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
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
Question from a 10-year-old: How to bugs "know" which part of something matches their coloring so they can use it for camouflage? | [From him:] I saw a small tan moth in our shower this morning. The walls of our shower are made of slate that is mostly grey but with red and tan parts. This moth was on the tan part and it matched the wings great. How did the moth know not to be on the red or grey to hide?
Things I know: I know some animals see color differently than us. And some see black and white.
I also don't know how lizards know what color to change in to, but that is a different question.
[Mom again:]Thanks, askSci -- we appreciate any answers you can give us (the more kid-friendly the better, but I'll do my best to translate. | 20 | The insect doesn't have to 'know' what things match it's camouflage, it just as to prefer to stand/rest on certain colors. Basically, it has to have a 'favorite color'. This is a fairly easy preference to evolve - insects already respond to many color and texture cues in their environment - and it happens like this: any insects who happen to prefer the wrong color, die. | 17 |
ELI5 Why do MRI machines cost so much to shut off? | 26 | You need liquid helium cooling to keep the magnets working. The only way to shut the MRI machine off is to flush the helium. And then you need to pump in new helium to be able to start it again. That's not particularly cheap. | 32 |
|
[Doctor Who] "A Time Lord's body is a miracle. Even a dead one. There are whole empires out there who'd rip this world apart for just one cell." Assuming this statement is true just what could somebody do with the body of a dead Time Lord? | 521 | Time Lords are time sensitive – something that is presumably coded into their genes. They also have the capacity for complete cellular regeneration, and extremely long life in each single generation – as well as enhanced strength compared to many humanoid species, a respiratory bypass system that allows them to survive without air for quite some time and, of course a second heart.
There is also the Rassilon Imprimatur embedded into each cell – which allows travel through the vortex in ways that others cannot – mapping them into Block Transfer Computation according to some accounts, and they are a source of Arton energy.
Any of those traits could be highly valuable to any genetic engineers looking to reverse-engineer them – or simply to culture the cells to grow their own Time Lords.
| 387 |
|
[Star Wars] Did Pong Krell ACTUALLY have a chance of becoming Dooku’s apprentice? | He seemed very insistent that when he got off of Umbara, he’d find Dooku and he’d be his new Master. But after his failure with Ventress, and his even WORSE failure with Savage, would Dooku seriously consider taking a former Jedi Master? Or would he just say “Sorry, but we’re not taking applications at this time.” And kill him? | 15 | I doubt Dooku would make him a real apprentice, but Dooku and Palpatine might tell him they would just to manipulate him into doing something useful for a little bit before getting rid of him. It’s unlikely Dooku would be able to keep it a secret he was training a former Jedi Master as an apprentice even if he wanted to, and Palpatine didn’t even like Dooku having Ventress. And Krell doesn’t seem strong enough that Palpatine would want him to replace Dooku either. And Krell would be unlikely to accept just being some tool for them.
So they’d probably just do what Palpatine did to Dooku; use him until he’s not useful anymore, and then take him out without a second thought. | 19 |
What does it mean to confront subconcious thoughts and feelings? | From what I understand of psychoanalysis, you try to find subconscious thoughts and feelings people have and make them confront them to better themselves. But what does it mean to do this? Could someone give an example? Once you find an insecurity, how can you deal with it or confront it?
If I don't understand it correctly, please correct me.
Sorry if this a common question. | 51 | A question based approach is often times the best way of recognizing deeper thoughts. This can be because people have often just not taken time to analyze themselves. Another approach that is great is to use art, symbolism, and metaphor then looking at one's reactions and interpretations to it. Another part of psychoanalysis is to look for patterns in behavior, what someone's environment is, and their history. Psychedelics can also be a pretty insightful tool to use in learning about your own subconscious.
Confronting subconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is going to vary greatly person to person. With trauma things like EMDR, ceremony, symbolism, experiential learning, and similar approachs are going to be more successful, while someone struggling with depression might just need someone to point out thinking patterns and help them change their narrative.
I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for, but hopefully it answers some of your questions | 15 |
ELI5: How can televisions measure number of people who watch them? | 21 | The television can't, but a sample of families are given boxes which track what's on TV and who is in the room. They just press a button on a remote when they enter and leave the room. Then the company handing out the boxes (e.g. Nielsen in the US or BARB in the UK) extrapolates from their sample to estimate the total number of viewers. | 10 |
|
CMV:The use of the atom bombs was justified. | The use of the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was a justifiable action for the United States to end the Pacific war with Japan. This applies to both the decision at the time, and in hindsight. The rational is simple: It helped to end the worst conflict in recent human history. An invasion of the islands would have left America with hundreds of thousands of casualties (that includes KIA and injuries) and the Japanese possibly millions. Simply put, in the long run, the bombing saved more lives than it took, American AND Japanese. Operation Overlord would have been a shitshow. This is not to take away from the soviet invasion, I fully admit that they played a part, perhaps even a crucial one, in the surrender, but that the bombs also played a significant effect on the mind of the emperor and the big six to surrender justifies their use. What's more, an invasion would have eventually involved the soviets, who would have probably demanded the north island of Hokkaido. No one (well, no western ally) would have wanted another North Korea situation.
I'm quite well read on the subject, but an opposing opinion is always welcomed. Some things that I would like to point out (and if you contradict them, please provide a citation, I would be glad to read it):
The US (pushed in part by the soviets) demanded a unconditional surrender from the Japanese.
We never gave them a conditional surrender, on the point of keeping their emperor (their big concern at the end) we never gave in, and offered a very cryptic response to their inquiries. It was only during the occupation that we decided they could keep the emperor as a figurehead (not a ruler).
Japan never offered surrender terms to the US before the bombing of Nagasaki. It is sometimes misreported that they did. They did try and speak with the soviets about helping push a conditional surrender, but the soviets stalled them on purpose and never gave them on answer (so they could attack manchuria and try and get territory). A Japanese naval attache in Switzerland tried to offer a conditional surrender to the OSS on his own initiative, but when asked for confirmation by the Americans, Tokyo never gave it.
Japan's war consul (the big six) was split on surrender terms (it had to be unanimous) half wanted to just keep the emperor, half wanted several more terms (Japan manages its own war criminals, disarms for a time under their own supervision, no occupation, and no major change in government-Terms no American would dream of agreeing to). Since they never agreed, they never offered peace or surrender terms.
The Emperor mentions the atom bomb in his surrender speech.
We dropped pamphlets in Nagasaki and Hiroshima (and several other target cities, urging them to evacuate. (obviously this was taken with a grain of salt).
The Japanese had their own nuclear weapon program.
The US decided not to use a demonstration bomb because they felt it might not make the same impact, and the bomb used on hiroshima was untested (the trinity test used an implosion type bomb, little boy was a gun type) and if it was a dud it would hurt credibility.
Many US generals say the bomb was unnecessary, and while true that it did not shift the military equation much, it arguably had a tremendous impact on the minds of the big six, and more importantly, the emperor, to end the war.
Hiroshima was a partial military target (second army headquarters)
One of the several reasons we bombed nagasaki was that we intercepted a transmission from the top Japanese admiral, who though that we might only have one or two bombs, so we felt we needed to prove him wrong (we only did have 2, the third would have taken a few weeks to be ready).
To those who just don't like nukes on "principle": They would have been developed sooner or later. Good thing we demonstrated how terrifying they are, and (knock on wood) will never be used in anger again
Some argue that the bombing was racially motivated, and we wanted to wipe the Japanese out. While wartime America certainly was racist, we certainly did not want to kill Japanese for kicks. During our bombing campaigns and our invasion plans, we purposely avoided hitting certain railroads and granaries, and attacking during certain times of the harvest, to avoid mass starvation that could have left millions dead. Truman also by and large rejected bombing Kyoto, the cultural capital.
Oh, and please no one cite "Untold American history" as a source. I know of and have spoken with the Professor, he is quite bias.
**TL;DR A-Bombs=a lot died. No A-Bombs=Thrice as many died and Chaos. You decide. **
_____
> *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!* | 458 | Well presented argument;
I think this:
>The US decided not to use a demonstration bomb because they felt it might not make the same impact, and the bomb used on hiroshima was untested (the trinity test used an implosion type bomb, little boy was a gun type) and if it was a dud it would hurt credibility.
Would be a mistake. Surely if two bombs were available, a demonstration bomb on a less populated target would be more appropriate. Perhaps a regular bombing of an area to clear the civilians out and draw their attention before the big 'show'.
If after that the desired effect wasn't had, then perhaps Hiroshima might've been acceptable as a decision.
| 143 |
ELI5: Why do our ears stop processing external sound and instead amplify internal sounds like heartbeat during a headrush/ when we are dizzy? | 43 | I think it's more complex than that. When you have a headrush or get dizzy, chances are either you already have a transient blood pressure problem or heart problem (unlikely) and your heart compensates or you reflexively increase heart rate and contractility (pumping force) due to the fight or flight response because of feeling dizzy and all these will result in enhanced sounds from the heart. The feeling that something is wrong suddenly will also make you shift attention focus to your body to monitor it, which is probably why you also begin hearing your breathing (could also be that breathing rate/depth increases reflexively). Usually you don't hear the heart even if you try (unless it increases rate or contractility), and other things like breathing are ignored by your brain because it's habituated to it.
Edit: English | 13 |
|
[Skyrim/Elder Scrolls] I was injured while adventuring, what are my options? | Medical care, Career paths, what am i looking at here? | 28 | You have basic healing magic, could wait for a while, or sleep, or if you have a healing potion, drink it. If you don't, then buy one at an alchemy shop, or make one, or eat food, or ingredients, which have healing properties ( blue mountain flower, for example). | 21 |
I don't think parents should lie to their kids about the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, etc. CMV! | My parents told me they were real, and I had fun with it and wasn't filled with feelings of betrayal or anything when I found out the truth. Still, I'm not sure you can morally justify lying to your kids about something like that for years and years for the sake of them having more fun. What are your thoughts? | 19 | Imagination is an important part of the growth of a functioning human mind. As adults we look back on our childhood fantasies with fondness and loving nostalgia, and they lay the foundations for our entire imagination as adults.
You wouldn't deprive your children of fantasy stories in media, would you? And yet, these are so much -less- impactful and meaningful to children. Is it just that you don't want to get *your* hands "dirty"?
Children don't have the references to be truly moved by a powerful fiction like an adult can be. But even an adult cannot be moved the same way a child can be moved by the idea that there is some magic in the world-- while they are still young enough to believe it.
Such things do no harm their ability to be rational functioning adults, as it didn't for anyone else, but their absence could greatly harm their ability to be imaginative, optimistic adults, with a healthy appreciation for the childlike wonder of their youth. | 18 |
I'm interested in what *is happening* when we compose and read fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Which branch of philosophy and authors should I be looking at? | I completed my undergrad education in English and Philosophy, with a strong emphasis on literary theory on the English side and Philosophy of Religion and Language on that end.
It isn't surprising that this is where my interest is, then!
Questions like these have been on my mind:
* *How, if at all, does a piece of writing actually represent the reality it claims to represent?*
* *What does it mean for an author to "tell the truth?"*
* *What assumptions do readers have to make before they can engage in reading fiction, poetry, nonfiction, etc.? Are there any assumptions that, if not adopted before reading, make the reading incomprehensible to the reader?*
I did a bit of work involving the truth in fiction, so I've read David Lewis and his whole 'school' of similarly interested logicians. My interest is less in logic and semantics and more in pinning down a definition for the act of reading and writing.
Where do I go from here? | 20 | Check out Gadamer and Bruner and hermeneutics; going from there, Barthes is a good read. Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, and addresses some of the questions you're asking, and Barthes famously coined "the death of the author," which is important to the contemporary understanding of hermeneutics and texts in culture. | 13 |
CMV: Modern capitalism cannot exist in a future society. | Now, before you start calling me a communist, I think capitalism can work in the future with changes such as UBI. In fact, that would be the best system for the near future in my opinion.
Now, the reason I'm saying changes need to be made is because of automation. Automation isn't something your grandkids or even your kids have to worry about. You have to worry about it too. Automation isn't something that will be here in the future, it's already here, and it's spreading quickly. By 2030, roughly 30% to 50% of jobs are going to be taken by automation, with some people saying the job loss could be even bigger. Keep in mind, the unemployment rate during the great depression was 25%! And remember, by 2030 that's supposed to happen. What about 2045? The unemployment rate then could easily be 75% to 95%, if not more. If no one has any jobs, how can people live? No money equals no food, no homes, no anything really.
I just want to know if anyone thinks todays capitalism can work in tomorrow's society.
Oh, and if you think your job can't be taken in the near future, go ahead and tell me why. I could probably think of a good reason why it could be. | 512 | There was a time that the bulk of people worked in agriculture. Not any more...what happened? Industrialization of agriculture; the use of machines to let fewer people do the same work. Automation is the same thing; machines allowing one or two people to fun an entire factory instead of a few dozen. So what will happen? Well, what happened with the extra agricultural workers? We created other jobs, more jobs; jobs in the tech industry, more entertainers, more social workers and other jobs that basically didn't exist at one point. The average level of education went up, and people found other functions. And, perhaps, the average person worker fewer hours per week. The same thing can happen here. Every truck driver that gets displaced, every factory worker, can maybe move on to something else; opening a small brewery, farming local chickens in their back yard, becoming an EMT, and so on. Is this the BEST solution? Heck, no. But it's perfectly plausible. | 208 |
Anyone here who now works outside academia, how did you alter your resume? Or did you just submit your CV on your applications? | I'm a finishing PhD student in marine biology, and I'm trying to keep my options open. I have a CV I'm comfortable with, but I'm not sure how to cut it down to 1 page for a resume. Does anyone have any tips? Has anyone gotten a job by just uploading their CV instead? | 22 | No, you definitely have to make it into a resume. CVs are a totally different thing and will probably just irritate any hiring managers. Does your school have a career center that can help you out? This is a pretty common question, so you can probably find info online easily too. | 28 |
[Fullmetal Alchemist] How is the conservation of energy and momentum explained? | I know the first anime (I prefer this one) explains that souls from our world provide energy for transmutation. But in the manga/Brotherhood world how is energy supplied for transmutation? Alchemists have a pretty detailed understanding of the composition of matter they should know that moving bulk amounts of matter, undoing chemical bonds, forcing chemical reactions to occur all require energy, in some cases large amounts. How is this reconciled? | 15 | Alchemists harness power from the tectonic movements of earth beneath the ground. It's why Father can block their alchemy (but not alkahestry), because his construction extends beneath them and he stops them from getting access to that tectonic energy. | 27 |
Eli5 When forging what is the thing falling off the metal and why? | So when I see videos people or machines forging things there is always a part of the outer layer that will fall off after each hit. Pls explain! | 54 | That's called "scale". Most metals, and especially hot metals, like to react with oxygen. So the surface (where it's exposed to the air) forms a layer of metal oxides. Most metal oxides are solid and brittle even at very high temperatures, so they form "scales" that falls off as soon as you distort the underlying soft metal...like when you hit it. | 73 |
eli5: Why does tinfoil affect teeth nerves so much? | 956 | it's like creating a battery in your mouth. Aluminium foil and other metals in your mouth have an electrochemical potential difference. Combined with saliva, which produces a wet, salty environment that's ideal for the transfer of energy, you experience a painful shock of voltage | 844 |
|
[Godzilla] If Godzilla emits radiation, has atomic breath, is powered by radiation, and was essentially created by atomic bombs, how is the entire human race still alive? | I mean I know it’s just a movie but we’re talking about a giant radioactive lizard titan created/fueled by an atomic bomb with literal atomic breath destroying cities and such. Like, you can’t tell me that these yahoos created a mini ship that can warp into hollow earth but they’re blissfully unaware of the dangers of radiation exposure. | 19 | Well, in the new Legendary movies it seems the radiation he emits gets directed mostly into causing rapid growth in plant and some animal life, meaning every time he wakes up our ecosystem basically gets a refreshing boost. | 15 |
How is mental illness treated in the third world? | Now when I say treated, I mean just that--treated. How is it taken care of? If we're to assume less resources are available to societies not of the developed world, how do they go about treating things like autism? Do these people just "cope," for lack of a better term? I started thinking about this the other day because I wondered if a hoarder can only exist when there's an abundance of goods. Then I wondered if hoarding is just a symptom and would display differently in a culture that doesn't have an emphasis on collecting stuff. Hopefully I didn't ramble too much. | 54 | Mental illness is treated much more at the family and community level than at the institutional level. In Europe and the US, families are quick to hospitalize, institutionalize, and provide drug-based treatments to the mentally ill. In Africa, India, and other rural regions with large populations the responsibility for care of the mentally ill lies with the family, or potentially the larger town or village that person lives in. Violent or really bad cases are referred to hospitals, where they get care (which might be drugs, confinement, or therapy in rarer cases). | 17 |
ELI5: What is the difference in sight between having 2 eyes and having 1? | Or, what are the differences | 43 | Stereo vision gives you depth perception. hold 2 objects out in front of you, but with one further away from you than the other. When you close one eye, they can appear to be on the same plane. Having both eyes open lets you see that one is further away from you. | 21 |
Why could I only see out of one lens in the 3D cinema where as my SO could see out of both? | So a few days ago me and my SO went to IMAX, which is a 3D cinema with "laser technology" , whilst watching the previews i noticed that i could only see out of one eye through the glasses, i asked my SO and she said she could see out of both, we swapped glasses and it was the same situation.
I am aware of light polarization and how it works but my question is why only I had the issue of only being able to see through one lens and not my SO.
What could have caused this? | 152 | Most likely you have suppression scotoma, a very common condition when people's eyes have a slight misalignment. This causes one of your eyes to suppress the image in order to prevent double vision. If you cover the seeing eye you should notice that the suppressed image appears. Sometimes this causes amblyopia, where the suppressed eye never forms proper neural connections and commit get perfectly clear sight. | 57 |
[Elder Scrolls] Was Miraak ever mentioned in the lore before the events of Dragonborn? If not, who was the first recorded Dragonborn? | 24 | He's never mentioned prior to dragonborn but in previous games the first Dragon born was talos mentioned by name and unnamed nords having the power of the shouts. Wasn't until skyrim that the shouts and dragonborn became interconnected to each other. | 30 |
|
ELI5 : Why the population of Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and China so high compared to other nataions in this world | 22 | Rice, rice, baby.
Of grains available to the pre-industrial world, rice yields the most calories per acre of land. At the same time, it is labor intensive, and requires more people to farm it.
You wind up with a staple that both supports and requires more people, and that leads to a higher population density. | 30 |
|
ELI5 If the bubonic plague was present throughout so much of human history, why was the outbreak from 1346 to 1353 (the black death) so much worse than the other outbreaks? | 209 | It was able to quickly spread across all Europe (and probably north Africa too) though the Mediterranean trade network. A lack of hygiene and previous starvation also worsened the situation. Moreover, it's wasn't only the bubonic plague, there was also its pneumonic form, which is much more contagious and deadly. | 175 |
|
How to politely refute someone who has gone emeritus | Hi,
I work alongside an emeritus professor who has "gone emeritus". They've not published in their original field in over a decade (well they are emeritus). They're publishing material in a different field to that which they are an expert in. Their 5 publications in the last six years are not well received, with few citations (about one article per year - no books/chapters - 5 citations per year per article - good articles get over 100 citations a year in our field). Their talks on the subject garnered a lot of controversy, the professor has been told that "you can't do that" by many people who have spent their careers in the field.
If the professor took the position that their work was the personal opinion of a learned fellow then I would see that as a net benefit to humanity. However, the professor takes the position that their personal opinion is based on a more rigorous method and understanding of the subject than those who actually do the subject, have made mistakes and learnt from them, and follow best practice etc. At this point I admit, as everyone does, that there are problems in best practice, but that it is best practice for many reasons. Further, the differences between the professor's approach and that of the field as taught, practised, and presented in books and articles are not technical, interpretative, or a small matter. He would not pass a first year PhD continuation exam. This says a lot about the open-mindedness/low standards required for him to have passed peer review and become published. I am for open-mindedness and the ability to try-out new ideas without being chastised. However, whilst the external world operates approximately as a free marketplace of ideas, the politics of the institution mean that personal power rules here.
I have decided to refute the professor's position in writing. This is because he still has significant influence and is having a strong negative impact on many people, including myself. I understand the politics of doing such a thing are very risky to me. Even if he were simply insisting that 1+1=3, anyone who disagreed is painting a target on their own backs.
I intend that what I write will only be read by people within the relevant political circle. One of the leaders of this circle comes from the field which my supervisor falsely claims expertise in, and is very sympathetic to my position. This leader has pressed my case before, but is unable to change matters. The other three effectively support the emeritus professor whilst claiming no knowledge of the subject.
I have thought about the best way to present my case. The facts of the case are clear: the professor's work does not cite the major sources anywhere, does not include the major concepts, does not explain why his work does the exact opposite of/ignores best practice, does not explain how his "rigorous, transparent, systematic, objective" method is any different from having an opinion etc. This is not a matter of building a strong case, but of presenting a case in a sympathetic but forceful manner.
I intend to replicate his argument in as positive as light as possible. Then in my critique I plan on using the Principle of Charity (taking kind interpretations of his work, understanding, knowledge without putting words in his mouth).
I have spoken to the professor about my concerns. He takes no negative criticism. His initial response, years ago, was to repeatedly call me stupid. Now he does not call me stupid, but instead tells everyone else that my views cannot be trusted. I have tried to be polite and respectful but there can be no academic argument, for example he laughed at me when I asked his opinion of a set of operating principles that directly contradict his published approach. I wish this were a joke.
Ultimately, if the political positions are maintained then nothing will change, even if I have shown that the professor is deluded. However, I need to present my case for my own well-being and integrity. It is likely that I will move on from here if nothing changes and so I want to have done everything within my power before I call it a day.
What advice would you give in presenting my argument?
**TLDR**: How do you politely say "dude, you may have power but you haven't a clue" | 21 | An unfortunate truth is that many professors slide towards senile dementia before they retire. Instead of regarding this fellow as a cantankerous colleague whose professional opinionfacts fly in the face of logic and good sense, consider thinking of him in a gentler light as a senile dementia sufferer. Then ask yourself whether it's worth your time and effort to discredit his non-work that no one in his current field seems to believe.
It could be that the people who still support him and claim ignorance of his field are just avoiding dealing with the reality that he's losing it out of politeness. | 21 |
[ELI5] how do people crack games? | 86 | The game programmer wrote code that says roughly:
draw_start_screen()
licensed=get_license_status()
if licensed==false:
exit
enter_game()
Cracking a game involves removing that 'exit' line. Since the end user doesn't have the source code they have to look at the compiled code which is much harder. Debugging tools can help track when the game makes the license check and then that instruction can be patched over.
Now of course contemporary games make this more complicated, so it is a battle of game developers making more complicated code to check the license status and people trying to disable it. Game makers might look for debugging tools and change their behavior; someone might use a VM to hide the fact a debugging tool is being used. The game might check for a debugging VM, people start hiding their VM status. It is a back-and-forth game.
Nowadays game makers might put a small but critical portion of the game online such that the game only works if the remote service is available and checks the license. Then the user has to guess at that functionality and reimplement, or figure out how to patch around it.
But ultimately it all comes down to the game checking on a license and taking an action, and the user tricking the game into thinking the check has passed. | 155 |
|
ELI5:Why is it when a tooth filling comes in contact with tin foil (that stuff you cook with) it hurts so bad? | 112 | You create a small battery and give a small shock to your tooth. The aluminum foil is one electrode, your filling is the other, and your saliva is the electrolyte...the solution that allows electrons to move from one electrode to the other. | 100 |
|
ELI5: Why do most fast food restaurants specialize in hamburgers and french fries? Why isn't there more variety? | If you're in the mood for a cheeseburger and fries, you're in luck because you have your pick of McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Sonic, Carl's Jr., White Castle... the list goes on.
Hot dogs are a well-known and beloved American food too, but off the top of my head the only place I can think of to get a hot dog is Nathan's, and I've only seen a handful of those over the course of my lifetime.
Why is this? How come so many restaurants can serve the same type of food with all that competition? | 34 | Tons of places offer hot dogs: street vendors, Sonic, Dairy Queen, and many more regional places. Many places offer Mexican food. Many places offer deli sandwiches. Quite a few Asian places could be called fast food, even if they are rarely drive through. I'd say they have competition. | 25 |
[Star Trek/General Sci-Fi] Why aren't bridges embedded deep inside ships? | It doesn't make sense to have your bridge exposed if you don't even have windows. All it will take is one good shot and your entire command structure is shot. Why don't Starship Architects put bridges in the center of ships, where they aren't exposed? | 22 | Watch the new BSG show, where the bridge is right at the middle of the ship.
In stuff like Star Trek the point is to keep the bridge as far from the warp core as possible though, because those are dangerous. Add in the fact that Federation ships are not designed as warships and we see why the bridges are up on the command saucers.
Star Wars, there's a similar distance from the reactor thing. Furthermore, big capital ships like Star Destroyers are designed to intimidate and having a big command deck looming above the rest of the ship communicates that quite well. | 37 |
At what point do you tell a child something is impossible. | My son asked me what are the chances that you could flip heads 100 times in a row.
I told him it was extremely unlikely, then I worked it out to 7.88e-31.
So, although it is possible, at what point would you say something is impossible? | 15 | I would think about it in terms of time.
If you flipped and counted 100 coins every second for the rest of your life, could you do it? What if you recruited a million people to help you? What if you asked a computer to do it for you at a million flips per second? What if you had a million computers doing a million flips per second? Etc.
Eventually either there’s a combination that makes it plausible (albeit very expensive!) or it would take more time or energy than is available in the known universe. Then it’s impossible. | 34 |
If two sets of identical twins married each other and had kids, would the cousins be genetically similar enough to be considered "siblings"? | 29 | Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Since the Mothers and Fathers are genetically identical, then genetically, the children have the same parents. Of course, blood siblings can (theoretically) be as genetically distinct from each other as their parents are from each other, but that's *really* unlikely. (something like 2^-46 unlikely) | 16 |
|
How do scientists determine how many millions of years ago 2 or more separate organisms shared a common ancestor? | I mostly understand the process of how they determine what the common ancestors were, but I don't understand how they place a time on it. This question was sparked by [this](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2124050-sneaky-beetles-evolved-disguise-to-look-like-ants-then-eat-them/) post about beetles and ants, and in it, the scientists determined that the 12 beetles examined shared a common ancestor ~105 million years ago.
How do scientists go about determining the time period for when these species started to evolve separately? | 17 | A significant number of mutations have little or no effect on the phenotype of an organism. As such, they cannot be selected for or against, so they accumulate within a lineage at a relatively constant rate. By counting these silent mutations between two extant species, we can estimate how long they've been reproductively isolated, and thus evolving separately, from each other. | 19 |
ELI5: If the British monarch had a child while visiting the states, and then fulfilled all the requirements, could that child grow up to be President and the King/Queen of England? | 104 | If a British monarch were to give birth abroad, they would most likely have declared whatever place she was to give birth in as part of "international territory". By doing so, the baby would be granted whatever citizenship the mother had.
This happened in Canada for the birth of Princess Margaret of the Netherlands. The birthing ward of the Ottawa Civic Hospital was "declared to be officially a temporary part of international territory, so that she would be born in no country and would inherit only her Dutch citizenship from her mother". This is also why there is now a tulip festival in Ottawa every year - the Dutch Royal family sends the bulbs to Canada every year in recognition of it.
TL,DR: Any place in the world can be declared international territory in order to avoid these problems. | 92 |
|
How do ocean animals "drink"? | 42 | they do not drink water like land animals do, as they don't risk dehydration from the sun. This goes for all the marine mammals like whales, dolphins, seals etc. The way they get water is through their food. - Google's Answer. | 20 |
|
Is it okay to give a small gift to my professor? | I’m transferring this fall. And I wanted to give a small gift to one of my former professors who took me under his wing and helped me fall in love with English and Journalism. I took 3 of his classes. He has helped me find the schools that would fit me best. Because of him, I became an English major.
I wanted to gift him a box of Nutter Butters (something that he always brought to class and snacked on) and also some nice carabiners (because he uses them a key chains and for outdoor activities), or if not the carabiners, an REI gift card. I will also write a little note thanking him.
Anyways, is this too much? I just wanted to thank him for being so kind to me, taking me under his wing, and ultimately allowing me to fall in love with English. Thanks :) | 109 | Be sure that you have your final grade for any of their classes before doing so, and don't be shocked if they decline any part of the gift. Many professors have strong policies against conflicts of interest. Some schools also have policies on gift giving. It's a nice gesture, though. | 104 |
Why does 100°C water feel so much hotter, more painful, and cause more damage than 177°C air? | For example, submerging your hand in boiling water will cause severe burns, but you can easily put your hand inside a hot oven for much longer than you could in the boiling water.
Also, why does a soft rug at 0°C feel warmer to your bare feet than a concrete floor at the same temperature? | 55 | This is a common question. There are two reasons water feels hotter (or colder) at the same temperature than air:
1) Thermal conductivity. Water has a thermal conductivity about 25 times that of air. That means that, given the same temperature difference between water and something else (for example, your skin) compared to air, the water will transfer about 25 times as much heat per second.
2) Heat capacity/thermal mass. Water is also much more massive than air per unit volume - it's a little over 800 times as dense. Heat is stored in mass, so water being 800 times as dense as air means that it can hold about 800 times as much heat just on that basis. In addition to the amount of mass, water also has a higher heat capacity (how much heat it takes to raise a specified amount of mass a specified number of degrees) than air - about 4 times as much. So because there's 800 times as much mass per unit volume, and that mass can hold 4 times as much heat per degree, water can hold over 3200 times as much heat per unit volume as air does.
In combination, (1) means water can heat you up a lot faster than air, and (2) means there is a *lot* of heat to dump into you - the water cools down a lot more slowly than air would.
A rug feels warmer than concrete basically for the same reasons - it's less thermally conductive than concrete and it has less thermal mass. So you don't lose nearly as much heat when you're touching a rug as you would when touching concrete. | 116 |
[Batman Beyond] What were the fates of the rest of Batman's villains? | We know about Joker, Ra's al Ghul, Mr. Freeze, and Bane. Whatever happened to the rest of them? How many actually reformed or were cured? Did any die during one of their schemes? (By accident or by another criminal, or even GCPD, of course.) | 109 | Harley evidently survived Joker and doing a not so great job of trying to divert Dee & Dee from flowing her footsteps.
I don't like to count the Post Infinite Crisis DC comics as part of the DCAU continuity but if you wanted to, they also showed some other characters fates. | 74 |
CMV: [The Martian] Earth would not have expended the resources to try to bring Watney home. | **Massive spoilers below.**
I just finished the book version of The Martian, which has Mark Watney, a NASA astronaut, stranded on Mars when the rest of his crew leaves, thinking him dead.
Watney is not dead though, and has to survive on Mars via his wits alone til he can make some contact with Earth (his crewmates having taken all but one radio, and the one they didn't take having stabbed him before flying off.
In the book. Watney establishes contact with NASA by driving over to the Sojurner rover and stealing/fixing it to transmit to Earth (which...*awesome*).
A few plans are developed to save him, one involving a hastily built probe to resupply him which blows up on takeoff. That first one I buy. But the latter plans I don't. And I have two principal objections.
First, it seems like NASA executives make the calls on these. This would not be the case. It would be the President of the United States making the ultimate decision to greenlight projects. And at that level, it seems very unlikely that they'd get the greenlight. The independence of NASA in the book is greatly at odds with how I see government agencies working.
The Chinese government would not give a large booster over to NASA like they did. This is portrayed as happening at the agency level coordinating with the Chinese space agency and then presenting it to political leaders as a fait accompli.
The plan is super-risky though, and depends on a single resupply mission with a quickly built supply ship - one of which just blew up on the pad. If the resupply doesn't work, all 6 astronauts die. Or 5, if they do space cannibalism.
I just don't think the governments of two countries who don't get along great would coordinate to waste hundreds of millions to billions of dollars (the plan also scrubs Ares 4 by taking its ascent vehicle), all to have a very low chance of rescuing one guy at the substantial risk to 5 more people. And the Hermes mutiny to force the government's hand just seems absurdly implausible to me.
Much more likely is that Watney would have been asked to compose letters to whomever he wanted, perform science til his food ran out (assuming he was willing) and then take a lethal dose of morphine.
_____
> *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!* | 39 | The politicians WOULD go for it.
Because potential success would be a HUGE publicity coup.
Heck, even failure would be a significant publicity coup, because politicians would get to talk about those brave astronauts who sacrificed themselves for a great goal.
You know what would not look good? Leaving Watney to die without apparently trying to do anything about it.
The politicians would have everything to gain by trying to save Watney, and almost nothing to lose. | 39 |
ELI5: In Interstellar, why does one minute on one planet equal four years on earth? | In the recent movie Interstellar, the protagonists raced against time to find a suitable planet for colonization. Now, among the many things I never understood from that movie, I genuinely don't understand how one minute of a planet can equal four years on earth.
I get that, due to some planet's sizes, one minute under that planet's day/night cycle might equal dozens of hours on earth, but that doesn't mean that time is literally being warped. Right? So does it have something to do with the black hole?
Thanks =3 | 20 | ELI5:
If you move very very fast, or if you are nearby a strong gravitational pull (black hole), you experience time slower relatively to when you are not moving fast/no strong gravitational pull. This is a fact and is not theoretical physics. It has been confirmed by numerous experiments, and for example the GPS satellites orbiting the Earth at about 3.9 km/s periodically correct their internal clocks in order to synchronize with the clocks on Earth. | 26 |
(ELI5) Why do school busses have such a large overhang from the rear axle? There's at least 10 foot of school bus after the last tire. This seems odd, especially considering a semi truck has several axles spaced out and one near the rear. | 5,884 | The only real advantage of this is the busses' turn radius. With a shorter distance between the front and rear wheels, the turning circle of the bus also shrinks in size.
Weight distribution is less of an issue here. The engine in the front is heavy and the rest of the bus is mostly empty space. The axle could be placed anywhere between the center of mass and the rear end. | 5,321 |
|
Are there any good books on how the scientific revolution of the 16th century brought about that "science" and "philosophy" started to mean different things? | 27 | I can't think of a book that covers this topic explicitly (/u/wokeupabug might know one). It's a hard topic, in part because the change is not at all abrupt. "Scientia" has a distinct meaning before the 17th century (that's the century you want, by the way), but isn't really applied to science as we now understand it until Galileo's *Two New Sciences* and even after that not consistently. And the term "scientist" doesn't come into being until the mid-19th century, when it was coined by an anonymous commentator on Mary Sommerville and popularized by William Whewell.
What you see in the meantime is a slow disassociation of what we now think of as philosophical concerns from those of physics and biology. But this change didn't happen overnight. Critics raised philosophical objections to Galileo's work (and lost). They raised philosophical objections to Newton's work (and lost). They raised philosophical objections to Darwin's work (and lost). And they raised philosophical objections to Einstein's work (and lost). (You might note a pattern here.) So it's not a simple story by any means. | 12 |
|
When something is stuck in another thing, say a cork in a bottle. Why is it easier to twist and pull it out, than to just pull it straight out? | 32 | So in your example it is way easier to apply torque than a linear force with your hands. Further, the stationary friction between most materials is higher than sliding friction. So as soon as it is moving, it is easier to pull out. | 24 |
|
What books should I read if I want to read books that reconciles/combines and charts out the differences between western and eastern philosophy? | I have read eastern philosophy and to some extent it has always made me feel that the major difference between EP and WP is about the goal of life and the ideal life. EP is not bothered with material developments at all. It just wants people to live simple lives with very less needs. Whereas WP tries to advance mankind. This difference might also have to do with the the role of religions in respective regions. Eastern religions like Hinduism, Buddhism were/are extremely liberal and did not have insitutional control at all. Ideas freely flourished. But in West people had to break themselves from the shackles of Christian institutions and the religion itself. This is my current idea of it I might be wrong, but I would love to explore this thought more deeply.
The books should not be about history of western or eastern thought. Rather it should work a bit on conclusions and universals.
I would also love if you guys provide books by both Western and Eastern philosophers. As it would help me see the point from many angles and perspectives.
Thanks in advance. | 100 | I think it would be interesting to study Greco-Buddhism, for example the T.W. Rhys-Davis translation of the Questions of King Milinda. There is a false mental model that West and East developed separately, which overlooks the stark historical fact of Alexander crossing Persia, Afghanistan, and eventually the Indus river; and the political interaction and cultural exchange that continued in the wake of the campaigns of Alexander. In addition, although it does not discuss the Alexandrian exchange, Seth Segall's book Buddhism and Human Flourishing: A Modern Western Perspective (2020), which explicitly attempts to compare and to some extent accommodate Buddhist and Aristotelian cosmology and ideals of the good life, is a useful resource. | 31 |
If a white dwarf comes close to an ordinary star could it "steal" enough material to start fusing hydrogen again? | Also, could a collision between two white dwarfs result in an ordinary star? | 15 | Yes! This is called a nova!
White dwarfs are largely composed of carbon and oxygen and other heavy materials that don't burn as easily, but they are highly compact making it easy for mass transfer to occur from a companion.
In most cases the accreted hydrogen doesn't burn initially, but as it accumulates it heats up until a quick period of unstable hydrogen burning occurs, which we call a nova :D | 22 |
[Star Wars] Why do the Sith even follow any rules at all? | I mean, seriously, why do the Sith even have rules at all? There are only two Sith so it's not like there's a council to judge their actions. If a master wants to cowardly kill the apprentice before he's ready, who dares call him out for it? If a master doesn't want to take an apprentice and wants to selfishly live forever, who can stop him?! Plus, the Sith are supposed to be selfish, right? So why do they care if their knowledge dies with them? | 422 | > If a master wants to cowardly kill the apprentice before he's ready, who dares call him out for it?
No one. But, generally speaking, masters don't want to.
> If a master doesn't want to take an apprentice and wants to selfishly live forever, who can stop him?!
No one. And, in fact, that's what Sidious was going for.
> Plus, the Sith are supposed to be selfish, right? So why do they care if their knowledge dies with them?
Some of them don't. But most of them would prefer that their knowledge gets passed on.
You see, in contrast to the Light Side, which emphasizes surrendering to the will of the Force, the Dark Side of the Force involves imposing your will on the Force. In other words, Dark Side users embrace a philosophy of dominance and of using strong emotions to get what you want. This type of mentality easily leads to conflict, which is why the early Sith Lords wasted a lot of time and effort fighting each other.
Darth Bane's Rule of Two cleverly channels this destructive nature in a productive manner. There would only be two Sith Lords, a master and an apprentice: one to embody power, and the other to crave it. This only works because a Dark Side apprentice *would* crave power. A Dark Side master *would* want to embody power and make the apprentice yearn for it. That's what Dark Siders do. Contrast that to Light Side users like the Jedi, such as Yoda and Obi-Wan. They're perfectly comfortable living as unassuming hermits, with no one having any idea of the actual power they wield.
So the master would train the apprentice, and pass on as much knowledge as they could, because where's the sport in dominating a weak opponent? Let the apprentice become as strong as possible, and let them come after the master. The master would simply take the opportunity to prove their superiority. And the apprentice would absorb as much knowledge and skill as they can, while also being as clever as they can, until one day they can slay their master. Sometimes it's because their powers in the Force or their skills with a lightsaber surpass their master. Sometimes it's because they get cleverer than their master. Sometimes it's because they discover a new (or rediscover an old) Force technique that they can leverage against their master. And then the apprentice would become the new master, and take their own apprentice, and the cycle begins again. However it happens, ideally speaking each generation of apprentice would surpass their master in some way, and the Sith would grow stronger. | 345 |
What are the differences between an expensive laser diode used for scientific applications and a cheap consumer grade laser pointer ? | 15 | The term "scientific laser" is pretty broad, and encompasses many different technologies and requirements for many different scientific purposes.
Generally, two things drive the cost of a laser system:
1) Sustained (not peak) power output
2) Beam coherence (how little the beam spreads out over distance)
The two things that are common to most consumer laser pointers are that they are very low power (by design, for safety reasons), and they usually have pretty bad coherence (by design, because highly coherent lasers are expensive). The optical components tend to be integrated into the silicon itself or made from cheaper to manufacture plastic.
Depending on the needs of the scientific laser, you might need high power, high coherence, or both. Higher power lasers quickly start to need special cooling apparatus and all of the optical components need to be made of higher quality materials and with better workmanship, lest they absorb too much laser light and overheat. Higher coherence lasers need precision crafted lenses and mirrors that are adjusted to keep the beam tightly confined.
For examples, a high(er) power but low coherence laser might be found in an astronomical laser pointer used for education and teaching. A low power but high coherence laser might be found in measurement devices. A high power, high coherence laser might be found in a laser cutter.
One thing that makes many scientific lasers expensive is not their performance, but rather their calibration. The laser is adjusted and certified by the manufacturer to have a certain output behavior. The technology itself is not necessarily more complicated in this case, but the warranty by the manufacturer that it is suitable for a specific purpose is expensive. There are also many peripherals you find in scientific laser applications, such as cooling for continuous operation, or data measurement and acquisition hardware/software, that aren't present in a consumer grade product.
There are a few well known scientific lasers that are designed to achieve very high peak power, versus sustained power. An example of this is the laser used at the National Ignition Facility to do fusion power research. | 14 |
|
[Marvel 616] Did Thanos really need ALL the Infinity Gems to accomplish his goal? | During the lead up to the Infinity Gauntlet saga, Thanos works his wrinkly purple butt off to acquire all of the Infinity Gems. In terms of achieving unlimited power this makes sense, but did he actually need all of them to do his famous finger snap and kill off half the universe?
Like, how did the Mind gem help this happen? Or the time gem, for that matter? Could he have done it with only a couple of gems? | 74 | Killing half the universe was probably the work of the Reality gem - possibly boosted by the Power gem - but it's been stated several times that if you want to use the Reality gem without catastrophic results, you need the other five gems for balance - and this has been shown to be generally true, as various efforts to use the Reality gem on its own tend to end badly, either by damaging the fabric of reality or leaving the user vulnerable. Even Thanos only used the Reality gem on its own *once*, and that was to fuck with the Collector. | 83 |
If low testosterone males experience chronic fatigue, why aren't women tired all of the time? | 855 | A woman's ovaries and adrenal glands will produce testosterone but on a much lower level than a man's testes. If a woman's body fails to produce appropriate levels (there's a sweet spot-not too much, not too little) of testosterone for the female body, she will probably exhibit symptoms. She could experience fatigue, hot flashes, mood swings, hair loss, lowered interest in sexual activity, and/or depression (to name only a few symptoms) if she doesn't have enough testosterone, and hair growth/loss, infertility, obesity, and/or menstrual irregularity if she has too much testosterone. There are many synthetic and bioidentical hormone therapy treatment options available to treat low testosterone for both men and women; however, insurance companies usually won't cover treatment for women. | 212 |
|
ELI5: Why is deflation worse than inflation? | I watched a documentary once and they mentioned the Fed likes to see a little inflation each year because deflation is much harder to combat, but didn't explain why. TYIA! | 1,054 | Deflation means things will cost less in the future. This means there is an advantage to not buying things now. Not buying things now means people can’t sell stuff. People not being able to sell stuff means they can’t make money. Not making money means people struggle and lose jobs. If that happens enough, the economy goes into as downward spiral. | 1,753 |
Why do we care about the heavy elements like 119 and 120 that decay in like .00002 seconds? What could we possibly use it for? | why do we care tho? to prove we can? | 80 | Producing and studying them allows us to constrain theoretical models of nuclear structure, and possibly atomic structure as well.
There are around 3000 known nuclear species and about 7000 predicted to exist. Many of these 4000 undiscovered nuclides are either producible using existing technology, or will be within the next few years.
Why *shouldn't* we study them? | 82 |
ELI5: How do atoms create living things? What differentiates something animate from something inanimate? | 25 | So do you realise that you basicaly just asked how does life come to be? That is the ultimate question in general and scientist don't know the answer yet. There are things like viruses which if you ask scientist is it alive or not, the answer would be "yes", because it depends | 27 |
|
ELI5: How exactly do we get some much power from engine now, than we did 40, 50, 60 years ago? | I know in the last 30 years turbos and superchargers have made it easier to make power, but I always hear about huge 7 or 8 liter engines made in the 70s or earlier, that will make like 200 hp at best. How is it possible to get so little out of so much displacement? | 36 | There are a few reasons, but it mainly comes down to increased efficiencies at mixing air and fuel.
Older engines had carburetors. These were mechanical devices that mixed air and fuel for the engine to burn. Carburetors were not nearly as efficient as fuel injection, which is the technology cars use today. Fuel injection gets a near-perfect air-to-fuel ratio delivered into the engine.
Older cars had pushrods for their air intake and air exhaust systems. Modern cars have overhead cams with Variable Valve Timing (VVT). The way old cars let air into their engines was completely static - now, cars can control how much air the send into the engine *and* change the amount of air sent into the engine at different engine speeds to create more efficient fuel burning.
Due to advances in manufacturing, engines now also have higher compression and can withstand higher speeds.
Finally, in regards to the 70s specifically, environmental legislation that came in at that time caused some American manufacturers to detune existing engines (made before the environmental regulations) and make them weak from the factory to meet emissions requirements, instead of designing new engines right away. | 145 |
ELI5: Why does everyone react differently to certain types of medication (like stimulants for ADHD), and why do the results and side effects vary so much? | 19 | Short answer is because our bodies and brains have lots of differences. We're all different heights and colors, have differently shaped heads and legs, have different strengths and weaknesses, have different innate tolerances to alcohol, etc...
Point being that our genetics allow for a wide variety of different traits. This means that we don't all respond to medication the same way.
There's also the fact that not all conditions are made the same. A good example of this is antidepressants. These medications don't work for all depressed individuals because they only target a specific mechanism that causes depression. If the cause of your depression is slightly different, this medication can have little to no effect. | 15 |
|
ELI5: If NASA simulate physics (with programming) precisely enough to accurately calculate what will happen when they send a rocket into space, can biologists simulate the human body to discover what will happen when, for example, new medicine is introduced to it? | I was thinking a reinforcement learning algorithm could be a trained in a simulated environment to find a cure for cancer, testing how every which complex process of a new medicine or even nanotechnology might react to its environment. Am I way off? | 15 | The simple answer is because it's not that simple.
We could simulate nearly every organ's function. What we couldn't do is simulate the genetic differences between people and how the introduction of a new drug will react with each person's physio-chemistry. Even if we made the perfect rendition of such a person, that simply doesn't account for the variety amongst any two given people.
For example, if your cholesterol is high because you're genetically predisposed to it, we'd have to create a "dummy" you to test out a drug on. What about medication you take to control your cholesterol? What about your diet? And of course, it's not simply a matter of your genetics but how you've treated your body. What other illnesses have you had and how will *their* legacies react with a new drug for an entirely different problem.
Basically, we'd have to create a dummy version to cover, at the very least, the 10,000 most common physiological states for humans. | 10 |
ELI5: Why are balloons so loud when popped | 104 | Ears work by picking up on subtle vibrations in the air. The compressed air in a balloon being suddenly released sends a shock wave through the air, much stronger than normal sounds, so it's crazy loud. (volume comes from the strength of the 'vibration') | 62 |
|
ELI5: how does soy products (tofu, soy milk, etc) mimic estrogen and why is this a bad thing for us? | Honestly curious. Is this something real or just one of those things passed off as a trending fact that really isn't fact. And how much would you have to consume before it started really affecting hormone levels? | 18 | They contain isoflavones which have a similar chemical structure to estrogen. While studies have been conducted on the negative impacts the results are not conclusive though it's likely not to have adverse affects unless you regularly eat a great deal. | 12 |
[General Immortality] You can't die and you've been sunk to the bottom of the ocean. How hard is it for you to find dry land? | So you pissed someone off and they took you out to the middle of the Atlantic, shackled twenty or thirty pounds of weights to your legs and dunked you. Once you finally hit bottom, it's pitch black and probably extremely cold.
How much of a problem is the pressure? Are you able to move at least somewhat freely? What about currents? If you go with the 'pick a direction and go' strategy, will you have any chance of keeping your bearings in the dark or will the currents spin you around? What about bouyancy if you try to swim upwards? Do you have any chance of making it with the weights? | 111 | Assuming you're completely unkillable by any mean being dropped into the ocean would be years or more to escape unless you got extremely lucky. Currents aren't a huge issue deep down but they will nudge you along their path at maybe a few millimeters with every step. The pressure will be extremely painful but assuming immortality you'll survive. It'll take a lot more effort to move along the sea floor than it does in a pool but the main concern is every empty cavity in your body will be collapsed. Lungs eyes ears blood vessels will burts under the strain and everything will be smashed down against itself and other organs. It'll be freezing cold so if you somehow aren't flattened by the pressure your body will freeze solid without regular movement breaking the ice crystals forming inside you.
Now for the biggest concern and the real reason it'll take so long to escape your fate. It's pitch black down there. No sunlight no stars no moon. Nothing to get your directions right. If one leg is slightly longer than the other in strides you'll walk in a massive circle. And you'll have no way of knowing this unless you pass by the same shipwrecks and undersea mountains that you'll have to identity by touch alone. Unless you can somehow see in some spectrum that's not dependent on light you'll be forced to wander for possibly eternity in the cold black until you manage to get above a few hundred feet to have sunlight faintly light your way. | 126 |
CMV: the Reuben is the ultimate test of the quality of a sandwich shop | There is no better sandwich to indicate the quality of a sandwich shop, than the Reuben. If you can make a good Reuben, you have command of the art of the sandwich, period, full stop.
The reuben requires the a number of key skills, and a shortcoming in ANY of these areas, will result in a bad sandwich. A few examples:
-Appropriate ingredient selection and ratios - for instance, a reuben which has not enough kraut is an insult against god; too much and it's an impossibility to eat.
-Heating skill - the bread must be heated to have a nice, slightly-crispy exterior, but the sandwich shouldn't be burned. Under-cook it (or too much butter/oil on the skillet?) and you've got a soggy mess.
-Careful sauce application - the Reuben is saucy and wet, yet in a perfect Reuben, you can eat it without making too much of a mess. Applied willy-nilly, there will be dressing in places you didn't know existed.
So that's it: not only do I love Reubens, I think the Reuben is the best test of quality for a sandwich shop, period.
CMV.
EDIT: Two deltas awarded: /u/art_con pointed out that there are just too many exceptions -- for example, the Italian-style deli can't be judged based on their Reuben, that would be unfair. So while the core argument still stands in my mind for MANY shops, it's unfair to apply it to sandwich shops in general. Also, /u/kazizza made a simple and elegant point: if the place makes a great Reuben but is a festering pile of feces otherwise, how can the Reuben be the test, "period"? Great approach.
_____
> *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!* | 484 | While there are plenty of things that can go wrong, the relative ease of cooking and keeping its primary ingredients, to me, make it seem like there are other more difficult sandwiches.
Corned beef is incredibly easy to do well and keep for a long time at a ready temperature. Sauerkraut likewise doesn't require a lot of upkeep. Something like a steak sandwich, though, requires precision at the time of ordering. Something grilled on the spot requires perfect cooking EVERY time. | 105 |
How does Tony Stark not get concussions all the time? | As we've seen in American Football, having hard head protection does little if anything to prevent the brain from impacting on the inside of the skull. Tony Stark is getting hit in the head by massive hammers and Hulk fists, yet he doesn't seem to ever have any issues with this. | 56 | On an american footballer, the helmet sits freely on the head. This means that if they get hit, the helmet and head either move laterally or rotate extremely quickly. This has the effect of causing the brain inside to not keep up with the skull, causing internal bruising which is extremely dangerous.
The Iron Man suit from Mark II onward uses an articulated and powered helmet which is connected to the main body of the suit. What this means is that when Tony gets hit on the chin, say, the head doesn't snap around the way it would if he had a free floating helmet.
Now if the Hulk were to hit him with a proper right hook, he'd still feel it. But the rigid body in the Iron Man suit is going to translate a lot of that momentum into the chest, and limit the rate of head rotation to something safe. The body will probably spin -- and Tony is going to go flying -- but flying is something he can recover from. | 75 |
CMV: I don't think incest should be illegal | Gay marriage has always been a controversial topic, and it was legalized recently in the U.S.
With all the "Freedom of love" going around, I was wondering why Gay marriage is supported widely but incestuous relationships are not.
Just looking it up in the dictionary shows negative language.
A few examples:
* The definition of incestuous is an overly close relationship that seems improper, or inappropriate sexual behavior between family members.
* Sexual relations between people classed as being too closely related to marry each other.
I have nothing to do with incest myself.
I have never thought of having an incestuous relationship with my sister, nor do I have a "fetish" on the subject.
However, if two people love each other, I think they have the right to form a relationship.
The most common arguments I see against incest is:
1. It's just **wrong/not natural**
2. Incest creates deformed children/offsprings
I'm not even going to bother saying anything about #1.
#2, it hold some scientific background and yes, incest does have a higher chance of producing deformed offsprings.
However, first off, it really isn't that high compared to normal offsprings.
Sure, maybe a slightly higher chance, but that's about it.
Second is that if you apply this logic to everything else, then people with higher chances to produce deformed offsprings (carriers or deformed parents) should not be able to reproduce.
My third argument is that even if it were to produce deformed offsprings, isn't it the parents choice?
If they like their relationship and they agree to raise the child, what's the problem in that?
Please note that english is not my first language, so there might be some incorrectly used words or phrases in the post, so if you find any please inform me in the comments and I will make edits.
Edit: I thought it was obvious, but the type of incest that I'm arguing about is just "normal love" that might happen between brothers and sisters and cousins and so on. Not affect by anything else including being raised for the intention of sex or cultural beliefs.
_____
> *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!* | 28 | 1. It depends on what type of incest you're talking about. Incest across generations will always have a power imbalance and therefore be abuse and rape.
2. Incest within a generation can still involve abuse given age differences and the extremely young age at which the pair was introduced.
3. You are arguing from morality, parents should not have the moral right to produce children they know may struggle their entire life due to deformities | 26 |
CMV: All religious authorities should be mandated to report child abuse or any other major crime when they become aware of or suspect it has or will occur, regardless of whether or not the information was obtained through confession | I think the title is pretty self-explanatory. I refer to the catholic church mostly, but it applies to all religions who are not legislated to report child abuse (as is the case in my jurisdiction). The catholic archbishop of Melbourne recently said he'd rather go to jail than break the seal of confession. To me, I can't comprehend that position. Even from a religious perspective, surely the forgiveness of jesus through confession can still be obtained whilst the priest reports the concerns to state authorities. If the offending party spends their mortal life in prison, that will be mitigated by eternity in heaven they get for confessing, right?
Edit: I woke up to a lot of responses, some of which criticised me for not offering a framework for the the application of my belief (this is my first interaction with the CMV community), so here goes. There would need to be prescribed definitions about that which will and won't need to be reported in any legislation amounting to what I have proposed. Without going into the precise scenarios, I will say that there is already a framework in place within my jurisdiction which could easily be transferred to those who are employed within a church setting. Mandated reporting is very much a thing in many places. I am a mandated reporter, so I know it well. I apologise for not suggesting that a framework be put in place in my initial post.
I woke this AM to lots of comments regarding my position. Many of them say exactly the same thing and don't offer any new or challenging points for consideration, namely that breaking the seal would be to dismantle the catholic church. I've also read that the church is in a better position to help offenders because under my system they wouldn't confess. These two lines of argument I find unconvincin, which I have document in responses already. Whilst I appreciate the time people have put in to respond, my view hasn't changed. I'm not sure if it's within the rules, but going forward I'll only respond to comments which offer different reasons as to why I should CMV. | 2,359 | If you arrest people at the confessional no one will confess, the real point is when you know of crimes you can prevent them, if people don't confess you won't know so won't prevent. Religions need the Right of Sanctuary, much like a doctor needs patient confidentiality or a lawyer needs client privilege, but even a doctor or lawyer are bound by oath to report the threat of imminent crime, short of that they use their judgement and resources to keep the person away from offending, that's what religions should do: use their resources to Prevent, not take the money and sell people down the river. | 590 |
[MCU] At the beginning of the Battle of Wakanda, how fast are Cap and Black Panther Running? | 113 | From the MCU wiki:
\> During their first encounter, Sam Wilson stated that Rogers ran over 13 miles in less than 30 minutes.
So he can run at least 26mph. For reference, Usain Bolt's top speed is 27.8 mph | 119 |
|
Could you theoretically "push" a singularity? | Would it be possible to exact a force on a black hole to move it in another direction? Or is the gravity too strong | 43 | Two masses will feel each other's gravitational field and respond to them regardless if they are singularities or not. A black hole singularity will still feel other objects' gravitational fields and orbit them like any other celestial bodies. | 24 |
Eli5 why are today's webcams so bad when compared to phone cameras? | I made a short attempt in streaming to Twitch during lockdowns and the pandemic. One thing I noted quickly was that the video quality differed immensely when I used an old android phone as a webcam compared to my then newly bought Logitech C920.
Why do they differ so much in terms of visible quality?
Edit: My webcam is a C920 HD Pro and cost me around $110-120 (1190 SEK).
Edit 2: I bought it a few years back. | 1,001 | The lens and sensor are only two of the four critical components of a camera
You need a good lens to get a lot of light onto the sensor. Most webcams are still using pinhole cameras while many phones have switched over to much bigger apertures, this results in brighter cleaner images.
You need a big sensor to collect the light that makes it through the lens and to provide you a lot of pixels to get the image quality you want.
But more importantly than either is that you need a signal processor and good storage connection to actually handle what's coming in. A 4k 30 fps camera will be sending 750 MB/s of data that needs to be processed, compressed, and then stored at least briefly in memory. The chip in your phone has a good signal processing segment specifically dedicated to the cameras with lots of hardware acceleration to help it with this job and connections to a large fast bank of memory, but its part of an expensive chip.
Your webcam is limited by the realities of its size, power allowance, price point, and connections. Most external webcams today are still USB 2 which restricts them to just 60 MB/s which means that they either need something that can get *really good* compression of the video stream very quickly to get their 30 FPS 4k video to fit down the connector, or they just film at 1080P and call it good enough.
The aggressive compression of the video stream combined with the tiny lens result in a sub part video quality for most cheap desktop webcams but there are good ones out there that sport a proper lens for good light collection they're just at a different price point | 440 |
CMV: Zoe Quinn is in the wrong. | I'm a feminist. I support women being more involved in the gaming industry. I want there to be better portrayals of women in video games.
That being said, I have no idea why anyone is bothering to defend Zoe Quinn. It seems like what she did was pretty evil. She cheated, lied, and took part in nepotism. If even half of the allegations against her are true, she was an abusive girlfriend and a terrible person. I get that women are harassed a lot in the gaming community, and that is wrong. But why is Zoe being defended? Would anyone mind explaining to me?
Relevant: The article that specifically influenced me to post here was this: http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2014/08/prove-youre-man-violence-harassment-toxic-masculinity/
_____
> *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!* | 107 | I think this is an example of defending someone who is on your team. Zoe Quinn is a feminist so feminist feel the need to defend her. Just like people will defend family members even when their family is in the wrong. | 19 |
Mysterious battery re-charge when devices turn off. | I've noticed with the past few cell phones I've had that if I have a battery level of say, 6% and I turn the phone off, when I turn the phone on again in a few hours I'll have a battery level of 11% or something like that.
What is the electrical/chemical explanation for this? Do batteries regenerate energy just by being dormant for a short period of time? | 25 | Your phone measures the percent of power left in the battery by the voltage it produces. By letting the battery sit it might cool, thus outputting a larger voltage which the phone takes to be a higher charge level. In any case no additional energy is gained. | 32 |
ELI5: Why does visible light only penetrate a few millimetres, whilst both X-rays and radio waves can penetrate much further even though they're on opposite ends of the energy spectrum? | I was thinking about television signals, and it occurred to me that whilst radio waves and X-rays are both used because they penetrate through matter, visible light does not. Why is this the case, given that X-rays are much higher energy than visible light and radio waves are much lower? Surely that should mean that one penetrates even less that visible light. | 21 | It's because the method for penetration is different for both x-ray and radio waves.
For radio waves, it has to do with the electron structure in the material - radio waves can pass very easily through some matter's electron configurations (like in plaster or wood), and not at all through others (like steel, or other metals), coupled with the wavelength of the radio waves - which is much, much longer than visible light.
Whereas x-rays just have so much energy that they can punch right through most things - they have so much energy that due to the inertia of electrons the electrons cannot "keep up" with them so they just bull-rush right through.
Visible light neither has the wavelength of radio nor the energy of x-ray, so it can't get through using either method. | 15 |
ELI5: What is hawking and why is it illegal in Hong Kong? | 22 | Unlicensed street vendors. It's technically illegal everywhere, but in Hong Kong it's especially difficult to get a license (officially because food safety, unofficially because it's essentially a black market for food), and thus it is more prevalent. | 15 |
|
Are Irrational Numbers Only Never Ending Because of Our Base 10 Number System. | Obviously in a base π system π could theoretically be simply shown as 1 right? And 2 would equal 2π etc. Is this just because I lack a fundamental understanding of irrational numbers? Also would changing to a base π system make π not irrational? Thanks in advance and if this makes sense please tell me. | 37 | In base pi, pi would be 10, and 2pi would be 20.
However, in base pi, the sqrt(2) would still be a non-terminating, non-repeating series of digits.
Moreover, irrational doesn't "mean" that it's a non-terminating, non-repeating series of digits. That's merely a consequence.
The meaning of irrational is that it cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers. Changing bases to pi won't change the fact that it can't be expressed as a ratio of integers, it only changes which numbers we choose to privilege with the base.
Excellent question btw. | 81 |
ELI5 How does fast charging work? | Qualcomm and numerous other manufacturers have announced some sort of quick charging technology to charge a battery up to 50% in 15 minutes etc. How does this work? Do they increase the amperage? Wouldn't that damage the battery? | 2,652 | A lot of wrong answers here. Quickcharging happens when the charging adapter communicates with the power management chip (pmic) about the current state of the battery. You see when a battery is empty its chemical state can absorb a lot more current than when the battery is almost full. Quick charging optimizes the electricity throughput with the state of the battery. It requires the charger and the phone pmic to communicate. | 2,389 |
CMV: 75% of Students Should Not Be in College | I am only writing this because of something that happened very recently with the girl I am dating. She straight out of highschool got a slightly higher than minimum wage job at a small company (no networking just online applications), and 5 years later has received 2 promotions the most recent one paying a little over 50k with great benefits. No degree.
Last week she tells me her old position was filled by a female with a degree in psychology from my alma mater. That same position she had 2 years into her career with no degree. Idk this new employee's situation, but looking at my friends who went to college they are struggling to find a job that will allow them to make their monthly loan payments and afford a small apartment to move out of their parents' home.
Now I went to college and later to grad school but the only majors I know of who had job offers straight after graduating were nursing, accounting, engineering, business analytics and data science/cs. Even after I graduated with a bachelors in economics I was struggling to find a job, so I went and finished my masters in econ and the semester before I graduated landed a job at a government agency that pays 72k and uses my degree.
Having gone to college and seeing the repercussions to over 75% of my friends who are still living at home and working jobs that are unrelated to their degrees (they probably could've gotten these jobs without a degree) this is a view that I have been wrestling with as of recent.
I don't think we should be giving financial aid or feferal loans to any kid at 18 unless they major in a growing career field (according to the bureau of labor statistics website) as to not put them in similar situations. Or maybe allowing students to sue universities and colleges if they can't find a job to make them invest in more networking events for these students or completely disband majors that are not providing valuable skills according to the marketplace (maybe make them optional minors rather than full degrees).
Change my view. | 52 | All data and research would contradict the takeaway from your anecdote. Is there a cost to college? Yes, and it includes the opportunity cost of not spending those four years advancing a career. But once you zoom out to look at career earnings, college graduates (in all majors) just massively outearn those with only a HS diploma. | 24 |
What makes it possible for crustaceans to be larger than bugs? | 69 | Crustaceans use a modified gill as a lung, which allows for larger size than the trachea used by insects,probably since oxygen is actively circulated in the blood rather than passively diffused through a series of tubes. | 23 |
|
ELI5: What were the Yugoslav wars about and why was America involved in them? | Unbiased answers with no conspiracy theories please. | 27 | If you want answers to questions like this that are "unbiased" and without conspiracy theories, one of your absolute best bets is to submit your question to /r/AskHistorians. They have very strict journalistic integrity and the moderators take it very seriously. Jokes and quack stuff gets deleted almost immediately. | 20 |
CMV: I don't believe people are fundamentally good. | There is so much unnecessary suffering in the world. Hunger, violence, hate, war etc. The only thing stopping world peace is just for people to stop fighting each other. There is more then enough food to feed everybody, but still so many are hungry. In the western world, people will kill each other over matters that seem banal when contrasted to the fact that children are dying by the millions (six million per year).
There is absolutely no reason for this other then that people are only good as so far it's good for them to be good. Civilization is only skin deep. Once people are really challenged, so few pas the test. We praise those who do, these unlikely heroes, precisely because we know it's not in our nature to act unselfishly. We are just animals. Though evolved to be intelligent and social, still unable to create the paradise we can all imagine. And even though we may have, as Rousseau puts it, 'the softest of hearts', our heart is still so much blacker then we like to think it is.
Change my view.
Edit:
There seem to be a couple of returning points that i shall address here.
1. Saying people are not fundamentally good is not saying people are bad/evil.
2. If we can't define what is good or bad (or define what morality is), then people can't be fundamentally good.
| 54 | First of all, the world is in a far better state than ever before. There is less war, less hunger, longer lifespans, less disease, and a higher standard of living than at any other point in human existence. Much of this has been accomplished through goodness.
Second, the logistics of helping aren't always easy. Many children starve in third world countries because of corrupt governments. Food and medicine shipped their for aid gets confiscated and resold, or used by those without a need. Should other countries go to war to depose those bad leaders? How bad do they have to be?
Most people do act unselfishly. If a starving African child went up to a well off person in a fancy restaurant, the vast majority of us would give up our food to help the child. But there is a limit to how much misery we can conceive of at one time. Should we help the starving children, or those dying of AIDS, or people dying of cancer, or the homeless or any of an endless list. At some point, we'd be paralyzed by the enormity of the world's suffering, and curl up into a ball if we ever fully comprehended it.
But enjoying life while also helping others is not choosing evil. If we withhold every pleasure until there is no pain in the world, we will all live very unhappy lives. Being selfless part of the time is still a " fundamentally good" thing to do. | 25 |
[Batman] How would batman be affected if he caused a vehicle accident that killed a child while driving dangerously fast in a pursuit? | 112 | At the very least he'd retire from being Batman forever and, as Bruce Wayne, start some sort of charity drive before disappearing into seclusion and cutting off contact with just about everyone who knows him in either identity. Pretty much what he did when he had to grab a gun to scare off a robber when he was suffering a heart attack as he got older.
He might even turn himself in to the authorities, though that would depend on whether or not there was a Robin in the picture since with the revelation of his identity that would follow his surrender, villains are likely to come crawling out of the woodwork for some revenge by proxy. | 75 |
|
Why do top economics journals publish articles that seem tangentially related to economics? | For example, [this article in the QJE] (https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/136/2/1199/6039346?redirectedFrom=fulltext) looks at the impact of sentencing rule violations on recidivism. [This AER article] (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20181607) measures racial bias in policing. [This AER article] (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20180284) looks at the legacy of colonial medicine in Africa.
These all seem like important topics and I can see how they are related to broader economic issues (e.g. racial bias in policing leads to disproportionate arrests which weakens the economic power of the targeted community; distrust of medical institutions make a population more prone to illness and thus less productive), but they don't seem like economics in the traditional sense that most people would think of. Am I missing the bigger picture here?
*Note: I don't mean to pick on these authors in particular. I was just looking at some recent issues of the two top journals I'm familiar with and these articles stood out to me.* | 83 | Economics is defined more by its approach than anything else. Macroeconomics studies what the layperson thinks of when they hear "economics" but micro studies pretty much anything related to human decision-making. Add in the empirical approaches of econometrics, pretty much all social science can be studied through an economic lens.
That said, even respectable academics are sometimes justifiably critical of the relevance of some publications. The editors are human and often make unpopular decisions based on their own judgment/bias.
edit: on second thought, economic research has to involve some decision-making agent on top of mathematical rigor. After all, theoretical physics is structurally modeling physical processes and pure reduced-form modeling is just statistics. | 97 |
ELI5: When faced with stress or danger, why do people soil themselves? | 69 | Its due to our sympathetic nervous system. Its the one responsible for Flee or Fight.
While it sends all energy to your muscles and brain it puts a holt on your digestive system so it does not waste energy digesting things and sends that energy to be used for our reaction.
Everything in body that is not essential to the body in terms of quick reaction where its a matter of life and death is put on hold so you can survive. | 31 |
|
ELI5 the physics of playground swings. | While I understand (intuitively, if not scientifically) how pulling on the chain might affect my movement, the fact that I can *just* move my legs in the traditional extended-when-moving-forward, bent-when-moving-backwards way and gain momentum makes no sense to me. | 20 | While you move your legs, you move your center of mass (thats a point where the gravity pulls you down) in front of or behind the seat. The center of mass "wants" to be as close to the the ground as possible and so by changing where the center of mass is you start moving. | 16 |
[LotR] Frodo chooses the Gap of Rohan instead of The Mines of Moria. What changes? | 32 | Saruman kills the majority of the Fellowship. If Gandalf survives he will still be the Grey without his power boost. King theoden remains under saruman’s control and he either obtains the ring or sauron does. | 28 |
|
[Star Wars] can a Jedi/light force user and a Sith/dark force user ever be friends, or at least on amicable terms? | Since there are Sith who have historically not hurt, or killed anyone, and since there have been maverick/more open minded Jedi, would it be possible for a Jedi and Sith, or Light force user and Dark force user to meet, agree to not kill each other, and be friendly? | 24 | Sith and Jedi would be difficult because it's not just dark side vs light side, their philosophies and very natures are diametrically opposed. A sith makes a jedi feel uncomfortable just by existing, because sith twist the nature of the force while jedi feel it should be left to do as it wills. It would be like a hippie and a lumberjack being on friendly terms, while the lumberjack is actively taking a chainsaw to a redwood. More generally, light side and dark side users can be on amicable terms, and even friends. | 37 |
ELI5: Do the the other monotheistic religions have an analogue for 'The Devil' / Lucifer? | 48 | I believe when you other monotheistic religion you mean other than Cristianity.I'll try sum things up for Islam
-The devil(Shaitan) was never an angel, but a Jinn(Genie?) who rised so high in the ranks of heaven, he was with angels
-The devil won't rule hell, it is ruled by the creator, in fact he will be the first one to "wear the fiery shirt"
-Basically his turn to evil goes like;
1-Adam is created
2-Shaitan is ordered bow to Adam
3-Shaitan is like nope, he is made of earth, i'm made of smokeless fire, me>Adam
4-Is banished from heaven and condemned to hell
5-He asks for extra time to prove he is better
6-Is given, now seeks to corrupt humanity | 11 |
|
ELI5: What is the craziness surrounding Jay-Z's Tidal? | I'm out of the loop on this situation, and just need a good explanation of the whole debacle | 29 | Tidal was billed as a music streaming service that paid artists better than Spotify or Pandora, which are notorious for not paying artists well. However, due to the big names at the promotion events and the artists attached, they haven't really been able to generate any sympathy for these very wealthy artists - at least not enough to encourage people to switch to Tidal and pay more than they're paying for their current streaming service.
They've also had a handful of celebrities drop out of promotions or try to distance themselves, like Kanye West did in deleting his previous Tweets about Tidal and removing the Tidal logo from his Twitter photo. They've dropped out of the top 700 apps in the App Store even though Pandora and Spotify are respectively occupying the third and forth slots on the store. | 22 |
[Marvel] Who could beat Squirrel Girl? | She has bested Doom, Thanos, MODOK, and Wolverine. Who even stands a chance against her? | 38 | Frankly, nobody can beat Doreen Green. Here's why.
Earth 616 is an iteration of Earth Prime, the first of all the pocket universes. Earth Prime is, of course, the Earth that we're doomed to live in. As various powerful minds on Earth Prime came up with concepts that we refer to as "fiction", the various Multiverse universes were created, due to Quantum Observational Theory, which states that the first great mind to define a concept forces that concept to become reality.
Earth 616 represents the basic human desire for Good to triumph over Evil, for the underdog to win, and for the pure and innocent to win out over the corrupt and evil. This is why even Galactus has never been able to defeat the heroes of Earth 616.
...and of all the Heroes of 616, one stands alone as the *most* pure, the *most* innocent, and the *most* selfless. Doreen Green, also known as Squirrel Girl. She beats heroes and villains alike because the very fabric of the 616 universe insists that she must. If she were to ever be beaten, the basic fabric of the 616 reality would be shattered. A new Mutliverse pocket would form, and Doreen's defeat would cease to be part of the reality of 616. | 122 |
[Marvel] How did the first Wakandians manage to use vibranium if even modern day tools or the tool of a norse god are incapable of breaking or melting it? | 257 | Raw, unrefined Vibranium probably has very different properties than finished products like their spears or Cap's shield. Ultron calls it the most versatile substance on the planet so it probably has other properties other than just hard. So early Wakandans might have been capable of manipulating it until they finally learned to refine it. | 239 |
|
ELI5: What are the differences between lumen, lux and candela and why do i need to know? | We were talking about it in school and i understood nothing. | 139 | Lumens are how much light is emitted by a light source. Lux is how bright a surface is (lux = lumens/m^(2)). Candela is how far you can be from a surface in order to light it up.
I shall try to explain this better. Take for example a 100mW green laser pointer. It emits about 10 lumens. A candle also emits about 10 lumens. This means that if you aimed both of them at a white ceiling, your room would be lit up about the same amount.
The laser, however has a much tighter beam (about 2.1×10^-6 steradians vs about 10 for the candle). This means that the candle has about 1 candela while the laser has about 5 million. This means that the laser would be as bright from 5 million metres away as the candle would be from 1.
To explain lux, imagine you're in a dark room and you're trying to read a book. If the pages aren't bright enough, you can't read very well. It doesn't matter how much total light you have (gigantic pages don't help you read if the text is the same size) but it does matter how much light you have per unit area. The minimum illuminance needed to read is about 2-3 lux.
Note: The numbers in this comment may be out by a factor of 2 or so. | 67 |
CMV: Trump Supporters will stand by Trump regardless how many promises he breaks | Once he fails to bring American jobs back to America, building a wall, supporting the blue collar workers of the south etc, will his supporters rise up against him for not doing the things he said he would? Once he reveals he has tricked them into thinking he isn't one of the many m/billionaires that has placed them in this situation will they still believe in his idea that he will make America Great again?
His supporters have used him as a vehicle to bring back 1950's social values and anything he does within office is a secondary issue. | 15 | With a statement like that, you're trying to conclusively predict the behaviour of 59,611,678 people.
I don't doubt that there is a hard core among Trump supporters that will stand by him no matter what, but your overgeneralization shows a troubling us-and-them mentality. | 10 |
ELI5: What is the purpose of sinuses | ELI5: Why do humans have sinuses. These giant cavities in our faces that fill with mucus whenever we are sick.
I know that your nose is mainly to help trap things in the air as you inhale, but are all of these big cavities necessary?
And why are they connected to our ears and eyes.
If you haven't guessed I'm just sick af and I want to drill a hole in my forhead to drain these forsaken caves | 59 | I don’t think anyone is really sure why we have sinuses.
A number of theories have been put forward:
- reducing the weight of the skull
- dampening pressure
- humidifying the air we breathe in
- absorbing heat, insulating the brain
- aiding in sound resonance for our voices
- increasing the olfactory surface area
Etc etc
Most mammals and birds have sinuses so their origins are likely ancient before we split off from the bird lineage. It may be that our ancestral organisms had a more defining use for sinuses and it’s a vestigial organ | 64 |
ELI5: Why can people without lisps, put on a lisp, but those with a lisp, can’t get rid of it? | 15 | Two possible reasons depending on whats causing the lisp.
1. it is physical i.e. enlarged tongue etc
2. It is functional and is caused by improper forming of sibilant sounds. The forming of sounds in this case is the same as an accent and can be difficult to rid oneself of in casual speech. In the same way that someone with a strong accent still drifts into their accent even when they don't want to and suppress it. Speech therapy helps to correct the problem but (as with accents) is more effective the younger the person is.
Interestingly, people with lisps frequently do not posses them when conversing in a foreign language, indicating that the defect is linked to the forming of sounds in the original language but not the forming of the sounds in general. | 22 |
|
[ENDGAME] What if Thanos had help from the Avenger's enemies? | Thanos upon learning of his future demise decides not to take any risks and tells the 2014 version of their enemies of their would be fate as they all die. Promised a future free of their enemies, they help Thanos accomplish his goal of destroying the galaxy.
How the final showdown play out with Thanos getting the extra help?
Clarification: by 2014 I meant to say Thanos came and saw their enemies in 2014 and warn them of how they will die at the hands of these heroes and offer a chance at vengeance once they get the means to enact it by taking them all with him once they are ready. | 34 | He finds Ulysses Klaue selling arms out of a derelict shipyard in Africa. The two hit it off almost immediately.
Thanos is endeared by Klaue's psychotic lack of fear for his own safety and is surprised to discover that he likes the man's taste in music. Klaue is impressed by Thanos' operation, especially his ship.
The Black Order becomes jealous at how quickly this human has supplanted their father's favor. One by one they find excuses to take missions far away from the hollow halls of the *Sanctuary 2*, endlessly echoing various brands of Earth synth-pop.
After a while, it's only Thanos and Klaue. But the two instinctively know that that's all they need in this crazy mixed-up Universe. For the first time in each one's life they have found the ultimate treasure - a friend.
The final battle goes worse than before, since half the Black Order doesn't even bother to return, but the pair are inseparable on the battlefield. After Tony's snap, Thanos looks around and finds Klaue lying broken in the mud, critically injured during the last desperate scramble. He pulls off his helmet and drops to his knees next to his fallen friend.
Klaue feebly tries to reach up. Thanos clasps the man's hand in his own. The two nod at each other and Klaue cracks his toothy lopsided grin. Thanos chuckles in spite of himself. Then the two dissipate in a cloud of dust, both with smiles on their face. | 39 |
[Batman] What would a world look like if Mr Freeze used his knowledge and skills legally? | Basically take "cut led Luther a check" but apply it to freeze and tell me how it would change him and the world of batman. | 17 | Not that much really. It depends on the version of the character you're looking at, but in most cases the issue with Freeze isn't that he doesn't have the resources to do what he needs to, but that bureaucratic red tape stops him doing it fast enough. No matter how much money he's given to work with, that doesn't change the fact he can't jump to human testing without resorting to illegal means. Given his main motivation is that ticking time clock of his wife's illness, speed is always going to matter more to him than ethical medicine. | 16 |
CMV: The HOV lane should be removed. Limiting access to a lane during rush hours is moronic. | The HOV lane is a terrible idea that has failed us as a society. I don't know if the original intention was to force people into carpooling or they thought it would be smarter to provide a lane of travel dedicated to 'higher occupancy vehicles'. But the true result is obvious; more traffic. Why during the busiest hours of the day (7-9AM and 4-6PM here in south florida on I-95) would you restrict travel? This not only causes more traffic in itself, but it causes humans to act in ways the create even more congestion. When people see the HOV lane moving they jump into it illegally and then quickly jump out of it if they think they see a highway patrol man up ahead. If we really want to reduce traffic and fix our rush hours, we should reduce the speed limit during those times and not restrict lane travel. The largest cause of morning traffic is tailgating. People ride each others asses (trying to prevent people from entering their lane selfishly and pointlessly) and then have to over compensate when braking. This causes a chain reaction making traffic come to a complete stop. And the cycle continues. Reduce the speed limit during rush hours not lane travel. Please I dare you to change my view.
_____
> *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!* | 24 | I train air traffic controllers for a living. The thing about air traffic and ground traffic is you can't just slow down and airplane and have it sit in stop and go traffic. We're taught in extreme detail how traffic works and how to ease its congestion.
Compression is THE primary component in traffic. Imagine you have 4 cars on a 1 lane road. Car 1 is doing 60, car 2 is doing 60, car 3 is doing 55, and car 4 is doing 60. Car 1 and 2 will have no issue; they'll virtually maintain the same distance between the two cars as long as they travel at the same speed.
However, car 3 is travelling 5 mph slower than the car in front of it. He's not doing anything wrong, because he's not speeding. However, he's creating an issue for the car behind it. Car 4 will close the gap until he's too close to maintain his 60 mph speed. This effect is called compression. Car 4 will slow down to match the speed of the car in front of it, or slower. If he taps his brakes to slow down, car 5 may see the brake lights and tap his as well, not knowing whether there is danger ahead of him. This follows through to car 6, 7, and 8, continuing down the line until at some point someone either doesn't tap their brake light or traffic stops.
Believe it or not, this is what causes stop and go traffic. A never ending chain of people slowing to avoid a collision. The car responsible may have only slowed 5 mph, but he's caused minutes to other peoples commutes.
Adding more lanes doesn't solve this problem because this problem happens in every lane. The problem isn't that you can't pass this slower moving car, the problem is that cars can move at separate rates. There's no rule dictating a car must move at or above 45 mph.
So we try to set "rules" of the road, such that slower moving traffic will stay in the right lanes while faster traffic stays in the left lanes (that's how we do it in California.) Other states who only have 2 lanes of travel (such as Oregon) have laws stating that all vehicles must travel in the right lane because the left lane is only for passing traffic.
While opening the HOV lanes might seem like a good thought, it'd cause more problems in the end. The faster moving vehicles that ease through traffic would just be stuck in the same traffic as you. People will still switch lanes, thinking "oh, that lane is moving faster. Let's go!"
It's a good idea, but it just won't work. Not until we have a microchip that regulates the speed of every vehicle by force to be identical. But when that happens, 1 lane would be all you'd need for any sort of travel. | 27 |
[Warhammer 40K] When did Earth and the Galaxy start to go to hell? | It followed our timeline (roughly) surely the universe wasn't always this bad. | 29 | There's 2 events that mark the galaxy's fall to GRIMMDARKNESS, the War in Heaven, and the creation of Slaanesh.
It all started about 60 million years ago. At the time there were 2 species of note in the galaxy; the Old Ones, a race of psychic toadmen, and the Necrontyr, the precursors of the Necrons. The Old Ones had found a way to transcend their physical bodies and spent most of their time in the Realm of Souls, a psychic dimension created by the collective subconscious of sentient races. You could say that they had achieved the pinnacle of evolution. The Necrontyr were super jealous of the Old Ones power, so they attacked them. Obviously this was a terrible idea, so in desperation they took the C'tan, a bunch of space clouds that fed on radiation, and gave them physical bodies hoping to make superweapons. The C'tan developed a taste for souls and enslaved the Necrontyr, forging metallic bodies for them. With the C'tan's power the Necrontyr, now the Necrons, were finally a threat to the Old Ones. Terrified of these massive soul sucking monstrosities the Necrontyr had unleashed, the Old Ones created their own monsters, the Orks. Around this point one of the C'tan named the Deceiver convinced the most powerful C'tan to start eating their weaker brethren to become more powerful. The resulting infighting weakened the C'tan so much that the Orks overwhelmed their empire. Those that remained went into hibernation hoping to wait out their enemies. With the C'tan and Necrons gone, the Orks turned their attention to the Old Ones and finished off most of those that remained. All of this destruction turned the Realm of Souls into a terrifying nightmare called the Warp.
At this time mammals were beginning to dominate earth.
The creation of the Warp wasn't great, but things weren't too bad until Slaanesh was created. With all of the most powerful races out of the picture, the Eldar began to dominate the galaxy. They had a long golden age, but unfortunately life started to get boring. They slowly became more hedonistic, indulging in some really fucked up shit. Eventually their obsession with sensual pleasures created a new Chaos god, Slaanesh. Slaanesh's birth completely destroyed the Eldar Empire, the center of which became overrun with warp energy creating the Eye of Terror. Only the Eldar living at the edge of their civilization and in the Webway were spared. This flood of chaotic energy completely threw off any semblance of balance the galaxy had left.
At this time humanity had developed its own interstellar civilization. Slaanesh's creation caused psykers to appear in massive numbers, beginning the Age of Strife. Humanity was plunged into a dark age until the Emperor appeared and went about uniting what was left of humanity. | 39 |
[Mario] Why don't Bowser's forces use the power ups conveniently distributed throughout his castles? | Who put them there, if not him and his people? | 15 | IIRC the original Super Mario Bros manuals say that Bowser transformed some of the Mushroom People into blocks and the power ups are rewards when Mario frees them. Presumably they’re still somehow reserved only for the “worthy” in other games. So it’s possible Bowser’s army just has trouble finding any, with those they DID find probably kept reserved for Bowser
That said, Bowser DOES use the Cat Bell and Double Cherries to great effect in 3D World! So the thought’s occurred to him at least once | 20 |
Why do I often feel less hungry for lunch if I skip breakfast, and more hungry if I have a small breakfast? | 44 | When you eat anything, your body has a chemical response to initiate digestion as well as to allocate destinations for the nutrients (storage, immediate use, etc...). Two very prominent chemicals associated with metabolism are insulin and glucagon. These two are constantly in equilibrium and get the body either into "storage mode" or "breakdown mode", respectively. When you eat, insulin levels rise to digest and store the food you just consumed. After some time (~2 hours depending on the meal) the insulin levels dip back down as there is no longer a ready source of nutrient in you stomach. This dip in insulin levels stimulates the excretion of glucagon which (along with other hormones such as ghrelin) causes the sensation of hunger. If you skip breakfast in the first place, no rise and therefore, no dip in insulin level ever occurs and hunger will take much longer to onset, often being ignored for hours. It should also be noted that different foods cause this rise and dip of insulin/glucagon levels to occur on different scales. This is known as the glycemic index of the food. The higher the GI of the food (pure sugars, fruits, simple carbs are REALLY high), the more severe the insulin response. Foods up near 100 on the GI (the level of pure glucose) cause an unstable spike then depression in insulin level causing the hunger felt after eating to be much worse.
TL;DR Eating breakfast initiates the flow of hormones that causes hunger shortly after eating | 31 |
|
Is the event horizon of a black hole actually a perfect sphere? | It just occurred to me that if the minute amounts of "gravity" from all the other mass in the universe would distort the shape of the event horizon, even if itis ever so slightly. | 60 | The most common presentation of a blackhole is as a vacuum solution: you have some amount of mass (which may be carrying charge and/or angular momentum) located at a single point and then *nothing else anywhere*. In the non-rotating case this predicts a spherical event horizon, but even in that case if you add in other effects (such as the contribution from matter in other regions of space), the shape of spacetime around the event horizon will be perturbed in such a way that it will not, in general, be *perfectly* spherically symmetric. However, except in rare cases such as black-hole collisions, the deviations from a perfect sphere will tend to be quite small. | 21 |
ELI5: Why does a pile of broken glass look blue? | 78 | Window glass is actually greenish. You don't notice when looking through a thin pane, but if you look through it edgewise or through a thick piece, you'll see it. When you look at a pile of glass, the light passes through many pieces and the color is more apparent. | 12 |
|
Applying to jobs before end of PhD, "what is your highest level of education?" Well, it WILL BE PhD | And that's the only thing that matters, but then there are these disclaimers at the end of these online forms saying that if I perjure myself I am liable to being banned from the company and if it's a government job, federal charges...
Any ideas? They are check boxes or drop downs or radio buttons - it's not like there's a spot for "will have a PhD in 3 months". I only have a BS, so I'm afraid they're just gonna filter me on that if I tell the exact truth for this point in time.
My CV clearly shows I'll have the PhD in December, but still...
example: http://i.imgur.com/HTr5wve.png | 24 | For a lot of U.S. gov jobs, the announcement will ask for 2+ years of post-bachelors education OR such and such degree. You won't be given federal charges for answering that, don't worry. On the resume portion, list the phd and list anticipated dec 2016. When you submit your transcripts, they'll show where you are in school as well. Any hr professional will understand what you're saying. | 16 |
What does the electric shock therapy do in a mental hospital? | I don't know the exact name for it, but an example of it is what happens to the old lady in Requiem for a Dream at the very end.
On that note, how does injecting painful liquids that make the patient squirm and scream help treat their mental illness? | 25 | The proper name for that kind of therapy is *electroconvulsive therapy*, or *ECT*.
The way ECT is done in real life isn't exactly like in the movies. In real life, the first step is to first use medicine to make the patient fall asleep. Patients are never awake during ECT.
Then, they inject the patient with a different medicine that makes it so they can't move. It makes their muscles turn off and go limp. This is important because of the next step.
Then, they shock the patient's brain with electricity. The idea is to overpower the brain's own electrical circuitry and force it into a seizure. Usually seizures make people shake and flail wildly, which could hurt them. Because the patient's muscles are temporarily turned off, though, that part doesn't happen.
Nobody knows exactly why, but all that electricity kind of reboots the patient's brain. This can help the patient recover from bad mental illnesses that they haven't been able to treat in any other way. It causes other problems, though, like headaches, memory loss, and confusion. Sometimes patients and doctors decide it's worth it though. | 32 |
ELI5: Why is it safe to eat veggies/fruit grown in rain water/waste water - but not drink the water by itself? | 816 | This is absolutely not always true!
Plants can *and do* absorb toxins from their environment. Now, the plant may filter some (or even all) of them out, but it might not. Some might end up in the parts of the plant you eat - **especially** if you eat the roots. | 301 |
|
[SW/The Mandalorian] Why did Mandalorian groups such as the Tribe continue to hide after the Fall of the Empire, and is Mandalore still under Imperial Rule even with the rise of the New Republic? | 66 | Based on the interactions with Bo Katan and her folks it seems like Din comes from a weird cult of manalorian extremists. Them wanting to isolate their members from the rest of society is pretty textbook cult. | 83 |
|
ELI5: How can our ears differentiate between sounds that are really far away and sounds that are close, but quiet? | 85 | Sound that is far away has a few characteristics that close sound does not:
1. the sound will have bounced off of things and will arrive at your ear through multiple avenues. The close sound will not have done this. We can discern this difference.
2. Certain undertones and overtones will have been lost traveling the distance - they'll be weaker, or won't survive the medium through which they travel at the same levels.
The TL;DR: on this is essentially that they sound different! | 51 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.