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[Men in Black] In first movie we've seen that alien battleships can fly by Earth with impunity. MiB alone can't afford space fleet, so if they care about planet safety shouldn't they cooperate with national governments and create one?
| 558 |
Earth is like a rural or old wild west town compared to everything out there. Towns don't have militaries, they have a police force. As long as Earth doesn't try to turn itself into a country and plays ball with the local powers, they can rely on the local powers to protect Earth as part of their Turf from the other more aggressive powers. MiB only needs to be strong enough to make invading Earth unprofitable for Corporations and Criminal Cartels compared to simply engaging in diplomacy and barter.
| 452 |
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ELI5 why we have body odour, generally only in the armpit area, and why it would have been useful, in evolutionary terms. Thank you.
| 25 |
Body odor comes from the bacteria that feed on our sweat and grease (yuck!) not the sweat itself. The smell itself isn't useful in evolutionary terms, but the bacteria are. They are mostly harmless and out-compete bacteria that could be harmful...A symbiotic relationship because the bacteria get free food and we get protected too!
| 18 |
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[LOTR] Why can't Gandalf fight at full power?
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He tries to stop Sauron, but not with his full power. This seems a little bit strange to me, because he is clearly for the "good" side.
| 25 |
He is forbidden to use his full power to fight Sauron or his forces. The wizards were sent to Middle-earth to help the people fight against Sauron, not win their battles for them.
Edit: Gandalf however, can and does, fight all out against the Balrog since he does not serve Sauron. They fight for 10 days nonstop.
| 23 |
ELI5: Why do blankets that have been stored for a long period smell weird? Stored in closets, boxes, etc
| 1,179 |
If you don't wash them before storing, the bacteria and mold reproduce.
If you wash them and don't rinse them enough, the left over soap rots.
If you wash them and store them in boxes, they take on the smell of the boxes. Especially true if you use the same box over and over.
Last but not least, organic fibers break down over time.
| 902 |
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Why is it a joke to ask someone to explain where layer 6 of the OSI model is?
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I was reading [this old thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/1wghsf/the_osi_model/cf1zpzz?context=1) and wasn't able to follow the joke.
| 25 |
It's not a particularly funny joke.
Even though the OSI model specifies 7 layers, generally in practice only 5 layers are used; 5&6 are rarely used. 5 is used in some special cases, however 6 is barely seen outside of research papers or new tech examples.
This is because the first 4 layers are implemented by the physical cabling and Operating System, meaning 5th layer is generally when the applications take over. Programmers are lazy and use their application communication right in 5th, even though its 7th in the model.
| 14 |
ELI5: Why do you smile when you feel happy?
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Like, why when we feel happy or good the edges of our lips go up and when we're sad they go down? Why isn't it the other way around?
| 167 |
Primatologist Signe Preuschoft traces the smile back over 30 million years of evolution to a "fear grin" stemming from monkeys and apes who often used barely clenched teeth to portray to predators that they were harmless, or to signal submission to more dominant group members.
It's basically a less threatening version of showing your teeth aggressively. A confirmation to others that you are *not* showing your teeth aggressively, because it's gentler. It shows self-restraint, theoretically, that you're keeping yourself from showing signs of conflict or dominance.
| 50 |
[The Dark Knight] What would the Joker see if he was sprayed with Scarecrow’s fear gas?
| 155 |
One time Joker huffed a bunch of it, commented that it smelled exquisite, and then beat Scarecrow half to death with a chair.
Either he's immune, or seeing his worst nightmares didn't really affect him in a meaningful way.
| 252 |
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Are modern encryption techniques (like 256-bit SSL encryption) more complicated than ciphers used in WWII (e.g. Enigma)? By how much?
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I understand the *basics* behind encryption of messages, and thanks to a recent analogy posted (I think) on reddit, also understand the basics behind how one-way hashes are created (but cannot easily be reversed).
How do modern encryption techniques compare to those used by the English/German militaries in WWII? Are new encryption techniques simply iterations on existing methods (linear improvement), or completely disruptive changes that alter the fundamentals of encryption?
| 280 |
SSL relies on a mathematical technique that was unknown to militaries until the seventies.
That specific technique was public key encryption, and the first (known, declassified) instance of a military using PKI was in the 70s in the UK, at the GCHQ in 1972. Diffie and Hellman also discovered the same technique as the GCHQ in 1976, but their work was out in the public domain, so it was used in a non military context immediately after.
What's interesting is that the idea of "easy to compute, hard to invert" had been thought of in the context of cryptography and number factoring sometime in the late 1800s, but it was never theorized that the two could be logically combined.
SSL relies on the RSA algorithm, which was invented in 1977 and again, in private by a mathematician in the employ of the GCHQ in 1973.
At the very minimum the public key infrastructure of SSL would've been something unknown to militaries in the 40s, whose keying systems were essentially just moving the keying information down from location to location. With Diffie Hellman key exchange, you can generate a shared secret over an insecure channel, and with RSA, you can encrypt messages with public keys that are distributed beforehand (in practice, you just encrypt the session key with RSA, and then use a standard block cipher). Being able to not have to physically move your key around is a sea change from the 40s: captured key books were a common source of Enigma cracks.
Block ciphers would've probably been more familiar to mathematicians of the 40s, but the first known (unclassified) example of a modern block cipher was with IBM's Lucifer in 1971. As you can see, almost all modern cryptography is now based on math that was developed in the 70s. That's not very surprising given that all modern crypto now relies on computers instead of electromechanical devices and scramblers which were de rigeur during the 40s, 50s and 60s.
| 215 |
Would a denser atmosphere increase the power of a nuclear explosion by any significant amount?
| 18 |
A denser atmosphere would result in a weaker nuclear explosion.
The atmosphere is the thing the explosion is expanding into. The explosion spends a significant fraction of its energy pushing the atmosphere around it out of the way, producing the shockwave. In denser environments you get less 'push' for the same amount of energy. For example, nuclear weapons detonated under water have significantly smaller blast radius than an equivalent device detonated in air because water is so much denser than air.
| 27 |
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CMV: It's inevitable that the US loses the AI race to China.
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One of the major realms in which the US and China compete now is in the R&D of new technologies, with the most researched and hyped up being AI, specifically in the form of deep learning neural networks - a complex bunch of algorithms that essentially "learn" by being fed enormous quantities of data.
The logic is simple. The better your data is, the better your system's performance is. There are entire subfields of Software Engineering such as Data Engineering that deal specifically in extracting "good" data from a messy dataset. But the problem is that our civilization hasn't exactly developed the internet with creation of clean data as a goal. Enter China.
China is currently at a unique point in history - they're simultaneously undergoing both an industrial revolution and a digital revolution. Vast numbers of people are being brought from poverty straight into a futuristic world of computers. And the Chinese, realizing the strategic potential of this reality, has been able to design their entire digital communications infrastructure around one purpose: the maximization of data collection about individuals, all for the purpose of becoming a world leader in AI by 2025-2030.
This isn't conjecture. All the details of this plan are public as part of the well known Chinese "Made in China 2025" policy.
The Chinese aim to become the world leader in AI. They have demonstrated that they aren't afraid to use digital technology in dystopian ways to maximize data collection about individuals. And they've been able to design their entire internet infrastructure around this purpose.
I just don't see how the West can compete. We simply aren't willing to sacrifice further privacy - the new post-Snowden environment has seen to that. How can an individualistic democracy that values privacy possibly compete in a race that, by definition, demands sacrificing privacy to win? Even if we decided to make data collection a national priority in the US, we're outnumbered by the Chinese 5 to 1.
And with one of the major uses of AI turning out to be subversion of the truth and the spreading of lies, I'm a little pessimistic about the future of Western Democracy. Please, change my view.
| 38 |
The major advances in AI are going to come in the form of novel new forms of AI not just inflated versions of the ones we currently know. Neural Nets have been around since the 80s-90s and the computational science describing them have been around since at least the 60s-70s. The big reason they've taken off now is because of the digitization of data, but if you're expecting these nets to start doing some next level shit - there needs to be a seachanging technological advancement beyond them.
That new technology might not be as predicated on bulk data as current AI.
| 40 |
Why do batteries take minutes/hours to recharge? What is in the way for them to recharge instantly?
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When I plug in my phone, laptop, or other electronic device in to recharge, why does it take 30+ minutes? Shouldn't it be able to draw more power from the outlet and recharge instantly?
| 49 |
There is a chemical process behind battery charging. When charging your standard lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) cell phone battery lithium ions move from the graphite anode (where they form LiC6) through an electrolyte (a fluid or gel which allows lithium ions to pass through) to the cobalt oxide cathode. This electrolyte has a very low but very significant resistance to these ions. Try to force them through it too hard and there will be a lot of lithium in the electrolyte and not a lot on the electrodes. This causes chemical changes on the electrodes which makes it harder for the lithium to move back and forth in the future. Picture a crush of people leaving a stadium vs a calm and orderly exit.
There's also the issue of heat. Charging isn't 100% efficient so if you try to charge it instantly it will heat up and potentially catch fire or damage sensitive electronic bits of your phone.
| 26 |
ELI5: What happens in our brain when we "stand up to quick" causing our vision to go semi black and feel like were going to pass out?
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This just happened to me, my vision went to the usual dotted blackness, just curious what is happening in my brain area during this.
| 17 |
Two words: Orthostatic Hypotension
OH happens when your blood pressure takes a dive. Usually, your body compensates when you go from sitting to standing by prompting your heart to beat a little faster (about an extra 10 beats per minute) and constricting your blood vessels, which force more blood back to your head and keep your brain on the up-and-up.
Many reasons, such as Dehydration, can cause OH and thus, Dizziness when you stand up too fast.
I hope that was thorough enough, feel free to ask any more!
| 20 |
Do Everest climbers carry water, if so how do they stop it freezing?
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Maybe they take vodka?
| 23 |
First, they only carry as much water as they will need to make it to their next camp. More water is acquired by melting snow with stoves at each camp, so it's not like they are carrying the same water for days on end. Secondly, water bottles are typically kept inside the jacket closer to the body, where temperatures are above freezing, and typically the bottles themselves are insulated. Even if the bottles are exposed to extreme temperatures, water has a very high heat capacity and it requires losing quite a lot of energy to actually freeze.
Fun trivia/useful trick: An effective but counter-intuitive way to keep water from freezing overnight is to bury it in snow. Snow, particularly un-compacted snow, is actually a pretty good insulator because there is so much empty space between grains. It also tends to have relatively poor surface contact with the water bottle, so heat loss through conduction is much lower than you would expect. Because the water bottle is buried, it is protected from both convective and radiation heat loss. A water bottle left out sitting on an insulating surface will easily freeze overnight, while a buried bottle will stay liquid for quite some time!
| 50 |
What will be registered to the brain first? A sound, or a sight?
| 33 |
It depends on how far away the object is. But if something happens to you close, the sound is processed first. This is because visual transduction, i.e. the process by which photons are converted to bioelectrical signals, is really very slow, and takes some ~70 milliseconds, while the process in your ears is almost instance.
Sound travels at about a foot in a millisecond, so if something is more than about 70 feet away, then the light will be processed first.
| 16 |
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ELI5: How does mold get into the fridge/my house if it wasn't already there?
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I know mold spores can travel through the air, but what about when I put food in my fridge with nothing moldy in there, no mold in the house... Eventually it is going to turn moldy. How?
| 24 |
There *is* mold there, you just can't see it. You said yourself that you know that mold spores spread through the air - that's your answer. Mold spores are absolutely everywhere. It *was* already there.
| 51 |
ELI5: Why are school shooters always young males? Is there a media bias in reporting or is there something to it?
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I don't ever recall hearing about a girl from any country going on a shooting rampage at a school.
| 26 |
Females are more likely to take angst out on themselves.
However, the song "I don't like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats was about a female who shot up a school, and the title was her answer as to why she did it.
Also, here in Colorado, a school shooting by a female who intended to follow the Columbine example was thwarted just last month.
It's just statistically higher that males resort to violence against others.
| 29 |
ELI5: How do documentary shows like in History channel manage to record videos deep inside things like an ant colony, bee hive, etc?
| 4,031 |
All of these answers are essentially incorrect or incomplete. They do use various camera scopes to look down holes, but that won't really give you very interesting footage most of the time. This is usually just used for short filler shots that are spliced together with shots created in a studio, as another poster mentioned.
For any shots where you see real details of an insect colony, they create their own colony and have a cross-section up against a pane of glass (like an ant farm). A lot of shots for nature shows, especially almost all insect and small animals (not just ones in colonies), do not have any actual connection to nature and are created on sound stages with captive animals. Chameleons eating insects? All set up with a drugged insect so it won't run away. Nobody's following a chameleon around all day hoping they'll capture it snatching a cricket up.
Also, a lot of the audio in nature documentaries is recorded separately or artificially created (using Foley techniques) and then added in post-production (and it often represents what the producers think viewers want it to sound like, not what it actually sounds like; e.g., horses sound like they're running on cobblestones when they're walking on grass).
Edit: Another thing to consider is that they often stitch together events from multiple days/weeks, and sometimes from entirely different individuals, to create a cohesive narrative out of whole cloth. Sometimes that cheetah you're watching eat a gazelle isn't actually the same one from the cool chase scene they captured, or that antelope escaping from the lions was actually filmed the day before the chase and it was actually killed in the chase but they didn't happen to capture that part of it on film.
| 2,210 |
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[MCU] How was Ultron suppose to protect the world?
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So in the movie Tony Stark creates Ultron to protect the world and says "What if the next time aliens roll up to the club they couldn't get past the bouncer." My question is how? How is a more intelligent jarvis going to make a difference? Tony already has the Iron Legion which Jarvis and Him do a pretty good job of controlling, no need for Ultron. Even if Tony was going to put him in a buffed up iron man suit why couldn't he put on the suit himself? In conclusion I really don't see what Tony saw in Ultron for protecting the Earth. He offers nothing substantial to World protection that he doesn't have already.
| 42 |
In one word: Retirement.
In a few more words, Tony wanted to create an era of peace that didn't rely on the Avengers. Tony wanted an army of Automated Soldiers, who never got tired, never lost control, and never had to go back to Asgard. Who could stand between Earth and any threat that came after it. His hope was that Ultron would assume command of the Iron Legion and render the Avengers obsolete. Unlike Jarvis, Ultron could upgrade himself each time he faced a new threat. Adapt and overcome, without human oversight. The problem arose when Ultron took Tony's plan a step too far.
| 71 |
ELI5: How have sheep existed in the wild without someone to shear them?
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I saw a post about a sheep that escaped owners/shearing for years and its wool was out of control. Have sheep ever existed in the wild without someone to shear them?
| 197 |
They don’t.
Domesticated sheep have been bred to never shed their seasonal coat and continue growing wool all year.
In the wild they’d shed this regularly to avoid overheating in the summer months.
Domesticated sheep that do escape will eventually overgrown and die.
| 545 |
ELI5: How is it that if you eat something that disagrees with you, it seems to go "straight through you" even though it takes several hours to digest?
| 16 |
But that's the thing, if you have diarrhea, it doesn't take several hours. Your body wants to get rid of whatever the offensive thing is, as fast as it can. So it takes liquids FROM your body, to flush out the contents of your stomach and intestines, so you poop it out as fast as possible.
In a regular poop, your body is taking the liquids from what you ate and using those in your body for good things. That takes more time to digest but it means you're getting all the nutrients and your body is happy.
| 21 |
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ELI5: How does truth serum work?
| 31 |
Well, there are a bunch of things that are known as "truth serum." Sodium Pentathol and Amobarbital are probably the most widely used ones, but there are many others.
The thing about truth serums, Timmy, is that they're not like what you see on TV. Truth serums don't actually "make" you tell the truth. Some cause what's called "dissassociation," which means your brain can't tell if the question you just got asked is coming from another person, or from inside your own brain (weird, huhn?) What they DO do, however, is make you talk a lot more than normal, so you're more likely to contradict yourself or accidentally tell the truth.
It should also be said that the US Supeme Court ruled that use of chemicals to extact a confession is inadmissable in court, and that it's banned from use in interrogation by international law. However, it is used in psychiatric treatments, specifically in people who are psychotic, manic, or in a catatonic trance.
| 55 |
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Why would an all-knowing and all powerful god want to be worshipped?
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I wanted some philosophy of religion perspectives on such a question. Worship is often taken for granted, I.e. if there is a God, then surely we must worship it. Has anyone put forth an argument to why God would command worship?
| 176 |
I won't put forward a serious explanation here, but just to put your question into context, if you listen to actual religious people or read either the Gita, the Quran or the Bible you must face the possibility as it's usually explained that it is us who need the grace or presence of God, not the other way around. The destiny of the religious depends on their relationship with the God, so even if it would seem to be a command, it is a pillar of faith and only an imperative as in building your own future - like saying "you must connect this device to the outlet if you want to use it" would seem to be a command but you should not forget about the conditional part.
| 120 |
ELI5: Why do towels and wash-cloths lose the ability to absorb water over time?
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There are a few ELI5’s about new towels needing to be washed a few times before they become absorbent. I’ve observed the opposite too - my old dish towels and other cloths just don’t soak up water very well over time.
| 15 |
The ability to absorb water is that, when it touches water, the tiny water molecules get scooped into air pockets between the fibers of the towel.
However, it's not picking up only water. It's also picking up whatever is in the water. This could be dirt, soap, hair, dust, etc.
When the towel dries, the water evaporates, but the non-water stuff doesn't. Over time, these pieces stay clogged in the fibers and build up. The more stuff is clogged in the fibers, the less water it can absorb.
Also just wear and tear. If you scrub the towel against a surface, the fibers will come off. They'll also come off from being cleaned. Less fibers means less scoops to catch water, so it absorbs less.
| 32 |
Why is it not yet possible to use plant-based plastics for all of the things we currently use petroleum-based plastics for?
| 122 |
The shortest version is that it is possible, it just results in more costly starting materials. The entire chemical industry is oriented around the cheap carbon starting materials from petroleum, and it will take *decades* to change that. Entire plants costing hundreds of millions of dollars will become obsolete and useless.
It is actually more promising to start by developing niche technologies based on easily available plant feedstocks. They could then compete in the markets and take up some of the slack as petroleum becomes more costly and rare. But the most recent example of that was that Sun Chip bag based on polylactic acid derivatives, and we know how that went.
| 26 |
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ELI5: Why does salt bring out favors in any dish?
| 29 |
In a high school chemistry class, you'll see that saltwater is actually capable of conducting electricity. Na gives an electron to Cl and becomes positive, while Cl becomes negative. And this facilitates the electron movement and in turn, electricity. In a microscopic level, 'tasting' food just depends on tiny electric interactions. The salt helps the 'taste' from the food connect to your tongue more easily and it is dependent on it.
Another analogy: Salt is one of the most essential components our body needs to function. Therefore, our brain makes it look tasty so we consume it more. Same reason fat is more tasty, because it is more important.
| 51 |
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ELI5: How Bill Cosby is not in jail?
| 39 |
Because he has not been convicted of a crime in court. If a crime is not prosecuted within a certain time period, in can't be prosecuted. This is called statute of limitation. His victims are suing him in civil court. Civil courts can asses monetary damage only.
| 69 |
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What does not emit electromagnetic radiation?
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My remote sensing textbook states "With the exception of objects at absolute zero, all objects emit electromagnetic radiation."
I understand that an object doesn't have to emit it's own radiation, it can reflect another objects radiation.
So what are the processes that cause electromagnetic radiation to be emitted?
Wha are objects that do not emit their own radiation?
| 157 |
Objects are made of atoms and atoms are made of charged particles (nuclei and electrons). Charged particles emit EM radiation when they are accelerated. All objects at a nonzero temperature T undergo some form of thermal motion and these random vibrations involve varying velocity and thus accelerations. Therefore all objects will emit a "baseline" spectrum due to thermal motion called a blackbody spectrum.
A blackbody (body that doesn't emit or reflect anything else other than the blackbody radiation) has a spectrum described by the Planck distribution, which is universal, depending only on the temperature and not on the details of the body or the material.
For temperatures above a few hundred degrees °C, the Planckian spectrum is significant in the visible range of wavelength and so bodies hotter than that glow with a specific colour and intensity, this is just incandescence.
At room temperature, most of the blackbody radiation is emitted in the far infrared region, therefore named thermal infrared, and this radiation is visible only through (relatively expensive) thermal cameras.
| 61 |
[Mortal Kombat] How come the top of Kung Lao's hat can go clean through bodies and things?
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And related question: wouldn't the blades of Kitana's fans have to be in the same plane to cut cleanly? Or at least it seems to be and should be.
| 17 |
When Kung Lao throws his hat, he spins it like a frisbee. What’s less noticeable is that the blade is mounted in a separate spinning rim. When the blade makes contact, it slows down compared to the inner rim due to the extra resistance. This triggers a reverse spring mechanism connected to the top of the hat causing it to collapse like a magicians hat. When the hat passes through completely, the blade part no longer has a resistance greater to the inner plate which releases the hat collapsing mechanism causing it to pop up again.
It happens very fast. I’m not surprised you missed it.
| 20 |
Since Hegel is infamous for how ambiguous his writings were, how much can we really trust what his translators thought he wrote? Maybe his works come across as completely different in english than in german
| 22 |
Ambiguity and difficulty in Hegel's writing is typically not because of his word choices, but because of the actual thoughts he's trying to communicate. We can take an example passage from the *Phenomenology of Spirit*:
> Das Selbstbewußtsein hiemit seiner selbst nur gewiß, durch das Aufheben diese andern, das sich ihm als selbstständiges Leben darstellt; es ist *Begierde*.
This is translated by Terry Pinkard as the following:
> Self-consciousness is therefore only certain of itself through the sublating of this other, which, to itself, exhibits itself as self-sufficient life. Self-consciousness is *desire*.
With one notable exception (*Aufheben* translated as *sublating*), these words are all rather straightforward, both in German and in English. The difficulty and ambiguity comes not in the individual words, but in their implications; that is, we aren't confused by *how to translate* 'Selbstbewußtsein ist Begierde* [self-consciousness is desire], but by *what this implies*.
| 30 |
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ELI5: Why do Diesel engines have that distinctive sound to them when compared to gasoline engines?
| 2,517 |
Yet another question for an engineer
Diesel engines don't use a spark plug, instead igniting their air-fuel mixture via pressure and heat.
With a gasoline engine, the mixture is well mixed before the ignition happens. If it gets too hot, you get pre-ignition, or knock. (The technical term for that mixture is that it's homogenous, meaning it's the same throughout)
Diesel engines are NOT well mixed (meaning their air-fuel is heterogeneous, or not the same throughout). In the spots that are mixing early combust (explode) before the actual power stroke. The clicking and clacking is the SAME pre-ignition/knock you hear from a gas engine, but in small pockets as the pressure is raised to combust the main body of the mix.
Those early, smaller combustions travel back through the engine mounts and drivetrain and we hear them.
On older diesels, you could also hear the mechanical fuel injectors clacking away.
| 1,851 |
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Firefly : Does Shepherd Book have to keep paying to stay on Serenity throughout the series...
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... while watching Out of Gas I noticed Mal tell Inara she was paid up until the end of the month, understandable, she runs a business out of the shuttle.
But those not in the crew (River, Simon, Book), would they still have to pay? I think Simon's medical skills cover him and River... does that mean Book is the only one having to pay to stay on Serenity? He steers clear of all their jobs (bar rescuing Mal from Niska, arguably not a "job"), so do you think he's given the benefit of the doubt as he's a Shepherd? Thoughts?
Answers on a post card....
| 46 |
Inara pays because she is a customer. She's not paying for passage aboard Serenity, she's paying to rent out the shuttle. Everyone else is more like an employee, they work for room, board, and a cut of the loot.
Simon and Shepherd started out as paying passengers, but ended up part of the crew. Like the rest of the crew, they don't pay to stay, they offer whatever services they can.
| 43 |
(ELI5) Why is old war footage (ww2) always sped up
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I've always wondered this whenever in history class or even just watching a ww2 documentary all of the clips of soldiers moving or running are sped up and it makes them look like there running in 4x the speed, is there a reason for this or do they do it to make the clip go by quicker?
| 112 |
First, let's understand how cameras work. As a general rule, video cameras are just taking a lot of still pictures in a row. When we play these in order, they give the illusion of movement.
In WWII times, cameras often took videos where they took 18 pictures per second (or 18 frames per second as a film person would call it). Cameras were also often hand-cranked, which meant that the frames per second could vary. Sometimes this was on purpose, and sometimes it was accidental.
Now, once you have the video, you can play it at a different speed than it was filmed at. If you recorded 18 frames every second, but play the film with 36 frames going by every second, you're getting two second's worth of the film for every second that you play the video. You can think of it like flipping a flipbook really fast.
The issue is that the industry eventually standardized the frames per second at 24. That means that most projectors run at 24 frames per second. If you run an 18 frames per second film at that speed, it will necessarily be sped up. The issue is that nobody really cared to create projectors where you can adjust the speed. There really wasn't any point, because every recent film is filmed at the 24 frames per second speed.
As mentioned above though, sometimes that speed was done on purpose.
| 283 |
ELI5: Why are certain people ticklish?
| 66 |
Because as humans evolved, the body need to be aware of something when it was crawling on the body. The reaction we have is to defend against bugs or snakes or other shit from crawling on our bodies and hurting us.
| 16 |
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ELI5: How is mass different from weight?
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Somebody said they are different because of gravity.
| 35 |
Weight is dependent on gravitational force. It's a measure of that gravitational force, usually on Earth. Mass, which measures the amount of matter in an object, exists whether gravity acts on it or not. The same object has the same mass on Earth, the Moon, or in the middle of space, but has different weights at each of those locations.
However, on Earth weight can be used to measure mass. Since the same gravitational force acts on all objects in the same place on Earth, comparing their weights will reveal their mass. On Earth, mass equals weight divided by the acceleration of gravity.
| 109 |
CMV: People need to stop and think before arguing about terminology/semantics
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I think it’s a flaw of CMV and also logic in general. This train of though started by reading a lot of the online debates about the term “concentration camps.” I think the debate is relatively absurd for a variety of reasons on both sides. First of all, no matter what you call them the realities within them are the same. Secondly, I think it’s severely intellectually disingenuous to argue about terminology when you hold a strong underlying belief that you are trying to prove by using certain terminology. More than this we often lose sight of reality when arguing terminology.
For a relatively absurd example, let’s say you(a liberal) and me (a conservative) watch a video of ISIS beheading someone. I say “wow that’s really what radical Islam has done to the Middle East” and you say “wow that’s a disgusting example of what religion does to people.” We then go on to debate whether or not calling ISIS “radical Islamists” is really the appropriate term and whether or not I am a bigot or something else. Despite this, I clearly felt empathy for the people who were killed and these people were likely Muslim.
Lost in this is someone just had there fucking head chopped off and I the conservative felt empathy toward them. This is a huge point in my opinion. Yet, if someone corrects my terminology I might feel far less empathy.
Now that’s how I feel looking at American politics. When you break it down, people often agree on many things. It’s horrible that nearly a murder a day happens in Chicago or Baltimore. We want the kids to have better opportunities. Yet, we let terminology override our common sensibility and if a conservative calls something “ghetto” we get in a froth. We use words that we know the other side will hate and the reject words that they use for various reasons. Now words are powerful and are the root of meaning and they do have historical context. Yet sometimes to change someone’s mind I firmly believe that you need to accept some of how they define the terms in question and look for common ground. I’m not rejecting debates of semantics, meaning or definition but merely saying that they can be counterproductive when people have heavily ingrained definitions.
I will give out a delta for someone who gives examples where appreciable good has been done in changing a persons opinions by question the definition of a word that they were using. Thanks in advance for your responses.
Edit: I’m speaking about American politics, and polarizing issues in general where the mere usage of word might trigger such a negative reaction by one side that will result in the conversation not being resolved. A better example is the term “privilege.” In America, conservatives hate his word when it is used to describe advantages based on unchangeable factors such as parent money, race, etc. I have personally convinced conservatives to acknowledge advantages that are not a result of individual hard work and based on race, class, sexuality by never mentioning the word privilege. I’m not arguing semantics aren’t important, so maybe my title is disingenuous but merely we need to consider whether or not arguing over a specific word is the best way to find common ground and change opinions.
Edit p2: Seems like some people construe my post as condoning hate speech. Again I’m taking an intentionally vague stance on this. I’m saying “people need to think” about arguments about semantics instead of “people should never.” When conversing with an individual you need to decide if it’s best to use certain words that may offend them or whether or not it’s possible to change the definitions they use. In some cases it may be possible to get them to see the point without changing the definition. This is a separate instance, imo, from the use of retard or faggot because the individual using that word has a clear negative intent. The term “radical Islamist” probably has some negative intent behind it in my example, yet I’m stating that the conservatives empathy toward the individual killed may be the more relevant starting point for the discussing that the terminology.
Edit p3: My view has changed fam. I think it’s very important to be careful when discussing generalization like this because in some instances the speech itself can be indirectly or directly very harmful to a certain group. Arguing about words may be beneficial even if views are shared if the words used are extremely offensive and or negative. Thanks for the responses.
| 58 |
Okay — so when two people fundamentally disagree over whether a term is appropriate how should they resolve their dispute?
I think rational discourse is exactly the right way to resolve disputes like this. It's how you find out what exactly people mean by the terms they use. It's a peaceful resolution that gives both sides a chance to get at the underlying issues present yet hidden by semantics. And in general, is the only productive way to resolve disagreement.
| 16 |
ELI5: How come Pakistan, a nation with the world's 6th largest army and nuclear weapons, hasn't defeated the Taliban in 12 years and needs the US' help.
| 845 |
Why does the USA have a problem still with organized crime? No matter what they try, there are always people willing to do the bad things for money. If not for money, then for religion. Plus people from other countries give the bad guys money too , and weapons, and even send more bad people there JUST to cause mayhem!
| 378 |
|
[Dungeons & Dragons] 8 Hours ago my intestines were falling out and I was nearly dead from traumatic injuries, now I'm perfectly fine. How?
| 19 |
You might have taken a hit to the head, since you seem to have forgotten our cleric friend here can channel the power of his god. Indeed that is what he did, and he healed you. You will still need to rest for about a week in a comfortable bed to recover completely.
| 34 |
|
What is happening when water puts out a fire?
|
I'm sorry if this is a dumb question but It's something that I think many people just accept without understanding. What about water makes it good at putting out fire?
Edit: A space
| 17 |
Water puts out a fire in two ways.
Firstly, by covering the burning object's surface area, preventing oxygen from reaching it.
With thinner or incomplete coatings of water, fires can be put out or at least slowed through heat absorption of the water. Water has a high heat capacity, and evaporates before reaching the flash point of most substances. In a fire there is an activation energy before energy is released, the energy released must be greater than the activation energy to be a continuous reaction. If water absorbs part of the energy, that energy does not contribute to further reactions, and can potentially decrease the energy output to the point where it is not continuous (the fire goes out)
| 19 |
Eli5: How do icebreaker ships work?
|
How are they different from regular ships?
What makes them be able to plow through ice where others aren’t?
| 4,592 |
Normal ships is made with a more or less straight wedge bow which is designed to push the water to the side out of the way of the ship. And that is fine because water will just rise up in a bow wave and get out of the way. However if you take such a ship into ice it will encounter problems. Ice is quite hard and when you try to push it aside it will just crash into more ice and be prevented from moving.
So icebreaker bows are not straight wedges but angled forward. So it does not push the ice outwards but rather down and out. When an icebreaker hits the ice it will climb up onto the ice forcing it down into the sea breaking it apart and then the wedge will force the ice flakes under the surrounding ice. It works kind of like an inverted snow plow.
In addition to this the bow is heavily reinforced with lots of internal structures distribute from the bow through the ship and into the propeller as well as thick hull plates to avoid any damage from ramming into the ice.
| 5,035 |
Ordinary vs Honours Degree
|
I’ve failed four exams in college and they will all be capped at 40% if I pass the repeats. However, my results from my ordinary degree are quite good.
Anyone know if many business companies require a honours degree over an ordinary?
| 16 |
An honours degree is mostly needed for graduate schools. Outside of academia the difference between a ‘regular’ and ‘honours’ is insignificant (but in some professions you can get more money with more advanced degrees). It all depends on what your goals are!
| 11 |
ELI5: Why do digital distribution video games cost the same as physical disc versions of games?
| 30 |
Because they are made by for-profit companies, that don't want to sell for less than the market will bear, because that reduces their profits. People will pay 60 euro for a game. They don't have a big incentive to sell it for 30. If it costs less for them to distribute, so much the better, more profit.
| 34 |
|
Why, if we get a new set of skin every 80 days or so, does skin ever become wrinkled and old?
|
Cells replace each other, so why does skin age if they are new cells?
| 35 |
Collagen and elastase degradation in the skin matrix. These proteins give skin its flexible nature. Over time the protein is no longer secreted as readily by fibroblasts and the existing matrix begin to degrade, resulting in looser skin.
| 19 |
[Star Wars] Are people born as force users, or can I meditate my way to becoming a Jedi?
| 96 |
There's a baseline level of force sensitivity that's present at birth. 90% of force users are born with it but a small percentage can achieve a minimal amount of force ability with enough practice and attunement but it's marginal at best and requires a neutral or light side alignment. Chirrut from rogue one was not force sensitive but was able to use the force to compensate for the lack of his eye sight until the force no longer needed him to fulfil his destiny
| 95 |
|
[Star Wars] So can EVERY astromech droid open ANY door ANYWHERE in the galaxy, or is R2D2 special?
|
I was watching the Star Wars marathon this weekend for the billionth time and it really strikes me as odd that a droid built to help fly X-wings can break into any door on any planet, or any door on the Death Star. Why do they even HAVE doors in Star Wars if any $20 droid can just open them?
| 297 |
R2-D2 is special, sort-of.
Astromechs - in fact most droids - routinely have their memories wiped, rendering them back to factory default. They are 100% artificially intelligent and can learn and grow beyond their programming. Artoo never had his memory wiped, and has decades of knowledge and experience. He's quite gifted at hacking computer systems.
You see this with some other droids that have avoided memory wipes: Chopper, K-2SO, LOM-4, IG-88...
| 338 |
CMV: The US should declare war on the cartels, end the domestic war on drugs, and help stabilize/invest in Mexico.
|
The single greatest form of external-terrorism in the United States is the introduction of heroine, coke, meth, and opiates like fentanyl to communities. People who take these are more likely to commit violent crimes, become homeless, have children that go to orphanages or grow up hungry. These drugs tear apart families, ruin lives, and the money spent on them goes to terrorists who basically own Mexico now.
When you take down low level drug dealers, there will always be more to take their place. Its like trying to shave someone's head by plucking out hairs individually. When you completely destroy the infrastructure and capabilities of these drug running operations, it will take years and years for them to rebuild it. The people with the know-how will be gone. Those who come after them will live in fear of what might happen if they get caught.
The US military should seek approval from the Mexican president to seek out and destroy the cartels by any means necessary. The cartels are powerful compared to the local police and government, by comparison, but are NOTHING compared to an actual military. I honestly believe you would spend less to destroy them than you would trying to use the DEA to enforce every single drug user in America.
After the Cartels are gone, we should invest in these communities in Mexico to help grow their economies and give young men less incentive to join a cartel. It sounds counterintuitive, but by investing in Mexico. I believe the US would actually save billions in the long term by treating drug use as an addiction, mitigating the DEA's budget, and helping local law enforcement see addicts as just that, addicts, not criminals. Also, if Mexico has a stronger economy, there will be less reason for people to try and immigrate to the United States.
| 31 |
The US isn't exactly trusted by the Mexican community right now.
The Mexican people aren't going to be rolling out a welcome mat, thanking us for saving them.
Police action in a foreign country is hard. How many of our armed forces know Spanish? How would our armed forces identify targets?
When you're frustrated and don't see good options, force feels like the solution. It is the option that we jump to when we don't see good options and want to force the world to be the way we want it. But, in the real world, violence isn't as effective as we imagine and has many unintended consequences.
| 33 |
Why doesn't [Batman] just permanently or extensively cripple the Joker?
|
Even in his Dark Night incarnation, Batman isn't afraid to break bones, so what's stopping him from simply rendering the Joker physically incapable if Batman won't kill?
| 85 |
By definition, villains worthy of Batman's notice are the movers and shakers, capable of achieving very impressive results (even if said results are immoral). If successfully rehabilitated, these people are capable of contributing substantially to the improvement of human society. By the simple act of sending these villains to Arkham instead of letting them rot in prison, the Batman proves that this is a desired outcome- why undercut that possibility by hampering the healing process with added physical trauma?
| 44 |
ELI5: Plastic, glass, or can? What is the most eco-friendly material to sell drinks in?
|
If only one of those materials would be legal because of being the most environmentally friendly, which one and why?
| 64 |
Can. Metal is the most easily recyclable material.
Plastics degrade over time and can only be recycled a limited number of times, as well as mixing types can weaken products or produce unwanted qualities
Glass is more easily recycled, but mixed colored glass can be a challenge
Metals, especially aluminum, can be easily sorted and melted down without much processing
| 46 |
[Star Trek: First Contact]why did the (alt-timeline)Borg bother occupying Earth? Why not just assimilate the population (circa 2063) then abandon the planet?
|
Earth is in the middle of an area of the galaxy they have no presence in (IE meaning holding onto it could be a real pain in the arse), why not just harvest the planet of sapient beings & resources then abandon it?
​
Edit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4k72iqolT4&app=desktop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4k72iqolT4&app=desktop)
| 22 |
We have no idea what the rest of the Alpha Quadrant looks like. It's possible that the Borg used Earth as a beachhead to conquer the rest of it. It wouldn't have been difficult, given their futuristic technology and aggressive recruitment practices.
| 14 |
How do scientists determine what a planet core is made of ?
| 17 |
There are no direct methods, but there are several indirect methods that we can use. First off, it depends on the kind of planet you are studying.
Let’s start with gas giants like Jupiter. Our first step would be to look at the moons circling it, from their orbits we can get a really good guess at what the overall mass of Jupiter must be. Next, from regular observations we can estimate it’s size. This gives us a density estimate which puts us in the ballpark of what kind of materials we can expect.
Additionally, we can get measurements of its magnetic field and surface make-up from probes. Earth’s own magnetic field is created primarily because our liquid core flows and spins. As magnetic fields can arise from the movement of electrons, a good explanation for the existence of our magnetic field is a hot, liquid core undergoing convection. We can apply the same reasoning to many planets, if it has a strong magnetic field it is possible that it has a very active core and so we might initially expect things to be liquid down there.
For terrestrial planets there’s one more trick we can use: seismic activity. Since waves travel differently through solids and liquids we can guess at what kind of materials might be under the surface. This gets more useful if you have many monitoring stations in different areas to all track the same seismic event.
Finally we can begin to play a sort of detective game where we deduce elements and structure from what we know about our solar system, physical properties of the planets, and the principles of physics and chemistry. Building off all of this knowledge, one paper used Density Functional Theory, a result of quantum mechanics, to estimate the behavior of iron inside the Earth’s core. Using this analysis they concluded the temperature of the core should be within 5300K-5700K and that there is likely between 8%-13% oxygen in the outer core.
Scientists have done an amazing job using basic physical principles to extrapolate what might be happening in labs millions of miles away from their chalkboards.
Sources:
[1] Goldstein, classical mechanics ch. 3
[2] Geophysical Research Letters, Seismic anisotropy in the Earth's innermost inner core: Testing structural models against mineral physics predictions, B. Romanowicz, et al.
[3] Griffiths, introduction to electrodynamics ch. 7
[4] contemporary physics, temperature and composition of the earths core, D. Alfé, et al.
| 14 |
|
Why are some contagious diseases terminal? Wouldn't it be more beneficial for it if its host stayed alive?
| 51 |
Not if it manages to spread before killing the host. Perhaps it causes diarrhoea which dehydrates and kills the host, but the diarrhoea causes the infection of many more hosts. It isn't about what the disease thinks is beneficial, it's just what happened to work.
| 28 |
|
What effect does reccesions have on black markets? illegal drugs, ect
|
Anyone know?
| 122 |
Overall the black market suffers, but it could also have varying effects depends upon from which side you look.
From Sellers POV, as there is no fixed price, at a time fo reduced demand they will increase the prices so that they are able to cover up the shortfall in revenues. This leads to an increase in prices, but an addict or one who is hooked will try his/her level best to meet the prices, either borrow or sell assets or even indulge in crime, like theft and burglary with an aim to find resources.
From Buyers POV, for normal goods, the demand falls with income, so it depends on what preferences the buyer has. If you look at those who have high financial debt or use it as a coping mechanism they will need it at all costs so they will definitely buy and they will too hunt for resources either through crime or other means, as their incomes fall in recession.
There will also be varying effects in districts that are hit the most, that is, that have high unemployment.
| 27 |
How do I helpfully interact with undergrads who approach me inquiring about Harris, Petersen, Molyneux, etc.?
|
This semester alone, I’ve had half a dozen or so undergrads approach me before and after lectures/sections to ask whether I listen to their podcasts, what I think about them, and so on. So far I’ve expressed an unfamiliarity with them so as to be careful. Is there a better way to approach this?
| 84 |
This seems like a good opportunity to emphasize basic interpretive skills. For example, if you try to *outline* a Molyneux talk, eliminating the snarky rhetoric and simply attempting to show the steps of an argument, accounting for explicit premises and implicit assumptions, things tend to fall apart pretty quickly. Even his book on UPB comes apart almost immediately when you simply try to understand it, rather than allowing yourself to be swept along by all the distractions involved.
| 51 |
Advice For Humanities Scholars Thinking of Leaving The Academic Industry
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I wanted to offer advice to professors or PhD students who are considering a career change. Last year I resigned from my tenure-track job in English, my first full-time academic post after graduate school. Ten months ago I began a new career in hospital operations management, a field in which I had no previous experience. The work is stimulating, challenging, and well compensated.
My post is mainly intended for Humanities scholars as I am most familiar with that discipline. I am not offering (or selling) services of any kind, just some ideas I've picked up over the past year.
---
**Volunteer For More Work Experience**
If you are fortunate enough to have a tenure-track appointment it counts as one entry on your resume. You can include one bullet point for teaching, another for research, and a third for administrative work, which in my experience was the main focus for/of employers. This is the complete entry for teaching on my standard resume:
> “Developed and taught 18 courses over 8 years; translated complex topics and coached foundational skills; conducted qualitative and quantitative feedback to improve self- and participant performance.”
Eight years of my working life – all of my successes in the classroom, the late-night grading sessions, untold hours developing my lecture notes and materials – over two adjunct positions and one tenure-track appointment is condensed into three clauses. You may add another bullet point for your editorial responsibilities at a journal or your leadership of a working group or program, but many early-career academics do not have those experiences.
You will need additional, non-academic work entries on your resume to be competitive for most non-academic jobs. Perhaps the best method if you still work in academia is volunteer work. If you do not have a specific industry already in mind I recommend two options:
* Write grant applications for local non-profit organizations. You will likely already have strong writing skills and understand how to follow grant application instructions. There are many charitable funding opportunities that go unused. Email the director of a non-profit organization whose mission you support, explain your commitment to their cause, and offer your services.
* Serve on the board of directors of a local non-profit organization. You will likely already have strong organizational skills and can hold the attention of a room. Research the organizations in your area that are run by volunteer boards: civic organizations, charities, co-ops, condos... you should volunteer with the organization first to determine whether their general leadership structure is sound, but unless you observe any serious problems it is relatively easy to get elected to these positions.
---
**PhD Students/Adjuncts: Consider Working For a Staffing/Temp Agency**
My hospital uses a staffing agency and short-term contracts for, among other reasons, the chance to evaluate promising employees for long-term positions. After talking to colleagues in other industries I learned this practice is fairly common. Some staffing agencies specialize in a particular industry, while others may have experience working with highly-educated candidates like you. Most recruiters work with rosters of managers who require certain kinds of staff. They do not benefit from sending unqualified staff to their customers (i.e. people like me), which means they can help you to identify your strengths and expose you to a range of *relevant* non-academic opportunities.
I hire temporary staff for short-term entry-level clerical and research positions; usually BAs and MAs without much work experience. They make considerably more money than adjunct professors and do not work nights or weekends. They also parlay temporary placements into full-time positions at the hospital or, even if a placement is not successful, they gain valuable work experience. I was originally hired on a temporary contract as a researcher with no previous experience or contacts in my industry; a few months later they hired me to manage my own program, as well as a few others. You can do this too!
---
**Learn/Teach Yourself Key Skills**
Before leaving the academic profession, I came across many articles in *The Chronicle* and elsewhere that advised readers to identify ‘transferable skills’ that can be re-purposed for non-academic contexts. These skills do exist; for example, many academics in the Humanities can write for multiple audiences (students vs. colleagues) and know how to navigate complex bureaucracies. However, you should also consider learning more about the programs, applications, and/or skills that are valued in the industries in which you want to work.
For example, one of the most highly-valued skills you can learn for an office-based or management role is expertise in MS Excel. Almost everyone claims on their resumes to know the MS Office suite, yet very few entry-level job candidates seem to understand conditional formatting or how to use pivot tables, much less the more advanced features in Excel. Do you know them?
One way to learn Excel: download a numbers-based data set relevant to your own academic research: census data on a community you study, sales figures in the literary genre in which you specialize, etc. Look for free online courses through educational organizations like Khan Academy, or check with your institutional or municipal library for a subscription to services like Lynda (now LinkedIn Learning). Spend one hour each day taking an Excel lesson using your specific data set. You can simultaneously develop your Excel skills and also produce material for your next research article or lecture notes.
Do not go back to school for another degree.
---
**Practice Writing Your Resume Now**
Writing a post-academic resume is surprisingly difficult if your only recent experience is in writing or updating an academic CV. As an exercise: visit a job search engine with listings in your community, choose a listing that appeals to you, and attempt to write a 1-page resume for that job. How do you demonstrate that your past or current work experience is relevant to the position? What are your marketable skills? How do you convince an employer that you could do the job? Stylistic conventions for the academic CV are standard across the industry, with slight differences in what matters most depending on your field or department. There is no universal standard for resumes, other than a typical 1-2 page limit. You should practice writing resumes using real job listings for at least a month or two before you go on the job market.
---
I hope these bits of advice are helpful to those of you thinking about a career change, but unsure where to begin. I don't plan to write about the academic-to-non-academic career transition ever again, but I would be happy to answer any questions you have about leaving academia, job searches, etc. Just leave a reply!
([cross-posted](https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/fqpoce/advice_for_humanities_scholars_thinking_of/) to r/professors)
| 220 |
+1 on the advice to apply for local grants. Most scholars are completely oblivious when it comes to where pots of money are. Everyone is going after NEH, MacArthur...sure, apply to one of those once but then repurpose that application for the family or community foundations in your area. You might only be getting $10k after overhead, but you get to hire a couple students for a semester, or do some major summer travel, or pair it with other funds.
And fwiw, your school probably has a subscription to fdonline.foundationcenter.org (edit: fixed URL). It takes all of ten minutes to find lesser known foundations that are interested in your work...and a lot of those small ones are happy to hear from you directly, by phone or email, and'll sometimes just say "Your project sounds great. The application will just be pro forma."
Big piece of advice though is to research their 990 tax forms. You'll see who they've given grants to in the past, and for how much. In the case of family foundations, sometimes you need to do that in order to weed out politically sketchy families. You'll have people that are wonderful arts benefactors who also, like, fund bonkers think-tanks.
| 27 |
Do people have their own philosophy?
|
I'm saying like do people have their own well constructed moral system and perspectives and stuff . I know this is a stupid question but i jus wanted to know.
| 34 |
I mean some people probably. But the average joe on the street likely doesn’t have a well thought out moral system, or view on the ontological status of numbers or a view on most philosophical issues.
| 53 |
[The Mist] Are there any intelligent civilizations in the homeworld of the Mist?
| 89 |
Civilization? Maybe, but most likely not. Sentient and sapient beings? Yes.
The Mist leaks out from the void between worlds. It contains your usual intelligent lovecraftian horrors.
The void between worlds are the remnants of the Prim after Gan arose and spun the innumerable worlds from his navel. Nowdays it's filled with your usual mind-breaking sentient horrors that just want to eat your face. But every now and then you'll find your sapient demon, succubus, or vampire.
Long days and pleasant nights.
| 62 |
|
[ST:TNG] Why is Picard French?
|
Not an in-universe question, but something which has always bugged me.
Why, having decided to make the captain French, did they hire an English actor? Having decided to hire Patrick Stewart, why didn't they change the character's background to English? And why, if he is French, does he drink Earl Grey rather than café and read Shakespeare rather than Balzac?
There was that one episode (*Family*), where he visits his brother (who also has an English accent) and they drink wine and sing French songs, but the rest of the time he is English as fuck.
| 32 |
sometime after WW III, French culture as we know it was destroyed and replaced by the invading Britons. The surviving population was re- educated. They were taught to speak English and drink tea. Several generations later, the descendants while regaining their place in society, retain little to no trace of their french ancestry.
| 34 |
ELI5 : Illegal Activities on Television
|
May be a dumb question but I've always wondered...How do the people on television who show their faces and names while uncovering their illegal business/activities not get caught and thrown in jail?
Ex. Moonshiners, new series Tickle, multiple series on drugs etc...
| 69 |
Ok, so you're a cop. You see Snoop DogLionWhatever smoking a huge joint on tv, right there in your town. So you decide you're going to arrest that guy.
He shows up in your town again, and you arrest him. Then his lawyer appears and asks how you know he was smoking an illegal substance on that video. Do you have any actual evidence as to *what specifically* he was smoking? No? Then prepare for a media circus and a lot of expense resulting in a probable acquittal, all over a very minor charge.
| 60 |
I believe oligarchy is a bigger and much more urgent problem than patriarchy. CMV
|
Let us define these concepts first:
**Patriarchy:** From feminist theory, the *a priori* truth that society is immediately geared to favor male *(cis-gendered(?))* people, male-like qualities and male role models to the derision of women, feminine traits and role-models in women and everything else in between.
**Oligrachy:** The *a priori* turth stating society is immediately geared to favor wealth and the wealthy, venerates money and the accumulation of it and puts wealthy people in a pedestal to revered and admired.
Colorary:
While I have many qualms with contemporary feminism (i.e. it's a movement that preaches gender equality and freedom of expression but acts to tarnish those same principles when met with dissenting opinions), I think some of the ideas it purports have a basis in fact (i.e. the right for a woman to choose over her own body).
That being said, I think the concept of *patriarchy* as the great boogeyman and the reason for all society's ills is misguided, ham-handed and short-sighted. It fails to represent societies around the world in a fair manner over time, assumes men are always favored over women in all circumstances and doesn't acknowledge healthy relationships between a man and a woman exist in many different hues and styles. I also believe the concept destroys history, culture and any kind of context in an effort to view everything with a short-sighted lens.
View:
I think that patriarchy is dwarfed by oligarchy, defined above. Wealth is held by any person at any given point of time, and it is the wealthy who have the power to oppress those who don't have as much wealth. While this is a point counteracted with the argument that most CEOs in the western world are men, this is also short-sighted: It's not hard to see wealth doesn't have a prejudice towards women. Positions of power held by women and men have alike have been based around the accumulation of wealth and social clout. Whenever a woman came from a wealthy family or built her own wealth, power never escaped them because they were female. If we lived in a purely patriarchal society, the smashing success of Oprah Winfrey, Anna Maria Escobedo or Sonia Sotomayor wouldn't be possible. These are all women who built their own wealth, and I'd argue they jumped through as many hoops and obstacles as man in a similar or even identical situation. Looking back on history, wealthy women had a lot more privileges than men and women in lower classes of society. Even though Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake." is a fake quote, it speaks to the vision of the French people of their higher classes as privileged people, disenfranchised from their woes. They even went so far as to execute her, not because she was a mother or a woman, but because she represented the crown they hated.
In my opinion, men aren't favored over women. Society simply favors the wealthy, whoever these people may be. As as society, we allow these people to be beacon and a finish line, a set of desirable traits that sets those who have far above those who haven't. These same people are the ones who get to make our laws (the 2013 US government shutdown), dictate our economy (AIG and the 2008 financial meltdown) and get to decide who thinks what (oligopoly of media).
The poor man will never be favoured over the rich woman.
I want this view to be challenged.
| 57 |
I'd say that a lot of feminists aren't quite as reductionist as to say that patriarchy is the reason for all of society's ills. Rather, they'd point out that a lot of social problems are shaped by patriarchy. For example, Wall Street is overwhelmingly male. This is because Wall Street strongly rewards competitiveness and risk-taking, which are attributes men are more likely to have. But this emphasis has led to some bad outcomes, and has exacerbated the problems of oligarchy that you mention.
Feminist authors write mostly about gender issues for the same reason that scholars of religion or race write about those issues. It doesn't mean they believe that there aren't any other issues.
| 17 |
Why are workers paid an hourly wage instead of a portion of the value they add to the product?
|
The question comes to me as a philosophy degree holding line cook. I watch the raw beef turn into a delicious hamburger, and yet I am compensated for my time rather than the work I put into the food.
I can think of a few bumps in the road, but no real reason why not, besides the fact that businesses profit more by treating labor as a commodity.
One of the minor problems would be figuring out how much work each employee did. But this would be simple enough considering our ticket system for tracking orders. You were at work from x to y and did z number of tickets totaling this much profit, and at your pay scale you get so much percentage of the profit.
| 50 |
I would say a major reason is the desire to keep labor at a relatively fixed cost. Under the current system, your employer knows exactly how long they'll be open and how much that will cost them in payroll. Giving you a percentage of the total product sold is much harder to predict. (Of course, keeping labor's share of the profits low is also a motivation.)
Keep in kind this can benefit the employee as well. You are paid the same regardless of how many customers the restaurant has any given night. That makes it easier for you to establish a household budget.
| 36 |
ELI5: Where does the strength from a hydraulic press come from?
| 582 |
Explaining like you're 5:
It's basically the fluid version of a lever or gears. You exchange speed for force.
An example: You turn on your kitchen sink faucet, and stick a glass under it. In a second or two, your glass is full of water, but it's not very heavy. However, if you stuck a bucket under the faucet and left it for a few minutes, you'd have a really heavy bucket of water because the bucket is wider and deeper. Now imagine this with the water flowing much faster, and in a closed system so there's a ton of water pressure instead of weight.
| 225 |
|
All corniness aside... is this a fact?
|
[Cute Comic](http://imgur.com/f6iD4)
If so, I'm about to start spinning.
| 47 |
There is some truth to it, spinning does lengthen the night (by a tiny tiny amount), even if the statement is technically false:
Angular momentum is conserved, so if you start spinning you are actually increasing or decreasing the angular momentum of earth. So while you spin the angular momentum of earth is decreased (or increased, depending on the spinning direction) by your angular momentum. As soon as you stop, though, the angular momentum of earth is back where it was. So it is the act of starting to spin which "robs" angular momentum, not the spinning itself. Each turn does nothing except keeping the rotation going.
TL;DR Earth turns slower (by a probably not even measurable amount) if you spin in the right direction. If you stop spinning, earth's rotation speed goes back to normal.
EDIT for clarity
| 57 |
[Lovecraft] Are there any Eldritch brings we can perceive as being “good”?
|
They probably transcend our ideas of good and evil, but from our mortal lens can any of them be seen as good guys?
| 17 |
It's not technically *impossible*. It's just statistically unlikely.
None of the eldritch entities are *just* evil. What they want and what they embody could be *anything*. There could be some eldritch entity whose only value is the colour blue, or the production of paperclips, or building more stars.
The problem is that the number of all possible value systems for an eldritch entity is astronomically huge, and the fraction of that enormous variety that your human mind can comprehend is infinitesimal. Mankind is barely out of the trees. You trying to comprehend what Cthulhu wants is like a fly buzzing against a window trying to imagine what the glazier wanted.
So statistically speaking, *most* eldritch entities want something bizarre and impossible to comprehend, simply because there are *more* things beyond human understanding than there are within it. Of the tiny fraction that don't, the majority want something like producing more paperclips, simply because there are *more* goals like that than there are goals that would seem sensible to a human. By sheer chance, some eldritch entities may have values that correspond to some form of human morality - but the vast majority, the near-totality, do not.
| 37 |
[DC] What is life actually like in a bottled city owned by Brainiac?
| 66 |
Brainiac specifically takes these cities in order to preserve the civilization they came from as best he can. He's not using them for scientific experiments, or computational power, or as a car battery, he's keeping them exactly as they were, for posterity.
This means that you could expect life to go on just as it always has. There's still traffic and grocery stores and garbage men and TV. People are still expected to go to their normal jobs and do their normal work, even if that means shipping excess Coca-Cola away on a train that goes nowhere or unloading produce that came in on a train from a food replicator.
There are a few major exceptions: you can never leave the city limits, obviously. Also, the death toll and birth rate are likely closely monitored to keep the population constant. Any non-local TV stations are mostly re-runs, new movies are rare, and internet forums see a lot less traffic.
| 46 |
|
Does inverse ethnocentrism exist?
|
By “inverse ethnocentrism” I mean the belief that one’s own culture is inferior to others.
I see lots of Americans online talking about how much they hate their home country so I began wondering: Is this a phenomenon that’s been recognized and studied?
| 41 |
Frantz Fanon wrote about this in the colonial context. That is to say, people who have been colonised internalise the colonisers' view of them as inferior. That's not really what you are referring to, but it's how a lot of anthropological work engages with the idea of inferiority, which in turn draws on a lot of Edward Said's ideas about Orientalism.
| 25 |
ELI5: Why are Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and ISIS against each other?
| 32 |
Firstly, religion. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are Sunni Arabs, Hezbollah are Shi'a Arab. Huge ethno-religious conflicts between the two.
As for AQ and ISIS, it's a bit more complicated. They're not really enemies, they just disagree with each other. You've probably read in the news that ISIS used to be affiliated with AQ until early this year, when they were kicked out for being "too extreme", which is partly true.
The short version is that ISIS see themselves as a state, rather than a terrorist group. That's a designation they kind of deserve, to be honest. They run police forces, local governments, schools, and even post offices in the territory they control. Befitting their role as a state, ISIS thought that, instead of swearing loyalty to AQ, AQ (as a non-state group), should swear loyalty to them, much as AQ swore loyalty to the Taliban back when they ran Afghanistan. This caused a big argument (in Islamic culture, a personal oath of loyalty should be to the death), and AQ disaffiliated with ISIS.
| 36 |
|
ELI5: How can we calculate the mass of the earth?
| 20 |
We start with the formulas
>Weight = m*g
and
>F_g = GMm/R^2
which is just Newton's second law and Newton's law of universal gravitation. If we equate the two, we get
>M=gR^2 /G
so if we know the gravitational acceleration on the surface of Earth, radius of Earth and the gravitational constant G we can calculate the mass of Earth easily.
| 10 |
|
Does high cortisol in the body, or a stronger than average cortisol response to external stressors, equate to a person being generally more stressed out? In other words, stress 'causes' cortisol, but does cortisol cause stress?
|
We know that external stressors and/or stress generally result in a statistically significant cortisol response. Has the opposite connection been shown to hold statistical significance? In other words, stress 'causes' cortisol, but does cortisol cause stress?
I'm asking this because I've come across studies in the past about this and general comparisons of stress in urban and rural populations. For example, I quickly found [this study published in May of 2018](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5960295/) comparing rural and urban upbringings.
I'm not well-versed enough to know whether this or other studies on cortisol and cortisol responses directly claim or show that more cortisol equals more stress.
| 25 |
Both. Cortisol is a sign of how aroused the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis is, which is a central part of the body’s response to chronic stress. But at the same time, neurons in the cortical and limbic structures express corticotropin releasing hormone receptors that act in a kind of feed-forward dynamic, to mediate a behavioral aspect of the stress response.
Not only do these exert a direct effect on behavior, they also alter the expression of housekeeping and neurotrophic genes in many neurons. This can act in maladaptive ways. For example, chronic stress-hormone exposure antagonizes the expression of BDNF receptor, which is necessary for adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus. These changes can manifest long-term as an anxiety/depression syndrome.
The long-term dysregulation of stress-hormone levels in this feed-forward mechanism is implicated in the withdrawal syndromes for drugs like alcohol, which can be seen as a kind of maladaptive chronic-stress response precipitated by not drinking.
One of the hypotheses for the way antidepressant drugs like SSRIs work is that the increased serotonin signaling they produce causes gene-expression changes that oppose what the stress hormones do. Essentially, they help to reverse the cellular and behavioral aspects of the stress-hormone induced responses in the brain.
| 10 |
[Star Wars] How did the Rebels escape Yavin?
|
So the Empire finds out about the secret Rebel base on Yavin, and sends the Death Star to blow it the hell up. And apparently the Death Star just travels around with *zero* capital ship escorts, for some reason. OK, fine, the Empire is arrogant and tactically unwise.
But surely the moment the Death Star is blown up, the Empire will then send every available Star Destroyer to the Yavin system immediately to blow the absolute shit out of that Rebel base? And yet the Rebels seem to think they have time for a great big and kinda relaxed awards ceremony before they start thinking about packing up to leave. And yet they seem not just to escape, but to escape undetected. How?
| 20 |
Yavin isn't exactly a hop, skip, and a jump from Imperial space, much less the Imperial fleet. Then there's the natural disarray that comes in the wake of the destruction of such a massive asset, as well as the loss of a leader like Tarkin. You don't rush the rest of the fleet into a situation where your best weapon under the command of one of your best commanders just got its ass handed to it by a force it should have easily overwhelmed.
Basically, they had some time to play with.
| 19 |
ELI5: Why it's important to stay awake after a concussion.
| 56 |
Staying awake doesn't help with the concussion, it helps the people around you (doctors, paramedics, etc) tell if you're experiencing any sort of brain damage. If you can't talk, they can't ask you how you feel or tell if your speech is slurred or ask you if you remember your name. If your eyes are closed, they can't check for pupillary response to light or see if they can follow moving objects.
| 47 |
|
CMV: Homelessness is not a crime
|
This CMV is not about the reasons why people become homeless. Even if people would become homeless solely due to their personal failure, they are still humans and they should not be treated like pigeons or another city pest.
Instead I want to talk about laws that criminalize homelessness. Some jurisdictions have laws that literally say it is illegal to be homeless, but more often they take more subtle forms. I will add a link at the end if you are interested in specific examples, but for now I will let the writer Anatole France summarize the issue in a way only a Frenchman could:
>The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.
So basically, those laws are often unfair against homeless people. But besides that, those laws are not consistent with what a law is supposed to be.
When a law is violated it means someone has intentionally wronged society itself. Note that that does not mean society is the only victim. For example, in a crime like murderer there is obviously the murdered and his or her surviving relatives. But society is also wronged, as society deems citizens killing each other undesirable. This is why a vigilante who kills people that would have gotten the death penalty is still a criminal.
So what does this say about homelesness? Homelessness can be seen as undesired by society, just like extra-judicial violence is. So should we have laws banning homelessness?
Perhaps, but if we say homelessness is a crime it does not mean homeless people are the criminals. Obviously there would not be homelessness without homeless people, but without murdered people there also would not be murders. Both groups are victims.
But if homeless people are not the perpetrators, then who is? Its almost impossible to determine a definitely guilty party here, because the issue has a complex and difficult to entangle web of causes. In a sense, society itself is responsible.
I am not sure what a law violated by society itself would even mean. So in conclusion:
Homelessness is not a crime and instead of criminalizing homeless behaviour we as society should try to actually solve the issue itself.
CMV
Report detailing anti-homelessness laws in the US:
https://nlchp.org/housing-not-handcuffs-2019/
Edit: Later in this podcast they also talk about this issue, how criminalization combined with sunshine laws dehumanizes homeless people and turns them into the butt of the "Florida man" joke. Not directly related to main point, but it shows how even if the direct punishment might be not that harsh criminalization can still have very bad consequences:
https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-75-the-trouble-with-florida-man-33fa8457d1bb
| 5,841 |
Homelessness isn't a crime, but throwing a bunch of used needles on the ground or taking a dump on the streets crime is. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to prove that the used needles next to this homeless person is theirs, especially if there are several homeless people in the area.
It's easiest just to make residing in these areas illegal. Ideally, you'd only enforce the rule when someone is actually doing something wrong. However, there are always going to be false positives, where an overzealous cop wants punish a homeless person minding their own business. Also, a lot of people will just assume bad intent from the police/Karens when a homeless person gets arrested for legitimate reasons.
| 658 |
CMV: CMV: Stupidity is not inherently different from any other form of mental disability. Society should treat them the same.
|
Let me preface this by saying that I've struggled with ADHD for my entire life, and this isn't meant to be a tirade against people with mental disabilities: I think that we are far, *far* too hard on stupid people for something that isn't their fault. It's considered unacceptable to hate people with disabilities of any variety, you can't make fun of them, you're expected to help them. Society tries to accommodate for and be nice to disabled people in many ways, but for some reason not being smart isn't part of this. I see *no* reason how they're different - both stupidity and mental disability are harmful, unpleasant, unlikely to change and never the fault of the person who has it.
Why should we treat one like an illness and the other as the butt of every joke?
_____
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*
| 17 |
Well, we have to draw a distinction between people whose mental capacity is inherently lower than average, and those people who willfully choose not to exercise the mental capacity they've been given. Most of the animosity toward stupid people is directed toward those who, through laziness, rebelliousness or disinterest, deliberately choose not to receive education or educate themselves in those things generally considered to be standard knowledge.
You've identified a problem, in that it's sometimes difficult to tell the difference, and those who would like to learn but aren't able are often mistaken for those who can learn but choose not to. However, we should rightly be opposed to anyone who is willfully ignorant due to poor character.
| 13 |
[Among Us] Why do the Impostors allow the Crewmates to eject them if they're killer aliens?
| 823 |
While aliens can kill a crewmate in a 1-on-1 fight, things get more complicated when they're up against 2 or more crewmates. Keep in mind that many execution animations involve crewmates being taken by surprise; during a meeting where crewmates are deciding to sentence an individual to death, they will be on the lookout for suspicious movements. "Everyone is pointing a gun at each other", so to speak.
| 754 |
|
ELI5: what exactly does the o/d button on my automatic car do?
|
I get that it stands for overdrive but as I know about as much about cars as I know about quantum physics (that is to say, not a lot) what does that mean? Should I be using it? Should I not have been pushing the button while I drove down the interstate?
| 109 |
Your car has a transmission, which has different speeds. That allows the wheels to spin at different speeds relative to the speed that your engine is speeding at.
If you watch your tachometer as you accelerate, you'll notice the engine speed increases, and then the needle drops back down and starts increasing again - this is because your engine speeds up until it reaches the point where the transmission shifts to a higher gear.
The o/d button selects whether or not overdrive is on. Overdrive is your highest speed, where your wheels are spinning faster than your engine (hence over drive - the wheels are "over-driving" the engine). It's good for high speed cruising - you get highway speed at lower RPM, which means better fuel economy and quieter engine noise.
You can disable overdrive, and that means that the car can't shift into the highest gear. This is useful if you're trying to accelerate on a hill. Higher RPM means more power, so in situations where you need more power, you want to turn off overdrive.
Generally though, you should keep overdrive on.
| 77 |
Why do most experimental fusion reactors focus on deuterium-tritium fusion, and why isn't deuterium-proton fusion ever used?
|
Deuterium-tritium fusion produces a helium-4 nucleus and neutron. In stars, deuterium and protons are fused to create helium-3 without the production of a neutron, in the second step of the proton-proton chain reaction. Wouldn't deuterium-proton fusion be the much better choice, considering they have the same amount of electrical repulsion, wouldn't generate power in the form of neutrons, and are much cheaper?
| 458 |
The difficulty in fusion is over coming the positive repulsion between protons in the 2 nuclei. The closer 2 nuclei get, the more the protons push each other away. Sounds like you're probably aware of that, and also aware that the only way to overcome this barrier is the strong nuclear force exerted by all nucleons at close enough range. Thus, isotopes with more neutrons in their nucleus fuse more readily, because their is the same amount of electric (Coulomb) repulsion, but additional strong nuclear force to bring them together.
In stars, the pressure is huge, and the temperature is huge, but the real key to fusion in stars is sheer number of atoms. The odds of two nuclei passing close enough to fuse is ridiculously low (hence the sun burning hydrogen for 10 billion years), but because there are so many of them, they over come the probability issue. If the odds are 1 in a million, and you have 10 billion, you're going to have a lot of events (these aren't the real numbers; but it gets the point across).
In fusion reactors on earth, we don't (currently) have the luxury of an excess number of particles or lots of time for the reactions to occur (the National Ignition Facility for example uses a DT mixture to initiate a fusion reaction that lasts a few billionths of a second). So we need all the help we can get from the fusion materials. Its basically stacking the deck!
| 101 |
[DUNE]Did technological advancement stagnate after the Butlerian Jihad?
|
If you look at the timeline here, most of mans technological advancements seem to be made before the jihad.
http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_(Dune_Encyclopedia)
Did the loss of AI lead to a stagnation in the rate of new technological discoveries? What are some of the major technologies that were invented after the jihad?
| 43 |
I think it's more that the betrayal of man by machine shook humanity's trust in technological advancement. Instead human society seeing new technology as offering a brighter, better future it was come to be seen as a danger to our long-term survival and not only abandoned but outlawed. The number of planets even attempting new technologies is incredibly limited and done almost entirely in secret, so even there advancement is very slow.
| 34 |
[Pokemon] Do Water-Types shoot clean/drinkable water? Can I use a Fire-Type's fire to cook a meal? How practical are Pokemon's abilities in normal day-to-day lives?
| 48 |
Dude, it's just water and fire, it's not poisonous or anything. Fire types can melt steel with their flames, so maybe tell them to hold back a bit or just use a campfire like normal people, unless you enjoy your meal charcoal-y. Water created by Pokemon is probably distilled, safe to drink unless you're fasting or haven't eaten in days.
| 24 |
|
[Avatar] After Hama teaches Katara bloodbending, she decides to use the power as much as she can to stop the fire nation. How much does this change the series? Does the world of korra change at all?
| 17 |
Assuming she is blood lusted (hur hur) and gets over the full moon exclusivity, she can wreck the fire nation with little consequence. Maybe Aangs pacifist ass wouldn't wanna put out for her after she kills a bunch of people.
If she blood bends more in character then the survivors would spread word of being blood bent which would lead to more water benders discovering this power, which would most likely be used for evil by the second series.
| 21 |
|
[Looney Tunes] Some questions about Michigan J. Frog
|
For anyone asking "Who?", [here you go.](https://vimeo.com/50941741)
Does he just sing when only his "owner" can see him? Does that mean if he were rediscovered in the present-day, with the prevalence of security cams and phone cameras he won't even make it to "*Hello my ragtime gaaaaallll*" before having to revert to "frog form"? Is he doomed to never get through a musical number again?
Alternatively, is he some sort of cursed being whose purpose is to drive his "owner" insane and can affect the immediate environment to this end? Will the person who finds him be stuck dealing with dead batteries/password screens/lockouts until the split-second after "*and tell me i'm your owwwwwwwwn.*"?
| 22 |
He is just an asshole, nothing more. He likes to fuck with whoever wants to try to make a quick buck on his musical talent.
And he knows when someone is watching him, even security cameras. He will just wait until he is in an ally or at home to do his thing.
| 12 |
[Star Trek] What species became the Borg?
|
What was the first species to turn themselves into what we would recognize as Borg?
| 29 |
We don't know. We know they originated in the Delta quadrant and that the species that became the Queen was *not*, in fact, the Borg's original species.
There is sparse information, but the Vaadwaur encountered them in the 15^th century, and claimed that they were a minor species who had only conquered a few star systems, so it seems like the Borg have only been on the scene as a star-faring civilization for about a thousand years.
| 33 |
[Fallout] Is Atom an actual god or eldritch abomination?
|
We know that Lovecraftian deities are a well established concept in Fallout and that they are associated with radiation (Ghouls worshiping the obelisk in the Dunwich building, the Krivbeknih exploding in radiation when being destroyed, radiation always being present when these deities are being presented). So I ask, is it possible that "Atom" is a disillusion of the Church of Atom or an actual being?
| 18 |
No they just personified the atomic detonation of the nukes and give a possible reason why something so shitty happened. Basically it was a half glass full style scenario of people trying to cope with the disturbing results.
Plus they needed an explanation why some people were totally immune or resistant to the radiation, which is likely caused by mutations from the early radiation or FEV.
| 23 |
ELI5: Are dogs actually happy when they are smiling or do we just think so because we perceive a smile as positive?
|
and no I do not mean when a dog just shows its teeth, I am aware that is just aggression.
| 31 |
Some dogs do actually smile, as we do, but it can also often times be a sign of stress or a need to cool the body by taking in and letting out large amounts of air. Dogs are much better at reading the subtle differences, than humans.
| 10 |
How can the stock market keep growing year on year?
|
It confuses me where that 3% annual growth comes from. Those of us with index funds are banking on it continuing indefinitely, but how can that be possible? Nothing in the universe keeps growing indefinitely.
Does the economy keep growing because it still has people and commodities in agrarian or village societies which it commodifies and brings into the global market? Or is it that technology is still making human labor more productive? A mixture of these? Will the market ever stop growing?
| 26 |
Long-term economic growth has three components: (1) Labor, (2) Capital, and (3) Technological Advancement. When looking at long-term economic growth, it's not unreasonable to assume, at least in a developed economy, that the economy will grow generally each year, as there is more labor, capital, and technological growth each year. Of course, there are potentially cataclysmic events that could happen to disrupt this, but those are not incredibly likely (knock on wood) year to year.
That's why if you look at a graph of US GDP (for example) from 1900 to today, even the great depression seems like a small blip. The great depression had horrible consequences for the country at the time, but the economy went through the cycle and eventually recovered.
| 23 |
ELI5: Why are so many deep sea and cave creatures white? I know it's 'lack of sunlight' but why does lack of sunlight make things white?
| 17 |
If there is no light, then you don't need camouflage because nothing can see you.
If there is no UV light, you aren't getting sunburned and don't need melanin to protect your cells from damage.
It's just a case of less effort, same result, and over generations, those low effort strategies became the most common traits.
| 26 |
|
[Superpowers] does super strength give you super speed and durability?
|
I just want to know if it can enhanced your physical abilities other than being able to carry heavy objects
| 16 |
This is why general questions make no sense here.
What gives the character super speed? Is it regular muscle power that let's them push off harder? Or do they manipulate time or space to achieve super speed? Maybe their body enters some kind of transformation into a nonphysical state? Do they utilize some kind of SciFi energy? What other rules in their magic system might effect the answer?
You need to be specific or else no answer can even possibly make sense.
| 21 |
Eli5: Why does the eye need a moment to "get used" to the dark to see properly?
| 29 |
There are two main things that dictate how well you can see in low light:
First is the iris. It expands or contracts fairly quickly to let more or less light in.
Second is a special chemical in the back of the eye that increases light sensitivity. This chemical is destroyed by bright light and it takes 20-30 minutes for the body to produce more after it gets dark.
| 48 |
|
Are Supermassive Blackholes eating galaxies orbiting them?
|
Edit: Thanks reddit that was a great discussion. :)
| 366 |
Not really. To address a common misconception, the supermassive black holes don't act like 'gravitational anchor' for the galaxy, much like how our sun dominates the solar system. Even though these black holes may be millions of times the mass of the sun, galaxies contain billions of stars. For perspective, the sun contains over 99% of the solar system's mass, but the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way is only about 0.0005% of the Milky Way's mass.
Rather, these black holes are more like an interesting anatomical piece. Stars and gas in galaxies have too much angular momentum to fall in - they'll just keep orbiting. Some gas and stars that get too close do get disrupted and eaten from time to time though.
And occasionally, they do use their intense gravity to generate powerful emissions from active galactic nuclei. Some supermassive black holes in some galaxies are actively feeding on gas close to them which generate powerful emissions, which we call quasars. Friction in those disks of gas heats the gas, generating the emission we observe, and causing the material to lose energy and angular momentum and fall into the black hole. This results in a pretty small change in the black hole's mass, so it's not like the event horizon is rapidly expanding outward and feeding at an exponential rate or anything apocalyptic like that.
| 280 |
[Star Wars] I have just stolen Home One and 5 Nebulon-B frigates, what is the worse that the Rebel Alliance can send after me?
|
Me and my crew of B1 battle droids that have been programmed to be extra smart have just stolen Home One, and 5 Nebulon-B frigates? What could the Alliance send after me?
Edit: Pre-Endor
EDIT 2: Lets say the have unlimited fuel, and my droids can pilot the starfighters also they auto repair themselves
| 35 |
Fortunately your Nebulon-Bs mean that you can defend yourself to some degree from starfighter strikes. However, there are still other forces in the Rebellion capable of dueling a force like that on even terms.
Really, though? The worst that they can send after you are their diplomats, agents, spies, and saboteurs. You may have enough battle droids to crew them in the short term, but you're going to need fuel, supplies, and other upkeep. You're going to need a shipyard of some kind. The Empire isn't going to give you one; they don't want freelance capital ships running around either. The Rebellion will try to systematically put pressure on anyone who might grant you a haven and/or strike at your ships as they are powered down undergoing maintenance.
| 29 |
CMV: The world would be better if everyone were forced to learn Lojban.
|
[Lojban](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban), for those unfamiliar, is a perfectly logical and completely unambiguous language that takes from many different languages to create what I believe is humanity's best attempt at linguistic perfection. But that's not the view I want changed.
I think that if there were some sort of worldwide law that said that every elementary schooler had to learn Lojban at school and only Lojban (they could learn their country's current native language at home) for about 2 generations, then made Lojban the worldwide official language for all communication, it would change the world for the better.
Imagine a world in which everyone could communicate with everyone in the world. Where international business turned from a headache to incredibly easy. Immigrants from foreign countries would be able to fluently speak the language of the country they emigrated to. Everyone in the world could have common ground with each other.
Obviously it would take time and money to do this, but once it were done, it could be truly groundbreaking and help us all to understand one another and help us empathize with each other much better. The human race should have one standard language, and I believe Lojban is, as it stands, our best shot at that. CMV.
_____
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*
| 15 |
> but once it were done, it could be truly groundbreaking and help us all to understand one another and help us empathize with each other much better
Since this seems to be the crux of your argument, why do you believe this to be the case? Is there evidence that the same language specifically (and not culture) actually brings about the harmony you are suggesting? South and Central America mostly all speak the same language, and there hasn't been any groundbreaking epiphany because of it. Similarly, Western Europe seems to be living relatively harmoniously despite having different languages. Parts of the Arab world are at complete odds with each other despite speaking the same language. Korea is split. And there are plenty of other examples.
Additionally, wouldn't Lojban evolve as a language? Different regions would have different slang terms, meanings of words would change, and there would be (at least) some divergence of the language in different regions. So even if you standardized Lojban, eventually there would be at least some differences in the language.
| 36 |
ELI5 How are large sums of money transferred between nations?
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Say country A sends some billions of dollars to country B in aid or in exchange for some resource. How does the actual transfer take place? How does the wealth of country A decrease and the wealth of country B increase?
| 493 |
Nations have state banks, such as the federal reserve in the United States. The transactions happen over a wire system, like fedwire or swift. In straightforward transaction like you are supposing, it's just like any other international money transfer, only with larger amounts and between public banks controlled by the state.
| 392 |
[ST:Voyager] Where does the USS Voyager get all of those photon torpedoes from?
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When the USS Voyager first became lost there were serious supply issues. Photon torpedoes pack a whole lot more punch than a phaser bank due to their 1kg antimatter warhead, but torpedoes are in limited supply. Once the torpedoes are depleted there's no more to be obtained.
At first, Voyager's crew was very reluctant to use torpedoes. After a while they became very free in using torpedoes, to the point where torpedoes were being used on a regular basis and even became the weapon of choice.
Replicating the parts to build a torpedo housing is something I can understand. Its energy expensive but its doable. They also did this to build new shuttles. However, a torpedo housing without a warhead isn't very useful. That warhead is pure antimatter.
As Voyager is continually low on its power, where does this antimatter come from? Every kg of antimatter used to construct a new photon torpedo means one less kg for the ship's warp core.
Power reserves are often times critically low, and yet Voyager still seems to be able to fire photon torpedo spreads at any time without concern to remaining ammunition.
Where is it getting all of these torpedoes from?
| 16 |
During the first part of their return, personal logs were filled with mentions of the criticality of resupply operations. Later though, as the situation settled somewhat, the drama of needing to be constantly resupplied wore off, primarily because it became much easier to barter with civilizations other than the Kazon. Many crewmen, including the senior staff, ceased discussing these now routine supply operations in all except regular status reports.
One good trade with a warp capable civilization easily provided enough to "top off the tanks" as it were, including the storage bottles for fabricating new photon torpedoes.
| 24 |
ELI5:When people are lined up for black Friday sales days in advance, how do they do normal "life" stuff?
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Here is an example:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/21/black-friday-shoppers-lining-up-best-buy-2013_n_4316397.html
Now be it folks lining up 12 days or 5 days or 2 days early for Black Friday Sales, how do these folks shower, shave, eat, work, take care of the kids, pay their bills, go to the bathroom-especially at night when the store is closed and most of all, how is this not seen as loitering or trespassing when at other times of the year it would be seen as such?
| 39 |
Frequently they're students or others with a low opportunity cost of being there (meaning they may live with parents or others who pay bills and work infrequently or jobs that are rather more flexible than most or offer liberal leave policies).
Stores love this because it means there will be a news story that basically says look how low the prices will be on the biggest shopping day of the year, you can't buy that sort of advertising.
| 23 |
[Star Wars] How does Mace Windu's fighting style make him "walk the line" of the Dark Side?
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I've read on this sub before that his chosen fighting style is enough to make him tip over into the dark side, but he never quite does it. Why is something as trivial as that able to make any effect on his connection to the Force?
| 205 |
Lightsaber combat styles aren't simply the movements of the body and blade. There's a mental aspect to them as well.
Vapaad, the style he co-developed, is one that has two non-physical components to it - it requires the user to enjoy the fight for the fight's sake, and it also acts as a conduit for the dark side. This means that the rage that anyone feels, not just the one using Vapaad but their opponent as well, is amplified in a self-contained, continuously cycling circuit.
| 224 |
When your brain releases chemicals as response to things than happen suddenly in our environment (dopamine, adrenaline, etc), where exactly do they come from? Are they made on the spot or all stored somewhere waiting to be released?
| 27 |
Pre synaptic vesicles. Neurons both recycle and make these chemicals. But both these processes are two slow. So they have containers (vesicles) waiting right there and ready to go. That way they can release them quickly and restock later.
| 19 |
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What does ^-/- symbolize in genetics? For example Suz12^-/-
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Hi, I am reading a paper (Gene Silencing Triggers Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 Recruitment to CpG Islands Genome Wide http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2014.06.005) and I see this ^-/- symbol or ^-/+ or the like a lot in reference to specific cell lines. I don't have much of a background with genetics but we have to discuss this paper and I'd like to at least have my terminology correct. From the context I believe this means the specific gene is knocked out in that cell line, is that correct. I've tried googling the symbol but all I get is gobbleygook.
If you can help a lowly first-year grad student out I'd greatly appreciate it.
| 69 |
Your inference is correct, it's a way of designating knockout strains. In this case it's addressing the fact that diploid species have two copies of the gene in question. "+" is shorthand for wild type, so -/+ strains are heterozygous knockouts, and -/- are homozygous knockouts.
| 36 |
CMV: This isn't a race issue, it's a police brutality issue
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The problem isn't just that police are shooting too many blacks, it's that police are shooting too many people across the board. When you adjust for crime rates, blacks are not shot more than other races. Blacks commit more crimes and as a result have more police encounters which leads to more shootings. The rate of blacks shot by police won't magically fall to match the rate of whites shot by police. In order for the black rate to fall, cops need to be less violent against everyone.
Despite some trying to use "All Lives Matter" to downplay police brutality, it is what we should be saying.
| 56 |
Here's the thing.
There are lots of problems with the police (and good things too, but it's just not the point).
You think the biggest problem is police brutality. You've seen some police brutality? maybe you know people who've experienced it maybe? fair enough either way. You are anti-police brutality. That's become a part of who you are.
If someone else (we'll call them Gerald) had their house stolen by a police dept. via police corruption, they would view the worst thing about the police as being police corruption. Gerald becomes Mr. anti-police corruption.
Now. Let's imagine there's a breaking story where police brutality and corruption are both considerable factors.
You read the story and say "well look here! More police brutality!", and Gerald reads it and says "By gum! when will the corruption stop!"
Neither of you are wrong. You both just focus on what you both have been focussed on for years. There's space for both of you because the police did more than one thing wrong and you're both calling them out.
For a lot of Americans, their personal experience has made them, more than anything else, anti-police-racism.
Police racism is definitely a thing.
Those people decry police racism when it's racism and corruption.
They'll decry police racism when it's racism and incompetence.
They'll decry police racism when it's racism and brutality.
They aren't denying the brutality, it's just that for them the racism fight is the bigger fight right now.
| 23 |
CMV: Religion has a net negative impact on the world
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I’ve been thinking about the role religion plays globally, and after a lot of internal dialogue I’m cautiously confident that religion causes more harm than good.
Here is my reasoning...
Most religions claim dogmatic authority on truth, and are over-confident relative to the evidence they have to support their authority.
Meanwhile, humanity has science, an epistemological tool that consistently outperforms religious dogmatism in separating fact from fiction.
For the majority of the religious world, science takes a back seat to dogmatic religious authorities, and there is an associated opportunity cost. Instead of using the best epistemological tool humanity has ever devised for answers, they turn to spiritual leaders for answers.
For example, suppose I grew up in poverty and wanted to get out. I could read social research on what I could do to improve my situation, or I could ask my pastor/mullah/rabbi/yogi etc. I would advocate that the moral thing to do is point people towards science and research, and away from doctrine and dogmatism.
I could certainly envision a form of religion that would always defer to evidence and reason when available, thus removing the opportunity cost of adherence; however, such religions make up a minority of religious people today.
CMV!
Update: as I hash this out, I realized that I should clarify that with the advent of classical philosophy in Ancient Greece, religion lost the crown for “best humanity can do”. I would argue that philosophy is a better tool to understand the world than religion, and in a perfect world would have replaced it immediately. Because religion is dogmatic, and very reluctant to cede authority to alternative epistemologies, it became burdensome. In other words, the world would have been better off if it had gracefully bowed to philosophy way back then (and later, to science).
| 15 |
Basically every historical document we have today from before the 1500s is available because of religion. They are also responsible for most of the medical advancements into the modern Era and arguably contribute more to the progress of medical science than anyone else.
As well as every major "age of enlightenment" was caused mainly by the stability religion brought to large areas.
It might seem useless in the modern Era but religion was a basic part of life for the majority of the time civilizations were a thing.
| 23 |
ELI5: Why do people find the dark so fearful?
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Of course there can be many reasons, but is there any ultimate characteristic that is most common or something?
| 15 |
Evolution. Darkness presents increased risk. We as a species depend strongly upon vision, which is in particular very hindered by darkness. The same is not true of every other species, some of which are formidable predators, nor is it an inconvenience to risks like falls and other sources of injury.
So us being strongly active (ranging and the like) at night, for much of our evolutionary history, would face a greater danger to our survival than if we were to sit down and shaddup. Fear is a natural 'discourager.'
| 23 |
[Fallout] Has anyone attempted to leave America and seek out civilisation/better conditions in Europe?
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Of course, I get that the two issues here are communication (so people in the US Wastelands wouldn't really hear back from these explorers) due to a lack of a postal system, telephone system or Internet technology, but also an apparent lack of transportation (obviously with no working planes, limited access to Vertibirds and not much of anything else).
But surely with a lot of boats remaining watertight and within the realm of repairing to seaworthy-ness, and the presence of Vertibirds/tech capable of making vehicles capable of flight, surely there should be some people looking to explore other regions of the world which aren't (assumingly) as devastated as the American Wastelands.
| 115 |
> (assumingly) as devastated as the American Wastelands.
Europe is likely worse off than the USA. It was nuked in the Resource Wars, fought a massive Civil War, and was bombed again in the Great War. It was nuked twice over, had no stable governments before the bombs fell, was already in a state of anarchy, and had no Vault system (there were 17 actual good Vaults and some Vaults that didn't result in everyone dying).
Europe likely isn't better, it's probably worse
| 111 |
ELI5: The Christie Bridge Scandal
| 801 |
It's still sort of developing, but here's what it appears has happened:
Christie was running for reelection as governor. It was widely agreed upon that he would win easily (and he did).
While the race was going on, the mayor of a town in NJ declined to endorse Christie. Shortly thereafter, a state agency closed some lanes on a bridge in that mayor's town without giving any real advanced notice. This bridge sees a ton of traffic, and supposedly is one of, if not the single busiest bridges in the world. The resulting traffic mess was very significant, and inconvenienced and angered many people.
Recently, some emails have been discovered between Christie's staffers that basically show that they orchestrated the shutdown of these lanes on the bridge as a way of punishing that Mayor for not endorsing Christie in his reelection bid. This is, obviously, a serious misuse of power, not to mention a completely petty and vindictive and ridiculous act.
So now the big question is whether or not Christie himself had any role in the decision to do so, or knowledge of it, or what. Since the news of these emails has broke, he has apparently fired the staffer(s) in question, while denying that he had any knowledge of what happened.
This is all pretty significant political news because Christie has been widely considered one of the front-runners for the Republican nomination for the 2016 presidential election.
| 688 |
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ELI5: Why don't moons have moons?
| 36 |
So many incorrect answers here.
A sub moon has never been observed in our solar system or anywhere else. While there's nothing preventing one from existing for a short time, the system is not likely to be stable other than for some theoretical models. Saturn's moon Iapetus may be able to support a moon of its own but that's mathematical theory and Iapetus doesn't actually have a moon.
Orbital mechanics are more complicated than x orbits y orbits z. Every object affects every other object all the time. With a moon of a moon, the interactions between the sun, the planet, the moon, and the second order moon become too unstable and the system will collapse, resulting in the second order moon colliding into the planet, escaping, or getting into its own orbit.
You would be right to say that people have things orbiting the moon, those count don't they? Turns out the same problem applies here but the time scales make it irrelevant. Man made satellites orbiting our own moon have unstable orbits and have to keep themselves stable with their thrusters. Without corrections, the orbits of those satellites will decay over hundreds to thousands of years. Sounds like a long time but it's nothing compared to the billions of years that the solar system has existed. Any second order moon system that existed in our solar system has certainly decayed by now.
TL;DR: Moons of moons don't exist. Orbital mechanics is complicated and causes and sub moons to not last very long.
| 37 |
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