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[40k] Where do Chaos bros get their ammo?
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Surely they didn't have enough when they turned traitor to last for 10,000 years? Do their respective gods just pull that shit from thin air or do they have captured forge worlds and stuff? Where do they get the resources to keep those worlds pumping out ammo for their various fights and shit?
I mean, I know Khornate marines are mostly melee based, and Nurgle niggas be using bioweps and Tnzeetchfags magic the shit out of stuff and Slaneeshi bros have sound weapons, and these are all things that their respective gods can conjure up with relative ease. But what of the physical weps? Bolthguns and such.
If captured forge worlds are the reason, then how are they distributed? The different Chaos legions don't really have they inter-legion cooperation to plan that shit - they don't have Imperium-level bureaucracy in place to ferry out ammunition as-needed by the trooperinos.
WHAT GIVES?!
| 15 |
Prior to the open war of the Horus Heresy, the Warmaster not only allied half the Astartes legions to his cause, but half of the Adeptus Mechanus as well. In the years following the war a percentage of these Hereteks remain to manufacture specilized munitions and armor.
In addition to these hereteks, many chapters of Astartes have fallen prey to hubris and corruption in the following millenia. Often these brothers will barter ammunition and other battle rainments to garner favor amongst more prestigious Chaos chapters.
| 23 |
ELI5: Why is arresting people for pirating so difficult when ISP's can see exactly what is going through from your connection?
| 66 |
There's no incentive for them to do so. If the government asks for the data for a specific person, the ISP will give it to them (if the proper court orders are obtained and presented). But the ISP, on its own, has no reason to preemptively stop people from doing whatever they like on their internet connections; an ISP that did this would get a really bad reputation (the ultimate nosey busybody) and would probably lose business.
| 62 |
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ELI5: Why does the body bring tears to your eyes when choking? What is the practical purpose?
| 17 |
The choking reflex helps us survive, and as such it overdoes it from time-to-time, like our Flight/Fight/Freeze instinct does.
First, it triggers coughing and mouth/throat secretions for lubrication. The secretory motor system, as a byproduct, brings tears to your eyes. It's flushing everything it can as fast as it can to get whatever is blocking your airway to dislodge.
The coughing thing isn't even a regular cough, it's a super-violent kind of cough that actually sends air up into your tear ducts, which A) hurts like a mother and B) causes more tears.
Normally this wouldn't be a big problem, happens all the time. We've got a neat little system in our tear ducts has these plugs (punctum) that stop the air from coming up and lets the tears we normally produce to wet our eyes drain down into our noses.
But the sheer violence of the choking reflex shoots up so much pressure that it reverses the whole system, making the tears coming down our noses shoot back up. More tears.
| 12 |
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Eli5: Why is glacier preservation so important? What would happen if they were to be completely melted across the globe?
| 30 |
Glacier melting is seen as a significant indicator of global temperature. They are long standing, relatively stable structures. If they start disappearing, it means conditions have changed that were constant for a very long time.
Furthermore, a lot of them are on land, which means if they melt they add their water to the ocean, which can potentially raise sea level.
So in and of themselves, they represent a danger, but also they represent a signal of a greater danger, global warming.
| 24 |
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[Marvel] Who would win in a game of Risk, Cyclops, Capt. America, or Nick Fury?
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Let's assume it's the original Risk, and the Steve Rogers Captain.
| 33 |
Risk isn't a strategy game. It's a luck game with soft strategy elements.
Whichever person has the ability to control dice rolls would win. Alternately, notable characters all have extremely good luck in dire circumstances, so depending on the stakes of the game it could go on forever.
| 40 |
ELI5: What determines the location of a headache?
| 5,613 |
Pain management doctor here,
There are many, many sources and causes of headaches. The location and type of symptoms are the main things we look for in coming up with a diagnosis. For example, migraines are typically one-sided and throbbing while hemicrania headaches involve one side but are more continuous. Cervicogenic(meaning, from the neck) headaches typically involve the back of the head. Tension headaches typically feel like a band across the head. Cluster headaches involve very intense pain behind an eye. There are many other types, as well.
Going into the actual mechanism behind all of these is a huge topic and not fully understood -- but each of them has very different pathologies, prognosis, and treat treatment.
| 3,748 |
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ELI5 - How does anaesthesia work? Specifically, general anaesthesia?
| 40 |
General anesthesia has has a few main elements, although one anesthetic agent might not affect all of them at the same time, which is why anesthetists carefully choose a combo of drugs that work together. The four elements are unconsciousness, amnesia (forgetting), analgesia (lack of pain), and immobility. Anesthetics, in general, depress the central nervous system and work on different parts of the brain in order to have all these different effects on your brain and body. We're not actually 100% sure how they all work, and there are tons of different kinds of drugs, but they have a few principles in common.
There are specific parts of the brain involved in wakefulness, like a region called the *reticular activating system* and the *thalamus*, which are commonly affected by anesthetic drugs. The thalamus is a relay, processing, and integration gateway region that works sort of as middle management: many basic sensory signals and information come to this structure, and it works to integrate all the information together into a more cohesive picture and send it out to higher (conscious) parts of the brain for further analysis. It also interacts with the reticular activating system, which is a connected system of regions responsible for regulating your brain's transition from awake to asleep.
Another important thing to remember is that pain is all in your brain. The actual physical cell damage (like a cut or a bruise) is noticed by specialized nerve cells called *nociceptors* that are throughout your body. These cells notice the damage and send the information up through your spinal cord to your brain ("hey brain! some bad stuff is happening to the body, you might wanna alert them so they can escape the danger!"), and different types of these cells encode different types of pain (sharp vs dull, burning, etc). However, the actual "feeling" of pain comes when these signals get to your brain, where lots of modulation and regulation of these raw signals happen. Using lots of pathways, your brain can enhance these signals or downplay them, which is why sometimes a cut doesn't hurt until you see it or why a surge of adrenaline can make you not notice a huge injury. For example, t*he opioid pathway* (which is stimulated by drugs like Vicodin and Oxycontin) interferes with the nociceptors so it's harder for them to tell the brain what they're sensing. It also enhances the dopamine (the "feel good hormone") pathway to cause euphoria or a sense of well-being.
In addition, some drugs work by enhancing our brain's natural inhibitory mechanisms ("off switches"). Your brain is a complex system full of signals and things trying to regulate and modify these signals: sometimes exciting them, sometimes inhibiting them. Some anesthetics also work by "disconnecting" certain connecting pathways, so that the sensory information never gets to the conscious parts of your brain. Ketamine works this way.
Here's an example of some of the diverse actions in a common anesthetic class, the **barbiturate** (phenobarbital, thiopental, etc):
Inhibits release of neurotransmitter (chemical signals) and inhibits neuronal firing in the thalamus and reticular activating system, causing sleep. Also enhances the functioning and binding of inhibitory neurotransmitter called GABA-A, basically depressing the function of the central nervous system as a whole. Cerebral blood flow and brain metabolism decreases. It also depresses important brain areas like the ones that regulate your breathing and heart rate, which is why during surgery you're hooked up to all those monitors. It also works at the junction between your muscles and the nerves that make them move, causing immobility (important during surgery!). As an example of "one agent doesn't do everything," these drugs don't stop pain, so you need to add another drug like an opioid when using a drug like this as a general anesthetic.
| 19 |
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[Pokemon] Pokeballs. How do they work?
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Is it ever given adequate explanation?
How come a bunch of acorns in Gold/Silver allow them to be imbued with special powers, too?
| 34 |
> Is it ever given adequate explanation?
Matter-to-energy and/or matter-to-information tech. Basically the same as teleporting something, except trapping it between teleporter pads. It's the same principle used for the item box app on PCs.
> How come a bunch of acorns in Gold/Silver allow them to be imbued with special powers, too?
Pokeballs date back for decades, if not centuries (around the end of the Information Age if we assume that the 21st century apocalypse timeline theories are correct, or far back into prehistory if we're going by the alternate universe timeline theory). The tech has been available for a long time.
The first pokeballs in recorded history were made from apricorns because the shells had properties that made them suitable for it. They weren't made of *just* shells, they also had some electronics put in of course (or possibly magic, because that is a thing that exists in the Pokemon universe). Modern pokeballs are plastic because they're easier to mass-produce, but hand-crafted pokeballs are superior in some situations.
| 30 |
ELI5: When a company talks about how much money they made, "in terms of EBITDA", what do they mean? Why does EBITDA matter?
| 479 |
EBITDA stands for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. It's just a fancy way of saying how much they made before subtracting unavoidable costs/obligations not to be confused with the costs of running a business since you could theoretically cut costs like employee salaries or manufacturing costs.
It's just a way to show how profitable the company could be. That's why there is a distinction between a company's revenue and profit. One describes how much money the company made (i.e. sales) but the other is how much goes into the pockets of owners/shareholders.
| 421 |
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ELI5: What is it that makes carnivores only able to eat meat?
| 63 |
Carnivores have a really short digestive system that's well-suited for getting nutrients out of meat.
It takes a lot longer to get nutrients out of fruits and vegetables, which is why we have a much, much longer digestive system.
Animals like cows have incredibly complex digestive systems consisting of several stomachs so they can get all they can out of *grass*. Pure carnivores have none of that.
| 45 |
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[Marvel] If Cap’s metabolism is so fast, does he need to eat enormous amounts of food to avoid starving?
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Also in one of the films somebody asks Cap if he’s looking for an apartment in Brooklyn. Cap says he cannot afford it.
Why wouldn’t the government or somebody give him a comfortable salary? Dude’s a war hero and active service member .
but yeah also the food intake question if ya be so kind
And if his metabolism is 4x faster, and he eats 4x as much, does he take bigger turds than Drax?
thanks
| 20 |
Absolutely. His intake is huge. Peak human is his listing, so there's no magic to it (aside from the formula getting him there...) If you train and move be and as busy as Cap, you gonna need some calories.
| 27 |
ELI5: How can "Bill" be short for "William"?
| 32 |
It rhymes. Literally as simple as that.
Nicknames would be stuff that sounded similar, and often rhymed because of our tendency to say cute rhyming stuff to little kids. "Ricky Dicky" "Willy Billy" "Robby Bobby".
Sometimes the nicknames stick, and we get names like Bob, Will and Dick. Not the same as the original names, but close enough to recognize the similarity.
| 22 |
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CMV: Porn escorts and the adult industry in general is becoming marginalized onto the Internet. It should be celebrated.
| 18 |
I think the sex industry moving online is a good thing, a large amount of abuse and harm comes from the people running the brothels and making money off the girls bodies, online sites allow the girls to be their own bosses and control their bodies more.
| 14 |
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[Pokémon] How do Ash and his friends get money on the road?
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Do they loot defeated trainers or something?
| 45 |
Trainers pay out after losing a battle. Not all trainers travel like Ash does many will have day jobs using their pokemon for stuff like power generation, rescue work, construction, transportation, and mail services.
| 57 |
If you stare at this picture it will disappear. Why?
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http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lu9xnxcc4E1qew99q.jpg
| 1,488 |
The effect is for color/intensity compensation in your eyes. The specific mechanism is fatigue in the particular retinal cells that are responding to each part of the image.
Ever wonder why you can see colors both in daylight (strong, very bluish light) and incandescent light in your home at night (faint, very reddish light)? Your eyes have an amazing mechanism to compensate and preserve approximate chroma values and to preserve your vision despite the crazy differences in illumination.
The retinal cells that produce nerve signals for your brain deplete their internal ATP supply as they fire, resulting in a long-ish (Edit: ~ 1 minute) time constant decay of any given signal. Weak illumination -> not so much firing of the nerve -> more fuel in the cell -> more sensitivity. Likewise, strong illumination -> more firing of the nerve -> less fuel in the cell -> less sensitivity. This is what makes that image "disappear".
That effect is not a weakness, it is a strength. Your eyes are for, well, seeing things. The long time constant decay of any given signal makes your eye self-adjusting: it works in a broad range of environments with no adjustment. You can easily achieve a factor of 10^7 in dynamic range by walking into a dim room from bright sunlight. It is very difficult to make (say) an electronic camera do that.
There are lots of other illusions that exploit that effect. In every day life your eyes habitually move around a lot to prevent washout of any given scene. That motion is called the "saccades" and it is semi-autonomous -- it takes effort and practice to suppress it, sort of like holding your breath.
| 769 |
CMV - "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism" is the most ideal society possible.
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So this title might sound like a joke and indeed it is inspired by one, but the more I think about it the more I hold the idea that for a perfect Utopia to exist it would have to be a fully automated luxury gay space communist regime.
Fully automated - all menial labor would be handled by AI programs. This would mean that there would no longer be Factory workers, truck drivers, delivery people or cash registers etc. Humans would no longer work jobs that are too simplistic or too dangerous instead they would likely lead logistical projects as well as of course manage their robot servants.
Luxury - While it is of course impossible to meet all the needs of every individual in a collective this society would work to ensure that all people have food water, and shelter as well as amenities such as Electronics and vehicles. Nobody would have to worry about running out of basic resources like medicine.
Gay - While I don't necessarily mean you that everybody must be homosexual, that would obviously be detrimental to a species, everybody should be free to express their sexuality and whatever way they choose provided they're not doing so with children, animals or those who don't conent simply put there would be a culture of openness and acceptance in terms of sexuality gender roles, and other practices of the sort
Space - if we wish to maintain all the energy and resource needs of our species, we'll have to branch into space. Constructions of fusion reactors and Dyson spheres could power our society near indefinitely and this of course draws back to one of our earlier points about luxuries.
Communism - if the government seeks to prosper without tyranny or major wealth inequality, private property and private ownership of resources would have to be limited if not completely outlawed. while this may not sound appealing and I agree is not possible in our current state it would be necessary in an ideal Utopia.
Sorry about my bad typing I was only using my right hand (masturbating with my left one)
| 22 |
Any form of "end of history" hypothesis/ideal is guaranteed to be wrong. There will always be something better, and a thousand years from now whatever humans become may look back on fully automated luxury gay space communism the same way we do the Middle Ages.
| 34 |
[Warhammer 40K] How common is it really for Commissars to get fragged?
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Fragging, for the uninitiated, is the act of "accidentally" killing your commanding officer in a way that resembles friendly fire. It has not gone unnoticed that Commissars have a particular reputation for dying heroically for the Emperor, even when the enemy is curiously far from the front, and without any witnesses. Even Ciaphas Cain, (***HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!!***) a Commissar himself, noted this in his memoirs and why he makes it a point to be nice to his troops. So, do Commissars really get whacked by their own troops at the slightest provocation on a near-hourly basis, or is this particular reputation grossly exaggerated?
| 46 |
Like everything 40k it is common and almost unheard of at the same time.
The guard isnt monolithic, its thousands of cultures and beliefs rolled into billions, if not trillions of troops.
So the commissar leading a unit made up of hive gangers will be more likely to "motivate" his soldiers with threats of violence and the occassional decimation. You might have death world units where killing each other over failure is the norm.
On the flip side you have just as many guard units from "normal" planets where its not constant hell and they might only engage humans rioting. Their commissar will be far less likely to just start wasting people who look away from the battlefield for too long.
You will also have commissars that are beloved and motivate their men by leading them into combat.
| 47 |
ELI5: Why are some plugs ungrounded?
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I know that grounding a circuit is a way to ensure that people won't electrocute themselves every time they plug or unplug a wire from the wall. However, some plugs in my house are ungrounded, such as my toaster wire or laptop charger. Why is this allowed? Isn't an ungrounded plug dangerous?
| 46 |
The ground exists to prevent a short circuit in a device from electrifying the case, which would shock you if you just touched the device. Basically, the ground is attached to the case in such a way that it if the case somehow becomes electrified, the ground is the shortest path for electricity to travel to your house's ground (as opposed to that being your body). Because of that, electricity should *never* be flowing through the ground - its a last ditch measure to keep a seriously damaged device from killing you.
If a device doesn't have any metal parts that you can touch then it doesn't need a ground because there is no way for the case to be electrified.
The ground has nothing to do with unplugging or plugging in a device. Plugs are made out of plastic or rubber so they can't be electrified.
| 44 |
What are the neurotransmitters responsible for humor reactions?
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You know, when someone tells a funny joke and you laugh and laugh? What causes that? What causes that wonderful, carefree feeling?
| 82 |
Too many to list.
Serotonin involved with mood, dopamine reinforces pleasurable behaviour, neuropeptides such as endorphins can be involved.
Humour will be formed in the cortex. Signals will be sent with glutamate, modulated by GABA/serotonin, dopamine and/or endorphin pathways likely next. There's noradrenaline involved too.
| 17 |
ELI5:How come people can't be cryogenically frozen safely as the ice crystals destroy the cell membranes, but sex cells such as sperm are kept frozen for long periods of time yet remain functional?
| 4,582 |
Sperm is frozen in liquid nitrogen, and the water in the cells is replaced by glycerol (basically antifreeze) as a "cryoprotectant", which displaces the water and does not form the crystalline structure that damages cells.
However, the freezing and thawing process is still pretty harsh and many sperm don't survive. Luckily, there are billions and you only need 1.
| 2,251 |
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ELI5: How do bar codes work?
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The entire system is complete wizardry to me. The laser itself is witchcraft but the most amazing part is the database. I could imagine that stores somehow associate a code with a product when they add it to their inventory system but what prevents two manufacturers from using the same bar codes on different products. Is there a master database somewhere and who is responsible for managing it?
Edit: I really appreciate all the answers about the database aspect of this but I am still wondering how the actual laser works. Seems like it has to be fairly simple because the technology has been around for decades, long before 'modern' computers.
| 25 |
When a manufacturer produces a product it has to pay for each of those number codes that are attached to the bar code scanned at checkout. Yes each product has a unique barcode for itself. From type and size (think different size boxes of the same cereal at the store) the manufacturer pays for them. It’s a long number too right? It can be broken down like a phone number with area code first...it is more specific than that though. Starting with the general product type, then country it was manufactured in, then the manufacturer’s company code, then that specific products code. The bars above the number are kind of like a number code for the laser to read. The size and spacing represent separate numbers. Pretty cool and a universally accepted way to track purchases, keep stock of an inventory, and maintain the extensive catalog of products out there. 😊
| 15 |
CMV: Using FGM to defend, minimize or even mock circumcision is absolute bullshit
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It's a shame, because I thought better of that sub. But I just read through \[this\]([https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/gl2bxe/i\_hate\_the\_fact\_that\_female\_issues\_cant\_be/fqux2jz/](https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/gl2bxe/i_hate_the_fact_that_female_issues_cant_be/fqux2jz/)) and I'm honestly more angry than I've been in a long time. Go through it...its much more than just saying "oh, dont bring up circumcision when talking about FGM", it quickly becomes people defending it, trivializing it, minimizing it, and
​
It's a stupid and hypocritical argument- firstly, it's feminists who do this far more often the other way around. It's impossible to bring up circumcision without feminists talking about FGM, They CONSTANTLY derail the conversation whenever it comes up.
​
Second, it's not a valid point to say "well FGM is worse, so circumcision doesn't matter." You don't measure something solely by how it compares to something else, you look at it for it's own value. Something can be bad even if something else is worse. Would you say "oh, cutting a hand off isn't bad because cutting the whole hand off is worse", would you?
​
Thirdly, as usual, feminists/women vastly underestimate the physical damage circumcision does. It's not just a "piece of skin", it's highly innervated erogenous tissue with specific sexual functioning. \[This video covers it very well\]([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bUPupm12VA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bUPupm12VA)). And it's that video where some NSFW images are, as well as the links you'll see below shortly.
​
There are 3 key terms to know about circumcision's effect on sexual pleasure
​
\- \[\*\*the ridged band\*\*\]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridged\_band](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridged_band))
​
\- \[\*\*the frenulum\*\*\]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenulum\_of\_prepuce\_of\_penis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenulum_of_prepuce_of_penis))
​
\- \[meissners corpsucles\]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile\_corpuscle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_corpuscle))
​
These are the key parts to the foreskin that cause the loss of pleasure when removed.
​
It's frustrating that feminists ask men to be "allies", and say they help men too, but then mock and defend it when baby boys have the majority of their erogenous tissue sliced off.
​
For me, 98% of sex feels like nothing. It only feels good for the last3-5 seconds; the last 3-5 seconds is the only time i actually feel any pleasure. The rest of the time feels like nothing and is purely about the mental stimulation.
​
Also in that thread was women who say they dont date men who watch porn- I \*have\* to watch porn because I don't feel anything, so I need the visual stimulation. Otherwise masturbating is like doing nothing.
​
That thread was and still is very upsetting to read.
| 18 |
Can you link us to the actual comments in that thread that you object to? Or to some comments elsewhere that illustrate the behavior you are trying to talk about? From the post you linked to, there doesn't seem to be anyone defending circumcision; they're almost entirely saying "don't bring up circumcision when talking about FGM because FGM is much worse." Right now it's not clear what behavior you actually find objectionable, because what you are describing in your post doesn't seem to correspond to what anyone's actually doing.
| 16 |
Odd question about the '==' and '==='.
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I'm quite curious about these two operators.
So far I only know that:
== : this comparison operator, can compare two variables and it will just ignore their data types if both of them are the same (e.g. 55 == "55" is true)
=== : this comparison operator, can compare the two variables but it will return false if the variables are not the same (e.g. 55 === "55" is false, while 55 === 55 is true).
Why they added === as a fix in the issue with == where they can pretty much fix it in the == just like what other programming languages so
or perhaps am I missing something that I don't know?
Sorry for my grammar lol
| 25 |
`==` doesn't ignore data types, it performs type coercion. This is behavior consistant (lol) with other operators (eg. +) in JavaScript. `===` is the exception.
Now the *real* question is, why is this true:
`'' === [] + []`
| 26 |
ELI5: How do fish in fish tanks keep each other entertained?
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Do they not go insane from being confined?
| 28 |
It's important to keep fish in the correct size tank, and with the correct number of fish (the rule of thumb is 1" of fish for each gallon of tank).
It's also important to give them something to be active *with* - plants and decorations are good for that (plants are also vital for filtration - which is *another* thing that *all* fish need).
If you don't do that, the fish *will* be stressed. They won't so much be *bored*, or appear bored - but they'll *not* be happy or have a good life!
So all those goldfish in bowls? Terrible. All those betas living in a cup? That's just horrific. They might not look it but they *are* suffering. Fish - even betas or goldfish need at *least* 5 gallons, *and* filtration, *and* entertainment, *and* their water replaced regularly, *and* their tank cleaned, *and* temperature control.
| 54 |
what's Plotinus reading from?
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don't you just love when someone reads from a source or references one but doesn't tell you what it is? In Plotinus Enneads 1.8.4 Plotinus says:
> it is, we read, the Soul that has entered into the service of that in which soul-evil is implanted by nature, in whose service the unreasoning phase of the Soul accepts evil-unmeasure, excess and shortcoming, which print forth licentiousness, cowardice, and all other flaws of the soul, all states, foreign to the true nature, which set up false judgments, so that the Soul comes to name things good or evil not by their true value but by the mere test of like and dislike.
Any one know plotinus's source for this. I assume Plato unless he had notes that were written up by Ammonius or something.
| 15 |
The Loeb edition translates this section as:
> Which, then, is the evil soul? It is the sort of thing which Plato means when he says "those in whom the part of the soul in which evil naturally resides has been brought into subjection,"^**1** that is, it is the irrational part of the soul which is receptive of evil, that is of unmeasuredness and excess and defect, from which come unrestrained wickedness and cowardice and all the rest of the soul’s evil, involuntary affections which produce false opinions, making it think that the things which it shuns and seeks after are evil and good respectively.
Footnote **1** gives a reference to Plato's *Phaedrus* 256B2-3.
| 12 |
[DC] Are most Amazonian women without a relationship and single and virgins for their entire lives, or do they ever have relationships with one another?
| 174 |
There are different versions of Amazons throughout the years in the comics.
In the modern version (New 52), the Themyscirans raid ships on the high seas and copulate with men. At the end of the mating, they take their lives and throw their corpses into the sea. They raise the female offspring, but the male children were given to the god Hephastus in exchange for weaponry and armor, and they are raised as the Sons of Themyscira, as artists and smiths. Lesbian relationships are common in their society, heterosexual relationships are almost a necessary evil.
In both the Silver Age of Earth-One and Post-Crisis versions, Amazons did not have much contact with the outside world until Diana became Wonder Woman. It was hinted there was some homosexual love between them Post-Crisis, but was not really built upon. Amazons had more sisterly relations than romantic. They did not have children as they were immortal. Diana was the only Amazon to really interact with the outside world, and she had a romantic connection to Steve Trevor. Donna Troy, her younger adopted sister Pre-Crisis (or magical clone Post-Crisis) was raised from childhood as essentially a human with magically enhanced strengths.
In the Golden Age of Earth-Two, the comic was ironically strongly influenced by the sexual views of her creator, William Moulton Marston, who lived in a polyamorous relationship with two women Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne. Their was a lot of lesbian subtext and bondage in the Golden Age comics surrounding the Amazons, subtle but obvious. And Amazon could lose her power if bound by a man. Diana herself was heteerosexual and married Steve Trevor, and their daughter Lyta was too and married Hank Hall, the Silver Scarab and son of Hawkman and later avatar to Dream, the Sandman.
This was even greatly built upon the recent comic *Wonder Woman Earth-One*, where Amazon rituals and bondage are deeply intertwined with sapphic relationships.
| 163 |
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[Half-Life] Is the G-Man a good guy?
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I know "good guy" can be kind of vague. If you'd prefer it rephrased, what's the G-Man hope to accomplish? What's his goal?
| 18 |
He works for a group, only known as his employers, who have a vested interest in Earth. They may be more powerful than the Combine, but we really do t know.
His current task seems to be ridding Earth of the Combine, or at the very least using the Battle for Earth as the starting point for a larger war against the Combine.
It should be noted he goes against the orders of his employers from time to time, so he may have goals sewerage from theirs.
| 22 |
[Star Wars]If the way that Sith progress is by offing their mentor, do the Sith ascend like the Jedi do? Proud that their apprentice killed them?
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I use ascend but I don't know what the appropriate term is for what Yoda and obi did...thanks
| 79 |
Sith cannot become true Force Spirits like the Jedi do. It is a skill that is described by Qui-Gonn, one of the first to discover it, as a skill that requires "release of self, not the exaltation of self. It comes through compassion, not greed." It's an attitude the Sith would never be able to truly accept, since their beliefs are all about passion and self value. Sith have been able to become more traditional ghosts, bound to the world by powerful energies and emotions, just divided from the Force in a different way than becoming a Force Spirit would be.
| 60 |
How possible is degrowth? Is it just a nice tought? (X-post NeutralPolitics)
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The degrowth movement proposes downscaling of production to battle social injustice and enviromental issues. I'm wondering about the idea of [degrowth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth) and would like some balanced thoughts about it. Is it just a fringe idea, or is there any possibility to move in this direction? What would the consequences of degrowth be?
I'm thinking it would be difficult for people to be content with less. Another problem might be that degrowth stifels research, research that in the end might help fix the enviroment or make the life better even for the lowest socioeconomic groups.
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"The role of knowledge in economic growth is so paramount that predicting The End of Growth is tantamount to predicting The End of Thought." -Philip Cross
Economic growth, to put it simply, is our ability to do more with less. It's the byproduct of our ability to generate a greater output with less time or with fewer material. It's inherently desirable and being opposed to it is synonymous with being against technological progress of any kind.
The idea of degrowth is, to use the proper scientific nomenclature, banana pants. Degrowth's for degrowth's sake is displaying a major misunderstanding of what economic growth is. Negative economic growth may be a consequence of desirable policy but it is not a metric by which to judge a policy's success. No matter how much you care about the environment or social justice, maximizing growth (or minimizing degrowth) within those bounds is something every right-thinking individual should support.
If, for example, introducing a carbon tax would cause economic growth to go in the negative in the short or medium term, then that might be acceptable as we're getting benefits in exchange in the form of lessened pollution. That being said, once our environmental goal have been achieved, once we've hit sustainable levels of pollution, there's no reason to cause further loss in standards of living.
Advocates of degrowth would better spend their energy on advocating for policies which would help achieve their goals of social justice or healthier environment, while persuading voters that the loss in standards of living would be worth the benefits.
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ELI5: why does the moon look big to our eyes but when we take a picture it’s really small
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Edit: thanks for the awards guys. I’ve never gotten them before :)
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Others are right about your brain's ability to focus, but also many cameras (including until very recently basically all mobile phone cameras) are very wide-angle. This is great for fitting in all of your friends from just arm's length. It's also absolutely awful at capturing things at a distance, since such a tremendously large area is in-frame.
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CMV: It is more likely the life of Jesus, as told through the Bible, is embellished rather than representational of the truth.
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Jesus of Nazareth is widely accepted as having existed. However, specific details of his life are met with heavy controversy.
It is my view that it is more reasonable to assume the miracles, resurrection, and similar details of extraordinary claims are to be assumed embellishments by the authors, or from those the stories were obtained from. There is little to no evidence to support any of the miracles, or the possibility of them. Instead, acknowledging Jesus was a real person who did his fair share to shake things up, but had no supernatural powers or incidents.
It is reasonable to assume Jesus existed but unreasonable to assume his miracles are true or representative of the actual events.
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In your view would you say that the earlier followers saw/believed that something incredible happened?
To me, it seems fairly reasonable to think that at the very least the early followers believed in a literal resurrection of Jesus. After all, if they didn’t then it would be extremely anti-Jewish for them to think he was the Messiah.
I know this might seem like a nitpick if your view, but it seems to me more reasonable that at least some of the miracles of Jesus were believed at the time they were said to occur and are not the result of later embellishments.
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How can Kant claim that the realm of the thing-in-itself is the source of freedom if things-in-themselves are unknowable?
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If the subject can not even conceptualise himself "as he is", only as he is for himself, how can Kant claim that it is reasonable to assume there is such a thing as human freedom or God or whatever even if Newtonian physics governs the realm of appearances? What is his reasoning?
"There is this realm which I know nothing about, but it is the source of my freedom." Sounds weird.
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In the *Critique of Practical Reason*, Kant argues the the moral law is a "fact of reason", i.e. indubitably binding on us by virtue of our reason. Now, since we must be able to do what we ought to do, and since freedom is required to be able to do what the moral law tells us we ought to do, then we must be free.
The critical resolution of the Third Antinomy showed that phenomena were governed by unfree causal laws of nature, while freedom was at least *possible* (thinkable) with respect to noumena. Thus we can have no theoretical *knowledge* of freedom. But Kant "denied knowledge in order to make room for faith". The moral law, as the law of practical reason, grounds a rational practical faith in freedom. (It does the same thing for God and immortality, theoretical knowledge of which is also impossible according to the *Critique of Pure Reason*).
So, in a sense, practical reason fills in the gaps of theoretical reason. Thus Kant argues that practical reason has "primacy" over theoretical reason.
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ELI5: What is the pay-off for those that deny the holocaust?
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There is no 'pay off'... I'd say a lot of these fools genuinely believe it didn't happen. Therefore it just coincides with their political beliefs.
Other reasons could be that it allows them to continue the 19th century tradition of blaming the Jews for everything and demonising them as liars and untrustworthy.
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[Dune] Would making a human mind in the likeness of a machine be allowed?
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In the Dune universe genetic engineering/manipulation is a thing so it could be possible to breed or design a human with mentat like abilities but without the personhood. This biological computer of sorts could then maybe be installed in something like an ornithopter and take over tasks that we have performed by computers in real life flying machines. However, since in function this would be almost identical to that of mechanical computers, which are outlawed. So, would such a process be allowed?
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A mentat is essentially a human computer, so I'd say "yes." You could push the hypothetical to a point where people in the Dune-verse might push back on some kind of needed distinction between man and machine, but it gets speculative.
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[Werewolves, General] A pregnant woman turns into a werewolf...
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So, a woman is either pregnant and becomes a werewolf, or already was a werewolf and becomes pregnant: when she transforms into a wolf, does the unborn child also become a wolf? If she gives birth under a full moon, does the baby remain a wolf cub or does it change back into human form once disconnected from the mother?
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Short answer yes. If Lycanthropy is a disease transmitted through blood and saliva like rabies or std’s then a mother would transmit that disease to her baby. However, if the nature of the disease is to change under the full moon then it wouldn’t matter when she gave birth. If she gave birth in wolf form, she would have a wolf baby but the wolf baby would turn back into a human baby at the same time the mother transforms to a human again.
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[Harry Potter/MCU] How did the Wizarding World react to The Snap?
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The problem about saying "the wizarding world" is it's the same as saying "how did 21st century Earth" - there are a lot of nations involved in that description and there isn't going to be a unified response to anything.
However, in general terms the response can be characterised like this:
1. Panic
Initially, wizards across the globe believed that they were under some sort of magical assault, so there was a lot of running about and use of defensive spells. When it became clear that no further assaults were coming, a lot of attention was directed at America.
2. Blame
It is absolutely and without question awful that, at least initially, the wizarding world thought that the USA must somehow be responsible. Especially since the last two Dark Lords have come from Europe. But that's modern Wizarding politics for you.
3. Investigation
Calmer heads soon prevailed, because some people had actually started asking what on earth had happened. The nice thing about magic is that it's good at providing answers. Once it was determined that the effect came from an artefact not of Earth, the Wizarding world moved right back to...
4. Blame
Come ON, America! You had the Avengers! You had SHIELD! You had a much larger population of Wizards! You had the Sorcerer Supreme and the Norse God of Thunder, ffs! How did you manage to drop the ball on this one! Obviously, because the Wizarding nations of the world are a secret population themselves no one thought to lay any blame at the feet of Wakanda, and rumours of Wakanda being a long standing tourist destination for wizards have been hotly denied.
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Is getting tongue-tied a very minor form of aphasia, or are the causes completely different?
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The phenomenon is so common it actually has a clinical shorthand, a "TOT state." It occurs when the left temporal and frontal areas of your brain temporarily fail to work together to retrieve words or names stored in your memory, or other information, like where you left your keys.
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ELI5: Why does scratching feel so good when it ends up in a much worse rash than before?
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Scratching sends a low level pain that distracts your brain from focusing on the itching. It can also help to slap the itchy area so that you can get the same distraction without causing damage with scratching.
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ELI5 - With all the concern about potential brain injury and sport team liability, it seems like soccer/football 'headers' would concern people more. Why isn't this practice frowned upon at a professional level?
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People are well aware of the danger. Many youth leagues ban headers for that exact reason.
But, sports in general tend to be conservative when it comes to safety changes, which likely explains the lack of action at the professional level.
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New to Econ, is socialism rejected by mainstream economics?
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Like the title says, I just started looking into to Econ for the first time and I was curious: as socialist economics are described as heterodox, does that mean that mainstream academic consensus is that socialist economics don’t work? I understand the rejection of Central planning given its well documented failures, but it seems like market socialism is rejected as well, at least from what I’ve gathered from posts on this sub and bad econ.
Does this mean that socialist economic theory is just considered to be wrong by orthodox economists, or am I misunderstanding something? As someone new to the subject, any and all help is appreciated.
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Terms like socialism, capitalism, etc. are generally not particularly well regarded because they are imprecise to the point of saying nothing at all. So in that regard, it's neither accepted nor rejected.
In practice there will always be situations where more or less state intervention leads to more desirable outcomes and different ownership structures have different benefits, broad statements make little sense here.
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ELI5: Why do countries have problems with low inflation (Japan, Canada now)? Can't they simply print more money to keep inflation in the desired range?
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Two reasons:
1. It is politically unpopular. Some politicians don't see low inflation or even deflation as a problem, and it's easy for them to score points against their opponents for "devaluing [constitutents'] money" even if that is the appropriate course of action.
2. When interest rates are very low, it can be difficult to produce inflation via money-printing. It can be a difficult balance, because when the economy recovers and interest rates rise, the central bank may have to choose between accepting higher-than-optimal inflation or undoing their work. Japan has had particular trouble with this, printing money and then stopping at the first sign of recovery.
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ELI5: Why don't trickle down economics work?
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It just seems to work so well in theory, and family members swear it's the only thing that will help our current economy. Why is trickle down, or Reaganomics widely considered to be a non-working, economic fallacy?
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When wealthier people get more money, they don't necessarily have much incentive to spend more since they already have their needs met, especially, if there isn't increased demand and they can easily use it to buy products overseas or expand there. Cutting taxes and social safety-nets hasn't really worked historically.
If you subsidize less wealthy individuals, they are far more likely to spend, and spend locally. If they've been making due with a bad appliance or lack some new piece of technology and get an influx of cash, they'll go out and buy something. This increases demand, putting money into company pockets, and encouraging them to expand and hire more people since people will buy more products.
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ELI5:What exactly happens if you put diesel into a regular engine and vice versa?
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In ELI5 terms... this...
What we call "Gasoline", that we put in our cars at the Gas Station, is a highly flammable and potentially explosive substance. Diesel fuel, while definitely flammable and potentially explosive, is not nearly as much so as gasoline. Jet Fuel, or kerosene, is another substance, like diesel fuel, that can be hard to ignite. In fact, some grades of jet fuel simply won't burn even if you drop a lit match into a barrel of the stuff.
So, if you put diesel fuel into a gasoline engine, the engine will just eventually quit running. If you start with a dry tank, then fill it with diesel, the engine will probably never start. The engine itself will probably not be damaged, but the fuel injectors and other components may need to be overhauled or replaced.
On the other hand, if you put gas into a diesel engine, stand by for fireworks. The high volatility of gasoline will most likely blow your engine apart if you don't shut it off in time.
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ELI5: What does the term "identity politics" mean?
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This is super embarrassing -- but it comes up all the time and I don't totally get it....
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"identity politics" are political idea or efforts to encourage political activities based on someone's membership in a particular "identity" group. The most common examples in the U.S. are race, religion, and gender.
The term is most frequently used with a negative connotation -- the idea being that "identity politics" is a way of setting groups against each other and making it harder to talk about actual policy because every discussion becomes about whether you are betraying your "group." However, it can also be used in a neutral or positive sense, to describe political appeals based on problems uniquely faced or experienced by people in certain social contexts.
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[Injustice 2] How much would it take to incapacitate/kill Superman after he bonds with Braniac's ship in the Superman Ending?
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I doubt much. Brainiac wasn't a powerhouse in combat, he was extremely intelligent. If anything, Superman after the bond is pretty much him but now with the knowledge that Brainiac possessed, which is kinda scary. I'd assume someone who could outsmart Brainiac and outbeat Superman would have the upper hand.
Superman's weakness is still Kryptonite.
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ELI5: Why are such such small (<1C) changes in average temperature enough to trigger large scale climate change?
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Many places experience daily variations of at least 10C, and seasonal variations of at least 20C, so a very small change in long term average does not seem like it would make much difference:
How do these small changes cause large scale effects? What are the mechanisms which link temperature to visible climate change effects?
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This of it this way:
Let's say temperature goes up, everywhere, by an average of 1C for a whole year. Water freezes at 0C. The average temp in Los Angeles, annually, might be 22C, which means after a 1C increase, it's now 23C annual average. Not that big a difference, not that important.
Now let's consider somewhere icy. Let's say... one of the more southern parts of the north pole. Let's say that there's 50 days a year where the average is EXACTLY 0C, 150 days that are below 0C, and 150 days at 1C or above. Under these temperatures, water is freezing (or staying frozen) 200 days a year, and melting 150 days a year. Now let's bump averages up 1C. Now in that region, water is freezing 150 days a year and melting 200 days a year. The balance of the region has change- more ice will melt, annually, than it freezes. And that's going to melt a LOT of water over the course of the next few decades.
These numbers aren't really very scientific, but just consider them for an example. When average temperature goes up, even slightly, it can have major cumulative affects.
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[Star Wars] What exactly do moisture vaporators have to say that you need a droid to translate?
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Couldn't a simple screen with columns of numbers handle pretty much all of the relevant communications for a giant dehumidifier?
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Look at it this way, if you tell a Binary Loadlifter to "stack boxes over here" it will continue to stack boxes until the floor collapses under the weight of them all, even if it has to actively leave the area to find more boxes of things to stack. And then, even without a floor, it will continue to stack boxes in the designated area. With a protocol droid to translate commands into the appropriate Binary, "stack boxes over here" becomes "Stack the boxes currently located within this warehouse that are designated with X licensing code into this particular area. Do not stack the boxes located with Y or Z licensing codes. If you are out of boxes to stack, go into low power mode until..." etc... The purpose of the protocol droid translator is to give a command so perfectly specific that it gets exactly what is needed done without any issues along the way. So specific that a human couldn't possibly give it in a reasonable time.
The same idea applies to vaporators. While they don't need to move any boxes, they still need excruciatingly complex commands in order to achieve their goal properly.
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ELI5: How is it that humans can see a new object once and then be able to identify it in images with extreme precision, but the best computer vision algorithms need thousands upon thousands of examples to be able to pick specific objects out of images?
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If you ignore the metaphysical (spirit, soul, etc.) and assume that the brain is a biological machine, then there are basically two arguments:
1. The human brain is (in some ways, at least) much more powerful than the computers we can build and/or it runs much better image-recognition software than we can write.
2. When you learn to recognize a new object, you aren't really starting from scratch - you're building on your past experience of learning to recognize many different things and then actually recognizing them many times.
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ELI5 - How come there aren't as many owls out there as there are crows, seagulls, robins, and other common birds.
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I can recall one time in my life I seen an owl.
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A couple of reasons. First, an owl is a carnivore, and any particular ecosystem can support far fewer carnivores than other types of organism - there really are fewer owls than, say, omnivores like the seagull. But also, most owls are nocturnal. They're out at night, where you aren't. Add those things together, and the fact that they mostly avoid populated areas, and you've got an owl sighting as a fairly rare event.
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CMV:Water is wet
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The Google definition of "wet" is: "covered or saturated with water or another liquid." I don't understand how a molecule of water that is surrounded by other molecules of water in not surrounded by water. If you simply Google "Is water wet," it will come up with an article from The Guardian. I feel that the text that is shown at the beginning of the article manipulates the definition of "wet." I think that people tend to just look it up like that and trust that source. Some people will say that water can't be wet even if it is surrounded by other water, because it's water. I don't understand that logic.
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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!*
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Water is not always wet, but it _can_ be wet. Here are some illustrative examples:
* Frozen water is not typically wet. When you take ice out of your freezer, it's usually not wet.
* Take that same frozen water and put it in a drink though, and now it is wet. It's wet because it's covered by a layer of liquid water. Even if you don't put it in a drink, and just leave it outside to melt, it will soon _become_ wet.
* Gaseous water is, practically speaking, never wet.
You can tell the difference between water that is wet and water that is not wet because water that is wet is slippery, much more so than non-wet water.
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What makes steam visible?
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You're not actually seeing steam/water vapour/gaseous water - you're seeing tiny droplets of liquid water that have condensed and are hanging in the air, distorting the passage of light into your eyes. You're essentially seeing tiny warm clouds.
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[The Purge] What is legal? Examples inside.
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Happy Purge! In honor of the first one, I have some questions about the legality of certain actions. Assume that it's many years from now and these issues have all been settled. Also, I haven't seen the movies, so apologies if some of these are real easy.
1. Can a doctor perform a medical procedure/give treatment without informed consent?
2. Al injures Betty. Betty dies three weeks later of her injuries with no intervening cause. Has Al committed a murder?
3. Carl and his family are in their underground bunker with fifteen minutes left in the Purge. Denise suddenly breaks into the bunker and slaughters Carl's family. In the middle of the slaughter, the Purge ends, but Denise reasonably believes that it has not yet ended when she kills Carl's wife, Elizabeth. Denise then waits two hours, then, still believing the Purge is still on, steals Carl's TV and XBox. Has Denise committed a murder? What about a stealing?
4. Frank is on trial, but the case against him is weak. Just after the Purge starts, the prosecutor and judge decide to try him in absentia with no counsel present and no jury. The trial lasts mere minutes and he is convicted. Can the conviction stand?
5. During the Purge, police officers break into Greta's locked garage without consent or exigent circumstances (unless the Purge is a per se exigent circumstance for Fourth Amendment purposes - is it?) and place a GPS tracker on her car. The prosecutor wants to use evidence collected by the tracker after the Purge has ended to convict her of a non-Purge-related crime. Must that evidence be suppressed? If so, does Greta have a viable 1983 claim against the officers who planted the tracker? (*See U.S. v. Jones*, 132 S. Ct. 945 (2012)).
6. The local Nazi subchapter has a public demonstration planned in a public park during the Purge. Can the municipality that owns the park suppress the demonstration without violating the Nazis' First Amendment rights? What if it was a private meeting at a member's home?
7. Hector is in Mexico, close to the American border. He comes over. Can deportation proceedings begin against him before the Purge ends? What about after?
8. During the Purge, Iris violates an administrative regulation that has a criminal punishment. Can the administrative agency prosecute her?
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1. Indeed they can.
2. Nope, as long as all illegal actions took place during Purge Night.
3. She has... But how could you possibly prove it?
4. The conviction wouldn't stand and any sentence would be revoked.
5. That's illegal, because they are still committing a crime *after* the Purge.
6. Yes, and yes.
7. They can't start before the Purge ends, but the important question is: what's illegal, crossing the border or being in the country? If it's the former then there's nothing they can do. If it's the latter then they'll just arrest him later.
8. Noooooope.
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Is solar power viable in the U.S.?
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You roommate is making a blanket black and white statement. They are almost never correct. :) The truth is usually in the gray area. We don't have to only choose solar for the sole energy source of the USA. We can implement it where it will work and where it doesn't have to be transmitted too incredibly far and do other energy sources in other places.
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Why is chocolate poisonous for dogs and not humans?
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Short answer: humans have insanely overpowered livers and we can break down a ton of things that are poisonous to other animals. Other things we are unusual in our ability to handle in more than the most minuscule amounts are caffeine, alcohol, plants in the onion family, and NSAIDs.
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[Da vinci code] So now they found the descendant of Jesus, what changes?
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"Hey, you know the person 1/3rd of the planet consider a literal deity incarnated in human form? Here's his heir, carrying the bloodline of the Lord!"
The idea is to use the descendent of Jesus to leverage control over the world's Christians- after all, who are they to say they know better then the literal descendent of God Himself?
Whether that works is hard to predict, but holy wars have started over grammar disputes regarding the bible. Whatever happens, the world isn't getting out of this unscathed.
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How close does the energy of a photon have to be to the energy jump of an electron for it to absorb the photon?
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If an electron can only absorb all or none of a photon and can only jump up to specific energy levels, the energy of the photon would have to be equal to the energy level of the electron. But, I am assuming that there can be some error, otherwise it would rarely happen. What is this error and why is there one?
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The answer is if you are going to transition between two bound states (energy levels) the energy of the photon and energy of the transition must match *exactly* for non-scattering interactions.
That being said its not "rare" because we are typically measuring ensembles of many many atoms. These ensembles have statistical broadening effects, as well as uncertainty effects in the light field that make them more probable. For example the precision something can measure a frequency of light is going to be inversely proportional to the time it can interact with that light field. Meaning most systems can only interact for a set amount of time before the light field is turned off. This innately gives the light field some uncertainty in frequency.
These uncertainty effects give both the atom/molecule and the light field a distribution of available frequencies. Now the probability that the light will interact (be absorbed) but the object will be proportional to the overlapping area of the two frequency distribution functions. There are more factors at play here but thats the basic point.
Additionally you can have scattering events where only part of the photos energy is absorbed due to induced fields.
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[Star Wars, BSG] An X-wing and a Viper engage in a dogfight. Who wins?
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(Assuming we're talking about the BSG reboot)
The main advantage that the Viper has is its maneuverability. X-Wings simply fly around like WW1 or WW2 style fighters, in long slooping arcs. The Viper pilots are much better trained to take tactical advantage of space's lack of orientation, and they freely spin their fighters around and fly backwards, or make maneuvers that can only be done in a zero-gravity vacuum.
Pilot-to-pilot, the Viper almost certainly has a tactical advantage. Unfortunately, the X-Wing has a number of other factors in its favor. Shields, for starters, could leave the Viper incapable of harming the X-Wing. Even if we assume that the shields are deactivated or won't stop machine gun rounds, you've still got hyperdrive, energy weapons, almost certainly more powerful missiles, and an R2 unit to repair damage on the X-Wing. The X-Wing pilot might have trouble getting a bead on the Viper, but there's a strong chance of it being a one-hit kill when he finally does.
All that said, if you put the two pilots in the same piece of hardware, I'd take the Viper pilot 9 times out of 10. They make *much* better use of their space based fighting environment as distinct from an aerial dogfight.
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[Alien] Ripley and gang come back from Hadley's hope with hard evidence of the infestation. Given the cost of the colony, WY decides to attack with a special task force of Marines, instead of a nuclear strike. How would you train and outfit this team to best fight the Xenomorphs?
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Normal training is fine. A briefing on the acid blood and general xenomorph tactics is probably all the special attention that's required.
Really the only reason the original team couldn't handle it was the loss of the dropship, which prevented them from being properly equipped. So, you know, a reminder that these are sneaky bastards and you should keep the door closed should do the trick.
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[Star Wars]Why did the empire continue to use Victory class Star Destroyers yet retire the Venator class?
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Due to Tarkins Doctrine of Fear, ships wouldn't be commissioned as much for their effectiveness in battle, but for the ability to dishearten would be rebellions. The *victory* class is not only more heavily armed the the *venator*, it also looks like a miniature *Imperial* class star destroyer, perfect for putting fear into the minds of the populace, plus since the *venator* was the back bone of he jedi forces its seen as a symbol of he old republic while the *victory* and imperial classes serve as a symbol of Imperial power.
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Could you have FTL but no time travel if your FTL could only take you to places that were in the future (or simultaneous) according to a fixed universal reference frame?
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So there would be some sort of aether that, although irrelevant for any known physics, everything could be measured as moving "relative to". With the reference frame of this aether determining the "future" according to this FTL method.
To break it down, 1: Is this even coherent? 2: Is there somehow still a way to do time travel even with this restriction? Or for anyone feeling particularly generous, 3: What oddities might one observe using such an FTL method in a galaxy moving quite fast relative to this special frame?
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There is no "fixed, universal reference frame"; it doesn't exist. But anyway, if your worldline only ever intersects events in the absolute future, you are by definition not moving FTL. Your worldline is timelike, which implies that your speed in any inertial frame is less than c. If your worldline is spacelike (impossible), then you can reach events outside of your absolute future, which means that you can move backwards in time.
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Are dreams and nightmares any less “real” than our waking conscious experience?
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If so, is everything equally real phenomenologically speaking? I feel as if it’s a silly question but i’ve pondered other things which I presumed were also silly and apparently ended up finding it wasn’t. So here’s my question..
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The phenomena which you can experience during a dream are of course real in the sense that they are phenomena which you are experiencing. But that does not necessarily mean that they are real in the same sense that the phenomena which you experience while awake are. The question is pretty complex, but one sloppy way to handle it is that you could think of the phenomena which you experience while awake to be more "real" since they come from external objects interacting with your mind and senses (again, this is a very messy take on it), but the phenomena in dreams come from imagination. Intuitively this could be supported by points such as external objects generally giving the same phenomena to different people, while its very hard to accurately convey some phenomenon experienced in a dream to someone else. So in a sense, both experiences are real, but they are differ greatly in other aspects.
You could look into phenomenology for more on this.
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ELI5: Who decided that we need exactly 12 years of grade school? Seems like kind of a random number to me.
| 30 |
OP, /u/Teekno has some decent points, but his information is a bit inaccurate. Unfortunately, all the people arguing over his inaccuracies have failed to actually fill in the holes those inaccuracies present in answering your question.
The PRIMARY reason that school ends when you turn 18 is because 18 is the age that US males were required to sign up for the draft. 18 was the age that was determined acceptable for going to war. In the US, until as recently as the 70s, 21 was considered the age of adulthood. You couldn't vote until you were 21 for a very long time in this country, and many other rights were only unlocked at that age. But the right to serve your country in the armed forces has been available to 18 year olds for nearly as long as the country has had a structured education system.
As /u/Teekno mentioned, the ages of 4-6 are when most average children demonstrate the ability to sit still, listen and accurately mimic. So we put them in school as soon as they are capable of learning in a school environment, and we provide an education to them up to the point where they are old enough to serve in the military.
| 18 |
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ELI5: What chemical reaction do drugs have (in particular MDMA) that makes us more sociable and why can’t people just “be like that” when they’re sober?
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Does it remove that anxious social barrier or it something else? Really intrigued as to what goes on in the mind.
| 137 |
There are stuff in your body and brain called neurotransmitters. These are molecules that some cells secrete and some cells take up, this is how they communicate. The most notable are probably endorphines (your bodys own painkillers), dopamine (reward molecule, it gets secreted when you do something that is beneficial to you and your survival like high calorie food, sex etc) and serotonin (love molecule, it makes you attached to stuff and makes you feel happy and euphoric)
MDMA, when you eat or snort it, goes into the bloodstream, then to the brain. In the brain, it makes cells secrete serotonin and dopamine, as well as norepinephrine (its like adrenaline, but while adrenaline is used mostly in the fight or flight reflex, norepinephrine is more broadly used by the body) this makes you energetic by activating the "oo stuff is happening better get ready" part of your nervous system.
These chemicals if present, make you feel how i described in the first paragraph, except you did nothing that would normally get the chemicals flowing, its just the mdma molecules on the cells constantly supplying the information that they have to make the happy chemicals, so they make lots and lots of it, making you feel the high.
Another thing is that your body usually picks these up to get the concentrations of the neurotransmitter down to the resting level. Mdma also blocks this, so the already higher than normal concentrations keep being higher than nornal, making you feel happy for longer.
| 131 |
How long does it take UV rays absorbed by your skin to be converted to vitamin D?
|
I have a vitamin d deficiency so I've been sunning myself every day for thirty minutes. Only for a couple days so far though.
How long does it usually take for the absorbed nutrients from the sun to convert to vitamin D in one's body?
| 27 |
The conversion is is pretty well finished in an hour, and absorption is rapid. But your skin doesn’t hold much of the precursor to vitamin D. So the best way to get more vitamin D from the sun is to lay in the sun with as much of your skin exposed as possible for about an hour. Note that sun from behind a window is nearly useless, as it blocks the necessary wavelengths.
Alternatively, look into a vitamin D supplement and/or increasing your calcium intake. One of those may offer a faster resolution to your problems, but it depends on what is actually going wrong.
| 11 |
ELI5: Why isn't tax included in the price prior to check out?
| 30 |
A) Allows them to advertise lower prices
B) Allows them to advertise the same prices for all stores - in the US, sales tax can vary across city, county & state borders
C) Allows them to mark the price once - sales tax rates change, by small amounts, fairly often
| 28 |
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ELI5: If Amber, containing preserved insects, lasts for tens of millions of years, why aren't we up to our necks in the stuff?
| 48 |
I don't think you appreciate how large the area of land is on the earth relative to the number of trees that produce amber (and the amount a tree could produce).
If every person on earth stood shoulder to shoulder they would fit in the space of a city like London, Mexico City or the area of San Francisco + Bay Area. That is the ENTIRE human population in the world today.
| 52 |
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CMV: SJW's did not ruin Star Wars (nor much of any media). It's just bad writing.
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**Edit**: Head is spinning with this topic and I feel I got some good view changes, so I'm going to stop responding. Sorry if I couldn't make it to your message.
Disclaimer: Anyone who enjoyed the sequel Star Wars is allowed to. I'll even throw you a bone and say there were some good moments and cool ideas in them.
For those who did not like the sequels, I often hear them blame its failure on SJW's intervening and making it bad. Namely, the SJW quest for diverse representation. That quest I also see pegged as a detriment to many modern medias.
My view is that any failure of modern media is just down to bad story-telling/writing. The fact that SJW's championed some causes in the media is just a coincidence, not a cause for the failure.
I'll use the Star Wars Sequel's as my case study since I just finished watching them and its fresh in my mind (Spoilers ahead). The main protagonist is female and one of the main cast sports black skin, which is what I assume are the SJW's influence that people are blaming. I don't see how Rey being a women or Finn being black makes them bad? The only bad things I saw in the sequels were power-creeping everything (which is somewhat to be expected the more sequels a story gets) and the destruction of Luke's character (probably a result of new directors/writers). Everything else bad is common downsides to all the star-wars movies that fans were able to ignore in the past (Storm Troopers being a joke, the good guys making morally questionable choices, ect...)
We also know having a female lead does not automatically make a story worse; think of the darling classics Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins. We've also seen legendary support characters that are black; Samuel Jackson in the prequel Star Wars and Morpheus from the Matrix. Having a diverse cast does not make a story automatically worse.
In general, I think striving for more diverse representation in popular media is a good thing. It allows for wider audiences to identify with the characters. The one exception I can think of is the new Netflix He-Man, and that is only because He-Man was originally a celebration of Males and Masculinity. This doesn't apply for most media, especially Star Wars which was about much bigger themes than having a male protagonist.
**Expected Counter-Arguments**
*If the SJW's didn't spend so much time focusing on diversity they could have focused more on good characters/storytelling.*: As a fledgling writer myself, I can say that the decision for the basics of a character (sex, skin color) takes vastly less time than it does to develop a character. If an author wants to spend an extra day, or even a week, on those decisions it won't really impact the months that go into developing the rest of the character(personality, backstory, ect...).
*They made Rey a Mary Sue to show Female Strong*: I think this is just a side-effect of the powercreep issue. They made the antagonists stronger, so the good guys needed some more power to overcome them. The weren't many Jedi left to support Rey, so they really needed to put all the good guy points into her. Also, she was shown doing a good amount of training, so it wasn't like it was all inherent.
*Why can't SJW's just write their own new stories, instead of commandeering old franchises*: Because this will likely not complete the quest. For a diverse cast to be effective, it needs to be in popular media. Starting a brand new franchise runs the high risk of not pulling in many new eyes.
**What would change my view**
Show me bad media as a direct result of SJW's quest for diverse representation (or other SJW meddling). Bonus points if you can show that it outweighs the upside that comes with diverse representation.
*Edit/Deltas*:
* An agenda pushed too hard in a story can come off as preachy, which can be a turn-off for people who just want to enjoy a good story.
* Rey was made a little too invincible. She never got her "arm cut off" loss like Luke did.
* The diversity of the anatagonists in Star Wars might be undermining it's original message of diversity = good guys.
* Diversity can clash with natural story-telling in instances where we wouldn't expect diversity, like with historical gangs.
| 66 |
Bad media example, please look up Marvel's "The New Warriors". That is not merely bad writing, that was the result of building something from the ground up as SJW nonsense. Morbidly obese superheroes, a pair of nonbinary genderbended black twins unironcially named "Snowflake & SafeSpace". You can't say that wasn't commandeering an old franchise and SJWashing it into a hilarious failure.
| 51 |
ELI5: Can anything capable of sleeping also have the ability to dream?
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My dog sometimes moves his legs like he is running in his sleep and will make noises. So I assume that's dreaming, but does this mean any animal that sleeps can also dream? Or is there a certain intellectual aspect/capacity that must be present in order for the process to occur?
| 32 |
Tough to answer because what does 'sleep' mean? Is a bear hibernating sleeping? The late-fall spider that pretty much shuts down on cold near-zero nights, what is its brain doing and is that 'sleep'? Then you get into weird cases like dolphins that would drown if they went fully asleep so they only sleep with one-half of their brain at a time so they will always be conscious.
We have evidence from both our own eyes and from scientific measurements using brainwave monitors that higher-order animals like dogs and primates dream. That's well-known. But as you go down the intelligence tree, at some point you reach instinct-driven animals that either don't have enough brainpower to need to quiet-time mental recharge/archiving processes like us mammals do when dreaming, or they just don't do it at all (the platypus is an example, although Perry might have nightmares about Doofenschmirtz from time to time). They just kind of shut down during their rest periods instead, with the cut-off point at least partly determined by intelligence levels.
| 10 |
ELI5: Why is it better to keep my iPhone apps "running" instead of turning them off (by swiping up) when done with them?
| 20 |
Modern smartphones are able to effectively manage their own resources, and they do a fairly good job of it. So, for example, it may take more battery power to "re load" an app than it does to simply maintain it in memory.
The phone makes the choices of what apps to shut down and what ones to keep running based on your past usage. It's already optimized.
Now, if you know more than your phone does. For example, you use an app frequently but know the last time was the last time and now you won't use it again for days. Then sure, shut the app down. But popping in and out of iMessage happens frequently and you'll be hurting your phone performance if you force the apps you use frequently to quit.
Both IOS and Android do a fairly good job of shutting down apps, or not, to conserve system resources. It is highly unlikely that your manual method is doing a better job than the phone would do by itself and it's fairly likely you are actually hurting performance.
| 16 |
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Refuting Eliezer Yudowsky
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I’m sure many people here are familiar with Eliezer Yudowsky and his ilk over at LessWrong. One of the most defining aspects of their philosophy is of what I’m going to term, for want of a better name, ‘literal utilitarianism’. That is to say, you do exactly what the utilitarian maths suggests, with no regard to whether or not the results seem wildly counterintuitive. So for example, you torture 1 person for 50 years to stop Graham’s number of people from getting dust specks in their eyes. This would lead to all kinds of hideous issues like the utility monster and the repugnant conclusion, but Yudowsky just steamrolls over all that by arguing that utilitarianism is rational, your intuitions are wrong, and you’re an irrational monkey if you see utilitarianism as wrong because it gives horrifying results.
Now, I’m personally of the opinion that Yudowsky only advocates this form of utilitarianism in order to convince people that they have a moral imperative to donate to the AI research ‘charity’ that he works for, but that’s besides the point. Why would a standard philosopher say he’s wrong? The vast majority of philosophers accept the counterarguments against utilitarianism that its conclusions can be apalling, and try to somehow explain them away rather than trying to take them at face value. So what would a philosopher say in defence of the common sense idea that say, you shouldn’t kill 1 person for a 1 in a billion chance of saving 1 billion people?
The main counterargument I can think of, without completely discarding utilitarianism, is that utilitarianism is only ‘correct’ because our intuitions tell us it is, and there’s real way to argue any given ethical theory is ‘rational’ because ethics is too subjective for that. Therefore, when it conflicts with our intuitions, instead of ‘shutting up and multiplying’, we change it so it doesn’t give results that look like that - because if you dismiss the validity of ethical intuition, you’re effectively dismissing the entire basis of utilitarianism in the first place.
Are there any other counterarguments? What would a philosopher from a non LessWrong school of thought say? Why is the standard response to the utility monster, or the repugnant conclusion ‘your feelings are wrong and the maths is right’?
| 24 |
It seems like you’re less concerned with Yudowsky as an individual and more concerned with “literal utilitarianism”, so I’ll talk more about that instead of why Yudowsky’s beliefs in general tend to be wrong.
The biggest “non intuition based” argument against the form of utilitarianism you outlined (which to be clear isn’t the version most actual utilitarians believe) is epistemic.
If we subscribe to the maxim that we ought to generate the most utility possible through our actions, but also acknowledge that we can’t know how much utility an action generates until *after the actions’ consequences play out,* then some serious issues start to arise.
For instance, a utilitarian in the year 1900 might believe that it’s a moral imperative to center our world economy around oil, because it’s cheap, abundant, and very energy dense compared to alternatives. However, this utilitarian doesn’t know about climate change, and thus is unwittingly hurting total utility in the long run!
This objection, in short, hinges on the notion that we cannot know how much utility any given action will generate. Since we cannot know how much utility an action will generate, basing an ethical system purely on “maximizing utility” is borderline incoherent unless we modify our criteria or introduce some new restrictions beyond actual utility.
One way around this is “rule utilitarianism”, but I’m guessing Yudowsky wouldn’t like that too much!
| 24 |
If our solar system had 2 suns like depicted in Star Wars on Tatooine, would life be possible or would this be too much radiation to sustain life as we know it?
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Meaning humans wouldn’t be as we are, or plants, animals, etc would be different? I know we haven’t found life elsewhere in the universe, yet, but it seems that situation would be difficult. And if it’s possible to sustain life with two suns, how?
| 1,462 |
It's totally doable.
For instance, if the two suns are in a close orbit, they basically just feel like one big sun, and you can have a nice stable orbit without huge variations in temperature. If they're both about as bright as our Sun, you'd just need to be a bit further away so that the temperature is okay. Or, the stars could just be a bit dimmer than our Sun, and the planet could be closer (or vice versa). All you're doing is moving the habitable zone in and out, but if there's a planet there, you can have liquid water and Earth-like life.
Alternately, your planet could be in a close orbit around one sun, and that planet-sun system is orbited by (or orbits) a second sun. If the second sun is dim enough or far enough away, you'll be dominated by the nearby sun, and you again won't get extreme variations in temperature, and you could still have Earth-like life with liquid water.
| 1,210 |
ELI5: The Ship of Theseus Paradox
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I thought I understood what it was about, "if you replace all the parts of a ship with new identical parts, is it the same ship?". But the more I think about it, the less I understand *why* this is a question. It can't be the same ship, it doesn't have the original parts. But everyone says it's one of the greatest philosophical questions. So maybe I'm misunderstanding it?
| 49 |
If it’s a different ship. At what point is it no longer the same ship? 51% 55% 99.9999%
But what about if some of the replacement parts have been replaced?
It’s a question that asks whether experiences and memories makes us or merely our component parts such as the structure of our brains.
| 53 |
ELI5: Why do wasps build nests in hexagons if they do not store honey?
| 37 |
The honeycomb shape is designed to store eggs. After the queen lays her eggs, they're moved to the honeycomb where they're sealed inside the hexagons until they hatch.
Hexagons happen to be the most efficient for this task. It needs to be a tesselation, meaning you can put several of them next to each other un a repeating pattern without any overlap. The easiest options are triangles, squares, rectangles and hexagons. Hexagons use the least amount of wall material per area, so they're the easiest to build.
| 39 |
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[Star Wars] In The Last Jedi, why did the rebels even use those weird sand rider vehicles? They weren’t capable of disabling the Walkers right? So why even jump in them?
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just to buy time?
in empire the rebels used those small snow craft with the Cables to trip walkers
but the sand vehicles from TLJ didn’t seem to have any ability to disable a single walker
like it could be 20 rebel vehicles vs 1 Walker and the walker would win...
| 20 |
When they were gearing up the sand skimmers, the plan was to hunker down, call in the cavalry (all the assorted allies of Leia and the Resistance who they were trying to contact), and then stall for time until backup arrives. The little craft weren't qualified to hurt a walker, *but the Walker commanders don't know that*. They need to consider the prospect that the small ships have upgraded guns, or missiles salvaged from the Resistance's Starfighter arsenal, or are converted to suicide bombs, and can't afford to just walk past them.
But then the cavalry tells Leia to go fuck herself. Now, it's no longer about stalling for a specific goal. It's just desperation, hoping they can buy another few seconds in death for a salvation that may not come.
| 28 |
If two cars are traveling at 100 mph towards each other would the impact be the same as one car hitting a wall at 200 mph?
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So if two cars hit each other going 100 mph would the damage be the same as one car hitting a wall at 200 mph?
Edit: you guys are really awesome! I found the answer and you guys are helpful.
| 63 |
You mean in total? Because in one case you have one car (and a wall that would escape relatively unscathed) and the other case you have two cars.
Or do you mean to the passengers in the cars? In this case the 200 mph case would be worse. The total speed makes no difference. What matters is the momentum change to a single passenger. In both cases they go from top speed to zero. In the first case the top speed is half the second case's top speed, so there would be a greater momentum change felt by the passenger in the second case.
If you had asked which was worse - two cars going 100 mph hitting head-on or two cars each hitting a wall at 100 mph - the answer would be, in a first-year physics way, they would be equivalent. The momentum change felt by all passengers would be the same.
| 76 |
[DBS] How come Beerus didnt know who Majin Buu was?
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When Beerus meets Buu for the first time, he seems to think that its just some fat pink guy who wont give him pudding.
Yet, buu is millions of years old, and almost killed all the kais, which would have killed Beerus. Even freiza and his dad knew about him, how come Beerus didnt knew about the extremly old being that almost killed him five million years ago? If nothing else, Whis should have know who he was, unlike gods of destructions, the angels are never said to be replaced, so he should have been there atleast.
| 45 |
Because Beerus is a temperamental slacker who naps for decades or centuries at a time. He probably slept through the entire massacre of the Kais. And as long as Shin survives, so does he.
When he woke up and discovered what happened, and that Buu had been 'dealt with', he probably just chastised Shin for being careless, and stormed off to gorge on some mediocre food somewhere.
He's also shown himself go be easily distracted, and forgetful, so even if he HAD intended to destroy Buu should he be released, do you really think he'd remember that after millions of years?
Frankly, Champa is the only God of Destruction that seems even more incompetent than Beerus.
| 54 |
[General Sci-fi] If a person is sent back in time and gets amnesia, would they recognize anachronisms?
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Let’s say tomorrow I’m some how sent back in time to roughly the 1920s, or even the 1950s, and develop amnesia, either immediately upon arrival or as a result of the trip. I wouldn’t know who I am, but I would be able to use a computer, smart phone, and have basic understanding of how modern technology works. But would I know that I shouldn’t know those things?
| 26 |
A lot would depend on the kind of amnesia you have, but you would likely feel out of place. If you retained procedural memory or general knowledge, you'd constantly be in search of things that were not available decades ago. For example, upon arrival in the past, you might have the impulse to call 911 for help (if you're from the US). But that number didn't enter into use until 1968. You would constantly be wondering why the things you know don't seem to work or exist.
Your speech would also be noticeably different from those around you. You'd use anachronistic terms simply out of habit. For example, you might feel confused and comment that you feel like the "world is gaslighting me." And people would not know what you meant.
If you possessed vague general knowledge, you'd likely also retain knowledge of how the world used to be. You might therefore be able to recognize that you were in the past. But, having amnesia, you might also default to the simpler explanation that whatever gave you amnesia also gave you a measure of insanity, explaining your sense of being a person out of their own time. You might not see anachronisms for what they are so much as evidence of being mentally unwell.
| 22 |
[Star Wars] Why did the empire choose the AT-AT design?
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I was thinking about design and history of the Empires military technology. And while there is a clear lineage to the republic era equipment some of the choices puzzle me.
In particular the AT-AT and AT-ST vehicles. Both use walking systems commonly found in terrestrial species for locomotion in order to carry their weapons systems and protect the crew.
Unfortunately this design choice has created incredible vulnerabilities. As well the size, moving parts and energy expenditure seems out of control relative to the weapons systems they are carrying.
So why did these designs win out over say a hover tank or other smaller systems that would be far cheaper to produce, easier to transport, far less vulnerable to ropes rocks and slippery terrain. Two significantly smaller tanks could provide the same effective fire power of the AT-AT.
| 47 |
The Empire has a fundamentally different military doctrine than the Republic, especially compared to the Clone Wars era Republic military. While the Republic was in the business of efficiently waging war against comparable enemies, the Empire rules over a period of relative peace and as such it's military focuses on all-purpose equipment to enforce rule over inferior targets. The best example of this is the ISD II. It has fewer fighters than a Venator, lacks the missile launchers of the Victory and Malestrom, fewer troops than the Acclamator, is a 5th of the size of the Mandator, and has fewer ion canons and point defense weapons than the Imperial I. In other words, it's not as well adjusted to any of the more specific roles of these other ships and overall less optimized for warfare. But this is because they aren't ships designed for symmetrical war. Rather, they are all-purpose space superiority vessels, a Swiss army knife of a capital ship which excels nowhere but can be called on to do anything.
The *all terrain* vehicles of the Empire have a similar doctrine. They have obvious weaknesses, but that's okay because they're used for force projection and putting down terrorists, not waging war. Repulsor craft are great, unless you want to deploy somewhere with microgravity or with dense vegetation and so on. The height of the AT-AT and AT-ST also give the advantage of increase line of sight and simple intimidation.
Also, mechanical locomotion will actually be a much smaller energy drain compared to repulsors on a vehicle of the same weight, and the vehicle can stand if power is lost.
| 48 |
ELI5: Why is "Ye" the only word we ever see with Y replacing the "thorn" character instead of th?
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I understand the history behind how the thorn ( **Þ** ) character was replaced with Y in printing presses, which is why you saw signs like "Ye Olde Pub" instead of "The Olde Pub". Yet almost every word that used to have thorn in it now uses "th". The only usage that remains seems to be the word "Ye".
For instance, there is no "Yat Olde Pub" instead of "That Olde Pub". "Yis Old House" instead of "This Old House", or "Tom Yumb" instead of "Tom Thumb".
Why is it only "Ye"?
| 1,016 |
Part of the reason is confusion. Ye (not to be confused with Þe) also exists/existed in English (currently depending on different dialects of English). It also appears in older texts such as, "Ye of little faith," which in most English dialects would be translated as, "You all of little faith."
So people have confused Ye and Ye (Þe) as being the same word and think "Ye Olde Pub" is actually "You Old Pub" and think it's just some old fashioned use of Ye (again, not Þe).
I hope that was clear as mud.
| 951 |
ELI5: How do anti-malware programs determine what is malware and what isn't?
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Title.
How does software like that determine malware from its harmless file counterparts? Is there any chance it could remove/quarantine a harmless file/program?
| 33 |
One of the oldest methods is the signature based detection, this is basically a big list of "this file is bad", unfortunately malware creation kits allow people with no skill to pump out vast numbers of new malware so this method is not viable any more.
Another old method is the heuristic detection, rather than looking for an entire bad program, they look for bits of code used by malware writers, this is great because the automated toolkits that make new versions of the old malware generally just re-arrange older code to try and get past security tools. The problem is you need to rip apart the malware that gets through and update your heuristic signatures. But if the malware gets through how do you know to pick it apart?
One of the more common techniques is to apply a weighting to the program and watch it. If the program starts watching your keyboard, add a few points to the bad side of the scale. If it starts talking to the internet again add "bad" points but not a lot as it could be legitimate. If it accesses a site known to be used by malware, add a whole bunch of "bad" points and so on. Once the program racks up enough bad points kill it and tell the user.
The continuous monitoring of the program is necessary because malware will often be designed to modify itself or download extra bits whilst it is running to try and hide from older types of antivirus software.
| 17 |
CMV: If you tell people that the rioting is okay because businesses have insurance, you promoting terrorism.
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Terrorism is defined by dictionary.com as the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for popitical purposes. Burning down businesses is illegal, voilent, done for political purposes. Many people when talking about the protests just will say, "if you are white, its not your fight. Check your priveledge." However, some of these businesses dont have insurance, and are already struggling from corona. I think of it like how terrorists use hostages as negototion tactics to get what they want. The rioters are doing the same thing with businesses to make the government do what they want. I also want to say, it is for a good cause, I totally support the push for racial equality. I just dont support terrorism.
| 60 |
I think a dictionary definition isn’t the best way to go about understanding a nuanced concept like terrorism.
In the USA, terrorism is defined in Title 22 Chapter 38 U.S. Code § 2656f as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents."
I think the riots and looting don’t qualify as terrorism because they are more of a spontaneous reaction to the violence perpetrated against a community, rather than “*premeditated* politically motivated violence.” There has been a mixed reaction from organizations like BLM to the rioting and looting, and it’s clear that this political violence is not something they planned in advance or are capable of controlling for their own ends. As many have pointed out, it could be hurting their cause rather than helping it; at the very least it is something they *wish* they had premeditated control over.
| 10 |
[Star Wars] "Obi-Wan is a great mentor; as wise as Master Yoda, and as powerful as Master Windu.". ―Anakin Skywalker
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Had the events of the Revenge of the Sith never taken place and Obi-Wan continued his knowledge and training under the Jedi Order before it fell, would he actually have become the most powerful Jedi to exist (second to Anakin of course)? With more time under his belt, could he have ever been a match for Palpatine alone like Yoda was?
| 234 |
Obi-wan was The Jedi's Jedi. He embodied everything good and noble about the Jedi order, everything that made them the legendary protectors of the Republic. He was kind, humble, self-effacing, decisive, a terror to fight against, and benevolent in victory. Had the order not fallen, he would have taken Yoda's place as grand master and mentor to the order IMO.
Normal people looked up to Jedi as symbols, and inspirations to aspire to.
Jedi Looked up to Obi-Wan.
| 355 |
[DC] So I think my boss Lex Luthor is a supervillian, what do?
|
So!
I'm a security guard at Lexcorp, and I was recently assigned to protect some new project we were working on. It's a decent paying job and everything is on the up and up- sure, there's rumours of supervilliany but it's never been proven that giant mech suit wasn't for legal purposes.
Anyway, I was patrolling the lab the other night and I noticed some files hadn't been put away. Curiosity got the better of me and I leafed through.
Turns out, rather then a more efficient SUV, what this project is actually doing is inventing a way to put out the sun, thus depriving Superman of his powers, killing the now-powerless Superman and then moving everyone who accepts Luthor as the heroic savior of earth into underground heated bunkers.
I may be a humble midwestern security gaurd, but this seems a tad supervilliany to me.
So. What do I do? I should contact the Justice League, but do they have a hotline or something? Email? Also I start to suspect that the high mortality rate among security may not be "workplace hazards" so, like, not being killed would be nice.
Any advice?
| 33 |
Let me get this straight, you think your boss, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, is secretly a super villian who spends his days plotting to kill Superman, and you get on the internet and post about this on a open forum?
| 55 |
ELI5: Why does rain not hurt when it hits you, even though it falls from an average height of 2 kilometers (around 6500 feet)?
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I was wondering why rain doesn't hurt when it falls on you from such a large height. I was thinking if I were to drop other objects of equal size from this same distance it would definitely hurt.
Thank you!
| 30 |
every object falling through the air has a terminal velocity based upon air density, object density, and frictional forces.
A drop of water weighs so little, and falls through the air at relatively low speeds, that it hardly has any force behind it at all.
| 47 |
If the liver can regenerate, how do people die from liver failure?
| 2,370 |
Liver failure can happen in two ways. First, the acute damage can simply be too serious for liver cells to deal with before the person dies. Second is a more protracted process, where damages accumulate.
Suppose that the liver has taken damages from infection/drug/alcohol/etc. **Then, instead of liver cells regenerating, scar tissues can form in the liver and replace them.** Scar tissue is tougher than cushy liver tissue, so this leads to hardened liver with reduced function. (Cirrhosis) If this damage keeps piling up, the liver will eventually be overwhelmed and lead to chronic liver failure.
| 1,421 |
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ELI5: How do terrorist groups like ISIS convince young girls in western countries that life is better in Iraq/Syria?
| 16 |
Generally, they have luck with any group because of outsider politics. Plenty of people feel marginalized and useless in Western society. Groups like ISIS preach a very well-defined set of social rules, in which these marginalized people imagine their life can matter.
While objectively, people seem to be giving up a wide array of rights, they perceive it as gaining a proper sense of community and purpose, things which generally matter more to people.
| 20 |
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Why is snow white and ice clear?
|
Sometimes it 'snows' ice too. What's the difference between snow and ice?
| 18 |
Snow is made up of many tiny pieces of clear ice, with air in between the crystals. This causes light to bend in every direction like it has no idea what it is doing. It does this to all colors of light about equally, so the light that comes back to your eyes appears white. It is roughly the same reason why scratches in glass are easily visible when they are large, because they have lots of edges to bend light, which is even more apparent in snow flakes given their complex shapes. A solid block of ice doesn't have many places for light to bend like a pile of snow, and light really only bends in a block of ice when it goes into or exits the block. In this way you can think of snow as a giant pile of really tiny, beat up, blocks of ice.
| 16 |
ELI5: Why is it such a concern when Russia fights ISIS in the middle east but when the US do it(along with other things in the area), no one gives a damn.
| 41 |
Plenty of people object to US involvement in the Middle East, including a lot of the people who live there.
Russia was especially unhappy about it, but we didn't hear much about that.
Also, when Russia does anything outside it's borders, it stirs a very deeply programmed American phobia that goes back to the Cold War days.
| 43 |
|
[Emperors New Groove] Who would have been the better ruler, Yzma or Kuzco
|
Before Kuzco's change of heart of course. From what we saw both seemed terrible.
| 35 |
Probably Yzma... While yes she may be a terrible dictator she worked for it. What did Kuzco ever do? He was born into a life of luxury and into the world of the elite, he had zero reference to plight of the common man.
It basically comes down to would you rather your leader be ineffective or totalitarian?
\#MakeIncaGreatAgain
| 46 |
CMV: A good voting system should NOT fulfill the Condorcet criterion.
|
My problem with voting systems that fulfill the Condorcet criterion is that it allows people to vote such that A > B, B > C, C > A. There is no instance in life where a sound mind would have such a preference. I think the only way to have a preference order like this would be to accept a contradiction and to have not fully thought out the situation. I do not think this should be an option when voting and so do not agree with voting systems that allow this such as ranked pair voting. Change my view.
| 18 |
I think you're confused about how the Condorcet criterion works. There's nothing about the Condorcet criterion that requires that people can express circular voting patterns. Indeed, many of the standard proposals that satisfy the Condorcet criterion don't allow such votes. For example, in the Kemeny–Young method, votes give a simple ranking of candidates (with ties allowed, but not cycles).
Furthermore, even the systems which appear to allow such votes could simply be modified to prevent it: for example, you can just modify the ranked pair voting method to require voters to give an ordered list of candidates and (assuming that no one has cyclic preferences) it's still a Condorcet criterion.
| 12 |
[Dr. Strange MoM] *Spoiler* Free Food
|
Do most dimensions actually have free food, or is it possible America has been stealing food in most of the places she visits because she didn't know any better?
| 29 |
The technical answer is: "We don't know because there is not enough information."
The likely answer is she is telling the truth as she sees it. Its very possible she jumped into a lot of universes where food is free and assumed it was the norm. Its possible this is not true and she was stealing the food every time and its possible she just has confirmation bias because she got lucky or her power predisposes her to free food universes because she needed food.
In a situation with not enough information, its best to assume competency and favor the scenario that gives a character the benefit of the doubt.
| 62 |
[Star Trek] Can Borg assimilate corpses?
|
There's not much to explicate about this question; if the Borg came upon the corpses of beings deemed worthy of assimilation, could they put them back into commission as drones by means of cybernetic augmentation/substitution? And, perhaps, what degree of decay could Borg implants compensate for?
| 35 |
The Borg don't even revive beings that they've already deemed worthy of assimilation, and already invested resources into augmenting. They just grab a couple of pieces out and leave them.
I doubt they'd have any interest in corpses. They may analyze the technology left behind by a dead civilization, but they're apparently not interested in bringing them back.
| 22 |
[Marvel / X-men] Magneto's powers
|
**Edit: for fourth wall rule i didn't see**
So i think in the last few decades Magneto has been struggling to decide if his powers are "Controls metal" or "Controls magnetism"
I much prefer the master of magnetism to be just that.. Control over magnetism.
I was really looking forward to [these](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMnsZuEE_m8) [scishow](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy6kba3A8vY) episodes to explain it to me.. but it really left me wanting.
Can someone give me a good explanation of what magneto could do if he could truely be as strong as he could be with strong influence over the Electromagnetic force?
Would he be a threat to someone like galactus?
| 29 |
Magneto has complete control over magnetic fields. He can create them, manipulate them, perceive them (with his eyes).
Furthermore he has some control over Electromagnetic force in general. To give you an idea of what this means read the following:
> With the exception of gravitation, electromagnetic phenomena as described by quantum electrodynamics (which includes classical electrodynamics as a limiting case) account for almost all physical phenomena observable to the unaided human senses, including light and other electromagnetic radiation, all of chemistry, most of mechanics (excepting gravitation), and, of course, magnetism and electricity. Magnetic monopoles (and "Gilbert" dipoles) are not strictly electromagnetic phenomena, since in standard electromagnetism, magnetic fields are generated not by true "magnetic charge" but by currents. There are, however, condensed matter analogs of magnetic monopoles in exotic materials (spin ice) created in the laboratory.[4]
So basically Magneto can use electrodynamics to make himself stronger, more durable, etc. Yes, he is an incredibly powerful entity and only grows more powerful as he understands more applications of his power.
Could he be a threat to Galactus? Not really. While electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental forces in physics you should consider that Galactus has the Power Cosmic. The instant Magneto began his move to attack Galactus (possibly as early as gaining the intent to attack Galactus) then the Eater of Worlds could basically make him stop existing. Unfortunately for Magneto all of his training to resist telepathy is no use against the Power Cosmic.
| 18 |
Is there any serious research into antigravity?
|
I know NASA was interested in the 90s to replicate the russian experiments (superconducting rings or something similar) but I don't know if it lead to anything. Magnetic fields are one thing but is the cancellation of gravity being seriously explored?
| 39 |
There are three ways to answer this question.
The first is simply to say no, none at all. With the advent of general relativity, we now know that antigravity would be exactly equivalent, both mathematically and physically, to doing backwards in time.
The second is to get slightly liberal with our definitions and talk about how whatever force propels the metric expansion of spacetime is, in a very sketchy sense, an antigravity of sorts. But it only looks that way if you're very careful about choosing your frame of reference, and it's not possible to interpret the physics in any way that a reasonable person would call "antigravity."
The third is to be a complete wiseass and point out that *flight* is equivalent to antigravity, and there's plenty of research being done in that regard.
| 45 |
CMV: Alienation of affection laws should be repealed.
|
In five U.S. states, you can sue the homewrecker in civil court if your spouse cheats on you. I am linking to a recent case of a North Carolina man who won three quarters of a million dollars from his wife's boyfriend. [https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/02/us/alienation-of-affection-laws-north-carolina-lawsuit-trnd/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/02/us/alienation-of-affection-laws-north-carolina-lawsuit-trnd/index.html)
&#x200B;
It is an old law (dating back to the days when women were viewed as property) that has been repealed in most states. I think it gives the spouse a free pass in their adultery and causes even more bad feelings among an already awkward situation. Moreover, the cheater never entered into a civil contract with anyone not to have sex with them. The married couple entered into the civil contract which in general agrees that you are not supposed to have sex with other people.
I see no good stemming from this kind of law, the taxpayers have to fund the courts that must process these spats. The few remaining states should repeal the laws as well.
| 15 |
In the 5 states where it’s still legal those voters have decided their morals and/or financial value of allowing those laws is worth it. The laws should stay For the simple reason that those voters want it and it’s violating federal laws.
The idea seems pretty simple. It requires that the marriage seemed happy and was going fine before the interloper came into the picture. That means the interloper almost certainly has to make clear and active manipulative efforts to ruin the marriage. If we want to talk in terms of benefits to society then a happy marriage is usually good for the physical and mental health of both spouses (saves healthcare cost in a number of ways). If there’s kids in the picture there’s a ton of benefits to society for the marriage staying together. The ruining of a marriage also causes negatives for everyone close to the couple. Financially it’s in society’s best interest to keep an interloper from ruining a happy marriage. Society regularly discourages things that amount to no more then protecting people from their own bad actions. precisely because we have had people that have no problems causing a bunch of destruction for their own short term benefit. The interloper knows precisely what they are doing, they are being punished for their inability to uphold the standards set by society.
| 12 |
'Luxury' drinking water is a bunch of BS and people who claim it "taste better" are pretending so they fit in or feel cool. CMV
| 21 |
> They all taste like what they are. Water.
Yeah, that's actually not how chemistry works. Unless you've sealed your water in a vacuum, it's been absorbing gases from the air. The most important contributor is carbon dioxide, which forms carbonic acid, which means "pure" water stored in air quickly becomes rather bitter and unpleasant.
Mineral water, like tap water, contains varying amounts of multivalent cations (mainly calcium and magnesium, the minerals) that, among other things, sequester the carbonates and bump that pH back up to neutral or even slightly higher - so your water isn't bitter anymore. But the variability in these concentrations is the "hardness" of the water. Tap water varies from place to place, which is mostly known for affecting how detergents work but could conceivably affect the taste. Different brands of mineral water may have different compositions too.
So actually there *is* variation in what water tastes like, depending on its source. Whether people can actually tell the difference is an open question, and probably has a lot more to do with psychology than chemistry, as you suspect. But there isn't any one "actual taste of water".
| 30 |
|
ELI5: Why don't fitness centers harness energy that its patrons create when exercising?
|
We go to the gym and same story, usually packed during peak hours and everyone is on a weight machine or some form of cycle. Is the amount of energy expended not quantifiable or can it not be captured? Or would the short answer just be that its cost prohibitive?
| 15 |
An excellent idea! The bad news is humans are too puny. From the Wikipedia page on human power *... adults of good average fitness average between 50 and 150 watts for an hour of vigorous exercise.*
So you on a treadmill could barely power a lightbulb or two. Sounds crazy, but there it is.
Some cardio machines have displays that are powered by the users, but that's a tiny amount of energy...
| 24 |
ELI5 How is it that if you put a piece of paper really close to loudspeakers, the speakers will push away the paper at high frequencies but suck it in at low ones?
|
Edit: a lot of people answering have gone off of the topic of the difference of the frequencies of the speakers' output and instead explained different sized speakers and other a bit out of context rattling. I appreciate all answers but if anyone really knows why different frequencies create different pulling and pushing, feel free to comment.
Edit 2: comments are suggesting Bernoulli's principle to the pulling of the paper.
How I understood it, is that the higher frequencies mainly move fastest but low frequencies move way more air. Because the low frequencies move a lot of air, the air needs somewhere to escape which is to the side of the paper and thus creating low pressure between paper and the speaker. The pressure on the other side of the paper is atmospheric and thus pushing in the paper towards the speaker because the low pressure is not creating an equal amount of force.
I'm still not sure about the high frequencies but I'm guessing that because it's mainly moving fast and not much air it has the momentum and force put into very few molecules which push on the paper harder than the little bit of low pressure between speaker and paper that is created with only high frequencies.
Correct me if I'm wrong in the comments and if you don't mind please DM me the copy paste of the message since there are many comments to go through.
| 9,443 |
Imagine the paper is a kid in a swing and the speaker is an adult pushing them.
There's a very specific frequency of pushing that will result in the biggest swings. It's pushing at the rearmost point of the swing arc. Speakers pull air as well as pushing, so you'll have to imagine pulling the kid at the front of the arc, too. The ideal rhythm of pushing and pulling is the resonant frequency, and it's dependent on the length of the swing's chains.
Imagine that you're pushing and pulling at the wrong frequency. You're pushing while the kid's still moving backwards, or pulling while the kid's at the bottom of the arc. You can see how the wrong timing could mean less movement, or even uneven swings to the front or back.
The paper has a resonant frequency, too. Certain frequencies will produce lots of movement, some will produce minimal or uneven movement.
| 1,026 |
What is it about a curing process of meat, drying of fruit etc. that makes the food last longer and allow you to store it unrefrigerated?
| 24 |
Microbes and fungus rely on the moisture present in their food to survive. Lower that moisture, and you lower then number of rot causing microbes and fungus spores the food can support this extending the shelf life of the food.
| 34 |
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Why do cats go limp when their scruff is grabbed?
| 19 |
The scruff is primarily used in two situations. 1) when a mother cat moves her babies and 2) mating. It's easy to see how injury to wigglers in the first case and lack of reproductive success in the second case may have influenced the strengthening of this response among the cat population.
| 14 |
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