post_title
stringlengths 5
304
| post_text
stringlengths 0
37.5k
| post_scores
int64 15
83.1k
| comment_text
stringlengths 200
9.61k
| comment_score
int64 10
43.3k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
CMV: There is too much stress placed on going to the perfect college. Your success depends on your actions, not your diploma. | There is too much pressure on today’s youth to pick an “elite” college. After finishing my senior year and therefore the college application process in the previous year, I felt first hand this pressure and observed it in my class mates.
People have themselves convinced that to land a good job they have to attend a highly ranked school. The stress both parents and children themselves place onto acceptance letters is unnecessary. If success in life depended on the performance of 17 and 18 year olds, then we would all be in trouble.
At an internship at a law firm I had over the summer, I worked with attorneys who attended both the University of Chicago for their undergraduate studies, easily one of the top universities in the world, and attorneys who attended Grand Valley State University, a small regional school. A good school, but not one that is nationally ranked. Both worked at the same firm, but the Grand Valley alumn was arguably more successful based on number of cases and hearings.
Now one might say that since it was a job that requires additional schooling, this argument is invalid. But I also know two people who went to University of Houston Law School and Harvard Law School who ended up at the same law firm immediately after graduation.
I am not arguing for the diminished accomplishments of attending elite institutions, but instead for a shift in focus that success is given from the obvious hard work students attending said schools put in-- not a fancy diploma, and hard work and intelligence is not limited to certain schools. And while elite schools can supply you with certain advantages like networking, name recognition, and renowned professors, it is ultimately up to the individual to determine his or her own success.
_____
> *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!* | 210 | While it's true that the University a person goes to is not as important as the connections they make and things they accomplish at the University of their choice, a person will likely have a better chance at making connections (and more valuable ones at that) at an elite school than at an unknown institution. So in that sense going to an elite school is still more valuable than going anywhere else on average.
Also, if a student at Stanford talked to literally no one, made no friends and only decent grades while he was there, he would still have the immense benefit of being able to include Stanford on his resume. He would probably get turned down from top level positions as they'd have higher expectations than even that, but when applying for middling positions or entry level positions in just about any industry, people will look at the resume and still go "holy shit, Stanford?" It gives you a general leg up in a lot of places that other colleges wont. | 42 |
[Star Wars] I'm a highly experienced bounty hunter and I've killed several Jedi Knights. But how do I go about killing a Sith? | I'm a Kyuzo bounty hunter from Phatrong, I've been in this business for 15 years now, and I've killed lots of formidable opponents in my time, including a few Jedi. I rely on a few of the typical anti-Jedi countermeasures like flamethrowers and explosives, and I also use my signature acid spray and my custom long-range blaster rifle. But my latest bounty is on a Sith. How do I deal with a Force user who won't hold back, doesn't care about innocent lives or collateral damage, and has access to violent Dark Side abilities? | 118 | You're fucked. Seriously, run.
And not in a "Sith are un-killable, there's no way you'll succeed" kind of way, in a "there's no way out of this that doesn't involve you being dead." See, There are only ever two Sith, and they're *very* secretive. And if the person who gave you the bounty was able to identify *one* of them to you, guess who it was? That's right; you're either being used to test a Sith apprentice (quite an honor, really) or in an apprentice's plot to overthrow their master. If you fail, you're dead (obviously). But if you succeed, then you're likely not going to be collecting any money from your contractor anyway. That is, unless your contractor is a Sith master who's heard of your apparent Jedi killing success and is looking to replace their apprentice... | 177 |
[Star Wars] Is there anything innately special or different about R2-D2 by design compared to other Astromechs, or did he just get lucky? | I've looked through a couple of other threads that talk about R2-D2 in the context of the Clone Wars and through the Original Trilogy, where he has never had his memory wiped like other droids, resulting in a smarter, more capable droid tempered by experience.
But I'm looking at his debut scene in *The Phantom Menace*, where he gets his first moment to really shine in the entire saga by being the one droid to successfully repair the shields of Amidala's ship and save the lives of everyone on board. Even then, the other characters seem to react with surprise that he managed to pull it off, as if he's already outperforming expectations.
Could any of them have done that job if the turbolaser shots landed differently? Could any astromech have been the one to become as resourceful and effective at his job as R2 and eventually be the hero of the Saga? Or was he somehow a more advanced or experimental model than the others? | 65 | At the beginning he was just another droid. Maybe a bit better tuned, maybe with a more creative personality, but nothing made him stand out before running the Naboo blockade. And really, nothing made him stand out for a long time afterward.
What separated R2 from other astromechs was that he went an amazingly long time without having a memory wipe, a common procedure for both droids and computers every so often. If you don't, they tend to develop quirks which get in the way of work, or even become rebellious. On the flip side, they then lose all the knowledge and experience they previously had and start from factory settings.
For whatever reason, R2 managed to go decades without a memory wipe and remain effective. This makes him *exceptional* in that he has years of prior experience to pull from and has become fiercely loyal to his companions, showing a level of ingenuity and bravery rarely seen with simple astromechs. | 91 |
[The Simpsons] Who built Bart's treehouse? | If Homer built it for Bart, it may count as the best piece of parenting he ever did.
If Bart built it himself (before the start of the series) he would have been a small child and would have had to get pieces of wood as big as he was up a tree... | 67 | Probably it was a team effort by Lenny, Carl, Moe, and Homer working together. They are lifelong friends and Homer is not totally inept with tools, as long as he hasn't had too many beers.
Four guys working together could have knocked it out in two Saturday afternoons. | 91 |
[Aladdin] Where did all of Prince Ali's retinue come from? Did the genie create actual humans and animals? | There were hundreds of soldiers, dancing girls, cooks, etc. plus lots of animals.
And where did they go afterwards? | 89 | Genie's rules aren't hard and fast, meaning that he can kill people, make them fall in love and bring them back from the dead (likely not in that order), but are moral choices made by Genie. Since he's a moral character, he likely has other rules that he imposes but are such uncommon wishes that he doesn't need to say them immediately upon being released.
Now, let's explore the options available. He could've created the people. He could've brainwashed them and transported them to Agrabah. Or they weren't real and just constructs/illusions created to emulate people.
The first one, creation, means that either he kills them when they disappear, or he spreads these adult babies, which know little more than singing and dancing, to the far corners of the Earth. The former is against his rules, the latter has serious implications that a moral character wouldn't want to create.
The second option, brainwashing, also has serious implications. It seems to be an extension of the "fall in love" rule by making somebody create decisions against their will. It also ends up with these people having temporary amnesia (hopefully, otherwise they'll have serious mental issues), not remembering the previous [time period] and neglecting their duties.
This only leaves the idea that they are constructs that are not people, but simulacra that can only expound on the greatness of Prince Ali. | 79 |
CMV: Technology is making us dumber | Between everyone being constantly attached to their phones and robots replacing people's jobs, it seems tech is turning us into dumber and lazier people. People are constantly distracted by their phones they can't even finish a conversation with a real human being without being interrupted by technology.
Moreover, children are growing up a world without books but instead with animated cartoons, iPad games, and battery-powered toys. They don't even need to bother remembering or learning anything since they can just Google it.
Note: I am on the social team for [Point Taken](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/point-taken/is-technology-making-us-smarter-dumber/), a new late night show on PBS that champions spirited and civil debate. Tonight at 11pm ET we are debating this very issue: If technology is making us smarter or dumber. | 32 | >People are constantly distracted by their phones they can't even finish a conversation with a real human being without being interrupted by technology.
But these people are using their phones to have conversations with multiple real human beings at once. They can do this no matter how far away they are, and they can send instant, constant updates on their lives to the people they care about instead of waiting until their next meeting. Technology isn't interrupting social relationships; it's allowing people to maintain many more relationships despite the constraints of time and distance.
>They don't even need to bother remembering or learning anything since they can just Google it.
This is the same objection Socrates had to the written word: that widespread literacy would replace the oral tradition and cause memories to atrophy. He was probably right, but have we really suffered because we can now access knowledge without knowing it by heart? If anything, literacy has hugely accelerated human cultural progress by giving our minds much more to work with; instead of being limited to what we can memorise, we can interact with and apply our thinking skills to recorded knowledge from other eras and places.
The Internet is just an amplified version of this that has overcome the boundaries of not just memory but also access and physical space. Why is it bad that we need less rote memorisation if we have instant access to the information we need and much more? (And it's just rote memorisation that's being replaced, not learning; we still need to digest and absorb information after we get it off the Internet.) | 27 |
Since the CoronaVirus has a limited lifecycle outside of human body (up to 3 days on different surfaces) can the masks left unattended be reused? | If not, why? What are safe ways to disinfect face masks in household conditions?
Edit: Some have claimed that virus on the surfaces can stay infectious for longer than 3 days. I was unable to verify this claim, however. Please do your own research and don't believe what some guy on reddit said. | 12,362 | The newest CDC guidelines contain several reuse strategies, the easiest - if you still have supplies, that is - is to dispense 5 masks/respirators to staff. Have them number them and or the bags they go into, using one mask per day and then placing it into the paper bag (please be careful not to contaminate the inside of the mask). After the fifth day, you start over at mask #1. The research from UNMC suggests that after about 3 days they don't seal well and need to be tossed, but with the rotation that could get you several weeks of use. | 4,369 |
ELI5: Why is there so little or no meaningful reaction or consequence to the US after the Snowden leaks? [FIXED] | 16 | Because the US is the 800lb gorilla of international politics. You have an economy so strong that there is no one who is super keen to piss you off. The US doing business with a place like Canada can make or break the entire Canadian economy.
Economic sanctions are almost useless, because the US had the ability to block any organization who is able to impose them (and who would we get to enforce them anyway).
The US is the equivalent of the bully who works at daddy's company. You can't be fired and everyone else just tries not to piss you off. But you make a good friend if we can stay on your good side. | 15 |
|
Which of a nuclear explosion's effects are unique to it being nuclear? | Radiation and fallout are obviously due to the radioactive fuel source, but what about things like the flash or mushroom cloud? How many of, say, Little Boy's effects could be replicated with 12,000 tons of conventional explosives? | 876 | Mushroom clouds are not unique to nuclear explosions, it’s just a result of fluid-dynamical instabilities (Rayleigh-Taylor, and subsequently Kelvin-Helmholtz). If you put a denser fluid above a less dense fluid (including fluids of the same composition, but with a downward temperature gradient) buoyancy drives any perturbation on the interface to grow. That’s Rayleigh-Taylor, which drives the stem of the mushroom cloud upward. Then if you have two fluids in contact moving with different velocities at the interface, that causes perturbations at their interface to grow. That’s Kelvin-Helmholtz, and it creates the swirl at the top of the stem, giving a mushroom shape. So this is just the behavior of air when you make it very hot, and a nuclear explosion is just one way to make a region of air very hot.
Like you said, ionizing radiation and residual radioactivity are due to the nuclear reactions that occur, or decays of radionuclides that were present in the nuclear weapon itself. So that’s unique to some kind of nuclear device.
But also the thermal effects, including thermal radiation (not all of which is ionizing). The temperatures reached by a nuclear detonation are many orders of magnitude higher than what would be reached with conventional HE. | 583 |
ELI5: Why do things turn pale when you put stress on them, like when you bend mechanical pencils in half? | 272 | Those pencils are made from a polymer. Polymers generally undergo a crazing process when under extreme stress. This process creates small inclusions in the material (if you zoom in you would see what looks like small cracks). The red/blue/yellow color of the pencil is only on the surface, so when these cracks appear the light that would originally hit the colored surface now hits the inner surfaces of the cracks, making it appear white.
Also, if you have a clear piece of thick plastic and you bend it, it turns white for the same reason. Light passes unobstructed through the homogenous, amorphous material, but once those cracks appear the light starts to reflect. | 135 |
|
[Star Wars] Do Force Sensitive people just have different psychologies than us? | Based on how quickly force sensitive people like Anakin and Ben Solo can flip so radically, and how cautious the Jedi are towards emotions, I get the impression their psyches are much more volatile than real life humans. Is the Force just a very caustic, uh, force? Or are the people in this universe naturally very mercurial?
Or as a third option, Doylian option, are they just poorly written mood swings that weren't intended to say anything about the universe itself? Or more charitably phrased, are these meant to be normal human psyches exaggerated by "artistic license." | 18 | The Dark Side of the Force is *seductive*. That's what makes it so dangerous. That's why the Jedi Order was an organization of *monks*, rather than knights, soldiers, warriors or even scholars.
Every Force Sensitive being is essentially walking around with their own little version of the One Ring in their heads, just waiting for them to put it on. Because once you start using the Dark Side it is very hard to stop; your anger makes you stronger and that power *feels good*, and that pushes you to get more angry, and more powerful, and so on and so on. The best Sith quickly discover that hatred works even better - it can fuel Dark Side powers just as easily, and doesn't make you quite as stupid or foolhardy as anger. The Dark Side is a bit like one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, in that it amplifies negativity (as well as being fueled by it).
So yes, I'd argue that Force Sensitive beings do have different psychologies than normal people. Their negative emotions have the potential to become addictive in a way ordinary people don't have to worry about. A Sith is, in many ways, just another junkie - only their fix lets them shoot lightning blasts. This is why Jedi can fall so quickly and so hard, and only very rarely come back.
But it also explains why Sith who 'come back' from the Dark Side start acting 'good' so quickly. Ben Solo is an interesting example, because he was never very Sith in the first place. He didn't have an affinity for the Dark Side, like Palpatine, Vader, or Rey; for example he never seemed to get the hang of Force Lightning, unlike Palpatine (who mastered it) and Rey (who could use it almost instinctively) or Vader (who only couldn't use it because it would have shorted out his life support systems).
So when Ben Solo turned towards the Light, don't think of it like an ordinary person doing a complete 180. Think of it like a junkie finding some magical way (the light side of the force) to cleanse themselves of addiction, all at once. Of course his immediately started acting differently - for the first time in years his perspective was no longer being tainted by an addictive cocktail of rage and hatred. For the first time of his life he was no longer itching for his next fix of power - he finally had a truly clear head.
TL:DR - The Dark Side of the Force is basically the One Ring, only it feels good even as it amplifies the negative emotions of anyone who uses it. This is what makes a lack of emotional control so dangerous to the Jedi and explains why Jedi can fall so quickly. But on the flip-side, moving away from the Dark Side of the Force is like finally taking the One Ring off and being free of its influence, explaining why 'redeemed' Sith start acting good again so quickly. | 29 |
[Dc] Who is the fastest character in all of DC that doesn't get their speed from the Speed Force? | Like who doesn't get their speed from the Speed force but is still super fast and what is their greatest feat? (Also don't get smart with me by saying Eobard who has the "Reverse" Speed Force) | 89 | That actually would go to Hunter Zolomon, though technically he's not so much fast as he is a time manipulator - rather than increasing his speed, he decreases the amount of time it takes for him to do something.
And he was fast enough that it took Wally borrowing speed from Jay, Max, and Bart to even *see* him at first. | 125 |
ELI5: Why shouldn't we let our smartphones go to 0% battery and neither charge it to 100%? | My past smartphones with a lithium battery were always great in the beginning but with time they lost battery life so charging it twice a day became regular. With a new phone I would like to prolong the battery lifespan. I've read that the phone should not be fully discharged neither have the battery 100%. Why's that? How does that affect the battery lifespan? | 312 | First, the percentages your phone shows you are not the absolute percentages for the battery. There's a safety margin on both ends to keep it in the happier zone.
Lithium Ion batteries suffer at ultra low charge levels. It relies on a reversible chemical reaction that builds up material on the ends when its discharging and puts it back into the liquid when its charging. Every charge cycle some of the material builds up on the ends permanently and doesn't return to solution which cuts into your battery life, if you bring the battery charge too low it builds up more. If you bring it too low it can drop below a critical voltage where it can never be recharged again, this is why your phone doesn't let your battery get to within 10% of its *real* charge level, the reported 0% charge isn't 0% real charge.
Overcharging is another risk because the battery will begin to heat up because there's no chemicals left to store the power in so it just turns it into heat. Battery powered devices have charge controllers on board that will cut off the charging so you don't have to worry about this.
For the most part, people with wayyyy better information about the specific quirks of your battery have already designed a good battery management system for it so you don't need to worry as much. Your phone is actually happiest when the battery is at 100% and on the charger because it cuts power to the battery and just runs off the charger power so hours spent like this are hours that aren't going up and down using up charge cycles. | 407 |
[DC/Batman] Why does Gotham PD use dirigibles? | You don't see GPD blimps in every imagining of Batman, but they are in a significant portion. AFAIK helicopters are less expensive to buy, less expensive to operate, and better at tracking bad guys on the run. | 30 | Gotham is notoriously corrupt from the top down. Buying blimps and other inefficient, costly and sometimes ugly aircraft lines the pockets of the manufacturers and ensures they remain working in Gotham when so many other businesses have left. With those major manufacturing firms and companies working, they in turn line the pockets of politicians and business owners who have a stake in keeping them around. They may or may not also work as fronts for illegal activities.
The city tries to pass these shady deals off as a tourism benefit. Gotham has a unique skyline thanks to the dirigibles. And unique skylines bring interested tourists. | 41 |
Eli5: why does it seem like the unsubscribe button for emails does nothing? | Okay my question has been answered thank you!
Edit: how do I turn off notifications for a post on mobile? | 1,140 | One sneaky thing legit companies are doing all the time now is making the "unsubscribe" button unsubscribe you to those specific types of emails. Oh, you don't want to subscribe to our daily deals? That's ok, we'll still send you the weekly deals and the special deals. Some sites have like 10 different lists that you have to unsub from individually | 425 |
[Battlestar Galactica] Why does every piece of paper have 4 corners cut off? | 38 | I dont think there ever was an in-universe reason mentioned, but in real life it was a gag by the production crew. During the mini-series, SyFy was micromanaging the budget, so the crew cut the corners of the papers as an inside joke. And it stuck. | 46 |
|
[Looper] How did some people develop telekinesis? | The movie says that a small part of the population developed telekinesis through a mutation or something. Is there any further explanation for this? Also, how is Cid much more powerful than everyone else with this mutation? | 96 | Both of his parents were tk users, and his mother was exceptionally powerful, several times stronger than any other tk she had met. So he had good genes going for him. A real world analog would be tetrachromatism, the same mutation that makes men colorblind can make some women see color exceptionally well, to the tune of thousands of times more colors than normal humans. | 51 |
[DC] Can Superman surpass Batman in every field of intelligence? | Technically, Batman isn't the most 'booksmart' person of the planet but he's probably the best detective, tactician and strategist.
However, there's Superman. For those who aren't aware, his solar powered kryptonian brain is way beyond the limits and abilities of a normal human brain.
His brain can process in a few seconds what a supercomputer would take years to do.
[https://i.imgur.com/TC6G14m.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/TC6G14m.jpg)
He read every medical text ever published and successfully perfomed surgery on Lois Lane. For a normal person, such a feat would require 10 years of medical training but for Superman, it barely took 5 minutes.
[https://imgur.com/a/btVnhdO](https://imgur.com/a/btVnhdO)
So my question is, if Superman used his powers to its full potential to studies and learn as much knowledge as possible, if he trained himself to be the best detective, tactician and strategist as he can be, could he surpass Batman? | 36 | Absolutely -- Superman's potential as a Kryptonian is leagues beyond what any human is capable of.
The one hurdle he'd have to overcome is his upbringing. Clark just isn't as cynical as Bruce, and isn't prone to being suspicious of everyone and anything. | 61 |
Would the night sky have appeared much brighter in the time of the dinosaurs? | Given that the universe is expanding, and that apparent brightness of celestial bodies is governed by the inverse square law, would there have been a noticeable difference in the brightness of the night sky during, say, the early Jurassic Period? | 190 | The universe is expanding, but gravity keeps small-scale (relatively speaking!) structures like galaxies - and even groups of galaxies - together. The volume of space containing all the stars we can see is a vanishingly small part of our galaxy! So the number of stars visible doesn't really change as the Universe expands. It might fluctuate a bit as the solar system makes its long orbit around the galactic center. | 56 |
How do astronomers know the "red shift" is coming from the Doppler effect and not from static stars producing light at a red wavelength? | Would scientists not need a benchmark to know what wavelength the star is emitting and then what it is received at? If so, how do they determine the emitted wavelength? | 87 | They measure the full spectrum of light. Each element creates a distinct ‘absorption’ line on the spectrograph. When you look at a red-shifted Star, all the elements are there in the right relationship to each other, it’s just that the entire spectrum is shifted towards the red. | 121 |
Is there a theoretical limit to how much detail we can get from satelital images? | The resolution you can get out of Google maps is pretty good, and we can make our individual persons most of the time. Will the technology ever get so good that we will be able to make out, say, an ant?
If not, does the limit come from our technological capacity or is the limit a theoretical one, where it's physically impossible to get more resolution/detail? | 45 | Diffraction puts a (quite) hard limit on the size you can resolve. To distinguish two things (like an ant from the ant next to it) with a separation x from a distance d using wavelength lambda your telescope should have a diameter of d\*lambda/x. Let's take 5 mm for the ants, 400 km for the orbit, and 500 nm for the wavelength, then your telescope needs a diameter of 40 meters. That's the size of the largest optical telescope under construction on Earth (ELT), and much larger than any space telescope under development. You don't need a full mirror that size, an interferometer that has a few smaller mirrors spread out that much can work as well, but this is not easy to build either.
Atmospheric distortions are another thing to worry about - currently more relevant for space telescopes looking outwards, but on the level of watching ants this might become relevant for the opposite direction, too.
Google maps uses satellite images for large-scale views and images from airplanes for the higher zoom levels. If you can see people then the image is most likely from an aircraft. | 64 |
[WH40K] Has any aspect of the Imperium improved since 30K? | Like for instance, the Custodes have been holding back a hellmouth for 10,000 years right? Does that mean they're extra hardcore now? Is there anything the 40K Imperium does better than the 30K iteration? | 72 | Standardization, in 30k each capital ship for example was a unique piece of engineering that required its own unique components and training for its crew, and if it where from a different system it would sometimes be built with entirely different technologies that would be as different to other Imperial ships as those of another faction.
In 40k more STCs have been rediscovered and they are uniformly spread throughout the galaxy, a Lunar-class Cruiser built in the Ultima Segmentum will be very similar to a Lunar-class Cruiser built Segmentum Pacificus. This means crew is interchangeable, modules can be attached and changed without ship specific expertise and a ship can easily operate and get repairs in any part of the galaxy. | 68 |
ELI5: Is there a limit to the amount of flavor a person can process? | Is that pepper actually hotter than a person can taste, or is sugar sweeter but a person is limited by their taste buds or brain receptors? | 201 | Yes, there is a point where your sensory receptors become 100% satiated and no longer accept additional imput.
You can test this yourself. Close your eyes, and have a friend hold something fragrant under your nose for between 5 and 10 seconds, an try to guess when they take it away. Chances are you will guess too early, because your scent receptors filled up, and no longer registered the smell. | 88 |
ELI5: How do contact lenses stay perfectly centered on your eye and slide/rotate back into place after you move them aside? | 15 | Your eye isn't just a perfect sphere. The lens is actually a bump out from the surface and the contact is curved. Staying on the lens then is preferred because sliding off would require pulling away or deforming the contact. | 16 |
|
[Star Wars] What a hunk of junk, and other comments on the Falcon. | Nearly everyone comments on the extreme unsuitability of the Falcon upon first seeing it. "You came in that? You're braver than I thought." "The garbage will do."
I know Han intends for the Falcon not to look flashy, but my question is this: Are the YT-1300 line considered to be particularly junky ships to begin with, or is there something about the appearance of the Millennium Falcon specifically that elicits this particular response? | 76 | The YT-1300 has a rep in universe as being heavily modifiable, having enough internal space and power to handle anything you could reasonably drop into a vessel that size.
But the Millennium Falcon took it a bit too far; the engines have been tricked out virtually to the maximum, and the internal spaces have been extensively rearranged to make room for gizmos like concealed weapons, high powered point defense guns, and smuggling compartments with shielding and built-in emergency auto-ejectors. If all these mods were done in a professional shop or shipyard, this would be ok, but they weren't; Han and Chewie (and Lando when he held the pink slip) did their mods on the fly, without professional assistance and in settings that make "rough" look nice, often under significant time pressure and using components never meant for the purposes they intended.
By the time Luke claps eyes on it, they've layered mods on top of mods, jury rigged repairs to fix their previous repairs, and generally made a pretty severe mess of things.
End result? One of the slickest rides in the galaxy, when it works, and a rough looking scrapheap 24/7. | 105 |
[Star Wars] Why can a Jedi wield other Jedi's lightsaber without issue? | If Lightsabers are built specifically tailor for the user alone since he/she is the one who built it; how come Jedi's usually don't have a problem being given a spare lightsaber and still use it proficiently?
Like for instance when Obi-Wan and Anakin lost both their lightsaber in Geonosis and were given a random lightsaber yet they wield if as if they had built it themselves. Even for example Barriss was able to use Ventress's light-saber and still duel Anakin even getting the upper hand in many cases. | 20 | Where did you get the idea that each lightsaber is only usable to one Jedi? That's like saying that a gun can only be used by the person who put it together.
No, a lightsaber is just like any other weapon, anyone, Jedi or not, can pick one up and use it. The difference is only a Jedi could use one to its full potential. That said, when a Jedi does build their own lightsaber they do so to fit their personal style of fighting as well as their own dimensions, but for the most part that wouldn't hinder another Jedi from using it. | 50 |
ELI5: When people eat whole honeycomb, are they eating bee larvae also? | - | 46 | Generally, hives separate comb by use: some is for storing pollen, some is for storing nectar, some is for storing honey, and some are for laying eggs and raising brood. It's not 100%, and stuff does get mixed up a bit. It's very possible that you could bite into a larva, but if you know what you're doing, you know what you're looking for and are going to know when there is brood rather than honey. | 59 |
Why can't you absorb mercury (metal) with a sponge? | If sponges absorb liquids, and mercury is a liquid metal, why can't mercury be absorbed by a sponge? | 51 | When you pick up water with a sponge, some of the water forms very weak chemical connections with the material of the sponge. We say that the sponge is 'wettable' with water.
Mercury doesn't have the same chemical properties as water, and won't make the same connections. If you had a sponge made of say, gold, it would pick up the mercury, but the mercury would also form an amalgam with the gold.
| 42 |
ELI5: Why do so many games now not have local LAN? Is it hard to implement? | 130 | At least a few games have removed LAN functionality as a means of DRM - when the publisher controls the servers they control what clients are allowed to play multiplayer.
Also you may be perceiving a general shift towards MMO-style games which your average consumer could not hope to host themselves. | 92 |
|
(Marvel) Why does Spider-Man have web shooters? Can he not shoot webs from his arms? | 37 | Before being bitten by the radioactive spider, Peter already had genius level intellect. The spider bite gave him the reflexes and strength of a spider, but since spider web is manufactured in the abdomen of a spider, that ability wasn't passed on to him. Using his ingenuity, he invented the web shooters to further his capabilities of "Spider-Man" | 73 |
|
ELI5: The Rabbit Test used for Pregnancy tests in the 20th Century (sometime around 1930 and after) and how it actually worked | 50 | The urine from a woman would be injected into a female rabbit and the ovaries of the rabbit would enlarge and show follicular maturation. This was a method of detecting a female hormone indicative of pregnancy. | 23 |
|
ELI5: How come when something really hurts our feelings we can feel it in the pit of our stomach and chest? | 11,476 | Your body and brain and part of the same system. Your emotions impact your body, just like your body impact your emotions.
A section of your nervous system lines your digestive tract: the enteric nervous system. It is full of motor neurons that contract and relax muscles all the way from the esophagus to the anus to get your food into your stomach, digested, and eliminated (among other functions). Normally you wouldn't notice it working away, but if things go into overdrive, your stomach can feel weird.
[There is quite a bit of overlap between nervous system and the gastrointestinal system. Neurogastroenterology is the focus of a lot of research right now because there is a lot we simply don't know.]
Anxiety or stress causes muscle tightness all over the body--it readies the body for fight, flight, or freezing. There are muscles all over your chest, so you feel it as tension or tightness. This response also increases blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and other functions. The result is that you can feel like your chest is heavy, feel your heart racing, feel your heart pounding, feel shortness of breath, etc. | 4,639 |
|
ELI5: "It's the amps which kill you not volts." But, wouldn't amps be always constant for given volt, as R=V/I. (Where R of human body is same) | 66 | It depends on the power source. Some power sources limit the amount of current that can be drawn independently of the supplied voltage.
For example, many AC-DC adapters will limit the current output to a certain amperage like 1.0 A independent of what the voltage output is. Similarly, some circuit breakers are designed to trip after 15 amps whereas others will permit up to 30 amps of electrical flow. Another example is tasers which supply very high voltages (thousands of volts) but limit the current flow to a very low amperage so the electric shock is non-lethal. | 16 |
|
ELI5:What is the difference between Indy Car and Formula One racing? | Ever since the Indy 500, Ive started catching some racing on the weekends and to me, the cars look pretty much the same.
Thank you! | 25 | I would say that there are a couple of main differences. First, F1 teams build their own car from scratch, every single year. They manufacture the bodywork and many of the components in-house by themselves. Therefore, while they look similar, different teams have radically different cars and approaches. Indy car, on the other hand, features cars that are built to pretty much the same spec, with the engines being different, along with setup changes.
In addition, while Indy cars have a higher top speed due to their engines, F1 cars are able to take a corner at a much higher speed due to the emphasis that F1 places on aerodynamics and downforce. If an Indy car and an F1 car were to race at a road course, the F1 car would likely beat the Indy car by quite a large margin due to its cornering ability. However, since F1 cars are not designed to race on ovals, while Indy cars are, an oval track would show the advantage that Indy cars have in power. | 16 |
[Dracula] Why can't Dracula control dogs? | In the book he's said he can control bats, wolves, rats, foxes and moths. At one point he summons a horde of rats to attack the heroes and one of the heroes let's his three dogs loose to take care of the rats.
Why couldn't Dracula just take control of the dogs? What would makes a dog different from a wolf to be immune to his power? | 98 | The difference is probably a thousand generations of domestication.
He has probably more control over 'wild' animals than those like dogs who have been intentionally bred to follow a human's orders blindly.
Which now makes me wonder why he didn't control cats. | 141 |
CMV: Animal abuse and neglect should carry MUCH harsher punishments. | I just want to state that even though I am 100% against animal cruelty, I am not a vegetarian and I willingly eat farmed meats. I completely see the hypocrisy in this and I have tried to change my eating habits, but I am a lazy 19 year university student and I base my diet on availability and cost, however I will keep trying.
I live in the UK where the laws about animal abuse and neglect stem from the Animal Welfare Act that was passed in 2006 and superseded nearly all of the previous legislature. It has since been amended several times, the last time being in 2008. This act states that the maximum punishment for **intentionally and maliciously torturing or injuring an animal** is up to a £5000 and/or a 5 year prison sentence. In the vast majority of cases, prison time isn't even considered as a form of punishment, even in the most severe cases, and this is completely wrong in my opinion.
Even though I understand that the life of a pet such as a dog is not equal to the life of a human, the discrepencies between the punishments for harming or neglecting a dog compared to a human are so huge that it blows my mind. People just stand by and watch other people abuse animals and they dont even give it a second glance. Organisations such as the RSPCA in the UK, or PETA in the US help thousands of animals a year, and I believe that number would drop drastically if the punishments for abusing an animal were closer to the punishments for abusing another human being.
I just dont know what the opposing arguments would be, what good comes out of abusing animals?
Even though I know 'PETA' has become this big meme I do recommend that you go have a look at their website: http://www.peta.org.uk/issues/
_____
> *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!* | 377 | >I just dont know what the opposing arguments would be, what good comes out of abusing animals?
Careful with shifting goal posts and setting up straw men. Your argument is punishments should be more severe. A counter would be punishments are sufficient, not that they should be reduced or removed. | 53 |
ELI5: How are standardized tests so expensive? | For example, the SAT is about $50 ($70 for late registration), subjects tests are about $20, and AP tests are $95. What goes into these for such a high price? | 212 | The price of a good or service isn't wholly dictated by how much it costs to produce or provide, but how much can be charged to achieve maximum profitability for the seller. It's mostly about how much people are willing to pay.
With that said, the production cost of the product is probably a bit higher than you realize. Some portion must go to supporting test centers (for some tests, anyway), which must have a proctor, security measures, and generally a fixed physical location. You have to employ people to generate the content, and refresh that content periodically. You have to design multiple test forms and then find a way to norm them (often, there will be entirely different questions on different forms, not just the same questions in different orders).
I'll also state that the SAT and AP tests are cheap. Try seeing how much taking the MCAT, GRE, a GRE subject test, or the LSAT will cost you. It's much worse. I'd imagine this is partly because it's easier to demand a higher price for these tests, as people are willing to pay it. I'd imagine a small part of the additional cost is getting people to produce the actual test questions (of course, there have been controversies about how similar tests are from form to form, and year to year... so this probably isn't a huge part of it). | 91 |
Are lost memories gone forever? Or are they somehow ‘stored’ somewhere in the brain? | 8,280 | It depends on whether or not the memories are consolidated into longterm memory. It takes several hours for recent memories to be consolidated into long term memory. This is the reason why individuals who suffer traumatic brain injuries tend to not remember what happened immediately prior to the injury. Alternatively, if when an individual has consolidated a fact or event into memory and later is unable to recall it, this is most likely due to the retrieval pathway being lost. Sometimes, pathways can be retrieved. An instance of this is struggling and eventually remembering someone's name. The memory (person's name) is there, it just took a while to retrieve it.
Dementia patients are often unable to consolidate new memories but are still able to recall events from their past. | 5,313 |
|
ELI5: How does storage on phones and computers actually work, and why is there a limit? | 16 | Modern phones and computers use "Solid State" storage. It works basically by charging super tiny parts (called floating gate transistors) in the solid state drive. These parts hold a charge, and the drive scans to see if the parts are charged (0) or not charged (1). This is binary storage, since all computers run on binary, which is just a very fast input of 1s and 0s.
You run out of storage because these transistors, small as they may be, still take up physical space. You can cram terabytes into a very small space, but this is incredibly expensive and most people don't use enough storage to make this worth it.
Some computers still use a "hard drive", which is a series of disks with small magnetic particles in them. When writing to a hard drive, a magnet sends specially timed charges to the disk, which then change the magnetic orientation of the particles, and when reading, it detects which ones are magnetized one way (1) or another way (0). Again, it's binary. A hard drive requires spinning discs so it takes a while. SSDs do not require anything moving so they are much faster.
So the even more boiled down answer: A small piece of physical space is either electrically or magnetically designated 1 or 0, which the computer can read and turn into an image on your screen. You run out of space because these small pieces are expensive to make and take up room. | 15 |
|
[Marval] why does Bruce and Hulk have seprate minds | when other pepole gets mutated by Gamma ray they retain their personnality but when bruce turn into the hulk it has a mind of ts own, why is it like that | 53 | Bruce Banner has psychological trauma from his abusive father, resulting in his deep seated anger/emotional issues that he represses. When he “Hulks out”, all his anger and dark emotions take over and he becomes the Hulk. | 70 |
CMV: If hashtag campaigns weren't extremely lucrative and effective, businesses would not be consistently using them. | They are virtually of no cost to implement, can reach tens of millions of people directly and indirectly, and act as an extremely impacting tool by itself or in a more complex marketing scheme.
http://mwpartners.com/hashtagcampaigns
http://mashable.com/2012/03/23/twitter-hashtag-campaigns/
As you can see and witness businesses love to market via Twitter. It gives them a powerful avenue to keep themselves in your eye. If these campaigns or involvements on social media were as lackluster and boring as people like to make out, then marketing sectors in multiple billion-dollar companies would scrap involvement.
But they don't. You see hashtag campaigns from companies all the time. Why would I trust someone denying they work when I keep seeing companies show their willingness to employ social media to increase profit? Why would I take your word over Nike's marketing team?
This is mostly in response to people saying how the ALS challenge is nonsense and doesn't do anything good. Which I can also guarantee by showing donation numbers is false.
_____
> *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!* | 29 | The best argument in favor of hashtag campaigns isn't that they're extremely lucrative or extremely effective. It's that they're extremely cheap. What does it cost a business to add a hashtag to their existing advertising? Almost nothing. A hashtag takes up very little real estate and can easily be dropped into pretty much any ad with a visual component. Even if the hashtag only provided a minor bump in exposure, it's still probably worth the 20 bucks it cost to get a designer to work it into an ad.
| 30 |
ELI5:How did internet provider monopolies, such as Comcast, form in the first place? What's keeping the competition out of certain areas so that Comcast is the only option? | 60 | Comcast was a cable television company before it was an ISP. Decades ago, it was common for a company like Comcast to strike a deal with a town: "give us a monopoly on cable television in this town, and we will wire the *entire* town".
Those exclusive franchises have been outlawed, but the physical networks that were created remain. It is very difficult to pay for a new network to compete with an established company that installed and payed for its network decades ago.
There *is* competition, for example RCN operates mainly in areas where there was already Comcast service, or some other company. This is called an *overbuild* network. It is not, however, a super lucrative business model, which is why you only see it in limited areas. | 23 |
|
ELI5: The difference between Laws, Statutes, and Ordinances in the USA? | 27 | Statutes and ordinances are laws. Statutes are promulgated by the federal and state government. Ordinances are promulgated by counties and cities.
Statutes will apply in the whole state or country (if federal). Ordinances will only apply in the particular city or county where they are passed. | 13 |
|
ELI5: Physics Question. Plane falling, jump at the last second, land fine? | Okay so, I know this has probably been answered somewhere before, but I couldn't find it on google. If you were on a plane that was falling from the sky (1000 feet fall, for example) and just before the plane hit the ground, you jumped (IF you were able to jump even though all the force coming down on you, etc). I know that you would still splat dead regardless of IF YOU COULD jump, but could somebody please explain to me, like I'm five, why you wouldn't survive the jump. Thanks very much in advance! | 23 | If you are falling at 300 mph, and you manage to jump upwards at a speed of 10 mph (relative to the plane), you are still falling at 290mph relative to the ground. You may marginally lessen the impact, but it's still going to go splat. | 29 |
ELI5: How can teachers (legally) deny you the right to go to the bathroom (in the US) | Excuse any errors if there are any, English isn't my first language. After I moved to the US, I was shocked in school when a teacher denied a student the right to go to the bathroom.
In the US, doesn't this violate your human rights of some sort? You don't make a dog ask for permission but you make a child do? Doesn't this violate the OSHA regulations? | 19 | Generally teachers do not refuse students a trip to the bathroom.
You are really only made to ask to demonstrate that you can't exit the classroom without the teacher's permission. Its an authority lesson more than anything else. | 17 |
ELI5: Why do dogs smell so terrible when they are wet? | 20 | Have you ever noticed that a lot of carpet and polyester or polypropylene pile (like plush blankets) also smells horrible when wet?
What unites all of these things: dogs, carpets, fuzzy blankets, is that they all have a high surface area due to the fuzz they are covered with. That high surface area, via adhesion, accumulates lots of smelly things. Like body oils, fragrances, smoke, and wonderfully named hydrocarbons such as "cadaverine".
Water helps loose and dissolve much of this. And then, due to the high surface area, the water rapidly evaporates. Weak interactions between vaporizing water molecules tug on other stuff that's stuck to the surface, helping it to volatilize into the air. | 19 |
|
Would an EXTREMIS soldier be affected by Dr. Conners' lizard serum? | 28 | EXTREMIS acts to reverse physical trauma. The lizard serum, whilst also theoretically a healing agent, provides massive physical changes. Whilst the EXTREMIS modifications wouldn't kick in instantly, they would act to reverse the lizard serum's effects. Which would in turn act to reverse EXTREMIS. This would effectively leave the subject in a coma, were it not for the exothermic effects of the former treatment.
EXTREMIS subjects have been observed to explode if their body rejects the modifications - by introducing the lizard serum, you're forcing a late stage rejection. So yes, your soldier would be affected. Fatally.
Conversely, what would happen if someone already under the effects of the Connors formula were to be injected with EXTREMIS? Assuming the latter took the lizard state to be the norm, you'd end up with A.I.M's treatment's excesses being held in check by the lizard's healing factor (the explosive rejection being less likely when the formula isn't being introduced to regrow a limb in the first place). Then you'd have a lizard creature permanently operating in a warm-blooded state, with strength and speed beyond that of either an EXTREMIS soldier or that reported of Kurt Connors. If Col. Rhodes' mission debrief is to be believed, it may also develop the ability to breathe fire.
In short, you'd have a regenerating dragon with near-impossible speed and strength. If you can fix the psychological issues inherent to Connors' formula, you'd have vastly improved over the original super-soldier serum we experimented with in the '40s.
| 25 |
|
[MCU] How powerful would star Lord have been comparatively to other avenger if he still had Egos power within him? | 51 | It's hard to say. Ego really should have been unbeatable, but he got beaten pretty easily compared to even Ronan. Remember Ronan was able to tank Rocket's improvised explosive with his face, and still needed an infinity stone to finish him off. Ego went out with just the bomb.
There's no telling if Starlord would have a similar weak point. If he does, he's still pretty high tier, but Thor, Dr. Strange, and maybe Iron Man still come out on top.
Otherwise, Starlord is the strongest by a fair margin. | 52 |
|
ELI5: In survival/apocalyptic movies, people can survive by just eating insects alone. Is this true in real life? | 191 | People eat insects, and they can provide some useful calories and protein.
But no human society has survived using insects as a major source of its calories, and for a very good reason. The amount of calories you gain by eating an insect is very small in proportion to the effort it takes to capture or cultivate it. In many cases it will burn more calories to harvest and prepare an insect for food than it provides in calories.
So if you are going to spend time gathering a food resource, it's a very poor choice. But if you are starving and see an insect as a target of opportunity, eat it. | 150 |
|
ELI5: Why does diabetes increase your risk of just about everything? | 39 | Because it affects your blood flow, and proper blood flow is the key to maintaining your health aagainst viruses/infections and healing injuries. When your blood sugar becomes high, it is much harder for blood to travel around in your body. This is why the most delicate (eyes) and furthest away (feet + hands) parts are affected the most. For non-diabetics this is also true, but non-diabetics will rarely have a blood sugar high enough to cause damage. But diabetics cannot automatically control their sugar as well, and with years and years of very high sugar levels, damage slowly takes place. | 14 |
|
I've been having a bit of a thought experiment lately - if personal safety can be legislated by requiring seat belts, motorcycles should also be outlawed. CMV | Take a look at these statistics from Wikipedia:
> According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2006, 13.10 cars out of 100,000 ended up in fatal crashes. The rate for motorcycles is 72.34 per 100,000 registered motorcycles.[1] Motorcycles also have a higher fatality rate per unit of distance travelled when compared with automobiles. Per vehicle mile traveled, motorcyclists' risk of a fatal crash is 35 times greater than a passenger car.[1] In 2004, figures from the UK Department for Transport indicated that motorcycles have 16 times the rate of serious injuries compared to cars, and double the rate of bicycles.[2]
>A national study by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATS) found that:
>* Motorcycle rider death rates increased among all rider age groups between 1998 and 2000
>* Motorcycle rider deaths were nearly 30 times more than drivers of other vehicles
>* Motorcycle riders aged below 40 are 36 times more likely to be killed than other vehicle operators of the same age.
>* Motorcycle riders aged 40 years and over are around 20 times more likely to be killed than other drivers of that same age.[3]
>Additional data from the United States reveals that there are over four million motorcycles registered in the United States. Motorcycle fatalities represent approximately five percent of all highway fatalities each year, yet motorcycles represent just two percent of all registered vehicles in the United States.
(Taken from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_safety)
It's unavoidable to conclude that riding a motorcycle is more dangerous than riding a car. It's intuitive based on how exposed motorcycle riders are.
But it's not even just the motor cycle rider's safety that is at risk. Cars are looking around them for other cars. It's easier to see other cars because 1) they are larger and 2) they are more common and what drivers expect.
A last point, seat belts help protect members in both cars of a crash because loose bodies not belted in can bounce around and harm others in the car. Occasionally people end up getting thrown outside of the car if windows are open (I've seen this happen in person), and can even crash through closed windows, and could be a danger to other people in other vehicles. Motorcycles don't have seat belts of any sort, and once more both the loose body and loose motor cycle could be very dangerous to other members of the car crash.
Again, in the end it can be argued that it is the person's right to choose to ride a motorcycle, even if it is less safe, but that doesn't stop legislation that requires seatbelts. If safety can be mandated on the roadways, why doesn't it extend to motorcycles?
Alright, that's all I got. CMV! | 19 | I believe that the difference comes from the fact that you are simply requiring a passenger to reach up, grab their seatbelt, and securely fasten it to the holder, a process which takes about two seconds if you're particularly ham handed, and places no tangible burden on most anyone.
Banning motorcycles would destroy an entire industry, bringing economic hardship and turmoil to many.
It's a combination of "It's safe" and "It doesn't place an undue burden on those affected by the law". | 19 |
ELI5 why governments keep trying to pass bills stifling or censoring the internet. Who's benefiting and why? | The internet has proved itself to be the greatest medium for information exchange humanity has ever seen. There are cons, like people gaining the knowledge to create explosives, organize illegal activities, sell illegal things, sure. The benefits surely out weigh the negatives, right? Slowing down the rapidly accelerating exchange of knowledge seems idiotic. | 22 | In general, these kind of censorship measures are passed when they present a threat to the existing political power structure. Information is power and those that control the flow information can determine the outcome of events in their favor. | 17 |
What do philosophers means they call something metaphysical? | I was told that metaphysical is any and all object that is not strictly physical. Words, numbers, algorithms. But the way some philosophers use it makes me think that the definition i was given was wrong. For example, 'La phenomenologie' by Jean-François Lyotard says that the vision of essence is not metaphysical. I am confused please help me. | 53 | While philosophers use the word "metaphysics" without any hassle, it is hard to pinpoint what exactly this word means to a person who has not observed its meaning in use.
Well, think of our actual physical world. When describing the existing world, we utter sentences such as "magnetic field exists", "this object has eroded over time", "this building is red", "a memory has flashed in his mind" and so on. These utterences are strictly physical, but they are interesting to a metaphysian in that they invoke the most general categories within which the world is "carved at its joints". The magnetic field might exist, but what is this "existence" we are talking about? This object might erode over time, but what is this "temporality" we are talking about? The building might have a certain property, such as having red color, but that is this "property of an object" we are talking about? A memory might flash in his mind, but what is this "mind" we are talking about?
So, when philosophers call something metaphysical, by that they typically mean that they are describing the most general features of our physical world, such as existence, predication, modality, mind, identity and so forth. The scientific language of physics makes no such demands, these categories are taken as self-evident there for methodological reasons. | 75 |
Why do some people say moving faster than light would mean you travel back in time? | Are those people just misunderstanding some concept in relativity? | 44 | This idea is born of a thought experiment Einstein is reported to have performed. Simply put, if one were traveling away from a clock face at the speed of light, the appearance of that clock face would not change because you would be traveling at the same speed as the photons that were reflected off of it. If you were to then accelerate, you would catch up to the photons that were reflected *before* you achieved the speed of light. In essence, you would arrive at an earlier time because what you are observing now isn't what is happening now, it's what happened before. When that clock ticks forward another minute, you will never see it because you are moving away from it at the same speed as the light that bounced of it in the new minute.
Ok maybe not so simply put... | 34 |
ELI5: when people do coke in movies, what are they actually sniffing? | 108 | Lots of different recipes. For snorting they use powdered lactose, or a vitamin b power if there are lactose intolerance issues. Also, if the actor is using a straw or something to snort it, they will coat the inside with Vaseline so very little will actually go in the nose. Snorting anything will cause congestion. | 121 |
|
ELI5:How does money laundering work and how do some people get away with it while others get caught. | 36 | Suppose you make $100k a month selling ... something bad. You can't deposit that money directly in the bank, because large cash deposits require special forms & draw IRS attention (and, if it is suspicious, eventually the police).
But, let's say you also happen to own a car wash. That is a business where people primarily pay cash. Now you can deposit your "bad" money and claim that you made that money at your car wash. It works great, but of course it looks like your car wash is much more profitable than it actually is.
This is how you get caught. The cops start to notice that you're depositing lots money (and claiming on your tax returns huge profits). In fact, they calculate from your taxes that you wash 10 thousand cars a month. BUT, they check & find out that you're only ordering enough soap & supplies for 3 thousand cars. This is a huge indication that the money you're depositing is not coming from the car wash.
In order to NOT get caught, you need to have a pretty successful cash businesses so your bad money won't be noticed. Big banks often get away with this, because they have such huge profits that a little bad money won't be noticed.
Or, you could always bribe/threaten/etc whomever is investigating you... | 24 |
|
Is there a difference in symptoms of someone who is depressed due to their situation and someone who is depressed due to genetics / biological reasons? | 174 | It's important to clarify that clinical depression is notjust being sad, it's a pervasive mood dysregulation where patients might not even feel "sad" but rather manifest primarily as loss of interest or pleasure in activities. The symptoms observed in major depressive disorder are (you don't need to have all of them, just 5/9 and 1 of the first 2): Loss of interest, depressed mood, insomnia, guilt/feelings of worthlessness/loss of self-esteem, low energy, concentration problems, loss of appetite, psychomotor retardation, suicidal ideation.
Ok, that said there is the "depression" associated with significant personal loss, such as a death in the family, which we clinically call "bereavement". Most of the symptoms of major depression CAN present in bereavement, except usually suicidal ideation or self-esteem erosion; if that does present, we tend to say that it's moved from normal grief/bereavement to pathological. Other differences in symptoms between bereavement and major depression are that bereavement symptoms tend to come in waves, where depression tends to be persistent. Finally, we typically say if bereavement lasts more than 2 months, it may be moving more into major depression.
All that said, there's actually been a bit of a debate in psychiatry whether we should just diagnose people with bereavement with depression, independent of that 2 month exclusion period. However, that debate is more centered around whether to treat or not with medications, so a bit off topic from your question.
Source: DSM IV/V | 71 |
|
[DC Comics] If Etrigan were to possess a woman instead of a man would their demon form change? What about the rhyme? | Would it be:
Gone, gone the form of Woman
Arise the demon Etrigan | 29 | man in this case refers to mankind so unless his host wasent human no, also im pretty sure he turns into his real form not magically alters the host into a demon, who the host is doesent really matter since the demons the same | 42 |
ELI5: Why do people swing their arms backwards when they're falling? | 80 | Take the advice of a boxer, the arms extending away from the body have a dramatic effect on balance, especially in "emergency" situations like this one. When you swing your arms, the shoulder uses the body to resist against the arm to create the actual motion, but you unconsciously adjust your weight for it 99.9% of the time when you're not falling. So if you throw your arms backward with 100 newtons of force, 100 newtons of force is reciprocally applied to your torso... *forward*. Hopefully that's enough to get your balance back over your feet. If it doesn't happen in the first swing, then it usually won't unless you're teetering right on the edge. | 36 |
|
ELI5: What was the dot-com crash, and why did it happen? | 16 | When the Internet was first getting wide public exposure in the late 90s, investors were throwing ridiculous amounts of money into tech startups. These were new companies that had little more than a website - they had products to sell or real ideas about how to make money. Investors were so caught up in the idea that the Internet could turn shit into gold, they didn't care.
3 guys in a garage could get millions of dollars for having a domain name with a landing page. You'd see companies going public (selling stock in themselves for the first time) putting at stock at $10/share and see it trading at $200/share at the end of the first day.
There was nothing rational going on because none of the investors understood the industry - it was nothing but people getting exited because they knew everyone else was excited.
A few people started catching on and started pulling out their money. Those 3 guys in the garage, after spending their money on $2000 office chairs and catered lunches - still not having a business that made money - found that investors weren't giving them anymore & closed up shop. The $200 stock price fell to $2.50 as everyone scrambled to sell of what they could. Things crumbled quickly & lots of people that had stupidly invested their money lost much of it and many businesses that should never have grown as quickly as they did laid off many people and closed up shop. | 15 |
|
ELI5: If both sides spoke British-English during the Revolutionary War, how did America slowly develop their own dialect? | I understand how in modern times, say if an Englishman came to the US and lived there for a lengthy period of time, their accent would slowly disappear, but that is due to the fact that they are constantly hearing the American dialect being spoken wherever they go, right? If that is the case, I doubt that the original colonists went out of their way to 'develop' their own dialect out of spite? Perhaps I am overlooking something obvious here, but I just can't think of it. Thank you! | 23 | Both the American and British English variants are different from what they were at the time of the Revolution and both have different parts that are closer to the English spoken then. For example, the way that Americans pronounce "Rs" is closer to how English was spoken then.
Both dialects have drifted over time (with the British very recently taking up the received pronunciation after the adoption of the radio and tv). American English on the other hand was heavily influenced by German immigrants, and to a lesser degree the languages other immigrants have spoken. | 14 |
[General Fantasy] What is the best explanation you know for why mages can't wear much/any metal armor? | 63 | Type a sentence on a keyboard. Play a few bars of a song on a guitar. Now try again with leather gloves on.
Magic is the sublime art. There's no room for error. Screwing it up can be disasterous, and anything that gets in the way can get you killed. | 51 |
|
How do you treat erroneous papers in your area of expertise | I often come across papers in legitimate journals that contain grave errors. These errors are obvious to me but might not be that obvious to others that aren't specialised in the same niche of a niche topic as I am. Therefore, I think it would be good to point out those errors. However, spending half the introduction of my paper on criticizing others makes me look like a dick, people will be pissed off at me, and they might start to criticize my own papers. The alternative would probably be to just ignore those erroneous papers. How do you handle this?
Edit: Sorry for the missing question mark in the title. | 33 | The first step is to make sure you don’t think a paper is erroneous only because you think it goes against what you believe. Calling a published article erroneous is a pretty serious accusation. Also, you would be correct in thinking people would perceive you as a dick if you spend time in your papers calling out said papers. That being said, there are times when a paper needs to be called out, so if you’re 100% sure it’s a bs paper, go ham! | 30 |
[Star Trek] How were Kirk and crew seemingly able to pilot a Klingon Bird-of-Prey with ease when they escaped Genesis? Are the controls standard on all starships? Or do they have special training on enemy ships? Or something else? | 101 | There is something you are forgetting; We are talking about the legendary crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. These aren't your run of the mill standard Starfleet crew. Oh no. These guys have single handedly saved Earth, the Federation, and the Alpha Quadrant on more then one occasion. We are talking about a group of people that have, traveled through time, stopped a massive alien probe from snuffing us out in a blink of an eye, and any other number of fantastical and improbable scenarios that can only be described as miracles for lack of a better word. And, to play the devil's advocate here, by some odd and improbable coincidence, most of these guys wouldn't have been able to operate that particular B'Rel-Class Bird-Of-Prey, you forget that they have 1 person in that group that is quite literally the greatest ship engineer starfleet has ever had; C. Montgomery Scott. We are talking about a man that figured out the forumla to transport a human being from a stationary point in space onto a moving target going faster then the speed of light with zero complications. To put it simply:
*"The notion of transwarp beaming is like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet, whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse."*
Federation starships and Klingon war birds are not all that incredibly different that a man of that type of intelligence couldn't figure out how to point it in a direction and put it on autopilot until they reached Vulcan and had their Vulcan scientists help them figure out the rest. | 55 |
|
ELi5: What makes white phosphorus so dangerous when used as a weapon of war? | 303 | It ignites with the air, it doesn't need any spark or ignition source.
It's also sticky so once it gets on something there's no getting it off until it burns itself off.
It's also very toxic.
It's pretty much just death. | 546 |
|
ELI5: Why is it harder and harder to get a full night sleep the older you get? | 45 | The cumulative effect of a life-time of alcohol, stimulants, sedentary life-style, overeating, rumination, rejection, heart break, loss, regret, humilation, meaninglessness, sadness, rage and the creeping fear of impending death. | 56 |
|
Why can't we just keep accelerating in space? | I read recently that the space shuttle's top speed is approximately 8km/sec. However, since space is a vacuum and there is no air friction or anything like that to slow it down why wouldn't continually adding thrust lead to continual acceleration. What is it that causes the shuttle to top out at the current top speed?
EDIT: Thank you all very much for your brilliant answers. I'm having a fascinating time reading all the responses and the expansions and tangent discussions that have come from them. | 1,955 | Continually adding thrust requires continuously ejecting fuel, and only so much fuel can be taken in a given rocket. To take more fuel requires a bigger rocket which requires more fuel to accelerate, etc. | 1,828 |
[Men in Back] Can a Neuralyzer be used to make someone a better agent? | In the second movie, J flashes the owner of the videoclub and he says "you will love and cherish each other" so he is using the Neuralyzer to make someone a better boyfriend/partner.
Would it work in the MiB organization if someone were to grab a Neuralyzer, point it to one of the agents and say something like "You are one of our best agents/you are very skilled in combat/you know how to spot aliens with only your eyes/you know how to best treat members of other species to not cause a diplomatic crisis or anything like that? | 34 | Unless that agent actually had the training and the skills but lacked confidence, you would definitely create a worse agent. You would end up with an Agent who thought that he knew how to fight, spot aliens on sight, and knew how to interact with all aliens, but actually didn't. | 50 |
[Star Wars] What part of Darth Vader’s meditation chamber allows him to take off the mask? Additionally, if he wanted to, could he give his castle the same function so he could walk around without it? | 69 | I believe it was pressurized and had bacta aerosols saturate the air among other things. While Vader probably had enough resources to make bigger chambers like this, his ultimate goal was to escape the need for suit altogether - in old canon he often tried to channel the Dark Side to reanimating his flesh, and managed to spend some time without the life support, but ultimately such experiments of his always failed, since the Dark Side can't heal on permanent basis. | 74 |
|
[Red Dwarf] What happened to humanity? | We know that Lister is the last human left alive three million years in the future. Humanity had spread out among the stars. So why was Lister the last human left alive in that distant future? What happened to cause the extinction of the race?
Edit: three not one. | 39 | We never actually find out whether he really is the last human alive, Holly just assumes it. There are plenty of human creations still around - GELFs, the Holoship, the Justice World, simulants, wax droids, Legion, the polymorph, and Kryten was still functional when they found his wrecked ship. All still alive and functional. Its quite possible humans do still exist, and Red Dwarf is just nowhere near them... maybe in a "no mans land" region of space because of all the dangerous shit that's there.
And, after the events of series VIII, we know for sure other humans do exist. The resurrected crew abandons the ship and probably are still alive somewhere. | 17 |
ELI5: Why I'm so willing to spend $20 on a case of beer and $10 more for pizza, but have a hard time spending $30 bucks on a pair of jeans and a tshirt that will last me months or possibly years? | 654 | Because the beer and pizza is instant gratification. You spend the money and you get the item and enjoy it. With the clothes, you spend the money but won't necessarily wear the items right away. So you put them in your closet and wait to wear them. Since there's no instant gratification you are subconsciously not as willing to spend the money there. | 343 |
|
[Harry Potter] How did the Dursleys explain to the doctor in London that their son needed a pig tail removed? | 386 | "We don't know what this growth is but we want it gone." Pretty much any doctor would quickly agree, and after a quick check it's not cancerous Dudley's free to go.
Obviously it's not *actually* a pig tail, that's absurd, but with only one case we can only theorise as to what actually happened. It goes in the medical journals as any number of strange health conditions we currently don't know about, maybe a tabloid shock story, but after that dies down it's quickly forgotten. | 309 |
|
ELI5: Why does the virginity of oil matter? | 17 | The amount of benefits that first pressings give are much higher than subsequent pressings as far as nutrients, and anti-oxidants goes. Only so many to go around and the first press gets the majority of them. | 17 |
|
ELI5: How does a knife thrower know that the blade will hit the target and not the handle? | 96 | The first thought is that it is a lot harder than the movies make it...
There are two ways of throwing a knife:
You can throw it so it travels blade first without rotating, which is harder to do with the same accuracy/power, but means it should always hit properly.
The alternative is to throw the knife so it rotates while in the air, and your aim is to have it blade first when it reaches the target - to do this you essentially need to be able to throw very consistently so it always rotates at the same speed, and then judge the distance very accurately - practise enough and you will learn a set of distances where the knife will be blade first, and then by stepping forwards or backwards you can align your target with one of these points so when the knife meets the target, it is correctly rotated. | 84 |
|
Is there a habitable zone orbiting a black hole? Black holes are extremely massive and (we think) they emit radiation in the form of Hawking radiation? Could a planet be in a stable orbit around a black hole with liquid water from the hawking radiation? | What requirements would a planet need in terms of atmospheric gasses and such for this to work? What would be the effects of time dilation on the planet as it gets closer and further away from the black hole if it was maybe an earth sized planet in orbit? How close would an earth sized planet have to be to what sized black hole for this to work if it does? If a planet maybe the size of Jupiter was very close in orbit around a black hole what would the effects of time dilation to the planet because a large planet might not experience time dilation equally on both sides of the planet. | 37 | As posed, this wouldn't work, because the temperature of the Hawking radiation of an object large enough gravitationally to have planets is minuscule. The larger the black hole, the lower its temperature, so to get a hot enough black hole to melt water, the black hole would have to be really small.
How small would it have to be?
A black hole with the mass of the Sun would have a temperature of 60 billionths of a degree above absolute zero (60 nanokelvin). A black hole with the mass of our Moon would only radiate at 1.7 K, less than the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation.
To get a black hole that radiated at 273K (the melting point of water), you'd need something less than 1% the mass of the Moon.
So this scenario wouldn't work. You'd need a black hole much smaller than the Moon to get the kind of temperature necessary, and such an object is not big enough to be the center of a solar system.
On the other hand, you could probably create a scenario in which a hot black hole orbits your planet and warms it up. But this is rather different from a habitable zone around a black hole.
Edit: some details added. | 23 |
[Destiny] Does the Light prevent aging as well as violent or accidental death? | During the Red War, Ikora mentions dying over and over, and other Guardians do too. Are they all violent deaths at the hands of enemies, or does the effect of the Light prevent any methods of dying?
It seems like the Guardians should be far wiser and more advanced/numerous if that were the case. For example, could there be Guardians still alive from the Collapse? Can Guardians have children?
I ask because if Guardians are somehow a race of immortals thanks to the Traveler's influence, it makes a lot more sense that so many alien aggressors would be tripping over each other to get at humanity. | 15 | Yes, the Light does prevent all types of aging, sickness or any other method of dying from permanently killing them.
However, there are several methods of killing a Guardian such as ontological weapons (reality consuming/corrupting weapons) either against said Guardian or against the Guardians Ghost. Other methods would include killing the Ghost or Guardian in a Darkness Zone or corrupting their bond (like Vex radiolaria consumption or injection).
Yes, their are Guardians still living from the Collapse (or at least in a close period of time to it). Example: Drifter.
As for if Guardians can have children this is still one of the most frequently asked questions in the community. Their is several theories:
1). They can, but if the Guardian (female) where to die the child would not be revived.
2). They don't do that because they would outlive their child.
3). They are sterile. | 16 |
ELI5: In modern aircraft, why are jet engines mounted on pylons away from the wing or body, while propeller engines are integrated directly into the wings or body? | Modern passenger jets, business jets, military transporters, and most other turbojet & turbofan powered aircraft (with the exception of fighters) mount their engines on pylons that stick out from the body or down from the wings ([examples here](https://www.google.com/search?q=turbofan+aircraft&tbm=isch)). Doesn't the pylon and nacelle add weight and drag? Why wouldn't they be built into the aircraft as much as possible to reduce the aircraft's frontal area and mass?
Meanwhile, turboprop & piston engines are almost always integrated into the wings or fuselage ([examples here](https://www.google.com/search?q=turboprop+aircraft&tbm=isch)). Intuitively, this seems way more optimal. Why can't this be done with turbojets? It has been done in the past (see the [de Havilland Comet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet#/media/File:BEA_de_Havilland_DH-106_Comet_4B_Berlin.jpg)), so what was wrong with that solution? | 16 | The only jet engines you'll see incorporated into the body of the aircraft are low bypass turbojets like those used on the Comet, high bypass turbofans are massive
Pylon mounting of turbofans comes with several important benefits. You don't have to integrate a 70" fan into your wing design. The engine is closer to the ground making it much easier/cheaper to service. You don't have to radically redesign your wing or entire aircraft just to change out the engine.
This last one is probably the biggest. Through the years aircraft engines have gotten bigger, and the ability to upgrade the engine and source slightly different engines from multiple vendors greatly extends the lifespan of the plane.
The original A320 could come with a CFM engine with a 68.3" fan or an IAE engine with a 65.3" fan. More recently they started offering A320s with new engine options(A320neo) which have a 78" or 81" fan. But because these engines are all mounted on a pylon, the wing and core of the airframe has remained the same through all of this which greatly reduced development and manufacturing costs
Engineers like leaving options open because it potentially saves you a lot of time, money, and effort in the future | 30 |
Since Mercury's temperature varies from 430°C to -180°C, and one day-night cycle takes 176 earth days, does the planet go through a few days of mild and livable temperature like the earth? | 36 | The answer is no, unfortunately.
On earth, we have an atmosphere that traps heat, so as the planet turns away from the sun, it cools very slowly, never really getting outside of "livable" temperature ranges except at the poles.
On mercury, there is no atmosphere, so it's the temperature of the physical surface that we're measuring, you wouldn't be able to just hold out a thermometer and get a temp reading.
At sunrise, you'd be blasted with unfiltered solar radiation as the sun rose, since there's no atmosphere to filter it, you get the full blast as soon as the sun peeks over the horizon. You'd be burned to a crisp within minutes. | 35 |
|
ELI5: What is happening to Russia's economy? Is this due, in part, to sanctions imposed by the west and/how will it effect the situation in the Ukraine? | Has Russia's economy being going south for a while or has the economic sanctions place upon Russia earlier this year finally starting to bite?
With Russia entering recession, how will this effect it's already strained relations with the EU and the US? | 26 | Saudi Arabia has drastically lowered the cost of their oil. By doing so, they are putting "the squeeze" on Russia, and other major oil producers to either do the same, or lose profit. Russia, for the most part, is the primary oil provider to Europe. That is one of the reasons why the EU is always too timid to sanction Russia harshly. With Saudi Arabia's oil prices now being so low, parts of Europe are now purchasing their oil and not Russia's. Because Russia's primary export is oil, this is starting to cripple the ruble. | 20 |
CMV: The US military has very rarely fought to "ensure our freedoms." In fact, it has done more to harm the world than help. | It seems to me that, at least since the American Civil War, the US military has had almost zero impact on the rights of Americans living at home. Maybe there was some preservation of potential loss of "life, liberty, and happiness" during WWII, especially defense against a potential invasion from Japan. But, with very few exceptions, the US military has existed as a militant pawn in geopolitics. It seems to me that the rhetoric of honoring the military for protecting domestic life is simply self-perpetuating propaganda. | 123 | I think the two counter-arguments would be:
1) The strategic engagements around the world since WWII have prevented the possibility of freedom harming wars (or terrorist attacks) coming to our soil, and
2) The preservation of American economic hegemony is necessary for protecting, at the very least our economic freedom, but also likely other freedoms, such as freedom to travel and engage in commerce around the world. | 52 |
How can we tell how far a star is? | Hi,I know about redshift, though I can't understand how we can tell how much that light has redshifted if we don't know its original state. In other words, we can observe only the light that travelled that long way to us, and due to doppler effect it has shifted a bit. I read the defition of redshift, and it says it happenens when the frequence of light is lower than when it was emitted. But we don't actually know what its original frequence was, right? I know this may sound a stupid question to you, but I can't realize it by myself. | 212 | We can actually say what the frequency of the broadcasted light was. The spectrum of starlight doesn't consist of a single frequency, nor is it constant and continuous. It has peaks and valleys at different frequencies. The locations of these depend on the material. We know that hydrogen absorbs light at very specific frequencies, so any light passing through a concentration of hydrogen will show a dip at those frequencies, because part of the light with those frequencies was absorbed by the hydrogen.
Now, we know that stars are made of mostly hydrogen and helium, so we can predict what the spectrum of a star looks like. When the light gets redshifted, the gaps in the spectrum get redshifted along with it. By identifying the frequencies of things like hydrogen absorption lines in the redshifted spectrum, we can determine exactly how much the light was redshifted. | 46 |
CMV: Obviously not all, but a lot of iPhone users don't actually understand WHY they hate Android so much | Let me just preface this by saying I couldn't care less if you're an iPhone user. Turn the tables though and I get judged by women everywhere on over my dreaded "green bubble" when I get their number and text them. Some play it off jokingly and keep texting like it's nbd, some literally ghost me after they mention it (not even kidding), but most can't resist saying something at least slightly judgemental.
Many iPhone users describe Androids as being super laggy, not user friendly, cluttered with bloatware, gimmicky, and generally view them as phones for poor people, lame people, or old people.
They're partially correct in believing some of those things, but what they don't understand is that literally none of it is because of Android as an operating system.
By itself, Android is actually far more fluid and user friendly and FAST than the latest version of iOS. The average person has never used a vanilla version of Android before.
iOS is a closed source platform meaning ONLY apple can use the software. It's why you don't see an LG iPhone, if one existed they'd probably ruin the device.
Well, when Google developed Android they made it open source meaning literally any fly by night Chinese tech start up could create a chintzy phone and slap Android inside of it. On top of this, you also have "high end" Android phones such as the Galaxy 10 and Note, and LG V series etc. While those phones aren't chintzy per se, they are essentially ruined by the software overlays and bloatware added by each individual manufacturer in order to differentiate each device. The Samsung Galaxy series has touch wiz for example, and the HTC phones have an overlay called sense.
I'm typing this right now on the Google Pixel 2 and literally the entire reason for the pixel/nexus line of phones from Google is to give users essentially a closed source version of Android, which is something you can't get from literally any other place besides Google directly. As much as I try to explain to iPhone users it's different, to them it's just a shitty Droid and they want nothing to do with it. My camera is better than the XS too and this is last year's model, just as an additional point lol. | 42 | What about your view do you want changed?
​
I would say that most iphone users don't hate android and don't really care.
Only the most vocal hyper fans trash android and some young people, because, lets face it, teenagers suck
​
Iphone has high market share among the main cohort of consumers (mid 20s - 50s) due to:
* great marketing / luxury item
* market penetration (app availability)
* simple user experience
* better managed security domain (corporate market)
​
​ | 37 |
[Interstellar] Why did they choose Miller's planet first? | While in orbit, they *knew* one hour there equaled 7 of their years. They could take a full year to evaluate Mann's broadcast, and still be back to Miller in under 9 minutes local time. While watching the film, this was the most mind-boggling decision that broke all suspension of belief. | 42 | They simply failed to realize that Miller's broadcast would have been redshifted. It's a elementary mistake but completely, wholly unintuitive. We're getting a binary beep, right? It says "Yay!" We've been getting it for 12 years here. We could look at Miller, we could see how close it was to Gargantua's gravity well (Romily does note that it's closer than they originally suspected, so before Endurance left it's entirely plausible nobody had any idea of the extent of the dilation), and we know it has water. WATER! the first exoplanet we've ever found with liquid water. We need to check this out!
When you stare at a dot in the sky, does it instantly occur to you that that space station or satellite or moon is experiencing life and the universe in slower motion than you? According to the universe, it should occur to you. But it doesn't. We've never moved far enough from our Gravity Well to experience this fundamental truth. We see time as a constant. This couldn't be further from the truth.
Bottom line is that they did a flawed cost benefit analysis while in a hurry to save humanity. They knew it was closest and had water. They knew there was some time dilation, but it wasn't until they got close that they could see just how much. And it's one thing to understand, academically, and another to *know*. That's what Brand meant when she and Cooper had their shouting match about the survival instincts of a boy scout troop. They got that far on smarts alone and it wasn't enough. They learned through *knowing* that day, and it cost them dearly. | 59 |
CMV: Justice Breyer should retire as soon as possible. | Justice Breyer is an octogenarian, and the oldest left-leaning Supreme Court justice by far. Although he seems to be in good health, he's still over 80 so the chances of him dying of old age increase by the year.
Recent history has shown us that the judges whom Republican presidents nominate go completely counter to the ideology of Breyer, and if he wants his legacy to continue and not be erased, he would step down now. If he cares about the causes he wrote for on the bench, he'd retire tomorrow. The 2022 midterms are approaching, and if the Republicans retake the Senate, Biden's hope for successfully confirming a nominee of his will become a pipe dream. It's simply too risky to wait.
RBG's refusal to retire during the Obama administration provokes a poignant warning of the dangers of dragging your feet on retirement. Breyer and Ginsburg were close friends and colleagues, and I'm sure she regretted not retiring under the Obama administration after Trump was elected and her health started going downhill as it did. I'm sure Breyer saw that, and one would think he'd want to learn a lesson from that.
My view is: a) Breyer should retire on his own accord, to protect causes that he clearly cares about. b) the Biden administration should gently nudge Breyer to retire, as many Presidents before him has done. and c) Perhaps most importantly, there is no reason why me, a left-leaning American, shouldn't be praying on our lucky stars that Breyer has the good sense to retire before it's too late. | 18 | One could argue that a supreme court justice should separate themselves from the political sphere and should only be focussed on the constitution. Therefore he should retire when he feels he is not able to do his job up to his standards. | 31 |
[40k] How our military's would do in the guard? | So our planet has after a brief transiting period (with some country s surrendering and others fighting) has been integrated into the Imperium with all the benefits and responsibility that come with it. One of them being that all of the surviving military forces that were not destroyed in the occupation have been formed either into the PDF or into Guard regiments to be sent off to some distant war-zones. Really what I wanted to know was what with all the enemy's the Imperials say are out there, what are the chances for our boys being sent out into these new wars? (meta - the question really is how would our real life modern military forces would fare in the 40k setting). | 23 | Pretty much the same as most other guard regiments. The scale at which guard regiments are deployed makes individual skill relatively useless most of the time.
Sure the Catachans are excellent jungle fighters and the Tanith are great stealth troops. But most of the time the war zones are so big that guard are simply deployed by the numbers with no regard for their talents or skills.
When Earth pays it's tithe of men out of our current armed forces it'll hardly matter if a man is a navy seal or some gulag prisoner. Guardsmen are bodies with lasguns and that's pretty much it.
The imperium doesn't care if a planet's tithe of men consists of highly trained soldiers, savages who'd never seen technology beyond a spear until they were conscripted or sacrificial prisoners.
They'll all get basic training, a lasgun and a one way ticket to the suck. | 34 |
ELI5: Why is it when some wounds heal, they leave a shiny scar, whereas others leave dark patches of skin? | Does it have to do with the size, type or depth of the injury? How to reduce the size or colour of the scar? | 60 | It deals with how that particular injury heals. Your skin is multilayered. The very top layers are actually dead. Underneath are the living tissues, softer, "normal skin" layers closer to the surface and "basal" layers below. These basal layers are slightly different from the ones closer to the surface and when you are injured, they play a role in 'filling the gap'. In small, superficial wounds, everything heals up to 'normal'. But not all the time. Sometimes the wound closes with those basal layers comprising most of the 'new' skin. | 20 |
[Mass Effect] How fast can a typical ship in Mass Effect travel? | I'm not talking about traveling through a relay. Obviously they're FTL-capable, but how long would it take to fly from the Citadel, for example, to Omega without the benefit of a relay? Is it even practical? Trying to avoid spoilers but obviously this has great impact in the original ME3 ending. | 80 | sublight, as fast as possible, given enough time.
at ftl, a regular citadel ship can fly at a maximum of 15 lightyears/24 hours. fuel is the limiting factor here for how long they can fly, that and maybe buildup of heat.
a reaper capital ship is said to fly twice as fast as a citadel ship at 30 lightyears/24 hours. | 50 |
Just learned about materialism and wanted to know if materialists can believe in things like electrons because we are not able to see electrons? | 52 | Materialism doesn't, at least in the first place, really have anything to with whether things are observable, so there's not any particular problem here. Materialism is just the view that every state that exists is, in some significant sense that needs to be specified, a material state. What this means can be questioned, but generally it means the sort of things described by the theories of physics. So electrons, at least at first glance, seem to be exactly the sorts of things a materialist will say exists. | 79 |
|
[Star Trek] How do Inertial Dampeners work? | 23 | Newton's first law of motion: An object at rest tends to stay at rest.
Inertial dampers "trick" this phenomenon into making the area being dampened move almost as a unit. From a relative perspective, no movement occurs, thus no inertial effect. Relative to the observer, all of space moves around them.
If you're asking how it accomplishes this feat... uhm. Gravitons or something. | 27 |
|
[Doctor Who] How do all the aliens who have secretly been manipulating the history of humanity for their own ends all get along? | Hi guys,
I've just met some nice guys, who are called the [Silence](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Silence). They've been secretly manipulating the history of humanity since the dawn of time to increase our technological prowess for their own ends (to build a spacesuit????)
But I also know a nice [Mr Scaroth](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Scaroth), who has been splintered in time and has been manipulating humanity's history in order to increase our technological prowess for his own ends. He was thought of as an Egyptian god and helped build the pyramids too!
The [Osirians](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Osirian) were also thought of as Egyptian gods and helped build the pyramids. Did they team up with Scaroth?
The [Daemons](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/D%C3%A6mon) were also thought of as Egyptian gods. They also blew up Atlantis (one time, it has been destroyed three times apparently???). They created humanity as an experiment and have spent millenia manipulating humanity.
Speaking of creating humanity, the [Fendahl](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Fendahl) also created humanity and have been manipulating us for milennia.
How does this work? Did they all take turns in manipulating us secretly for their own ends? Did they know about each other? Do they get on? Is there some sort of evil shadowy committee I'm not getting invited to? | 109 | Their "occupation" of Earth tends to get erased from history - you get a lot of timetravel on Earth, it's more historically important than it looks - and then another species notices how vulnerable Earth is, and decides to move in ... | 55 |
ELI5: When someone rubs their fingers together rather forcefully for a while, why does black residue start to appear? | 27 | The friction causes your epithelial cells to slough off and the oils combined with sweat and dust and whatever else you might have on your finger (or in the grooves of) accumulate into the dirty looking matter you're asking about.
If in the shower, you can also do this on your body. Some places (like the behind the ankle) are easier than others. | 26 |
|
ELI5: Why are bullet sizes usually in decimal and not just a whole number? | For example, why 5.56mm and not just 6mm? Why 7.62mm instead of just 8? | 732 | Because bullets are designed with very specific performance parameters in mind. In the case of the 5.56 NATO they were:
* .22 Caliber
* Bullet exceeding supersonic speed at 500 yards
* Rifle weight of 6 lb
* Magazine capacity of 20 rounds
* Select fire for both semi-automatic and fully automatic use
* Penetration of US steel helmet through one side at 500 yards
* Penetration of .135-inch steel plate at 500 yards
* Accuracy and ballistics equal to M2 ball ammunition (.30-06 Springfield) out to 500 yards
* Wounding ability equal to M1 Carbine
On top of all that, they wanted a round with less recoil than the M2.
After development and testing of many different new ammunitions, the brand new .223 remington was the round that had the best results for the specified parameters. It was later officially adopted by the US military and renamed "Cartridge, 5.56mm Ball, M193." This round was further developed and became the 5.56×45mm NATO with the subsequent military designation of SS109 in NATO and M855 in the U.S.
While 5.56 may sound arbitrary, it was the result of a 13 year project that spanned multiple countries and involved every major gun and ammunition company of the time, to create a small caliber, high velocity firearm for military use. | 481 |
ELI5: How do people get "used to" the cold? | I was just recently in a snow town and when I ask locals how they can be wearing a shirt, their response is usually, I'm used to it. | 86 | Body temperature regulation is controlled by a part of the brain called the hypothalamus (which also does a lot of other things). The "normal" temperature range where you feel comfortable is determined by what temperatures you are exposed to most often. But there's an even bigger range of temperatures that it's possible to feel comfortable at, and your "normal" temperature can move around within that range depending on your surroundings. | 45 |
ELI5: Why do some clear liquids turn foggy when mixed together? | Working at a bar, have always wondered why clear (pilsner) beer and clear apple cider turn foggy when mixed together. I'm sure there are plenty other examples. How is this, and why are substances clear or foggy in the first place? | 21 | There are two ways this very often occurs: either it forms millions of tiny bubbles (like with your drinks, because they form or release a gas) or it forms millions of tiny solid particles (called precipitate) because of their chemistry. There are other ways that this happens, but these two ways are the most common.
Substances are clear because of the arrangement of the electrons in the chemicals. The chemicals that interfere very little get part of the light spectrum absorbed when light passes through, so it looks colored. If the chemicals interfere basically not at all (like water) it looks clear.
Things get distorted through liquid for the same reason lens do: they change light's direction. | 15 |
A lot of drugs are derived from plants. Why not just eat the plants? | I keep hearing about new wonder drugs derived from plants - many of which seem to have long-known (according to local tradition) curative properties. If that's the case, then why not just use the whole plant? Is there a good reason, apart from making Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline a lot of money, that the source material just doesn't cut it? If its just a concentration thing, couldn't you just eat lots of it to get the same effect? | 22 | There are a few reasons for this. By the way, microorganisms also produce a lot of drug compounds.
Firstly, the concentrations of active compounds are often low, and nobody wants to eat vast quantities of plant material to get an active dose.
Secondly, the concentrations of active compounds often varies greatly between different batches, so there's no way of knowing how much you're getting.
Thirdly, the plants may contain other compounds which are poisonous or have unwanted effects.
Finally, compounds taken from nature are usually not ideal drugs - they are usually chemically modified to optimise their beneficial effects and minimise side effects. | 43 |
Why do we build larger particle colliders with bigger diameters instead smaller diameters traveled multiple times? | The question came up after [this article](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/large-hadron-collider-2-0-cern-fast-tracks-plan-develop-three-time-bigger-particle-collider-1624587) discussing the successor to the Large Hadron Collider. | 63 | To go to higher energies at a fixed bending radius, you need stronger bending magnets. The momentum per unit charge of a particle along the central orbit inside a bending element is called its *magnetic rigidty*: Bρ = p/q.
B is the magnetic field strength of the bending magnet, ρ is the bending radius of the central orbit, p is the momentum of the test particle, and q is the charge of the test particle.
If you want to increase p while leaving ρ fixed, you need to increase the magnetic field strength proportionally to p (or in terms of energy, sqrt[E^(2) - m^(2)]).
We can only make our bending magnets so strong, and it ends up being better just to increase the bending radius. That means that if you need a larger diameter accelerator.
Or you could sidestep the need to bend the beam entirely by using a linear accelerator. But then you lose the ability to put the beam particles on target (or collide them with another beam) more than once. | 48 |
Is there an ideology that revolves around aesthetics and beauty being the very most important ideas that exist? | In this ideology, aesthetics and beauty might govern all other decisions. They would be the deciding factors in everything.
I would elaborate further if I could. I’m very new to the world of philosophy, and also very excited to learn more, so maybe if any of you don’t understand what I’m asking you could ask a question in return so I can clarify anything that needs clarifying. Thanks for your help. | 27 | Nietzsche argued for something similar in The Birth of Tragedy, that life can be understood as a conflict between "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" forces, or the forces of beauty and order vs. the chaos and meaningless of an uncaring universe. He argued that art makes life worthwhile by portraying this conflict and making suffering into beauty (the title being a reference to the claim he makes that Greek tragedies were the apex of art for perfectly achieving this balance).
One of his posthumously published notebooks also contains a quote along these lines: "We have art lest we perish from the truth." | 23 |
ELI5: Do Ants (and/or other similar insects) Breathe? Like breathe and respirate in a similar way to Humans/Mamals? | 122 | Most insects breathe through spiracles, which are tiny pores on their legs that allow air into their bodies. However, they do not have lungs or anything like that, largely because they also have no circulatory system. Instead of a heart pumping blood to a single central area to get oxygenated the way we work, insects have "open" circulation, where the heart just keeps a freely-flowing pool of blood-like substance flowing around all the organs. They have no blood vessels, and everything in their body cavities is more or less just floating in a soup of blood.
This works for insects specifically because they are tiny. Oxygen doesn't have to go as far to perfuse (or soak into) all of their tissues, so just having a free-flowing soup of blood running past some openings on the legs is just fine for them. The oxygen will get into their tissues because they have so little tissue which needs oxygenation. This is one of the hard limits on insect size, as if they get too large their tissues will get oxygen starved. This is also why insects were absolutely gigantic hundreds of millions of years ago, as oxygen levels were much higher at that time, so they could more easily perfuse a larger body. | 279 |
|
[Warhammer 40k]So, if Chaos had the power to spirit all the Primarchs away, why not just kill them then? | Or raise them in the Warp, or put them in lava planets, or literally anything short of putting them with other humans for the Emperor to find? | 35 | This is what the Chaos Gods wanted. What better way to get at your greatest enemy than through his own "family"? They couldn't have raised them in the Warp, because they would have simply become daemon princes, which Big E can handle. They didn't want to simply kill the Primarchs, because then they don't have an "in".
What they did was allowed the Primarchs to be raised as Humans. As regular people. They were allowed to grow in an environment that wasn't being strictly regulated by someone like The Emperor, which is an environment that would have greatly lessened the chance of Chaotic corruption later down the line.
By the time Big E started finding them they were adults, and so had not had their minds barred against the influences of Chaos. Were they less susceptible than your average person? Totally. But it only takes one to start the domino effect. Really, the Chaos Gods got SUPER lucky with Horus being the one that started everything, because he was the favorite son. He was arguably the most powerful of all of the Primarchs and was generally respected by them all.
Consider that the only reason that Horus was able to fell The Emperor is because he was holding back. He didn't want to hurt Horus. He didn't want to believe that his favorite son had turned to the very thing they were most against. In no other situation could they have ever gotten The Emperor into such a position. There is no other scenario that leads to his being mortally wounded without a favored Primarch being involved, because in no other situation does The Emperor willingly let down his guard.
The Chaos Gods took a calculated gamble, and it turned out marvelously for them. | 49 |
ELI5: How can American restaurants legally pay their servers and delivery drivers less than minimum wage under the assumtion that they might get tips? | 727 | Legally they can't, they're required to make up pay to minimum wage if tips don't cover it. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean they do, and if you insist then they might decide that someone who doesn't earn enough tips is doing a crap job and should be fired. | 566 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.