat" --> person of size. "Homosexual" --> gay. "Latino/a"--> Latinx. (I completely advocate all of these changes, just feel we should extend the same philosophy to this term).
So please, CMV that Feminism should be dropped for a much more equal, non-gender, and overall more encompassing label.
> *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!* | 24 | Groups and movements regularly have broader or narrower scopes.
Take LGBT groups. You have broad groups that deal with all four and beyond (sometimes adding letters, or going for a broader term like GSM). However you also have groups specifically focused on different issues faced by each one. A Bisexual Rights group might focus on things like bisexual erasure, a Trans Rights group could particular deal with the social and legal challenges trans individuals face that the others don't, and so on. These issues will often intersect and intertwine, and a group need not solely concern themselves with their particular subsection, but that doesn't mean the subgroups need to be entirely subsumed by a broader label.
There is a similar issue with Feminism. The most common replacement term, Egalitarianism, is *incredibly* broad. "Equality" isn't just about gender issues but racial issues, class issues, and all other types of inequality under the sun. You could go for a more specific term, like Gender Egalitarianism or something, but if one intends it to *replace* Feminism that means issues specifically related to women will get subsumed into the broad group and you couldn't have a subgroup specifically about issues women in particular face, because that would just be Feminism again. The same would go for Men's Rights groups, which as a smaller and lesser known movement would be even more likely to have their specific voices and concerns lost if they were forced under one indivisible label as opposed for allowing streams of advocacy/thought/etc with specific, gendered labels.
It would be like changing the name of all ethnic and racial equality movements to "Racial Egalitarianism" and not wanting more specific groups like the NAACP or ADL to acknowledge their particular focuses. | 25 |
[Monty Python's Flying Circus] How much risk was there in deploying the Funniest Joke in the World with bilingual soldiers on both sides? | 28 | They wouldn't have let bilingual soldiers anywhere near the joke. The joke was translated by a group of scientists who were only permitted to see one word of the joke. In fact, one saw two words of the joke and had to spend several weeks in hospital! So, likely, only monolingual soldiers were allowed to participate in joke warfare. | 30 |
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Any good mixologist knows that adding booze to carbonated liquid kills the carbonation, but reversing the order and adding the fizzy drink to the booze retains some of the fizz. Why do two different results happen when mixing the same liquids in the same ratios? | 45 | You lose a lot of the carbonation in the initial soda pour due to microscopic nucleation points on the bottom of the glass--and the ice you're pouring over. By adding the liquor first, these surfaces are getting filled (or smoothed off). You're "wetting" the glass, so to speak.
There's nothing special about alcohol in this regard. You can get the same results with juice. | 40 |
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[Star Trek] Why didn't the Borg stay in warp and skip over Wolf 359 to go straight to Earth? | It seems like it was an unnecessary risk to stay and fight. | 29 | The Borg value efficiency. Fighting and destroying the federation's fleet is absolutely in their ability but they know they're not invulnerable.
So it is a lot more efficient to destroy the federation's response to their invasion before beginning their assimilation of Earth.
They can focus on one thing at a time. Much more efficient.
Also, breaking the morale of earth would enhance and make their process more efficient. | 30 |
ELI5: smokers should relate to this. Why do we feel the urge to smoke after a meal or while drinking alcohol? | The title is self-descriptive. every smoker should relate to this. | 82 | The urge to smoke after a meal comes from the fact that nicotine stimulates the emission of stomach acid which helps us digest.
As for the smoking while drinking, alcohol blocks the acetylcholine receptors, which are also our nicotine receptors. Thus, the more you drink, the less satisfying a smoke becomes. | 28 |
Was there ever a better time for black people than now in US history? | I live in [segregated] chicago and it's hard to believe that this is the best time for black people in the US. Public housing is a mess, segregation is getting worse, and the low income areas are like visiting another country sometimes. | 24 | I think location makes a huge difference here, as well as education/income status. For example, a black person living in Harlem during the 1920s during the Renaissance may have been better off than someone living in an inner-city project today. On the other hand, many avenues that people of all races take for granted today (e.g. universities, certain occupations, living wherever you want) would not have been available.
Also, the problems you mentioned affect poor people of all races moreso than black people specifically. | 16 |
ELI5 How do plant seeds still work after hundreds or thousands of years? | 37 | Most plant seeds will not live that long. They have a finite amount of chemical energy stored within them and no way to get more; while their metabolisms are *nearly* zero, they aren't completely dead, and will still use up that energy.
That said, seeds are basically hardy batteries of chemical energy that the un-germinated plant uses *very* slowly until it's time to sprout. They can survive extreme conditions and don't really need to do anything, so they can wait a very long time. Under ideal conditions, such as the Svalbard seed vault, the cold slows the plant metabolism down much further, even pausing it. As long as conditions don't change, the timer on their expiration date is effectively paused. | 33 |
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ELI5: Why does reading small text hurt our eyes instead of making them stronger? | 85 | Your eyes have muscles to point them in the direction you’re looking, and small text doesn’t take up much space in your field of vision, so those muscles need to work hard to keep your eyes pointed at the small text.
The muscles just get tired working continuously, but it’s not like it’s a strength exercise that’s going to build them up like your arms. | 35 |
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Could a (presumably larger) solar system have other planets or even moons within it that were also massive enough to be stars? | Not like a binary star system, a system with multiple planets including some (or just one) that were stars. I'm picturing something like our solar system, but with Jupiter as a small star. Would it even be able to work? | 16 | It's a bit of a tautological question, since if one of the planets in a solar system is a star, then, by definition, it is a binary star system. There are plenty of examples of solar systems, in which one of the stars is much more massive than the other one, so the smaller star almost orbits the bigger one.
On the other hand, it's worth noting that in our own solar system the center of mass of Jupiter and Sun is located *outside* of the Sun. | 10 |
[DC] don’t ask how, but I currently have the corpse of Superman and unlimited funds. What are my options here? | Some guys from LexCorp came over and offered to buy it off me to make a “super-battery”. I read some forum posts from a few armchair biologists saying it could possibly lead to an army of Super Clones. What all can I do with the body? What’s the most profitable? | 23 | Okay, Kryptonian protip here: Unless Superman's body has been decapitated and dismembered, he's (almost certainly) not dead. He's in a Kryptonian healing coma. Assuming you had nothing to do with the sequence of events that put him into that coma, the most profitable thing for you to do is contact the Justice League, let them know the situation, and leave Superman someplace well-guarded and with plenty of sunlight. Having Big Blue and his friends owe you a big blue favor is probably more valuable than any amount of money.
Of course, if you're the one that put him in that coma, don't do that. | 54 |
[Ratchet and Clank] Why do people know what a Lombax is? | We’re told over and over again in the Ratchet and Clank series that Ratchet is the only Lombax in the galaxy. It’s clearly a galaxy that has lots of sentient species. Why do people recognize a Lombax? Why don’t they just think he’s a member of some species they’ve never seen before? | 20 | Because Ratchet isn't the only one, just one of the only ones left. The Lombaxes were galaxy-wide heroes for defeating the cragmites, and were only banished from the galaxy at most 15 years ago.
Remember, Ratchet was an infant when they were banished, and he's at most 17 in the first game. That's still within living memory for most people. | 32 |
ELI5: If people "die", and "come back" then isn't it time to redefine death? | e.g. "He was legally dead for 8 minutes". Um. No. How so? | 22 | People confuse the "Heart Stopping" with actual death. I've heard doctor's actually say "He died three times on the table"... weellll ok, kinda. Most people won't come back if their heart stops. Completely stops. Something has to happen to get it to beat (correctly), again.
I've been in medicine for quite awhile, and I've never seen someone actually "Legally Dead" for any period of time other than "He died at " (pick a given time). Once you're legally dead, you're dead, barring weirdness (call it a miracle, if you want).
HOWEVER, it is time to redefine death. We're finding out that stopping the heart, chilling the body, and doing a couple of other things (that make the patient look really, really dead) may give us enough time to start fixing problems.
Hell, already in medicine, we have different criteria for "death". A popular one is "You're not dead until you're warm and dead", talking about hypothermia patients that arrive without a detectable pulse.
Cardiac death versus brain death versus organ death. Really important when it comes to things like organ donation.
| 27 |
[Star Wars] Is Coruscant a man made planet, or just a planet that's been absolutely covered in city? | It looks completely metal every time I see it.
Is it man made or just a planet covered in city? If it is natural, what was the surface like before the city was put on it? | 425 | It's a normal planet that has been heavily developed with infrastructure. There is still a natural surface, deep down. Most of the ecosystem is dead though.
Edit: According to Legends, it originally had many oceans, but they were all drained and stored | 383 |
ELI5: What does it mean when a state makes reservations, declarations or understandings when it ratifies a treaty? | I was reading on how the US ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide while making two reservations, five understandings and one declaration. Can anyone explain what does it mean by reservation, understanding and declaration during ratification of a treaty, etc.? Thank you! | 158 | These are all basically stipulations on how the state will follow the treaty it has ratified. Different treaties will have different rules on how such tools should be treated, but such stipulations are usually respected.
Reservations are the state modifying the treaty, and their obligations under it. They can be a simple: "We aren't accepting this bit and that bit" or something else. There are usually limitations to what can and can not be reserved from--usually that the reservation can not be "incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty"--and the US has been roundly criticised for its reservations under the Genocide Convention.
Declarations and understandings are basically statements of how the state will interpret the treaty. The state basically says that as to its understanding, this provision of the treaty means [X].
The document you'd want to consult when interpreting treaties is the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which is--yes--the treaty on treaties. The Vienna Convention has lots of rules on how treaties should be interpreted, and--although many states have not ratified it--it is widely respected, and often turned to. | 21 |
What would the population of NYC be if zoning laws were abolished? Are zoning laws responsible for the sprawl of the western world? | [The NYTimes claims](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html) that 40 Percent of the buildings in Manhattan could not be built today because of zoning laws.
[According to this statistical model by Berkeley](http://ternercenter2.berkeley.edu/examplecities/index.html?city=San+Francisco) a significant upzoning and reduction in permitting time could lead to 30,000 additional housing units being built in SF. With an average household size of 2.69 and a population of 800k, that is 80k more people or a 10% increase.
How big would NYC be without these laws? Would we see a NYC metro area of 30 million people, rivaling Beijing, Tokyo, and other megacities in Asia?
Are zoning laws responsible for the sprawl of the western world? | 64 | So, it's interesting that you couch the question in terms of both NYC and the NYC metro area. If buildings were allowed to be built even taller in NYC, then it's not unreasonable to think that more people would move there. It's less clear what that would mean for the NYC metro area. One could easily imagine if there were more housing available in the five boroughs, population growth might reallocate from LI and the suburban counties in NJ and CT to NYC itself, while the total population growth trend of the metro area would remain unchanged.
As to the broader question: are zoning laws responsible for the sprawl of the western world? Academic urban planners have made the argument that zoning, along with a host of historical developments including the automobile, the interstate highway system, the selective preferential subsidization of mortgages and infrastructure for single family suburban homes, and the combination of redlining, racism, and "white flight" contribute to urban sprawl in the United States.
See: Ewing, Reid H. "Characteristics, causes, and effects of sprawl: A literature review." Urban ecology (2008): 519-535.
Also see: Fishman, R. The American metropolis at century’s end: Past and future influences. Housing Policy Debate, 11(1): 199-213
However, similar urban forms can be seen in Canada and Australia without this peculiar combination of factors.
Moreover, Houston, Texas doesn't have zoning yet has a very classically sprawled urban form, which is regulated by innumerable privately arbitrated subdivision regulations made between land and building owners on neighboring parcels.
Finally, different-looking, yet still sprawling forms of urbanization are present in Latin America and South Asia, where zoning, if it exists, is not enforced in any real way.
So one could say, zoning might be a cause of sprawl in the USA, in the sense that it is an "insufficient but necessary part of an unnecessary but sufficient" recipe for sprawl. However, to say that zoning is a necessary or sufficient cause of sprawl by itself probably isn't supportable.
I would say sprawl in the USA is caused by a dynamic interplay between cultural preferences for single-family living and laws that both condition these very same cultural preferences (such as school funding being based on local property taxes) and create economic incentives that discourage building high-rises and encourage building suburban single family subdivisions (such as zoning & building codes, mortgage subsidies, mortgage interest deduction, etc.)
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