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[40K] Our ship is too fast, please help. | So I have the honor of serving on a Rogue Trader's ship, big family legacy. Okay, so a few weeks ago we arrived at a system over a week ahead of ourselves. No problem, it happens, especially when our ship is so fast thanks to our xenote... endless faith in the Emporer. However, then after the next jump we ran into Big green problems and had to run back to the previous system so fast we arrived before we even left the first time, burning out our engines.
A guy I know works on the bridge and overheard that we're going to meet ourselves in about 2 days and the engines won't be ready for a while.
So what's going to happen? Is no one going to show up? Are we going to not exist anymore? We lost like 80% of the crew to the Green Backs, can we just warn the past ship to not make the next jump and go somewhere else? I liked some of those guys, and we lost like all of the decent looking women and for the sake of argument all of the Inquisitorial spies on board. | 153 | The Warp is a strange place, and while it is incredibly rare, it is not totally unheard of to reach a destination before you left, at least as far as the "timeline" is concerned. Yes, there may now be two versions of you in the same Universe, but "their" existence no longer has any bearing on your existence.
We know of Warlord Grizgutz who managed to travel back to his own homeworld before he had left in the first place, decided that the other him was unworthy, and so killed himself to have two of his favorite gun. When this happened, Grizguts did not disappear. He didn't cease to exist. He simply went on being his Orky self, albeit with two of his favorite gun.
The fact that you got somewhere before you left means nothing. The "other you" will still head out just as you had already done, and who knows where you'll end up. See, the Warp isn't linear when it comes to time. Just because YOU went back in time doesn't mean that the other you will. There's no causality. Maybe they'll get exactly where they wanted to go, exactly when they wanted to get there. Maybe they won't pop out for another 300 years. Maybe they'll never be seen again. What matters is that YOU are okay and can continue in the Emperor's glorious name. | 131 |
Are there any good YouTube channels that talk about economics in a “fun” way? | I enjoy watching youtube videos about economics on my free time, but i dont know if they are just opinions or actual good research based videos.
I enjoy watching “Economics Explained” is that a good channel or is it not really good for economic knowledge? Any other suggestion? | 34 | I highly recommend Jacob Clifford. He’s an AP Micro/Macro high school teacher that has the upbeat/fun approach you’re looking for while still giving great explanations on many economics topics in his videos. | 14 |
ELI5: Why are radio commercials and shows allowed to make car horn and ambulance sounds? | This must have caused an accident at some point. | 49 | Because there is no law, rule, or regulation that forbids it. It's pretty much as simple as that. While it may or may not have caused an accident, those incidents are not widespread enough to put pressure on regulatory agencies to ban those sounds. | 33 |
ELI5: The recent Obamacare decision ruled by the Supreme Court, without bias. | Mandate upheld, mandate struck down. Either way I don't know what it means for the American people. | 1,020 | There were 4 questions before the court:
1. Can the court hear these arguments before anyone is actually penalized for not having health insurance?
2. Is the Individual Mandate to buy health insurance constitutional?
3. If not, is the rest of the law constitutional without the mandate?
4. Unrelated, can government require states expand medicare since the government is giving them money.
The decisions were as follows:
1. Yes, they can talk about it. This was unsurprising
2. The Individual Mandate is really a tax, not a fine. This is an important distinction because everyone agrees Congress can tax people but few people thought Congress could force people to buy stuff. This was the big question.
3. Moot point due to 2.
4. The court decided that if states take federal money they have to go with the federal rules, but states don't have to take the federal money and can then ignore the rules that come with the money. This was not terribly surprising.
The interesting thing is that the case was decided 5-4, with Republican appointed Chief Justice Roberts being the deciding vote. NOBODY expected that - they were expecting 5-4 against, 5-4 with KENNEDY the deciding vote, or 6-3 with Roberts joining so he could write the opinion.
EDIT: The entire health care reform was upheld. You will have to have health insurance in 2014. There are a bunch of other provisions that were better explained elsewhere. | 565 |
[SW] Why doesn’t the Millennium Falcon have an astro droid? | Seems like one would come in handy. Does it simply not need one? | 28 | **Complete answer:** A Navicomputer is used by most ships to chart courses through hyperspace. Many small ships, like X-Wings and Y-Wings, don’t use Navicomputers and instead rely on Astromech droids to control the ship’s hyperdrive (essentially acting as a removable Navicomputer). The *Millennium Falcon* not only has an on-board Navicomputer controlled by the pilot or co-pilot, but it also has (as we learned from *Solo: A Star Wars Story*) the vast array of navigational data downloaded from L3.
In Legends (Star Wars expanded universe), it’s also stated that the Falcon’s on board computer uses a trio of linked droid-brains that allow its Navicomputer and other computerized systems to run even faster than an Astromech droid (which itself has only one droid brain).
**Simple answer:** The *Millennium Falcon* doesn’t need an Astromech droid.
[Edit: Formatting] | 53 |
[Harry Potter] How do wizard power levels work? | How is it decided that Dumbledore is the only one powerful enough to beat the great Dark Lord's of the age? Hermione is super smart and memorized all the spells, but no one says she'll be powerful. Just talented. How do wizard power levels break down? Is it natural power, learning, exposure to gamma rays? Can you move up or down the ranks? It seems rather arbitrary. | 17 | > but no one says she'll be powerful. Just talented
The difference is often practice. Both Dumbledore and Riddle dedicated their lives to the pursuit of study, honing their skills, and finding powerful ancient artifacts. By the events of the book they are 70 and 120ish(?) so they have had plenty of time to practice | 22 |
[DC] Why the hell do some metahumans accept being called "Reverse Flash" as their go-to supervillain name? | I know some of them have alternative names, but I often see them go back and forth between the choices like it's nothing. It's sort of like being in a community college with multiple people with the name Neil. One of them is "Fat Neil" while the regular unseen Neil is just called "Neil". Obviously Fat Neil doesn't like being called Fat Neil and wishes to just be called Neil by his peers while they play Dungeons and Dragons. What | 33 | Why wouldn't he be okay with the name, it describes exactly who he is.
It's also possible he didn't pick the name, someone could have called him that and then others carried on doing so.
Unfortunately fat Neil is shit out of luck. | 19 |
[Looper] How does Abe know that a loop has been broken? | Within a few hours of a looper breaking their loop, Abe has men out looking for them... but how does he know? Why don't loopers who break the loop just pretend that they killed their future-selves and disposed of the body as they were meant to?
I guess not having the gold could be a clue, but in that case, why didn't old Joe (for example) leave young Joe the gold? It seems way too easy for a looper to cheat the system by checking their targets before killing them and planning to let their older self go free. | 18 | This actually takes a bit of thought, but the reason the mafia uses Loopers is because people in the future have some sort of transmitter in their body that starts broadcasting once they die. Part of a Looper's job is to destroy that transmitter.
By letting their older self go free the Loopers fail to destory the transmitter and once the older self dies and the tracking software is invented in the future the Mafia will know that the Looper failed to close their loop. After that, it's a simple matter to send the info back to Abe who hunts the Looper. | 15 |
ELI5 What makes garlic and onion bulbs special that makes them so good to cook with? Is there a reason other than taste that stops me from trying to cook with all the different species of bulbs? | 10,975 | The fact that they're both bulbs doesn't mean that anything bulb-shaped is either tasty or safe.
Onions and garlic are both in the same family, "allium". Several other alliums are also edible and share broadly similar flavor profiles: scallions, shallots, and chives, for example. To be clear though, there are poisonous alliums too - the entire family isn't generically safe. | 4,230 |
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ELI5: why is there a "terms and conditions" for using a website or program, but not for more 'real life' things like eating at a restaurant? | 212 | Because websites and programmes can be used everywhere in the world, where local laws may or may not be the same as those applicable to the location of the programmer / issuing company.
You know where a restaurant is located, and it follows local laws and regulations (or should, anyway), and its customers are also supposed to adhere to those laws. | 92 |
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ELI5: Why is it that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump seem to be the leading presidential candidates when it seems that public opinion of both is very low? | 328 | First, this is how it always is this early in campaign season. Anyone with a little bit of name recognition immediately is at the forefront, regardless of their quality as a candidate or likelihood to do well long term.
But more to the point, it's because we don't cast negative votes.
If 20% of the people love you, but 80% hate you, you don't get a score of -60. You get a score of +20. Those 80% who hate you are going to be divided up among a bunch of other candidates, or will just be left undecided. +20 is enough to be the frontrunner early on in primary season.
Note that general elections are different. A negative opinion often converts into a vote for the other guy. So now, those 80% who hate you vote for the one leading opponent and you easily lose. | 167 |
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ELI5: Why is it that when people in very prestigious positions lose their jobs, they have to tender a resignation, but in everyday jobs, you just get fired? | 244 | Most jobs in the USA are at-will; this means that either side can terminate the relationship at any time. You can quit whenever, and you can be fired whenever, for nearly any reason or no reason.
Most upper management positions, however, are on contract. This means that the employee and the company sign an agreement that the person can only be fired for certain reasons. If there's disagreement over those reasons, a firing might lead to a lawsuit.
So instead, the organization and the employee negotiate an end to the contract. If they agree, the employee resigns and agrees not to sue for termination of the contract. | 244 |
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[Pokemon] Why the heck is Blaine allowed to have a pokemon gym inside a volcano filled with magma? | I traveled to his gym and my pokemon got beat pretty badly by his Magmar. His Magmar was about to knock my pokemon into the lava but I forfeited in order to save my pokemon friend. Blaine let me know that I made the right call because if my pokemon had fallen into the lava and perished, I would have lost my pokemon license.
What the heck!? How would it be my fault if my pokemon died if he's the one hosting battles in a volcano and he's the one ordering his Magmar to knock opponents into the lava to begin with!? This entire scenario seems nuts. Do I really have to battle this psycho again? Can I report him to anybody? | 67 | Gym leaders aren't subject to any kind of safety standards, they can trap their gyms any way they want. Fortunately for you, it's in the gym leader's best interest not to kill people (people will stop coming to your gym if it's a deathtrap).
And yes, if you or your pokemon die he *can* get disbarred by the Elite Four if they can prove that he was at fault (although it really only happens if humans get killed, since pokemon die somewhat frequently). This kind of stuff is taken quite seriously.
Of course, *you* traveled out to a remote island and climbed an active volcano, so he probably assumed that you were up to the challenge. | 54 |
[Star Wars] Why exactly was Anakin lauded as some tactical genius? | At least Vader seemed to be hot on the trail of Han and nearly won it all in the end and was basically a Magnificent Bastard in that film, but Anakin’s whole strategy basically seems to be “Let me go ahead and kill the enemy with my saber/starfighter because I’m completely invincible due to a prophecy loophole!”. I honestly feel Rex is a better strategist, he actually has to command the clones, idk what Anakin does beyond getting intel and fighting. Does he have to do paperwork? He’s literally a general, after all. | 83 | Part of what made Anakin such a renowned commander was his willingness to leverage his own abilities to his advantage, damn the danger. Compared to many other Jedi generals (Pong Krell being the most direct antithesis), Anakin relished being in the thick of the fighting and was damn good at it, which gave his forces an immense tactical advantage. Jedi have a history of hanging back from the fighting because of their emphasis on peace and serenity, but Anakin's inherent dark tendencies also made him ideal for charging into battle and putting all of his considerable Jedi advantages at his troops' disposal. Jedi as a whole don't make great generals, as their skills with the force and talent in combat are counterbalanced by their pervasive mentality of patience, peace, and stoicism. Anakin had all the advantages of being a Jedi, and rejected many of the drawbacks.
Along with that, Anakin actively encouraged creativity and out-of-the-box thinking amongst his subordinates. Consider, for example, his decision to attack the Malevolent through a nebula, a bit of stellar geography normally considered impassible, or his use of AT-TEs in space combat in the Battle of Bothawui to supplement his outgunned fleet. In a war that was often defined by traditional tactics, Anakin fostered ingenuity amongst his forces.
Finally, as you mention, Rex is an excellent strategist, which helps both of Anakin's previously mentioned traits. A good portion of any legendary general is his or her equally talented support staff, and having Rex, a clone trooper who stood head-and-shoulders above many of his comrades in terms of tactical and strategic ability, allowed Anakin to delegate more of his commanding to Rex and other such troopers, giving him greater tactical flexibility.
In short, Anakin could fully leverage his Jedi abilities, something few of his peers did, actively encouraged creative solutions in a war where that was not the norm, and had a support staff just as talented and capable as he was, which allowed him to make full use of his abilities. | 163 |
[Dune] - How did the freeman bring jihad to so many people and planets with so few soldiers? | In the first book they estimate the freeman population at 5 million. In the second book it is said the hundreds of planets were conquered over 12 years causing the deaths of over 60 billion people. I find it hard to fathom that so few could conquer so many is such a short time, no matter how blood thirsty and tough they may be. Is there something I'm missing? I mean there were more combatants in World War 2 than the entire freeman population. | 55 | Remember that Paul had prescient abilities and knew that the only way for things to move forward was to be bloodthirsty and ruthless. With his power, he guided his Fremen soldiers to planets where they would be most effective. With the ability to see the future, he could have easily struck vulnerable targets and left before a response arrived.
It wouldn't take long for many Houses and armies to surrender after enough attacks of that nature. Some were indeed exterminated completely.
Also, Paul saw through his visions that the jihad would spread Fremen culture to various planets, which could have swelled the ranks of soldiers over time. | 51 |
ELI5:Why don't drug cartels, street gangs and other criminal groups just merge instead of competing? | It seems like a monopoly is best, because you can control the prices of whatever illegal stuff you're selling, and there's no inter-group violence. Aren't antitrust laws the only reason competing corporations don't all just merge into monopolies? Why don't organized crime syndicates do it? | 19 | You may as well ask why everyone everywhere doesn't get a long.
They aren't in it for anything but the money, and sharing that money with someone else is not appealing. Basically the various gangs and cartels could never stick together long enough to make this work. They'd stab each other in the back and go back to the way things are. | 21 |
[Batman] Does Batman deserve blame for the people Joker has killed due to his refusal to kill Joker? | 25 | No.
We're used to thinking of Batman as a god, or at least someone with a higher moral responsibility. But that's because he's a protagonist, he's a superhero.
The reality- he's just another person.
You know who else could have killed the Joker? The State. Any police officer. Any Arkham employee. Any human being with the opportunity to.
Batman doesn't bear responsibility for Joker's actions, any more than he does if he captures a mugger, and that mugger mugs again. | 54 |
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[Marvel] Why is SHIELD so inept at keeping super criminals in jail? | Seriously, how many super prisons have there been over the years? The Raft, The Cube, Pleasant Hill, hell, wasn’t there one in a whole different dimension one time? Time and time again, criminals are allowed to break out or cheat the system to go and cause more havoc. Why is SHIELD so bad at this? | 65 | SHIELD mostly aren’t. They’re an international espionage and law enforcement agency, not a prison service. They operate a few facilities, but most incarcerated super criminals are in government-run or even private prisons.
Even Cyclops - about as high-profile and high-risk a prisoner as you can get - was held in a private prison. | 63 |
[Avatar] How did the fire nation kill the entire air tribe but never took out the earth and water tribes? | 26 | In addition to the Air Nomads being relatively small and only having the remoteness of their temples for defense, the Fire Nation killed the bulk of their population during the weeks that Sozin's comet was enhancing their firebending. Even a relatively small company of firebenders would have been able to wreak devastation on their numbers.
With that in mind it points to how much of a badass Gyatso must have been to take down several comet-empowered firebenders with him. | 40 |
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[Magic School Bus] How does Miss Frizzle get the permission to take children on such crazy field trips? | Like, how in God's name did she get the okay to take her students into other countries, shrinking them into the size of insects, going into the human body and into out space, MULTIPLE TIMES for both of the latter 2? What is wrong with the school or district she's employed at that they're totally fine with all of this? | 131 | What the school administration doesn't know can't hurt them. The Bus is the personal property of Miss Frizzle. Parental Permission slips are not used, and no one is going to believe the kids anyway. | 149 |
[DuckTales]in southern schools do they teach ducks evolved from Dinosaurs? Which side won the Scopes raptor Trial? | 52 | Ducks are known to have not evolved from Dinosaurs.
When Scrooge went back in time, and they ended up bringing Bubba the cave duck back to the present, you see him living alongside dinosaurs. In fact, Bubba saved Scrooge from an attacking T-Rex. | 24 |
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Would wires made of anti-matter have the same electrical properties? | Would the right hand rule still apply or would it be the left hand rule? Would electricity be propagated with positrons and would this change how the magnetic fields would be generated?
Is it the same, but opposite or the same in general? | 122 | All the same rules and formulas would still apply; with the definitions we use, a current going in a given direction can be the flow of positive charges in that same direction, or a flow of negative charges in the opposite direction. Or both! Magnetic fields are the same for the flow of a positively charged antiparticle (like a positron) as for a positively charged particle (like a proton). But, like you suggested, in an antimatter wire the moving charge carriers would be the positively-charged positrons, with the anti-nucleons forming the fixed "lattice" of the solid wire.
Slight aside: there are a variety of sign and handedness conventions baked in to our laws of E&M. The sign of charges, the direction of current, the direction of magnetic field, and whether to use the left or right hand rule are some of those. The choices that we use are largely due to choices made by people muddling in the dark trying to figure things out as they went along (like Ben Franklin assigning positive and negative charge). The physical observables of course don't care what choices for those we make, as long as we're consistent.
Note that we do have experience with "antimatter currents" in the proton-antiproton and electron-positron beams at various particle accelerators. We also have experience with the flow of positive and negative charges in electrolyte solutions and plasmas. We of course don't have experience building solid antimatter wires; connecting those to our instruments (or even suspending them magically in a pretty good vacuum) would be... a bit too exciting. | 81 |
[Chronicles of Narnia] what exactly is the deplorable word and what was the price Jadis paid to learn it? | To be clear I'm not asking what it does or how it works, but what the actual word itself *is*. Like the letters and syllables of it. | 36 | We don't know the word and we don't know the price. All we know is:
* it was a well-kept secret that had long been known about
* Jadis had to "pay a terrible price" (the only description) to learn it
* it had to be spoken "with certain ceremonies" to be effective
* it destroyed all life on her planet except for herself.
Aslan also warned that an analogous power to the Deplorable Word was soon to be discovered on Earth. Shortly after that, nuclear weapons were developed and used for the first time. | 43 |
ELI5: How can scientists prove the big bang if it happened 13.7 billion years ago? | And how did they come up with 13.7 billion years as opposed to 14.7 billion or 12.7? | 48 | The basic premise relies on the fact is that light and other electromagnetic waves have a travel time, its just that they move really really fast.
By turning our telescopes to the parts of space that are both empty and very very VERY far away we can then "listen" to electromagnetic waves (like static on your TV). The big bang itself created a kind of "cosmic background radiation" which is a fancy way of saying that it's static exists everywhere.
We can then make a guess at the age by knowing how far that point we are listening is away from us and by how fast light can travel. This is not a perfect system but it is mathematically correct (hence why its 13.7 billion years instead of an exact number like 13,726,432 years. We can only be accurate to within 0.05 billion years.)
Thus we look for areas that are the furthest away that we can hear the cosmic background radiation. Because that radiation from that area of space still has to travel to us we can guess its age.
As an interesting point this holds true when looking at planets. Whenever you look at something you are actually viewing it in the past because light, again, has a travel time. Thus whenever a scientist finds a new planet and says something like "It is 40 light years away from us." what this means is that we are viewing the planet as it was 40 years ago because it took light 40 years to travel from that planet to our eyes. Because of this any alien looking at earth from, say, 77 light years away, would be watching WWII, and an alien looking at earth from about 65.5 million light years away would be watching a meteor smashing into a planet full of dinosaurs.
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Is the total mass in the universe is constant? | 16 | TL;DR: No, there isn't really any reasonable sense in which one can say that the total mass of the universe is constant.
The sum of the rest masses of all particles in the universe is not constant. Particles are frequently created and destroyed, with their mass-energy being converted into other forms of energy such as kinetic energy, or vice versa.
That's actually kind of a different statement than "is the total mass of the universe constant," because mass is defined differently for *systems* than it is for individual *particles*. The rest mass of a system is defined according to all of the energy that is present in its rest reference frame (its center-of-momentum frame) -- this includes any kinetic and potential energy possessed by the constituent particles, which count as part of the "mass" of the whole system. If the system is not losing energy to or gaining energy from another external system, then the total mass of that system is generally conserved.
But the universe itself can't really be described as a system, at least not the way we're familiar with it in classical mechanics. There is no such thing as a "rest frame" or "center of momentum frame" for the entire universe, partly because the universe is expanding. And in an expanding or contracting universe, the total energy is not conserved in general, as the energy of radiation will become redshifted and energy is "lost" in this way, and the total amount of dark energy increases over time because the density of dark energy remains constant (so, expansion = more volume, more volume + same density = more energy). And before you or anyone else asks, no, those two effects do not cancel each other out numerically; if the universe doubles in size, the total energy of radiation is halved, while the total dark energy increases eightfold, and it does not appear to be possible to harvest/utilize dark energy because the dark energy that is present is part of the lowest-energy vacuum state; you can't get energy out of it because there's no lower-energy state that can possibly be reached.
Hope that helps, | 29 |
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ELI5: How Ram works and how DDr4 is faster than DDR3 | I'm confused about how the DDR4 makes things go so much faster and uses so much less energy? what about it? What changed from DDR3? | 119 | Think of it like a highway with garages on one end. In going from DDR3 to DDR4 they did the following major changes:
- Added more lanes
- Increased the speed limit
- Made the cars more efficient
- Allowed garages to have a second level
- Allowed each level in a garage to be bigger | 85 |
[Guardians Of The Galaxy] [SPOILERS] Sticks. | Vague title because spoilers.
At the end of Guardians when Groot 'dies', we see Rocket grab a handful of sticks from an even larger pile of sticks and say "I called him an idiot".
I'm not saying that Rocket took more than one, but **if another Groot grows from the stick that Rocket took then what about all of the other sticks? Wouldn't they also grow into separate Groots?** | 25 | Note that Rocket is still holding that one stick when they do the Infinity Stone Kumbaya at the climax. He's not holding any of the other sticks that are on the ground. Perhaps exposure to the stone's energy is what caused that stick to grow back? | 24 |
CMV: The minimum eligibility requirements for employment in law enforcement and politics are way too low. | Most law enforcement jobs only require a high school diploma, and to be over 21. To be president the main requirement is to be born in the US and be over 35.
Any idea how qualified those 2 astronauts had to be to take a ride in a spaceship that flies itself? And not to diminish those astronauts, they are the real deal, but how much influence do they have over your lives?
Obviously people shouldn't need to be as physically and mentally fit as an astronaut to become a cop or president, but usually a simple way to ensure a job is done by qualified people is to ensure they meet some minimum eligibility qualifications.
So if people are unsatisfied with the quality of service they are getting from those fields, that is one simple thing that could actually bring real and lasting change. | 268 | It's not an issue of credentials or education why these people suck who are in these jobs, but that the incentive structure's of these jobs make it so that non-sucky peoply don't last. They either leave or adapt into sucky people. | 57 |
CMV: "Pay In 4" Services are predatory and people who use them only dig themselves a deeper hole | TL;DR: They are like Credit cards but worst. So just use a credit card.
Background:
I am referring to services like Affirm, Klarna, Etc... AKA Buy Now Pay Later
They allow you to split "large" purchases (I think anything above $100) into 4 fixed payments with zero interest. Payments are made every 2 weeks, so essentially 8 weeks total to fully pay something off. This can be used on a variety of things. Even clothing purchases in some stores as well.
There is also this credit card from Wells Fargo which allows you to split your rent into 2 payments every month (so essentially pay it every 2 weeks) so it is in a similar boat as Pay In 4 services and ill get back to this in a sec.
The issue:
It gives people the wrong impression and makes them have a false sense of comfort when they think they are only paying a 4th of the price every 2 weeks. in reality, this is no different than buying it on a credit card.
Lets not even talk about the cashback, you would be forfeiting by not buying it on your credit card. Lets say your statement closing date on your credit card is the 1st of each month. meaning anything you buy between, say, September 1st to September 31st goes on your September statement. this statement is generally due a week before your next statement. Giving you 3 weeks after statement closing date to pay your statement.
If you make a purchase on September 1st, you have all of September (4 weeks) plus the 3 week grace period that's 7 weeks to pay it off. 1 week less than PI4 (Pay In 4). (Sometimes but not always, in PI4 you have to also pay a downpayment on the first day)
There is also a group of people who think it is a good option because they get paid every 2 weeks and it helps them pay for things every 2 weeks. This is exactly why these services are outright predatory.
This kind of thinking is flawed and more often than not comes from people who use debit cards to make purchases and think everything has to come out of their account right away. Affirm is no different than a 0% cashback credit card with zero after-purchase protection as I just explained.
You can pay your credit card every 2 weeks. Nothing is stopping you from setting automatic payments every 2 weeks.
So instead of using affirm, just use a credit card. Not to mention having the headache of having 50 different transactions every 2 weeks getting deducted from your account instead of one central place to see exactly how much the total amount is and paying it once (or twice) before the due date.
Buy Now Pay Later services only further promote the living paycheck to paycheck idea. You set up your life around every 2 weeks getting something deducted from your account down to the last penny.
The idea is to break out of having to plan our life around when we get our paycheck. The entire point of saving and making good financial decisions is to not worry "if I have enough money left over after my next paycheck to pay this installment of affirm".
This is why the Wells Fargo credit card is also an issue, if paying rent every other week is really what you want, I don't think any landlord is gana have a problem getting half their money 2 weeks sooner.
If you don't agree with anything I said, that's fine. But agree with this, If you don't have the money to buy something today, you probably shouldn't buy it anyways. It's not like you can pay for necessities with affirm like bills or groceries. Just save for it for 8 weeks and then buy it.
Now tell me I'm wrong :)
Edit 1: 2 common points that have been raised and my response to them just so I don't have to clutter the comments with the same response: [Point 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/x804ux/cmv_pay_in_4_services_are_predatory_and_people/infhzif?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3) [Point 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/x804ux/cmv_pay_in_4_services_are_predatory_and_people/infg2bs?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
Edit 2: This will be the last edit. Deltas were awarded where needed, vast majority of the arguments are addressed by the TL;DR in the first line and major arguments have been addressed with counter arguments therefore I think this concludes the CMV for me (not that I can ignore any further discussion since apparently the ignore replys to this post option doesn't exist on android or maybe it's just my phone!) | 412 | These services don't ask for interest for two months. Credit card will see that interest in one month. So they are objectively better than credit cards. And if you don't like paying in 4 bulks you are free to pay them in one as well. Sometimes you get 0 sum bills but you don't have to pay for those. | 378 |
ELI5: How do lakes freeze with waves continuously moving? | 15 | Just because water is moving doesn't mean it can't freeze. It'll just freeze slower because ice crystals can't form really large. Drops at a time, eventually the entire lake will freeze
Edit: entire lake surface | 15 |
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CMV: Life in America is better now than it was 50 years ago | 41 percent of Americans think life was better 50 years ago than it is now. I believe that the miracles of automation, ease of access to vehicles or transportation (especially airfare), the internet, accessibility to information ability to communicate, higher net household income, a far more racially tolerant society, and an extra 8 years added to life expectancy all support my claim.
As well, threat of nuclear war is lower than back then, same amount of people were renting now as back then, extreme poverty has dramatically declined world wide and medicine has progressed exponentially since then.
CMV
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 60 | The issue is we don't have a specific definition for 'better'. For example, 50 years ago life in America may have been better for religious people as society was more reflecting of their values.
Likewise, college was cheaper 50 years ago - so for a student perhaps 50 years ago would have been better. 50 years ago it may have been easier to enter the job market, so life may have been better for people entering the job market, etc..
Generally yes the standard of life has improved, but technology would have been introduced regardless - so maybe if we replicate social/economic policy from 50 years ago with today's technology we would have a better life. | 28 |
ELI5: What causes the sick to the stomach feeling? | 25 | Blood rushing from the stomach to other parts of the body. Depending on the situation you're in depends on how the body reacts, so for example if you're scared, you're body will divert the majority of blood to your limbs in order for you to fight or run more effectively. The same for when you see your crush, the your body will divert blood away from your stomach to your genitals...for obvious reasons. | 12 |
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ELI5: How do they reduce fat in things like peanut butter? | Is there a low fat peanut? Is there a fat removal machine that I need to step into somewhere? | 1,476 | Peanut butter normally has added oil. To reduce the fat, you don't add the oil. To further reduce the fat, you spin it (in a centrifuge) so the lightest part—the peanuts' own oil—floats to the top, and then pour it off. | 1,155 |
ELI5 How do you feel like your being watched (without seeing the one who's watching)? Does our brain simply detect it or is it something else entirely? | 18 | There have been some experiments on this, and they all conclude the same thing: people can't tell if someone else is watching them. It's just confirmation bias, because sometimes you notice people watching you, but you never know when you haven't noticed someone watching you. | 27 |
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Which of the basic forces of nature is the strongest? | A few years ago my physics-chemistry teacher asked my class which of the 4 basic forces of nature was the strongest. I answered Gravity because of black holes. They are gravity at its maximum, and them being the most powerful things in the universe, it made sense to me that gravity would also be the strongest. However he corrected me and said it was actually the strong nuclear force the most powerful and that gravity was actually the weakest.
So my question is: if strong and weak nuclear forces are technically more powerful than gravity, how can neutron stars come to exist? How can gravity overcome nuclear forces and start fusing the atoms in the core of the stars together in ways that are not "natural"?
(I only know the very basics of what happens to create a neutron star, so if I'm saying something wrong, please feel free to correct me) | 3,611 | Yes, your teacher is correct.
The reason why gravity seems to be the strongest over large length scales is that the strong and weak forces have very short ranges (~ 10^(-15) and 10^(-18) meters, respectively), and electrostatic forces tend to cancel each other out when you have material that is macroscopically neutrally charged.
So for material which extends over a large region of space, and has no net charge, gravity tends to dominate. That's why gravity is a very important force for astronomy/astrophysics/cosmology, but it's totally irrelevant for things like atomic/nuclear physics. | 2,866 |
ELI5: Why does body temperature fluctuate so much when sleeping? | When I go to bed I'm a normal temperature, i often wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, and then I wake up in the morning and I'm freezing. Bonus points if you can tell me how to skip the sweating part!! | 49 | It's not normal to wake up drenched in sweat. It's not necessarily a sign that anything is wrong either, but if you have ruled out things like having the heat up too high, too thick of a blanket, etc. then it might be worthwhile to get checked out by a doctor. Thyroid and hormone problems, among many others, can cause this. | 32 |
ELI5: How come continuing to eat a spicy food keeps the spice at bay until I stop eating it? | It seems many spicy foods have a delay between my bite and the heat, but if I continue to eat, it doesn't get hot until after I stop. | 28 | Your saliva and the movement of your mouth is keeping the capsaicin (spicy stuff) from staying anywhere for more than a second. Once you stop eating, it has a chance to stimulate your nerves and start making your mucous membranes cry. | 13 |
CMV: Media companies probably all inflate their numbers when it comes to things like ticket sales or video views. | I am hesitant about this view because I'm strongly against most conspiracy theories. That said, it seems unreasonable to trust media companies when they self-report their sales or view-counts.
Examples:
* When James Cameron's people say Avatar made 2.7 billion, I expect they pad that number to increase sales. Maybe they increase it by 30%, so that they can say it broke all records and is more culturally relevant than it actually is, which in turn increases actual sales by another 10%. I expect all movies do this, so it's still relatively as successful compared to other movies, but it may be possible that some moviemakers inflate their numbers more than others, the way some athletes steroid more than others.
* When Chris Roberts says Star Citizen has raised $100 million in crowdfunding, I expect he is grossly inflating that number to increase sales. The original record-smashing $4.2 million was probably largely legitimate, and he has surely raised many millions more from direct donations and actual business investors, but the claim of $100 million in crowdfunding is just a marketing tactic to make people feel more comfortable funding.
* I expect Vevo inflates the view count for music videos, and that this is [why they are all the most viewed videos on Youtube.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_viewed_YouTube_videos) Youtube may inflate their numbers a little (even unintentionally, given how challenging it is to filter out bots) but Vevo is probably inflating their views counts more every day, to increase real views.
The basis of my view is the following:
* I've never been able to really track down the accountability mechanisms for these numbers. If someone has a hot citation for how the accuracy of these sorts of numbers are held accountable, I would gladly use that to chance my view.
* Most conspiracy theories are based on a bunch of people doing something very wrong together. But at all these media companies, there are only a few people in position to know that the numbers they are reporting are actually wrong. At Enron, it was possible for Skilling and friends to cook the books because there were only a few people who could see the entire book. Likewise, in the world of competitive cycling, Lance Armstrong and all the other cyclers were all taking steroids because only they, and their immediate group of teammates, needed to know about it. In the same way, only a few people could possibly know the sum ticket sales of all theaters showing a movie, or the sum donations for a privately crowdsourced game. For an automatic system like a view counter, there could be a hundred programmers working on Youtube, but only a few with complete understanding of the view-counting system, and they might not even be fully sure if they are fudging the numbers or not (but they could be advised to err on the side of higher numbers.)
* Most conspiracy theories that turn out to be true, are born out of market competition. For example, so many professional athletes do steroids, because each professional athlete had to overcome about a million competitors to reach that point, and so had to be willing to do anything to win. If they were not 100% committed to winning, they would just be surpassed by some other guy that was 100% committed to winning. The same goes for media producers. Game show producers were caught all rigging their gameshows because they were 100% committed to having a successful show. If they weren't 100% committed, they'd just be beaten by someone else who was. Same goes for corporate CEOs who cook the books or collude with their competition. James Cameron went from the director of " Piranha Part Two: The Spawning" to the most successful director in the world, so it is hard for me to believe he would turn down any advantage.
* It's not that evil. In my own career in the video-game industry, I was once actually that guy who cooked up a so called "bullshot" screenshot for the marketing department. I just want my project to be a success. I told myself everyone else is doing it, and so if I don't do it, it's unfair to my teammates, and it doesn't really hurt anybody because our product is going to look better before shipping anyway. By the same logic, saying a bigger number surely increases the actual numbers, so it would be easy for people to not feel bad about their decision.
* Other industries have been caught doing things like this. So many book sellers have been caught cooking numbers to get on the New York Times best sellers list that they constantly have to change their counting system. And to get on the top 10 lists on the iPhone and Android stores, a lot of companies have taken to just buying their own product over and over. The fake popularity of the product puts it on the popular list which leads to it becoming a real popular product. Even religions do this to make their cults or churches seem more socially relevant. The system has been proven to work.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 22 | Ok so with movies that would be really difficult to do. There are multiple 3rd party agencies that measure that number so if they lied it would be obvious. Secondly if they inflate their numbers the investors in the movie will expect a higher payout and will be pissed when they find out it was a lie. Then the IRS who collects on that profit will note your underpaying taxes compared to the profits reported on the movie. So it just not smart.
So with star citizen again if he lied and upped those numbers to lets say attract more investor. Any accountant will find out really quick it is a lie and the investors will pull out or most likely sue so again that would be stupid.
With youtube videos yes you can inflate your views, but that would be stealing from YouTube who looks for that type of thing. So if they do it is very risky and would cause a huge lawsuit.
As you noted in your last point there is some benefit to doing it in certain cases is there but there is a huge risk to doing and therefore is largely avoided. It is also pretty easy to find out. | 16 |
[Ubisoft] Is Rainbow Six a Templar organization? | There's hints that Ubisoft games share a world, Sam Fisher recently joined Rainbow Six, you can find Abstergo crates on the Rook Islands and in Kyrat. There's an Assassin's logo embossed on the Villa map. So if this is the case does that mean that Rainbow Six, a globally powerful counter terrorist organization would be likely to be a part of the Templars? And if so how deep does it go? Are the operators in on who they are working for, or is it only certain higher up members like the woman who reactivated it or the "therapist" who manages the group?
Also would this mean that Ded\_Sec is affiliated with the Assassins? | 18 | Jumping off that
The white masks as a terror group aren't given any ideology, just that they've commited poison gas attacks and wear maks... And hoods.
There's been a theory for years that smoke has some involvement in the white masks, as their smoke resembles smokes grenades an awful lot.
So it's possible that the white makes are an assassin-like false flag designed to let rainbow crack down on assisns in the open.
The fact that these operators are at the tippity top of thier respective nations security structure, and often very well educated means they are probably aware of the tempars and agree with them
This would also explain why operators like Iana (an astronaut) and amaru (an archeologist) are in the team. Their templars first, and trained for combat by the templars. | 16 |
If ouzo, absinthe and other aniseed liquors are diluted with water as part of the manufacturing process, why are they not already cloudy when you buy them? | The [ouzo effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louching) supposedly occurs because aniseed oil is soluble in alcohol but not in water. This makes no sense to me, because the ouzo was diluted down to ~55% water before bottling. Why is it not already cloudy? | 158 | The concentration of alcohol in the bottle is sufficient to sustain a solution as stated in the article. When more water is added, the ethanol concentration becomes too low to support the hydrophobic oils and they drop out of solution. | 65 |
[DC] If Kal-el landed in Wayne Manor and was taken in by the Wayne's, would he have ended up as a tyrant villain after seeing his parents get shot in the alleyway? | 174 | There's a comic with this exact premise! Speeding Bullets.
He stars off as essentially a far more brutal version of Batman, viciously attacking criminals with super-strength and lasers. But over time, his innate goodness (and lois lane) leading to becoming a more conventional superman.
Dude just keeps being superman. | 170 |
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Why is a rounded nose on an airplane/rocket more aerodynamic than a pointed nose? | I remember asking my high school physics teacher this and he didn't know the answer. Here's hoping some kind redditor out there can answer my question 15 years later. | 1,347 | If it's not aimed directly towards the air flow, a pointed nose can produce flow-detachment, turbulence and drag. A rounded nose is more immune to this effect. Specifically, the front stagnation point in the flow diagram needs to land on a flat surface. As the fuselage changes relative angle to the oncoming wind, the stagnation point can just move along but without any large outbreak of turbulence. The same explanation applies to the round leading edge of wings vs. the sharp trailing edge.
Designs for supersonic flight are very different, so the above doesn't apply very much to rockets and fighter planes.
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ELI5: Why is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment for the TSA to search Valet Parked cars at airports? Video Inside | 52 | There are many exceptions to the warrant requirement of the fourth amendment. One of them includes border searches. If you are at the border or a border equivalent (international airport), the government can search and seize without a warrant. Basically, the fourth amendment protects against UNREASONABLE searches and seizures. At borders, the government has a legitimate reason to monitor what is coming in and out of the border, thus the search and seizures are not unreasonable (debatably). | 14 |
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[Marvel] Is there an upper limit to the beings Rogue can absorb energy from? | 37 | Yes - certain beings are sufficiently powerful that they can resist her outright - for example, most proficient wielders of the Power Cosmic would be able to prevent themselves from being absorbed (though doing so tends to be painful).
Another limit to consider is that if she attempts to absorb the powers of somebody sufficiently powerful for too long, she runs the risk of their personality overwhelming her and taking over. She actually struggled with this for a time after absorbing Carol Danvers' (Ms. Marvel's) powers. | 31 |
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Can light come in anything other than a sine wave? | If not, can other waves be approximated? Such as a square wave... and if so... what would it look like to us? | 17 | Mathematically, any wave can be broken down into a linear combination of sine (and cosine) waves (Google Fourier Series to see some visualizations of this) . So all electromagnetic radiation (including e.g. a square wave) is a superposition of sine waves, because all em radiation satisfies a wave equation. | 28 |
[Game of Thrones] Isn't Night's Watch a bad concept for thousands of years? | White Walkers don't show up so Wildlings are the only problem. The thing is, what is the point of sending people north of the Wall to track and kill them? This is obviously the way to antagonize them perpetually. Commanders of the Night's Watch could allow limited transfer of people and trade exchange, while focusing only on fighting the Wildings south of the Wall that are attacking the villages. This way in no more than one generation attacks would be stopped, because it's not natural for two groups of people to fight constantly and indefinitely, more like ocassionally | 281 | This happens in real life.
The wildlings raid a village, so you send some guys to kill them, so in retaliation they raid a village, so in retaliation you send some guys to kill them, so in retaliation...
Alas, Westeros is far from a just, humane society who recognises this cycle or cares if they do. So the cycle just goes on...forever. | 230 |
ELI5: How does one forget something in conversation, only to miraculously remember it a few seconds later? What causes that delay? | 17 | Memories are not stored in your brain like information is stored on a computer. Memories are built by associations. Sometimes those associations need to take a round about route to get to the place it needs to be. So you have to try a couple different paths before you find the right one. | 11 |
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Eli5: TV commercials cut out after 1 second and play another? | Is it a problem in the control room of the TV station? Is it overbooking of commercial spots? Why do I sometimes see a commercial play for about 1 second, and then it cuts out and another compliantly different commercial plays instead? | 122 | Commercials could be from two or three sources. The network has a commercial there and the local station then cuts that one out and places a local one in its place. There are signals that tell them when a commercial is starting and sometimes the equipment starts the local one a little late.
In Canada we see this more as a lot of commercials are replaced with Canadian versions vs US versions.
In Canada we see very few of the US commercials during Superbowl and the US stations are replaced with Canadian ones. | 131 |
ELI5: How do animals like horse deal with smaller creatures controlling them? | Even large dogs, who can easily overpower their owner. Why don't they remove them and act out their own will? | 48 | What's missing from these other answers is the fact that horses are herd animals. We are hijacking the fact that they are hard-wired to follow a leader. We take that instinct and exploit it to the nth degree training them to follow our commands. | 40 |
ELI5: Why are automatic cars less fuel efficient than manuals (stick shifts)? | It surprises me that automatic transmissions are typically significantly less fuel efficient for the majority of everyday drivers in the most common cars in comparison with the manual equivalents.
After years driving automatics (and a Prius - which is CVT rather than automatic, so we shall ignore this) I have returned to manuals not least to save money and have noticed the difference already. Petrol costs around $8.22 per gallon (US) in the UK at the moment.
I had sort of assumed that automatics would change gear at a point that was good for efficiency as they are not generally seen as optimum for performance. I guess I am completely wrong. Surely it cannot just be from the additional weight?
EDIT: fantastic response all, thank you very much. Will be interesting to see if the inefficiencies and overheads can be addressed in due course. | 24 | These days, they aren't. They used to be, because the torque converter was always slipping and the transmission took a fair amount of energy to run. But modern torque converters are locked when the vehicle is at speed, and they have become much more efficient. | 19 |
ELI5: How come when you open task manager to close a slow program, the program will sometimes suddenly start working again as if nothing is wrong? | 34 | I hope someone who knows some in depth details on this can chime in, but the short version is:
Opening the task manager by your standard ctrl+alt+delete is not like starting any other program. It's treated by Windows differently, and interrupts other functions for a moment - that's why it can work even when the OS is otherwise nonresponsive. Sometimes it's enough to give whatever was causing the hangup a push - it depends on a lot of variables and what was actually causing the application to stop responding. | 36 |
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ELI5: How does our brain choose 'random' things? | Let's say that i am in a room filled with a hundred empty chairs. I just pick one spot and sit there until the conference starts. How did my brain choose that particular one chair? Is it actually random? | 2,590 | Human brains are extremely bad at being 'random'.
We can't actually be really random even if you try.
If you tell a bunch of humans to randomly generate a sequence of numbers some very obvious non-random patterns will be quickly apparent.
When a human has a sequence they will look at the sequence and subconsciously try to make it more balanced if the number seven has come up multiple times already they will try to avoid it as the next number in the sequence because that looks more random to them.
At best we are not trying to act randomly and simply not thinking consciously about what makes us make the choices we do. At worst we try to act randomly for some reason, but fail to be truly random which may endanger the actual purpose of our trying to acting randomly.
This failure to act truly randomly even if we try to can and has been exploited by others. | 2,368 |
ELI5: Why do male shirts and female blouses have their buttons lined up on opposite sides? | 43 | Historically women were more likely to have maids and such doing most of their dressing for them and it was easier for the servants to button the clothing if the buttons were on the opposite side. Most people being right handed and all that. Tradition carries on.
Edited: missed a word or two | 91 |
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ELI5 the difference between x86 chip and ARM chip | 17 | More of an ELI5: they understand different languages, for example your have to talk in French to one of them and in German to the other. They also think in different ways but in the end the result is the same. However, due to these two differences one or the other will be faster in different tasks.
More advanced: AMD64 (the proper name of the 64 bit extension to x86, commonly and incorrectly written as x86-64) is a CISC architecture: the instructions to the CPU are large in number and they can be with different sizes (for example different number of arguments). The instruction set is regularly updated with newer (generally faster but now always) instructions. ARM is a RISC architecture where there is a limited number of instructions and their sizes are the same (may need a correction here). Following from that single instruction execution is faster than in a CISC architecture but you may need more instructions to achieve the same goal.
CISC: complex instruction set computer
RISC: reduced insurrection set computer | 22 |
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ELI5: Why was salt so valuable in the past? | Why was salt so valuable in the past if people already knew that salt came from the ocean and could be extracted via evaporating sea water? | 17 | There's not a lot of real estate that's suitable for extracting salt from seawater with ancient methods. You need clay soil (so the sea water doesn't seep out of your evaporation pond). You need a long dry season (so the rain doesn't keep filling up your evaporation pond), ideally with a lot of wind. You need to be on the coast, so you can get seawater. | 19 |
[Star Wars] So, Hoth must be pretty warm, far as planets go, right? | Sure, the entire surface is frozen, but it can support life on the surface, meaning it can't be colder than Earth's polar regions. Although Earth's polar regions are extreme to us, they're quite bearable far as extremes in the solar system. The characters can breath on Hoth, meaning the ice and snow is simply water, not only that, but they survive with their faces uncovered. In our own solar system, Mars alone is cold enough to have frozen carbon dioxide in its polar region, Titan is cold enough to have liquid methane lakes, and Neptune's moon Triton has frozen nitrogen on its surface. All in all, Hoth is pretty warm for an ice planet. | 174 | Yeah, it could be on the outer edge of the habitable zone.
Atmospheres trap heat, so maybe Hoth is like Earth but with a thin, but breathable, atmosphere.
I think Mars could be habitable if it had an atmosphere as thick as Earths, with an ozone layer too.
Either way, the areas we see in the movie must be the temperate or tropical areas of the planet. The poles may be too cold to support life. | 134 |
Why are large telescopes, such as NASA's James Webb, considered so fragile and extra precautions are taken before flight, but can survive the forces of acceleration and vibration from a shuttle launch? | I've seen news outlets report on the "drop" that happened with the telescope, and how it delayed it a little bit. It seems like everyone is so worried about the fragility of the components within these telescopes and their parts, but how are they able to survive the sustained vibrations and forces of a rocket launch if people have to be so careful with it even prior to the launch? | 38 | Spacecraft are designed to resist launch but only launch. In practice that means that they have one hard mounting point where they are mounted to the rocket and where all the force is applied. The rest of the structure might be really fragile. It means that it is also designed to resist to the precise type of vibration a rocket puts out and only for the duration of the launch. When designing spacecraft equipment you often optimize a lot for the launch. But just because it can withstand high g for 8 minutes doesn't means it will be able to survive the transportation loads. Just the vibration from road transport over hours can cause problems (which is why shipping boxes for spacecraft are very complicated).
So when there was this unexpected shock during integration you have to check everything again because it's unlikely that this precise case was ever simulated. Or even if it was simulated you need time to find out if it was the same thing as what you simulated.
For launch they are also locked into a specific position. Antenna and mirrors will be folded and latched, the solar panels will have tie downs. This is actually one of the biggest mission risk for the telescope. It is folded up so much for launch that the deployment is something like a 300 steps process and needs dozens of latches to come free.
You can kind of think of it like an umbrella. An umbrella can take quite a bit of abuse if it's folded and you hold it by the handle. Once deployed the whole canopy is pretty fragile. | 48 |
CMV: Lucifer or the Devil is more of an antihero than a villain | Fyi I'm not a satanist or sumin
In common christian theology the devil is obviously referred to as the incarnation of evil and so on but from what I've read from the bible he seems more like an edgy character who keeps getting f'ed over more than anything.
The main reason why I can tell he is referred to in a negative light is because well hes the devil, but why is he the devil. For those who dont know he was an angel that fell from grace because he disproved of God favoring the humans over his direct children the Angel's. The reason for his disapproval of humans is because they were imperfect and extremely flawed which is true. He proved his point in the bible when he tempered eve with the apple and she took it proving his point and God damned humans with mortality and suffering etc. In return for proving himself correct he was abandoned by his brethren and his father and cast into hell to torment. So god cast out one of his sons to torment humans for eternity and be surrounded by the thing he hates most humans.
Another negative thing attributed to him is tempting jesus with food as he wandered the dessert and this time he was proven wrong. If Jesus had taken him up on his offer wouldnt that take away the entire point of the jesus figure anyway and prove him a fraud and a hypocrite. Wouldnt it be a good thing to know that? I mean if some dude claimed he wasnt eating or drinking for a month in the dessert and I stumbled upon him I would question it all the same as I think most would.
Also most of the things we associate with modern day satanism like the goat sacrifices and so on were made up by humans to my knowledge I dont bieleve it stated anywhere that satan loves killing horned mountain dwelling mammals.
Maybe theres some other scripture that I havent seen or I'm simply misinterpreted certain aspects. I'm not religious but I enjoy discussing theology all the same so I view the bible more as a creative fiction and one that doesnt seem to have very reasonable character development. So is the devil really all the evil he is preached to be? | 23 | Since you are speaking from a Biblical standpoint here, let me argue with the Bible here as well:
Satan's / Lucifer's role in the bible is to lead people away from God, starting with the Serpent. In the story of Job, Satan incites God to take everything away from one of God's most faithful men, certain that he would lose faith once he lost everything. That's not antihero behavior, that's simply being dickish.
Same with Jesus and trying to make him break his fasting - an important religious ritual, and Satan wants Jesus to fail. There's nothing even remotely heroic here; Satan simply thinks Jesus, as a man, is fallible, but He is Christ and will not fail.
Also, look at how it all ends, specifially Revelations 12 and the following chapters. Satan takes the form of a dragon - a very large version of the original serpent - and has a son with a woman, in mockery of Jesus being the son of God, and makes him king of the mortal world. Then he goes to war against the heavens. When that fails, he tries to give his power to two great monsters, one from the sea and one from the earth, who subjugate humanity for him
Eventually, the forces of heaven come down to earth, defeat Satan's forces and bind him in chains for a thousand years before finally casting him into a lake of fire.
Antihero? Villain, absolutely. | 14 |
Why has the US stock market (e.g. the S&P 500) outperformed EU stock markets by so much since the Great Recession, and even before? | I'm wondering about this because investing in index funds is a good strategy for retirement... if you're in the US. (Shoutout to /r/personalfinance.) This has kind of bummed me out, but I also started wondering why this happens.
Consider the S&P 500 versus literally any index for EU companies, such as the DAX indices in Germany. (The only EU-wide index I know that's similar enough is the Stoxx 600.)
Is this simply because the US has better business-friendly policies (e.g. more flexible labour markets)? Is it because the US is a single country, and there's regulatory alignment? I am also quite confident the sovereign debt crisis had a major impact, but since I'm not an economist, I'm asking here.
The above are based on assumptions that, in the long run, one expects the price of a stock (and the value of a company) to reflect the conditions of the economy.
Thanks! | 53 | This is more related to investing than to economics. You would probably get more relevant answers at r/finance. Here, I'll give you the typical economist's perspective:
Stock markets are highly volatile. They go up and down based on a multitude of factors, only some of which are related to the real economy. For this reason, economists usually avoid reading too much into stock market movements.
We can speculate over some of the economic factors: strong GDP growth in the U.S. (due partly to faster population growth), stronger U.S. dollar compared with the Euro, internal issues in the E.U. etc. etc. but ultimately, the truth is we don't really know for sure. | 23 |
How do vets perform surgery on aquatic animals? | 40 | Marine mammals are usually lifted into a sling of some sort to support body weight, and given anesthesia in the usual way for mammals (inhaled isoflurane, or injectable ketamine mixes). Fishes and amphibians are given a compound called MS222 (related to cocaine!) mixed into the water, then during surgery are intubated with a hose providing fresh, oxygenated water over their gills.
Source: I've done surgeries on fishes and amphibians, can't speak personally to the marine mammals. | 36 |
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ELI5: What does it mean when they say a burger uses 1300 gallons of water to make? Isn’t water renewable? | I saw an ad for being vegan saying either don’t flush your toilet for 6 months, don’t shower for 3 months or don’t eat a burger once. But isn’t all of our water basically renewable and no matter if we do any of these things, it just goes back into the water cycle and we’ll reuse it eventually, even if we have to clean it somehow? What’s the big deal? | 43 | Water can be renewed, but that requires energy. Water treatment plants use a lot of energy to make sewage into drinkable water again.
Nature can do some of the work, but it does so more slowly than we need, and because of that we are fouling more and more of nature and making it less effective at the water cycle every day.
So the big deal is that we either need to spend much more money to purify water, we need to use less water, or we need to be prepared to die as a civilization because we refuse to do either of those two. And of course, that also applies to a lot of other environmental concerns as well. | 82 |
ELI5: what happens if a muscle knot is never released? | Clarification: What happens physically if a fibrous muscle adhesion is never broken up? | 15 | A knot restricts your movement. Your movement would be permanently restricted and your body would adapt around it.
Some Indian fella held his arm above his head for decades. You can be sure he got some knots in his arm and shoulder along the way.
What happened along the way? It basically got stuck there and now he has a bizarre, whithered arm that's jammed in position. Presumably making his efforts a lot easier than they were before. | 19 |
[Doctor Strange / Marvel] Where do beings like Dormammu get their power and energy? | 16 | beings *like* Dormammu? There is nothing like Dormammu, he's the master of a universe. And not just any, the dark dimension, which devours other dimensions. This means Dormammu has more power than our entire *universe*.
Dormammu is.
Really the most similar being i can think of is Mojo, but he's much more limited in power. | 11 |
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ELI5: When we learn a new word/term from a T.V show or game, we start seeing it frequently after that. Why does that happen? | It happened to me a lot. I find a new word, I look it up and then I start seeing/noticing in other stuff a lot. | 27 | The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also known as the frequency illusion, is a psychological effect that causes newly-discovered concepts to seem to pop up in an observer's life with increased frequency. It is a combination of selective attention and cognitive bias that appears to increase the likelihood of an occurrence. | 35 |
ELI5: What is so "huge" about the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight, besides the money? | I'm not a boxing fan, I enjoy watching fights but only the big ones, for the spectacle.
Can anyone explain to me the significance of *this* fight? Is it the biggest fight of the century so far? What's at stake for the fighters? Mayweather seems to have more to lose, but is he the more experienced? Does Pacquiao have a chance (ie like Cassius Clay vs Liston) or is he solely an underdog taking a huge opponent? | 798 | 2 of the best fighters of their generation. The both have two completely different fighting styles and everyone has wanted this fight for the past 5-7 years. Floyd is undefeated and a five division world champion and considered one of the smartest fighters to ever fight. He can counter-punch well as anybody and has an undorthodox style of fighting using his shoulders.
Pacquiao is a southpaw (left handed) brawler with knock out power.
Pacquiao is the first and only eight-division world championin which he has won ten world titles, as well as the first to win the lineal championship in four different weight classes | 702 |
Could electrolysis be used in a matter to purify water of radiation? | I have been playing a little too much fallout at 2am I will admit. But I got wondering during fallout3 on their project to purify water.
Using electrolysis, splitting the hydrogen and oxygen and then having them reform in a separate container. Would it treat the water of radiation and other impurities as well?
| 25 | I think this is like building a death ray to kill an ant; there are filters that can remove radiation from water. If water is contaminated, then the ionizing particles are dissolved in it (like strontium-90, radium-226 etc.). A proper filter should remove these particles through reverse osmosis. Adding procedures such as activated carbon or ion exchange would possibly even remove gaseous contaminants like Iodine-131.
What you are describing sounds like combustion; burning hydrogen and oxygen gases creates water.
2H₂(g) + O₂(g) → 2H₂O(g) + energy
You would then need to condense it to get liquid water, and it should be free of radioactive contaminants. | 20 |
ELI5: Why do wasps seem to be more aggressive in the fall? | Growing up I had pear trees, wasps LOVE rotting pears. During the fall, when there was hundreds of pears on the ground you’d think they’d be less aggressive because of the abundance of food, Compared to the only 20-30 ish pears on the ground during the summer. The wasps seemed angry in the fall, does anyone know why? | 25 | #They are drunk on pear wine.
Wasps undergo a four-stage life cycle that starts with eggs and ends with adulthood. An adult wasp isn't likely to live longer than a few weeks, though it is possible for some workers and drones in the colony to survive for several months. The exception here is the queen. The average queen lives for about a year (queens have been kept alive in lab settings for several years though).
Having said all that, the average queen has stopped laying eggs by mid-summer. By the end of summer, a nest typically goes dormant. That leaves surviving workers with nothing to do and, more importantly, no food.
Older wasps are no longer capable of eating other insects, like flies, due to a restrictive band around their abdomens. The insects they do capture are chewed up and fed to larvae in the nest. In turn, the larvae secrete a sugary substance that acts as a food source for the adults.
A dormant nest is no longer producing food for older adults because there are no more larvae making it. Those adult wasps are forced to find food elsewhere. One source is rotting fruit found out and about. It is this rotting fruit that makes wasps more aggressive.
Rotting fruit ferments as it rots, so although no big deal for us, it's not good for wasps. They essentially get drunk just by feeding, which makes them more aggressive. It turns out that wasps are not happy drunks; they are more prone to taking a defensive position even when not provoked. They are also more prone to attacking. | 40 |
ELI5: How do they cast obese and/or ugly children? | I once read [this post](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m7dnc/eli5_how_do_movies_deal_with_casting_overweight/) explaining the same question regarding adults and what people wrote is logical, but do you deal with children?
Kid: "Mom? Why do I always have to play the fat guy?"
Mom: "Because you're fat"
Kid: "Oh"
I don't want to underestimate children, but this somehow feels strange. Of course we all judge people in some way or another, but from a psychological viewpoint it makes me question what happens to such children. We all either knew people who have been bullied or we've even been bullied ourselves. In these situations people often try to compensate. And I personally knew people who tried to be "the funny guy" etc. when in reality they cried inside.
You don't tell them "Yeah you're ugly and always stay ugly, but make the most of it", don't you? ^( )^(or do they?) | 230 | Kids are pretty much left in the dark when it comes to what they are filming, specially if it's inappropriate for their age. A famous case is the guy that acted in The Shining, and how he never knew he was staring in a horror film. They don't specifically cast for fat kids, they just have dossiers with a lot of available people, and each has a profile (that includes a physical description, picture, etc). So, the role might call for a fat kid 6 to 10 years old, so they just pick one from their files. | 100 |
ELI5: Why are humans sympathetic toward a crying animal, but find crying children annoying? | Shouldn't my animal instinct be to help the child? | 20 | One theory is that the child's cry is meant to induce a sense of urgency. Puppies have no reasonable expectation of human help, but babies do. So they can skip being pleasant, and get right to being urgent.
Another theory (unproven) is that there is an evolutionary advantage to a baby making life unpleasant and sleepless for its parents for a year or so after being born: it makes the conception of a new sibling less likely because the parents will be too tired and crabby to have a lot of sex. | 24 |
[Alien Series]Shouldn't the Xenomorph Queen give birth to a baby(chestburster)queen, instead of a royal facehugger? | Through out the alien series, all the xenomorph queens look almost exactly alike, excluding the one from Alien Resurrection(which was cloned from Ripley). It is shown in the films that the only way a queen is created is by a royal face hugger impregnating a host.
All these xenomorph queens definitely did not come from from the same host, yet, they all look the same. It would make more sense that Queens directly gave birth to another future queen, while also producing face huggers for creating drones and warriors.
Xenomorphs that use humans as host resemble the body shape of a human, however, the queen has an all together different, more dinosaur like, body shape. This led me to believe that maybe the xenomorph queens were their own breed and that it would make more sense that the queens directly gave birth to a queen chesburster.
Using a royal face hugger to create a new queen could also create lots more obstacles for the queen, as seen in Alien 3. It is also possible that the host could also be a bad host and will create a faulty queen.
The creation of a xenomorph queen is of vital importance to the creation of a whole hive. I think it would make more sense that that Queen should give birth directly to a new heir so it will be a controlled system and it can easily receive protection from the previous queen until it grows up.
What are your thoughts on this? It seems that for a queen, genetic variation does not matter. Please tell me if I am missing any facts. | 87 | Royal Facehuggers have a more stable genome that does not react to the host.
Normal Facehuggers produce Xenomorph Drones, who are responsible for acquiring prey and protecting the Hive. It is advantageous for the Hive that these drones be well adapted to the environments that the Hive develops in, and as such the gestation in a host assimilates some of their genetic characteristics to allow for better adaptation. This is why the host of a Chestburster influences the end result of the Xenomorph Drone life cycle.
The Royal Facehuggers, on the other hand, are intended to produce a Queen. Queens do not need to be as responsive to their local environments, because the Drones serve as their suppliers and protectors, allowing them to exist in relatively static conditions. Thus, they produce an Egg/Facehugger/Chestburster with a more stable genome, to produce a new Queen. They all appear the same because they are, for lack of a better description, pure-strain Xenomorphs.
As for why they don't just give birth to a live Queen... They can't. They have the biological apparatus to lay eggs, not give birth directly, and they aren't able to control their genetics in such a way as to allow that kind of directed development. Certain gametes produce Drones, and when the Hive reaches a particular population density (likely triggered by certain pheromone concenrations) the queen automatically produces one or more Royal Eggs to allow for expansion of the colony. | 72 |
[Harry Potter Book Series]What would have happened to the Wizarding World if Harry hadn't forgotten about the Taboo in Book 7? | The scene in question is Harry forgetting Voldemort's name has a locating enchantment on it. A Snatcher group captures them and takes them to Malfoy Manor where Harry rescues Olivander and Griphook. Bellatrix implies and then Griphook confirms the location of the last Horcrux located outside of Hogwarts.
So how would Harry have beaten Voldemort if he never forgot he shouldn't say Voldemorts name? | 19 | It's doubtful because by the time that the trio would have figured out where the last horcrux was, Voldemort would have probably figured out that Snape was not the true master of the Elder Wand, and likely would have traced it to Draco, consequently killed him and then truly claimed the wand for himself. Without Snape's memories, Harry would have very likely gone in with the intention of dueling Voldemort, thus invalidating the whole Horcrux caveat in the book and subsequently died due to both Voldie's skill, and use of the Elder Wand. | 12 |
ELI5: why can people visit Chernobyl without effects of radiation today? | I've seen pictures that people have taken quite recently that reflects a considerable amount of time spent there. How come they aren't in too much danger? | 850 | Visitations to Chernobyl are highly regulated, and can still be very dangerous if you break the rules that are in place.
For example, you're only allowed to travel along certain routes, as some areas are more contaminated than others.
You can't touch anything, or bring anything out with you.
There's a dress code, and what you wear needs to cover you as much as possible.
And when leaving, you and your clothes need to be checked for radiation.
As long as these rules are followed, any irradiation should be well within safe limits. | 747 |
How can freezing water break matter? | I'm not sure how to put it exactly so here is a simple, "ideal" scenario:
If I put a bottle of water in a room and start removing heat from the room, the water will first lose its sensible heat until it gets to 0 C.
Then, the water will give up its latent heat and start freezing. Since ice is less dense than liquid water, it will start to expend in volume as well.
But if my bottle is closed, the ice will build pressure inside it until it breaks. The ice will do "work" on the bottle.
My question is: how could the formation of ice break the bottle if the water is already giving up energy as heat? Is there a force known as "work energy of crystal formation" that would explain it? How could it be explained on an atomic level?
Thank you for considering this. I couldn't find a satisfying answer by myself. | 31 | Phase transition "water -> ice" produces heat, but it doesn't mean that it *has* to produce heat. Unless heat is actually taken away from the water, it will not freeze. Unlike, say, a radioisotope source which constantly produces heat as a result of radioactive decay of its fuel, and will just heat itself up if left fully insulated; a bucket of water in the process of freezing will not heat itself up though.
Freezing happens because as you continue to take energy away from liquid water around 0°C, its molecules can collectively occupy lower energy states by becoming a part of crystal lattice. The phase transition can only happen if this extra energy will dissipate, usually through thermal contact. However, there's nothing that prevents you from using the energy to do work instead! Stretching the bottle and heating the freezer around the water bottle are not two independent processes, they use the same energy released in the process of crystallization. | 14 |
[MCU] How will the Pym Particle Disk affect the following? | Seeing that pym particle are usually contained when shrinking humans, like it will only work while in a suit or in a car. How will it work in a given scenario
1. What will happen if the disk was thrown to iron man or war machine? Will it turn Tony into a pink gloop while shrinking the suit?
2. How it affect the Terminator T800 series since it has an outer organic covering?
3. How does a gun fight work in a miniature world. Will it render guns useless? | 16 | 1. No, Pym particles have shrunken vehicles with people inside with no ill effects.
2. Same thing. You get a little Terminator.
3. Maybe. Pym particles are weird. Sometimes the shrunken object is dense and other times not so much. There's probably a setting that would allow bullets to work when miniaturized. | 14 |
[The Purge] What is the legal status of personal property stolen during the purge? Does it become the property of the thief post-purge? | Like if someone stole a car/TV etc. and managed to survive and hide out with it long enough, would they become the legal owner? | 335 | Overall yes, at least when it's poor people and minorities stealing from one another. Remember that the purge exists solely to "weed out undesirables" and keep the rich and powerful in their positions of power. If someone steals a highly valued or sentimental object on one purge year, the original owner might seek revenge next purge, which could create a cycle of violence that the New Founding Fathers can exploit.
Stealing from someone with even the smallest amount of government clout or enough money, would mean that the item will be returned to them, and the perpetrator dealt with to the fullest extent of the law. Which likely means summary execution. | 222 |
The Joker and Mr. Rogers sit together in an empty room. How does their conversation go? | 18 | The Joker thinks Rogers is a villain doing a routine at first, and cackles in delight at how evil he must be to hold such a deceitful aura. However, he quickly realizes that Rogers is sincere, and becomes frustrated. He gets angry with Rogers and tries everything he can to break his calm demeanor, to do anything that could shake his faithful kindness toward others. He laughs about all the evil he's done and makes aggressive threats and jokes, but nothing phases Rogers. He simply smiles and retorts kindly and meekly. The Joker is now hell-bent on proving to himself that Rogers can be broken, but nothing works. Over time, his exposure to Rogers begins to affect him like a reverse-corruption. Slowly his mannerisms become more polite. His laughter becomes desperate and manic as the Joker knows he's being changed and he can't seem to stop himself. Given enough time, the Joker will eventually come to regret the harm he's done, causing him to fall into a sadness that Roger himself pulls him out of with forgiveness and kindness. The Joker has completed his transformation, and is now an agent of chaotic... *fun*. His goal is now to delight the people of Gotham and make them laugh with chaotic, fun antics on a city-wide scale. | 61 |
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CMV: You should not censor yourself | Now, this idea has been going through my head for a while now, but a [recent post](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/ik3tuq/cmv_saying_the_r_word_is_different_from_saying/) now prompted me to actually make it a post.
For the first half of that post, I had no idea what OP was even talking about.
​
As for the CMV: I don't think you should censor yourself, by writing "the n-word" or "the f-word" or even "f\*\*\*". Not even "f\*ck".
​
There are two options here.
1. It's extremely obvious what word you were trying to use. In that case, there is absolutely no point in censoring it, because everyone knows what you're trying to say anyway.
2. It is not obvious what you were trying to say. If it isn't obvious and the meaning simply isn't clear, you've failed at a fundamental concept of language, in that you failed to actually convey meaning.
There isn't really any other option here.
​
Now, I make an exception for, let's say, delicate communities. On a subreddit where people come to talk about personal problems or anything like that there's a good enough reason to censor the word, that reason being empathy for the other users. In those cases, I think censoring yourself for words of the first kind (i.e. people still understand what you're talking about) is acceptable. This argument does not hold for communities specifically made for debating and discussing ideas, though, such as this one. | 23 | It’s a way of indicating you’re sensitive to the offensiveness of a term, even when you need to use the term in a particular context.
It is not about protecting sensitive ears from hearing a certain word, it’s a way of signalling one’s own sensitivity to the way a word may be received.
As such, it serves an *additional* function in language to just saying the world. And a useful one. | 20 |
Can someone help me better understand solipsism? | I've been interested in it for a few years now but don't fully grasp the concept. Any help is appreciated. | 22 | Solipsism in the strict sense is the belief that there are, necessarily, no other minds besides one's own. Though sometimes it is used in a broader sense to refer to the denial of anything other than one's own mind, so that it also denies that there are any non-mental things as well. | 17 |
[Dracula] How to stop the Count’s return? |
Okay so it’s been established (mainly by the hammer horror series) that it is possible for Dracula to rise from the grave. He’s been burned, drowned, staked, impaled, you name it, and each time he’s able to come back. So that leads to the question, how do you finally kill Dracula? Like kill-kill, “won’t be seeing him again” killed? And is resurrection a him only sort of deal or is that the case for all that become a vampire? | 24 | You could feed him to a cat maybe
Dracula does appear more resilient than the common vampire. Across a number of universes he has fought a bewildering variety of foes including the other classic horror staples, Abbot and Costello, Batman, a good chunk of the Marvel universe, Chinese martial artists, Sherlock Holmes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Monster Squad, Billy the Kid, famed international porn star Emmanuelle. That's not getting into the possible connection between him and his many imitators like Count Orlok, Count Yorga, Kurt Barlow, Vlad Carstein, Strahd von Zarovich, General Mattias Torgo, and many more.
It's strongly suggested in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series that the only thing that could finally do him in is forcing him to confront the irrelevance of his own existence... and even then he might return anew, reincarnated into a new dark form. | 32 |
[DC] Is Deathstroke invincible? | I can't find a single example of Deathstroke legitimately dying.
He has regenerative powers (apart from for his eye, but that's another question for another time) but to what extent? [Wolverine-style regenerating from a single blood cell?](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/DarthJoe/Uncanny-X-Men-Annual-11-Pa.jpg) **How much can he actually take before being killed?** As everyone knows, Deadpool's based on him but I doubt Slade's healing factor is as effective as Wade's. [In the Death Battle between him and Deadpool](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn8ZqX82neg) he simply has his head cut off, I find that ridiculous, but maybe it's a case of decapitation being the only way to kill him even though that's never been explicitly stated.
Every comic character has died and came back to life at some point but Deathstroke simply hasn't. *How do you kill him?* Or is he just invincible? | 29 | No, Deathstroke is not invincible. His healing factor is a lot weaker than Deadpool's.
Deathstroke can recover from fatal injuries faster than a normal human but cannot regenerate limbs (or his missing eye). Also, he becomes kind of insane while recovering from otherwise fatal injuries. | 27 |
ELI5: Why do people often get sick after pushing themselves? | I have noticed that oftentimes after prolonged physical and/or mental stress there is a tendency that people get sick. Is there a pattern here and if so, why does the body react this way? | 24 | When you're under stress, your body releases the hormone cortisol, which helps in the fight-or-flight response. It readies your body to be amped up to react in stressful situations - but if you don't react accordingly, the cortisol builds up with nowhere to go.
If you keep elevating the levels of cortisol without using them, it throws your body out of balance and can adversely affect bone density, memory, weight gain, healthy heart function, cholesterol levels, and so much more.
Think of it like a dehumidifier in a room. Its purpose is to collect water from the air and collect it in a bucket-like thing. If you empty it regularly, it can keep performing like it's supposed to. But if you forget about it for a while, it keeps collecting water and will eventually spill over.
The body favours being in a state of homeostasis; it's also remarkable in that you can throw a lot of crap its way and it'll adjust. But homeostasis is where it's happiest and keeping it in an extreme state for too long without relief will cause it to "voice its displeasure" with you and it'll show that displeasure physically. | 17 |
Does anyone actually understand [Garfield]? He only communicates in thought bubbles. | 32 | Most of what Garfield says and does is a projection of Jon's imagination. To everyone else, he is an ordinary cat, but to Jon, he is an ubiquitous force that consumes his joy, (and dinner) yet also provides him with a certain amount of comfort.
It's sort of like a pathetic Calvin and Hobbes: Garfield cannot exist without Jon, but Jon is nothing without Garfield.
…an interesting thing emerges here. Garfield takes on a life of his own, so to speak, and has some thoughts that Jon cannot understand. Of course, it is all run by Jon's subconscious, but both cat and owner believe Garfield is sentient. The sad fact is, that the actual cat Garfield died years ago, but Jon's fragile psyche couldn't take it. Now the thing that exists is pure projection.
All of Jon's world is a hallucination that takes place from the darker corners of a mental institution. Liz is not the vet… she is his personal doctor. Odie is not a dog… rather, he is Jon's mute roommate, who Jon sees as a dog. Not just any dog, but *his* dog. What a horrible, depressing comic. | 64 |
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[Predator] If Dutch had immediately ordered his men to disarm, would the Predator have left them alone? | 35 | I’ve always got the impression that a predators sense of honour is pretty arbitrary. It *prefers* to kill challenging targets but it’s not honour bound to never ever harm non-combatants.
If they all throw down their guns it could just kill one to goad the rest into picking them up again and giving a good fight. | 52 |
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What is the difference between "legalization" and "decriminalization" of marijuana? | ? | 129 | Decriminalization = taking away CRIMINAL charges. In most countries, that term is tied to a criminal record. Instead, you can be fined, but it's kind of like a parking ticket... Pay the fine and you're done. Still not "legal" but no criminal charges, criminal record, trial, potential jail time, etc.
Legalization = adding laws to govern the sale and distribution of marijuana. This would mean that marijuana would get the same treatment as alcohol in most of the world.
| 113 |
ELI5: Why isn't America's massive debt being considered a larger problem? | 2,896 | US debt is not the same as personal debt. US debt is sold as a point of investment in the form of government bonds. It is also one of the safest forms of investment as the US has never defaulted on any of its bonds when they have come due, and they do not all come due at once.
We also have a better debt to GDP ratio than most developed countries and half that of Japan.
Also 60% of our debts owned by the US. Divided up among various parts of the government, corporate investments into bonds, and private citizens investments into bonds. The rest is distributed among dozens of countries with China owning about 8% of our total debt. | 2,868 |
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[DC] Which DC villain is pettier: Lex Luthor, Eobard Thawne, or the Joker? | 15 | Eobard Thawne narrowly wins out. Lex Luthor needs to constantly flaunt his superiority, but when Thawne doesn't get what he wants, he goes straight to murder, erasure from existence, or, if neither is an option, ruining every single aspect of your life. | 30 |
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CMV:The United States should immediately remove armed forces from the Middle East and leave the region to handle its own problems. | 31 | >We are spending, and have spent, ungodly amounts of money, time, energy, resources, and unfortunately, human lives to fight groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS for decades, and have almost nothing to show for it. The people in the Middle East have been fighting each other for centuries, with no end in sight, and the US seems to only be making it worse.
That's not true at all.
Here's a few sobering facts:
* Life expectancy of Afghans in 2001 - 45
* Life expectancy of Afghans today - 64+
* % of children who died before age 5 in 2001 - 25%
* % of children who died before age 5 today - <10%
* Children enrolled in schools in 2001 - < 1,000,000 (males only)
* Children enrolled in schools today - > 8,000,000 (including women)
>>Every time we drop a bomb, invade a country, kill a terrorist, what have you, it just makes the enemy hate us that much more. The damage we have done is probably irreparable at this point, so we should cut our losses and just leave, while still offering aid to countries who ask for it.
This is said all the time, and yet terrorism against the US existed long before we ever dropped bombs in the region. Whether it was the Barbary Pirates in the early 1800s or siding against the Arabs in the Arab-Israeli conflict, countries and organizations have found ways to generate hate towards the US - or really any country for that matter.
>We can devote some of the resources used overseas to protect ourselves at home rather than fighting anything that moves in other countries.
The resources we devote overseas directly affects us at home. Our naval base in Bahrain supports patrolling the Persian Gulf - and thus helps maintain the Straits of Hormuz from being closed off, as it was nearly was in the 1980s.
We don't fight "anything that moves" - after all, we have a base in Djibouti. Do you know what a lot of the people there do? They build houses and stuff for the locals, like the Seabees.
Does having a base in Japan mean we fight everything that moves? No, of course not - those bases are directed at helping Japan and South Korea in case North Korea starts a war. But they were also used for Tsunami relief in 2011 and also Typhoon relief in the Philippines this past year. Had we not been based out there, we wouldn't have had the ability or the quickness to fly in relief.
| 22 |
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ELI5: How does bug spray kill insects so quickly? | 32 | Bug spray is a mild chemical weapon (It will cause false positives on military chemical weapons detection gear) which causes insect nervous systems to cease working. Without nerves firing to keep the insect alive, it dies quickly. | 19 |
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[ELI5] Why do American wall plates for switches use Flathead screws instead of Philips? Why do we use Flathead screws for anything? | First, I hate Flathead screws for what I believe are self-evident reasons.
Second, I don't understand why switches mount with Phillips or combination Flathead-Phillips, but the plates mount with Flatheads.
After researching screws (no kidding) on Wikipedia, I've determined that there is a really interesting history of screws, but no explanation for why we still use Flathead screws.
EDIT: Excellent feedback. I accidentally clicked on the exclamation mark - I don't think the question has been answered by a long shot. It remains open, and weird.
1) Aesthetics are largely subjective; to say that a line is more aesthetically pleasing than a star, hex, triangle, square,or any of the other screw drive types ([longer list here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw#Types_of_screw_drives)) is a bit of a stretch.
2) As far as being less noticeable, I disagree. A Spanner head or Robertson would look pleasing on a wall plate.
3) As for paint issues, no one that I know spray's on wall plates - you remove these before painting, or tape over them.
4) Lastly, as far as concerns of stripping bolts go, multiple individuals have pointed out the utility of Robertson heads; the inability to strip them because you have a limited number of drivers, unlike philips.
As for myself, I use torque / torx heads or Robertson when I can, tolerate Phillips, and continue to grit my teeth when using Flathead screws.
EDIT2: **eelnitsud** provides the following succinct reasoning:
>A flat head screw is used when a higher amount of torque is needed. It's shape allows it to be tightened tighter without the tool slipping. A philips head screw is used to prevent overtightening by allowing the tool to slip when a certain tention is reached. Flat head screws have been around much longer than power tools. - source: electrical trade school. | 1,051 | Usually a flathead is used where you don't want somebody using a power tool. A power tool with a flat head bit could easily slip the end of the screw, losing control.
With an electrical outlet, a power tool could cause problems if you accidentally over-tighten the screw. For example, the plate could crack, causing both the electrical wiring to be exposed and for the power tool to lose control from your grip... and hit said wiring. | 1,616 |
ELI5: What is the purpose of prison bail? If somebody should or shouldn’t be jailed, why make it contingent on an amount of money that they can buy themselves out with? | Edit: Thank you all for the explanations and perspectives so far. What a fascinating element of the justice system.
Edit: Thank you to those who clarified the “prison” vs. “jail” terms. As the majority of replies correctly assumed, I was using the two words interchangeably to mean pre-trial jail (United States), not post-sentencing prison. I apologize for the confusion. | 19,852 | Bail is for when a person has not been tried or convicted yet. It's basically collateral to ensure that the person shows up for trial. If they fail to appear, the bail money is forfeit. If the court decides that a person is likely to flee or just not show up, they will deny bail and hold them until trial. | 9,899 |
ELI5: If feminists are fighting for gender equality, then why call themselves feminists? | Doesn't this title imply superiority of women over men? It's an honest question not meant to be mean-spirited; I certainly agree that gender equality is an important issue. | 116 | Well, historically, equality required building up the status of women. You might argue, or not, that it's still required today. But the name, at least, is historical and made perfect sense when it was coined at a bare minimum. | 137 |
[Pokemon] Are the 7 regions independent countries or part of a bigger country | 44 | If they were all independent nations, they would likely be called nations instead of regions. We do know that real-world nations exist since Lt. Surge is referred to as the Lightning American. Since all the regions are based on real-world locations, Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh likely make up Japan, Unova and Alola are part of America, and Kalos is France. | 38 |
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Were superconductors theorised first or discovered? | The title say it all really.
Were they mathematically predicted first or just discovered by accident or similar? | 295 | In the early 1900s, there were competing theories about what would happen if a sufficiently pure metal were lowered towards absolute zero. Some thought that the trend of lower resistance would continue all the way down, others that electrons would become immobile and resistance would increase towards absolute zero. Heike Kammerling-Onnes tried to test this using mercury, which was easier to purify than solid metals. He found something totally unexpected, that the resistance didn't just smoothly decrease, but that there was an abrupt drop to zero at around 4 kelvin. | 277 |
ELI5: Why do spiders curl up once they die? | Okay, wow! Didn't expect this to blow up so much! I found spiders weird enough before but now I know they walk around on 8 penises they've just got a hell of a lot creepier... | 2,389 | Because they move their legs, not by muscles, but by a sort of hydraulic pump system. the pressure in the "hydraulic pumps" fades when the spider dies, which makes the legs curl up. /u/unidan would probably (most definitely) be able to give a better explanation. | 1,910 |
CMV: Bernie Sanders's propensity to cut people off and not directly answer questions is getting annoying. | I was and tentatively still am a Bernie fan, if not necessarily a direct voter. I like his energy and enthusiasm to right the various wrongs in our present society. However, I think his most ardent and perhaps therefore least critical supporters are ignoring a pretty big orange flag; he almost never allows anyone to finish a sentence, and frequently either gets sidetracked from answering questions or just plain doesn't answer. It honestly leaves a bad taste in my mouth, because I absolutely HATE talking to people like that in my life. But it almost seems like he can do no wrong and no matter what actually comes out of his mouth it must be the right thing. Honestly, it's just getting annoying to me. CMV and tell me what I'm missing here. | 16 | Not sure anything can change your view about what you find annoying, but you do realize that's how the game of politics is played, right? You have to spout the platitudes and you can't just sit there and let an interviewer push you around and control what you say like some kind of noob.
Now hopefully behind the scenes you can get stuff done, but in front of the cameras you have to play the game. | 10 |
Did the Apatosaurus have any true predators as a threat? | I mean, let's face it, she was monstrous even by dino standards. I get starving desperation could take one down, but I mean just every day threats, any critter have its number 24/7? | 66 | Yes!
Apatosaurus and the closely related genus Brontosaurus were early diplodocids and lived alongside such terrors as the four ton, eight metre long Allosaurus and Saurophagnax. We also find the slightly smaller Ceratosaurs.
We know the sauropods of the Morrison Formation laid large clutches of eggs in large egg nests. We also know the landscape wasn't nose to tail with them, so very few made it to adulthood. Of course, once they did, they were immune to any predation.
This means their young and juveniles had an enormous attrition rate. The infants would be preyed upon by the likes of Coelurus and Ornitholestes, the early coelurosaurs. Once the animals were the size of a horse or so (around a year's growth!), they were too large and strong for these, but they'd be a prime target for the larger theropods, the allosaurs and ceratosaurs, until they reached ten to fifteen years.
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Edit: It's also worth noting that Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus juveniles had a much larger disparity between fore and hindlimbs than adults did. This is interpreted to mean they could run on their hindlimbs alone. As the coelurosaurs are known to be fast and agile, it'd be sensible for their prey to have a good set of running legs too. | 39 |
[Walking Dead] Why do the skulls of the zombies seem so easy to destroy? | There's been a few occasions when zombies are killed with knives or machetes, is it really that easy to put a knife through someones head? It seems like it would be more difficult then it's portrayed. Maybe something with the virus making the skull much weaker? | 20 | They've been decomposing for a year. You'll notice that when the infection first broke out, we had a more difficult time killing them. Nowadays, you can stomp the sons of bitches' heads thanks to the putrification. Long live bacteria, man.
You must be a sheltered little flower from Woodbury if you don't have the hands-on experience. | 55 |
[Harry Potter] How closely do the borders of Magical Britain match those of Muggle Britain? | Is everything in the United Kingdom considered part of Magical Britain (Northern Ireland and the British Overseas Territories), or is it only the island of Great Britain that marks the border?
How about other countries? Do the Magical and Muggle borders line up, or do they differ? When one changes their borders, does it effect the other? And how much of a role do the wizards play when it comes to war or other forms of territory acquisition (like the Louisiana Purchase) | 16 | Based on the presence of Seamus Finnegan and the fact that during the Quidditch world cup many British fans (among them the Weasleys) considered supporting Ireland nearly as good as supporting England or Scotland, it's entirely possible that wizarding Britain includes not just Northern Ireland, but *all* of Ireland. | 15 |
ELI5:Why do so many stores keep one of their double front doors locked | So many stores have a double front door. You would think you would go in the right side and out the right side like traffic. Then bamm, the door is locked with no indication that it won't open. Is there a reason for this that I don't understand? | 25 | Because alot of the time, the door that is closed has latches on the top and bottom which must be pulled to open said door. The door that is open is normally a standard lock, and you just pull it open once its unlocked. So its mostly cause its easier to open that one door than to go through the "trouble" of also opening the second door. Shit. Why are you complaining, the door is opened for you. Be happy | 12 |
ELI5: How does a currency become "stronger" or "weaker" with respect to other currencies? | How do countries ensure that their currency remains stable? | 32 | Mostly the best ways to keep your country's currency stable are to:
1. Make sure there is a market for your country's goods and services abroad. Foreigners will want to buy your currency so they can buy your goods and services. This demand increases the value of your currency.
2. If the demand for your currency starts to get too high, it will become too expensive and foreigners won't be able to buy your country's goods and services any more. If this happens, your government can print more money to buy your people things like roads, hospitals, schools, or bombers. This increase of your money will lower the value of your currency.
If you are good at balancing these two strategies, your country's currency should stay fairly stable.
I hope this helps. Please rule your people justly and kindly. | 44 |
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