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[Pacific Rim]Why do the people building the wall (the one that was meant to keep the Kaiju out) have such bad working conditions? | New York Garbage men have really good salaries because the city would basically be drowning in rubbish within days if they were ever to go on Strike. I'd have thought the wall builders would have similar collective bargaining power, because if they ever decide to just stop working it'd mean there'd be vast areas of the coast that'd be left unfortified? | 19 | You say that like they're unionized and non-replaceable.
With Earth's economy bent towards defense and civilian populations fleeing coastal cities, there would be *lots* of people willing to do manual labor for little pay. Anyone that *doesn't* want to work is told to piss off. We see a little of that in the first film. | 33 |
If cardiovascular exercise is healthy for you because it gets your heart pumping, why wouldn't it be considered a "healthy" side affect of certain legal/illegal drugs the fact that they get your heart pumping (ie. cocaine, coffee, etc.)? | I know drugs legal/illegal, although sometimes fun, are not "good" for you. But an important part of cardiovascular activity is raising the heart rate and making that muscle work more actively then when it as rest. So why wouldn't whatever drug that might make your heart pump faster have some kind of "good" side effect in that it makes the muscle work harder than when it is at normal rest rate.
I'm not wondering this to at all make a justification of drugs being good for you in some way. Just a small thought I had earlier today. | 16 | Increased heart rate due to exercise is caused by muscle tissue needing more oxygen. The heart pumps harder to
send more oxygenated blood to the muscles. This increased pumping strengthens the heart muscle, which is good for heart health. Increased heart rate from chemicals like caffeine, nicotene, amphetamine, etc. is caused by vasoconstriction--the constriction of blood vessels. This causes the heart to have to pump faster in order to pump the same amount of blood, and in the long-term can cause hypertension. | 18 |
[Breaking Bad] What would have happen if Hank didn’t notice the book? | In season 5, Hank figures out that Walt was Heisenburg after finding the book Gayle gave him
If Hank didn’t go into the washroom that day (or maybe if Walt didn’t put the book in an easy spot to find), what would happen to Walt? | 16 | Two possible answers:
1. He gets out of the game and continues to launder money through the car wash and/or other means. Heisenburg was only valuable because he knew the formula to cook the meth. By the time he was trying to get out he had around $80 million in cash in the storage locker which, as Skyler points out, is more than they could ever use. He either sells or gives away the formula (eg. posting it on the dark web) to make his own knowledge of it worthless to prevent kidnapping, etc.
2. He tries answer one but the lure of being Heisenburg becomes too great and he continues to try to be a drug kingpin which either ends in his death or arrest. Walt was given more than one chance to give up the drug game and couldn't do it because of his pride. | 22 |
ELI5: Why does the uterine lining have to shed every month? | Can’t the body just use the same uterine lining till the woman gets pregnant? | 38 | In addition to /u/WSp71oTXWCZZ0ZI6's explanation, there is another leading theory out there.
Some scientists did experiments on mice by implanting an embryo elsewhere in the body. Their theory was that the uterus existed to provide a healthy, helpful environment for the fetus. What they seemed to find was the opposite - the fetus grew faster *outside* of the uterus. So it seems like the uterus exists to *control* the fetus and prevent access to the mother's body.
This kind of makes sense. The fetus has the best chance of survival if it gets more resources, but the mother has a better chance of survival if she can meter out resources and be able to spontaneously abort the fetus during lean times. This creates a kind of evolutionary arms race, where the fetuses evolve to be more aggressive and the mother's uterus evolves to contain them. The uterine lining acts as a filter, preventing pathogens from transferring mother to child, sure. But it also acts as a filter the other way, preventing the fetus from using hormones to control the mother's body.
Humans seem to have *really* aggressive fetuses. They're so aggressive that they can cause the mother to have [gestational] diabetes, because the fetus releases its own hormones causing the mother to dump excessive amounts of sugar into her blood - sugar that will eventually make its way to the baby.
To counter this, humans have *really* thick uterine linings. The blood vessels don't go all the way through the lining, either, because if they did then they would be accessible to the fetus through the placenta. The lining is so thick that it becomes too costly to maintain it *or* reabsorb it. So, after a month, the body just sloughs it off and rebuilds a new one. | 68 |
ELI5: Iran before revolution | 243 | Before the revolution Iran was ruled by Shah Reza Pahlavi. Power was clustered among a close network of the Shah's relations and friends. During the 1970s the gap between Iran's rich and poor grew. Distrust of the Shah's economic policy and resentment of his autocratic style fueled dissent against his regime.
Opposition voices rallied round Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a shia cleric living in exile in Paris. Promising social and economic reform, the ayatollah prescribed a return to traditional religious values, which struck a chord with many Iranians.
As the 1970s drew to a close, a series of large-scale, increasingly violent anti-Shah protests swept Iran. Instability, including a wave of general strikes, continued throughout the year, crippling the country's economy.
In January 1979, the Shah left Tehran for an "extended vacation". He was never to return. All over Iran statues of the Shah were torn down by Khomeini supporters.
In his final act before fleeing, the Shah appointed Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar as head of a regency council to run the country in his absence. Mr. Bakhtiar tried to stave off the growing tide of opposition. He refused to allow Ayatollah Khomeini to form a new government.
On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini made a dramatic return from exile. Political and social instability increased. Street battles raged in towns and provinces between pro-Khomeini demonstrators and police and security officers, and supporters of the imperial regime.
On February 11, tanks rumbled through the streets of Tehran amid rumours of an impending military coup. However as the day wore on it became apparent that the army had little appetite for seizing power. Revolutionaries stormed Tehran's main radio station and declared: "This is the voice of the revolution of the Iranian people!"
Prime Minister Bakhtiar resigned. Two months later Ayatollah Khomeini won a landslide victory in a national referendum. He declared an Islamic republic, and was appointed Iran's political and religious leader for life.
***TL;DR*** Iran's revolution began with a popular democracy movement and ended with the establishment of the world's first Islamic state. The revolution turned Iranian society upside down and became one of the defining moments of the 20th Century. | 99 |
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ELI5: How money is stored by banks and brokers? | For example, we know that some brokers are not allowed to lend your money to third parties (like a bank) nor invest it in any interest-rate paying note or bond.
Then how can money by held by these institutions in a virtual manner? I assume they don’t hold your money in another bank either as this would also count as lending your money. | 17 | Lloyd's of London broker here.
Brokers don't really do anything. We come up with a product, like an insurance for cat paw injury.
We then convince an "underwriter" who works for some variety of bank that there is a market for them, and then if they agree then they "underwrite the risk" which means they will reserve an amount of money to be used for claims.
Then we, the broker, sell the products to consumers like show cat owners in this case. We manage the claims, payments and so forth but we don't keep the money.
We make our money from the bank, who give us a percentage.
So basically us brokers don't store our own money. | 22 |
Can someone exaplain the new covid brain damage study? | [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5)
I'm not scientifically literate enough to full understand this study.
Can someone please tell me,
What was the average amount of brain loss?
Is this a big deal or relatively minor?
Will these effects be permanent or does the brain normally heal?
Can you assume this data would be similar in young people or would I have to wait for another study? | 3,679 | Basically they looked at 401 people who had imaging done before and after they got COVID and compared it to 384 people who did not have covid. The 3 main results they found are:
1. less brain matter in the *orbitofrontal cortex* (responsible for higher cognitive abilities like impulse control) and the *parahippocampal gyrus* (area associated with memory)
2. tissue damage in areas connected to your sense of smell
3. reduction in brain size
The overall reduction in brain size has a mean difference of 2%. Whether this is small or large is sort of subjective based on what you consider "small or large" but it does lead to cognitive decline compared to the control group. They do not know if this change is permanent, they'd need to follow the patients longer to know. Since the age of this population is 51-81, it's hard to tell whether these results extrapolate to younger populations without studying them also.
​
Edit: Since people have been asking, thought I'd also add that the paper did not look into vaccination status or severity of illness. They did account for hospitalizations, but there were only 15 hospitalizations out of the 401 covid participants. | 4,270 |
ELI5: Why can drinking too much alcohol cause you to go blind and what is the biology/chemistry behind it? Is it specifically because you absorb too much too quickly (like with moonshine/liquor/spirits), or is there something else that causes it? | 16 | Drinkable alcohol is ethanol; it's what in the beer and spirits you buy at your liquor store. Moonshine that isn't distilled correctly builds methanol which the body metabolizes into formaldehyte (which is toxic) and then further into formic acid which will harm your nervous system, beginning with the eyes (causing blindness). | 26 |
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[Star Wars] How does anyone understand what the hell R2-D2 is saying? | I mean its just beeps and boops yet people seem to know what he is saying especially in the animated Star Wars the Clone wars. Anyone know whats going on? | 20 | The only time you see anyone interact directly with his speech in conversation form, they either have a digital display translating (Naboo fighter, X-Wing fighter) or C-3PO is translating.
Think of R2-D2 as a dog. A *really smart* dog. No one, aside from C-3PO and other droids, really *know* what he's "saying", but they can guess based on the context of the situation.
"Boy, we sure are lost."
*Woof*
"Maybe we should go that way."
*Whine*
"Haha, okay, we'll just turn around instead."
Replace the woof and whine with beeps and whistles and it's basically the same as interacting with R2. Luke may have an advantage in understanding R2 since he's been around astromech droids his entire life. | 33 |
How do the energy economies of deciduous and coniferous trees different? | Deciduous trees shed and have to grow back their leaves every year but they aren't always out-competed by conifers in many latitudes where both grow. How much energy does it take a tree to re-grow its leaves? Does a pine continue to accumulate energy over the winter or is it limited by water availability? What does a tree's energy budget look like, overall? | 2,756 | Energy required to grow leaves is only part of the equation. Conifer and deciduous trees have different strategies to survive which all depend on the balance of energy, nutrients, and water.
Conifers (in general) are better at conserving nutrients and water bc not only do they keep their needles year round but they also have a waxy cuticle that doesn’t lose as much water or nutrients and have different internal structures which more efficiently retain water (tracheids). So overall conifers require less nutrients and water to grow and produce less energy bc of the small surface area of the needles. But they can photosynthesize year round. Hence why you usually see more conifers in colder or harsher growing areas.
Deciduous trees take a different approach. They make a lot of energy quickly through the high surface area leaves. But this comes with drawbacks. They usually require more nutrients and water because they lose much through their leaves (stomas) and from dropping leaves. When growing conditions change in winter they shed their leaves to keep from losing too much and repeat the cycle again. This is why you usually see deciduous trees in more favorable growing conditions. Such as warmer climates or close to streams in harsher climates.
Simply put conifers grow slow but are always making energy while deciduous grow fast as possible in the short amount of time they can then take a break. This is kind of a broad characterization of both but gets to some of the main differences. There are many examples which don’t fit this exact paradigm. | 818 |
CMV: Given what is publicly known as of today, to believe that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election is conspiratorial | Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of what we know (publicly) related to Trump/Russia:
- There are several investigations (FBI, Senate and House committees) into Russia's meddling into the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign (or any member of the Trump campaign) colluded with Russia.
- Russia more than likely [meddled in the US election](http://bit.ly/2iRbS9b) in such a way as to benefit Trump and harm Clinton (hacking DNC/John Podesta docs/emails, disseminating them in a politically damaging way, employing people to manufacture/spread fake news and other pro Trump / anti Clinton propaganda).
- Members of the Trump campaign seem to have lied about, omitted, or characterized contacts with Russian officials or the nature of contacts with Russian officials (e.g. Jeff [Sessions](http://nyti.ms/2mgQqfj) stating he never met w/ the Russians, Michael Flynn stating he never discussed sanctions w/ Russians, [Kushner](http://nyti.ms/2oKP3qH) leaving off meetings in security clearance app)
- Several members of the Trump campaign seem to have unusual relationships with and/or financial [ties to Russia](http://politi.co/2mOLWwJ) (Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone)
- Jared Kushner discussed [establishing a "back channel"](http://wapo.st/2sOkW3F) for communicating w/ Russian officials outside of the traditional diplomatic channels during the transition.
- [Trump told Comey](http://nyti.ms/2ro31gm) he "hoped" the FBI investigation into Flynn would be dropped
- Trump admitted he fired Comey with the Russian investigation on his mind.
- In trying to minimize the fallout of many of the above revelations, Trump and administration officials have often released reasoning or excuses that later turn out either be false or to be contradicted later by Trump or other administration officials.
- As of the date of Comey's firing, Trump himself was not under investigation by the FBI
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I believe I've covered most of the majorly important pieces of information we have. All of this certainly does not look good for the president and much can be seen as circumstantial evidence of collusion.
~~But my view is that, given what is known to the public as of today, there is not enough evidence to conclude that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election or directed campaign staff/advisers/surrogates to collude with Russia to influence the 2016 election, and to believe either is true is conspiratorial. CMV.~~
*Edit: It was pointed out that "and to believe either is true is conspiratorial" is circular reasoning and I have awarded a delta. I am updating the CMV statement to remove that element.*
**my view is that, given what is known to the public as of today, there is not enough evidence to conclude that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election or directed campaign staff/advisers/surrogates to collude with Russia to influence the 2016 election.**
**Definitions**
Collusion: secret agreement or cooperation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose
~~Conspiratorial: relating to or suggestive of a secret plan made by a group of people to do something unlawful or harmful.~~
**Please note:**
- I will not engage with claims that any item on the above list is "fake news" (because if you believe this, you probably already agree with my stated view).
- I recognize that it's possible Trump individual campaign staff/advisers/surrogates colluded with Russia and would not take this, necessarily, as evidence that Trump himself colluded, directed collusion, or knew about it when it happened.
- I recognize that if someone on/related to Trump's campaign colluded, it's possible he has since learned of it and is trying to hide it. But again, this is not evidence that he colluded or directed collusion.
_____
> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 686 | I would like to note that your view is a tautology. Essentially, you are saying "If you believe Trump conspired with Russia, that is conspiratorial". To collude is essentially the same thing as to conspire. The definitions you list for the terms are almost the same.
I don't believe your view can be changed in its current state, because it is circular. | 400 |
If Greece withdraws from the Euro and immediately has to introduce the Drachma, how would they determine the value? | Taking a common economics example - The banks close, the new currency is taking over the day after, so a general store need to switch currency. How does the shopkeeper know how much to price up a Mars Bar for?
I appreciate that the price it is introduced at is *very* unlikely to be the price it is at the end of that day as the markets will dictate the true value, but they have to *start* with something.
Other questions here seem to be more about the process of changing currency, whereas I'm concerned with the immediate setting of that currency rate. | 88 | I think they would immediately set it at one drachma = one Euro--so that shopkeepers would not need to reprice anything and bank accounts would have the same numbers--but this value would probably rapidly decline. | 33 |
ELI5: Could a human brain retain consciousness without a body, assuming it was still receiving adequate oxygen/blood flow? | So basically, if you could supply the brain with enough nutrients, oxygen, blood, etc., through an artificial delivery system, would the brain still be conscious/sentient? It would obviously be unable to receive any form of external stimuli, but would it still be... alive? Able to think?
Remember I'm five, thanks! | 37 | Theoretically, sure, but the mind in there would go insane pretty quick. Sensory deprivation is not good at all long term. You need some way to simulate a body and environment for the brain-in-a-jar, or at minimum give it vision and hearing and control over a computer. | 26 |
As two of the most-populated democracies, why does India's elections take place over so many weeks when Indonesia's is over in a day? (Question further elaborated in post) | (I hope this is the right sub for such academical questions, for I tried /r/Ask_Politics but was told the question was "too historical", whereas /r/AskHistorians would have consider such a question "too recent". )
India and Indonesia are currently the first and third largest democracies in the world with their massive population. (The United States is the second largest.) Both are considered "Emerging Market" economies so their infrastructure and ability to organize elections should be similar.
And to date, both countries have their elections declared free and fair by international observers, a rare feat for countries with their still developing economies and infrastructure.
India's elections take place over the period of a month. According to this [BBC article](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27233843), the rationale for this is to reduce vote-rigging by deploying the less partisan federal army to monitor the elections as the local police, appointed by local political forces, could not be trusted as they could be considered biased. Due to India's vast size, the federal army could not be in all places all the time, hence the staggered date, with different states holding elections in different times.
OTOH, Indonesia, while having only 1/10th of India's population, it's still quite sizable at 250 million (2013 figures), which are spread over many islands across the sea in Southeast Asia. According to [Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index 2015](http://www.transparency.org/cpi2015), Indonesia (88) is actually ranked *worse* than India (76) in terms of corruption, yet Indonesia has no problem wrapping up their elections in a single day and still be relatively "clean".
So my question comes down to: **Why and how did Indonesia succeed where India couldn't?** | 41 | >Indonesia, while having only 1/10th of India's population, it's still quite sizable at 250 million
Seems to be a problem with the math there. If Indonesia is at 250m, then India's population is 5x that, not 10x.
>Why and how did Indonesia succeed where India couldn't?
"Success" according to whom? You're defining it as having the election in one day. Perhaps that's not their goal, perhaps they found a system that works for them and that most people are happy with, and see no need to change? | 12 |
[Fallout 3] What do people do for a living? How do Tenpenny's inhabitants afford to stay there? | Medical practitioners still have a place in the world, as do engineers, armed security, store owners, sex workers, but what do all of the generic NPCs do? They can't all be prospectors, and most settlements (Rivet City, Megaton, Republic of Dave) don't see enough trouble for everyone to make a living as security.
As far as Tenpenny Tower goes, I understand the doctor and former slaver, but what does everyone else do? There's no Crimson Caravan or Gun Runners like in the West Coast for them to invest in, there don't seem to be any farms or ranches, there's no franchise of Super Duper Markets or Dots Diner for them to secretly own. One of them won't stop talking about communism, which baffles me since you'd think he'dve been lynched. What does *he* do for money?
I've heard fan theories that TP came from overseas, but that doesn't explain his wealth to me, where TPT gets its food, and brings in the new problem of who he convinced to accept pounds over dollars.
The only settlements that make sense to me are Paradise Falls and Rivet City. One seems self sufficient and insular, while the other probably deals slaves to foreign powers like The Pitt. I can't wrap my head around TPT or Megaton surviving. Canterbury Commons is 4 dudes with constant stop offs from caravans so its hardly even a village imo. | 40 | Tenpenny Tower is living in the past. Its a bunch of self-proclaimed wealthy people who live as people lived in the past. They're pretending everything is normal and they're living the good life in this luxury hotel. However, they're not actually wealthy.
No matter how wealthy they claim to be, look at their actual inventories, including in their hotel rooms. They're no more wealthy than a random wasteland raider. The only thing Tenpenny Tower has in abundance is delusion and denial, similar to Andale. | 51 |
[Star Wars] The Sith are always going on about revenge. Revenge for what? | 314 | The Jedi and Sith have a long history of fighting - in fact, the Sith were born out of a group of fallen Jedi.
About a thousand years prior to the rise of Palpatine, the Jedi and Sith had another major conflict which ended with the Jedi hunting down and eliminating most of the Sith with no known survivors. | 290 |
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[General Science Fiction] Why do so many technological advanced cultures and species have an inexplicable fetish for melee weapons? | The Kree, the Wakandans, the Klingons, the Imperium of Man and other WH40K races, the corporations and Dark Symmetry from Mutant Chronicles, all of the various techno-ninjas and samurai, the soldiers from the TV show Dominion, a variety of species from Star Wars, the Asgardians, and plenty of others I'm sure I'm forgetting. All have at least segments of their societies militaries who dedicate themselves to melee combat, despite the plethora of technologically superior options available to them. Why? | 108 | It's usually one or a combination of three things:
**Tradition.** Sometimes the culture celebrates melee combat and views ranged combat as something less virtuous. Klingon, Jedi, and Yautja culture all agree on this, for example.
**Technology.** Sometimes the tech makes melee combat more practical. Jedi can deflect blaster bolts. Astartes have the speed to get in range quickly and the armor to tank hits. So do Protoss Zealots.
**Special circumstances.** Sometimes the situation forces you to fall back on old-fashioned ways of killing. In *Dune*, personal shields turn into nukes when you shoot them, so you gotta resort to slow-mo knife fights. In *The Forever War* there's stasis fields that neutralize all electromagnetic radiation, so you need swords to fight in them. Sometimes the enemy is resistant to ranged weapons, like in *Highlander*, *The Matrix*, and any *Star Trek* episode involving the Borg. | 106 |
Eli5 why the storms of Jupiter separate gases into striking vortices and bands of heterogenous color, rather than mixing them into a continuous gradient? | 30 | First, there is the phenomenon of Hadley cells. These come about because the planet is round, spinning, and has one side facing the sun. These are pretty stable systems where the wind predominantly flows in a given direction. On Earth, these are responsible for Trade winds (winds strongly blowing west when a little north of the equator, then switch to blowing strongly east above \~30° latitude). On Jupiter, there are a lot more of these cells, each cell is one of the colored bands.
The vorticies that you see are the interactions of these two circulation cells.
The colors of the clouds come from two chemicals, Ammonia clouds (white) and ammonium hydrosulfide (brown)
On Jupiter, like on Earth, the atmosphere cools at higher altitudes. In the regions of the atmosphere where the air is rising, it reaches an elevation where it is cool enough that the ammonia condenses into clouds. These clouds are heavier than the air around them, but they are held up (and replinished) by the updrafts. In the regions where the air is falling, there is no ammonia to form clouds, and any ammonia clouds that are formed get pushed down to where it is warmer, so they evaporate. As a result, you can see the atmosphere below the ammonia cloud layer, which has a brownish color.
As a side note, Jupiter is big. Those tiny vorticies that you see would be continent-spanning hurricanes if they were on Earth. | 16 |
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ELI5: Magnets stick to each other, and magnets stick on refrigerators, why don't refrigerators stick to each other? | Edit: I'm surprised at how many downvotes this post got when this turned out to be a pretty deep subject. Doesn't really matter to me, though, I still got my answer. | 46 | Your hand can grab a ball, and your hand can grab another hand, but that doesn't mean that two balls can grab each other.
Magnetic attraction is a property of the magnets, not necessarily a property of what they stick to. | 22 |
Who decides stock prices? (because "supply and demand" isn't a conscious entity who can mentally make a decision or manually press a button to change the listed price of something) | So, I understand that prices (in general and in the stock market) are "determined" by supply and demand.
But, say I'm selling shirts. I have 100 shirts left and they're not selling well so supply and demand has "determined" that I need to reduce my price if I want to sell more shirts.
But "supply and demand" is neither a human being nor a robot. It is not a sentient being. It is not going to log into my POS and edit the pricing on certain products. Nor is it going to go replace my signage advertising $5 shirts with price tags and signage advertising $4 shirts. Supply and demand doesn't determine or change my prices - I do! I just make that decision based on the current supply/demand situation.
So. Stock market. NYSE. People either won't pay the price it's listed at, or they would be willing to pay more. Who changes it?? My understanding is that the price that's listed was just the price that was paid in the last transaction, but if I have to buy or sell it at that price now then how does my transaction change the price??
I know it's all made up and the points don't matter, but I also am really struggling to understand which sentient being picks the current going rate for literally anything. | 75 | In the stock market, people with the stock and willing to sell it set an **asking price**. If someone wants to buy some stock at the lowest asking price of anyone in the market, they can. People looking to buy a stock set a **bidding price**. If someone wants to sell some stock for a highest bidding price, they can. The price of every transaction is recorded and the price of the **last** transaction is what you see when you see a stocks price (or if you are looking during the day, this may be delayed 15 minutes or whatever the policy is to restrict day trading). If you are trading stocks, you see three prices, "bid", "ask", and "last". So the price is different if you want to buy or sell. And if you want to buy (or sell) a lot, you might have to find multiple people who have different asking (or bidding) prices to complete your order. The stock's **spread** is the difference between the bid and ask. Spread is lower on stocks with more sales volume. | 140 |
CMV: It is hard to take a side on the Russia-Trump debacle until Mueller's investigation is completed. | So I've been kind of pissed off at this Russia thing. I'm up-to-date on everything (in my view), and to be quite honest it seems that a conclusion can be drawn either way.
On one side, I can completely see this being blown out of proportion by the media to make Trump's presidency a living hell for him. Practically, media is the fourth branch of government and Trump did NOT make it easy for himself by attacking them so viciously. There have been reports that CNN was blowing this out of proportion for ratings by some conservative journalists. CNN has had journalists [resign over false stories](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jun/27/three-cnn-journalists-resign-over-retracted-trump-russia-story), a video of a producer at CNN saying ["it's mostly bullshit right now"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdP8TiKY8dE), among other things.
BUT on the other hand, this could absolutely result in the uncovering of some huge international scheme orchestrated by Putin to get Trump into office (with Trump knowingly accepting information from Russians to help this cause). I probably don't need to link the latest stories but there has been a lot of compromising stuff coming out lately, specifically with Donald Trump Jr.
I feel that the truth is somewhere between the two extremes here and most people will be disappointed with the outcome (though I could be wrong).
At the end of the day, we literally don't know and I hate watching /r/politics circlejerk around "TRUMP IS A COLLUDING MOTHERFUCKER" and /r/The_donald circlejerk around "But her REEEEEEE-mails". Why can't everybody just accept the fact that we really don't know anything until Mueller's investigation is finished? | 50 | It's difficult to say with water-tight epistemological certainty exactly what happened until after Mueller's investigation is completed. Hell, it will probably be hard to know exactly what happened even after the investigation is completed, given the nature of the allegations, the players involved and the fact that objective truth has never felt as out-of-reach as it has felt these past couple years.
But that's all quite different from taking a side on the "debacle."
To begin, let's define what the two main positions are:
1. The Trump Campaign and Russia worked together during the campaign in a concerted effort to undermine Hillary Clinton's election efforts and get Trump elected
2. No they didn't
There is a plethora of evidence (even if it is only circumstantial evidence) supporting the first argument that has been brought to the public's attention since before the election and which has continued to present itself. From the appointment of pro-Russia lobbyist Paul Manafort as Trump's campaign manager to our intelligence agencies' conclusions that Russia was behind the DNC hack to campaign members' frequent and furtive contacts with Russian agents to Donald Trump Jr.'s (stunning) recent e-mail disclosures, there is substantial grist for the first camp's collective mill.
The second camp, meanwhile, seems to be mostly based on a belief that because elements of the MSM are anti-Trump (which they are), their reporting is without merit (whatever the actual facts may be).
As intelligent and perceptive individuals, we have the ability to decide for ourselves what we think happened based on the facts, as presented. Mueller's investigation has a higher burden of proof threshold, which makes sense given his investigation can lead to criminal charges, but we ourselves do not need to share that same burden in order to determine what we believe happened and in order to make decisions in the future (e.g. voting against Trump). | 49 |
ELI5: What is the paradox of tolerance? | I keep hearing this a lot and I don't get it. For instance: Say an argument breaks out between two sides, when a third party points out that both sides are being incivil and they need to chill out so they can lead to a civil compromise or conclusion, they get dismissed because of this paradox.
What do they mean? | 39 | "Tolerance" as a ideal, would be to allow each side to speak their peace and have an equal chance to be heard. The idea behind this is that, by being tolerant of all beliefs, all beliefs can flourish.
However, the issue is that not all beliefs allow other beliefs to coexist, or allow tolerance. So by tolerating an intolerant belief, you are actually harming other beliefs. If one belief system espouse the destruction of followers of another belief system, those people will either be destroyed or will be silenced, either of their own volition to avoid being targeted or through harassment/censorship. This is the paradox of tolerance; by tolerating all beliefs, you may open yourself up to an intolerant belief system reducing the overall tolerance of society.
The solution to the paradox of tolerance is to not have unlimited tolerance. When a belief system advocates for the destruction of another, it loses the umbrella shield of tolerance. This puts them into a dilemma: change their views to be tolerant of others (ideal), or exit from this society (unfortunate, but maybe necessary). | 95 |
How does infrared light heat objects up? | I've been learning about the photoelectric effect in my physics class, and one of the formulas that I learnt was that the energy of a photon of light is given by E=hf. From this equation, ultraviolet light has more energy than infrared. So why is infrared able to heat up objects and ultraviolet not?
Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of an object, so wouldn't a higher energy light transfer more energy? | 39 | Higher energy photons can transfer more energy, but the question is mainly what happens with this energy in light-matter interactions.
A wide range of processes can occur when absorbing light. They can range from atomic to macromolecular scales. Light of very high energies can be used for photo-ionisation, which can have profound chemical consequences, since you can change electronic properties of molecules. A well know example is the destruction of DNA structures, which can cause cancer. There are also more complicated processes that can occur in these energy ranges.
Infrared light is important because it is in the energy range where you do not really change electronic properties of molecules. However, molecules come in many shapes and forms, such that they can rotate and vibrate. Infrared light has the right energy to trigger transition to higher vibrational energy levels. Quite literally, this type of light is perfect for making molecules shake around. These vibrations are what we associate with heat.
Let me add that energy is not the only important factor when talking about light-matter interactions. There is also the question: *With which probability will a photon be absorbed?* Even if this probability is low, enormous intensities of radiation can still cause notable effects. At some energies there are also competing processes and then one should wonder with which probability some of these processes will occur.
What /u/Rannasha explains is more or less the reverse process, where you radiate photons of different energies. Here the idea its that you use other techniques to transfer energy into your material in order to make molecules vibrate. Just as light can be absorbed to increase a molecule's vibrational energy, you can also emit radiation to go to a lower energy.
edit: Typo
| 16 |
If SARS-CoV (2002) and SARS-CoV-19 (aka COVID-19) are so similar (same family of virus, genetically similar, etc.), why did SARS infect around 8,000 while COVID-19 has already reached 1,000,000? | So, they’re both from the same family, and are similar enough that early cases of COVID-19 were assumed to be SARS-CoV instead. Why, then, despite huge criticisms in the way China handled it, SARS-CoV was limited to around 8,000 cases while COVID-19 has reached 1 million cases and shows no sign of stopping? Is it the virus itself, the way it has been dealt with, a combination of the two, or something else entirely?
EDIT! I’m an idiot. I meant SARS-CoV-2, not SARS-CoV-19. Don’t worry, there haven’t been 17 of the things that have slipped by unnoticed. | 14,237 | SARS-CoV-2 is worse than SARS-CoV because, paradoxically, it’s not as bad. SARS tended to have a faster disease onset and be more severe, so you had far fewer infectious people with mild or no symptoms walking around spreading the disease. In fact much of SARS spread was in hospitals, rather than on the street. That made it relatively simple to identify and isolate potential spreaders. SARS-CoV-2, on the other hand, has many people spreading it who are not sick and who don’t isolate.
Even so, SARS was just barely controlled. People are complacent today, but SARS came much closer to being a pandemic than most people realize. | 11,355 |
If Hubble can make photos of galaxys 13.2ly away, is it ever gonna be possible to look back 13.8ly away and 'see' the big bang? | And for all I know, there was nothing before the big bang, so if we can look further than 13.8ly, we won't see anything right? | 14,138 | The early universe is opaque, so there's a limit to how far you can see before you hit this opaque region. The furthest we can see is back to the point in time when the universe got cool enough and thin enough that it transitioned from opaque to transparent. We're looking back in time with distance, so what we see is a sort of wall behind everything, a kind of *background* to the universe.
In this background we see the surface of the very hot gas that our portion of the universe evolved from. Over time, the light from this background has been redshifted down to microwaves. So this is the *cosmic microwave background*, and we have lots of maps of it.
One thing to keep in mind is that telescopes don't see "far", they're just good at capturing lots of light to see dim things, and at magnifying things to see things at higher resolution. So a low resolution telescope will still get the light from lots of distant galaxies, it just won't resolve them well enough to see them as individual galaxies - they'll just all get muddled up together. And a small telescope just won't capture many photons from these galaxies at all.
But the cosmic microwave background comes from all directions, so it's not too hard to detect. Newer instruments have just been able to map it in higher precision. | 7,185 |
What happens to light when it is absorbed? | Certain lights are reflected and absorbed.
So what happens to light that is absorbed? | 41 | If light hits an electron, the incident photon is absorbed and its energy transfered to the kinetic energy of the electron. With a higher kinetic energy, the electron enters an excited state, moving to a higher energy orbital.
The electron can then emit another photon and "jump back down", and the emitted wavelength of light will be whatever's allowed for the allowed transitions for that electron. | 10 |
How large a colony must be in order to be genetically diverse? | Operating on a example - how many people would be required for a colony to avoid inbreeding?
Or to rephrase - how many generations must pass so offspring from the same n-grandfather could mate without consequences? | 15 | The homo-sapien population is theorized to have dropped from around 21,000 to around 618 breeding individuals around 195,000 years ago. Due to the Long glacial stage known as Marine Isotope Stage 6 (MIS6) that lasted until roughly 123,000 years ago. This explains the lack of genetic diversity in modern humans.
They managed to produce 7.2 billion of us, with only 618 individuals. | 12 |
[Arrow] What skills besides assassination does the League of Assassins teach? Would the League of Assassins make me a good DJ? | I've been thinking about spinning, but the general quality of DJs in Starling City seems to be pretty low. I once heard that there was this DJ who was better than everyone else, but it turned out he was an agent of the League of Assassins.
I'm wondering, was he a good DJ before being recruited or did the League of Assassins teach him to spin? Do you think they would teach me? I'm not that interested in the assassination part, but I'm willing to make some sacrifices to learn how to drop a mad beat. Are there any other vocations that the league of assassins might train? | 49 | I believe all the training provided by the League is designed to further their designs so unfortunately you will need to become a master assassin but if you can convince them that you becoming a master DJ will help achieve what they want they'll probably allow it.
They do seem to be fairly relaxed during their non-training time though (they do have a hot tub) so it could be something you could learn in your personal time if another assassin possesses that skill. | 16 |
[Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood] If Pride happened to absorb Greed like he said he could, what benefits could that grant him? | Considering Pride's shadows are an extension of his body, would Greed's ultimate shield benefit Pride's childlike form, or would Pride's shadows be able to transform into an indestructible carbon-based substance? | 16 | It's not clear that there would be any benefit to Pride, other than a small stroke to the ego.
Pride, despite his small stature, is the de facto leader of Homonculus by virtue of his immense martial strength and power. This has to be somewhat embarrassing for Greed, who is very clear about not taking orders from anyone but himself, especially when the person giving out orders appears to be a child. When Pride threatens to absorb him, Greed backs off immediately because he knows that Pride could wipe him out in an instant. This shows a deference to Pride that the other homunculus seem to show as well.
When a Homonculus "dies" their powers can be reallocated to another physical vessel (e.g. the first body that contained Greed gave way for Greed to inhabit Ling's). This has got to be embarassing for Greed, as greedy people generally do not like having things taken from them, especially super powers. Pride knows this, and knows that he could kill Greed in an instant, so absorbing Greed is less of an injury and more of an insult.
Alternatively, we know that Greed's ultimate shield works by manipulating physical matter. It's not clear what Pride's shadows are, but they seem keen enough without needing the additional fortification of Greed's ultimate shield. A neat application would be deploying the shield between a light souce and Pride, creating the shadows necessary for him to use his powers. | 10 |
ELI5: How did Native Americans of the early 1700s cope with tornados? | 15 | Well there's tons of different Native American/Pre Colonization tribes. They all kinda viewed them different. In some parts they thought of it as evil, but a lot of tribes actually thought they could reason with the tornados, seeing them as spirits and healing. Lot's of tribes people also built communities that could easily be destroyed and rebuilt, so it probably wasn't as devastating for them when disasters hit. There is a lot of missing history though. | 11 |
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ELI5: How can grocery stores get ripe fruits of all types every single week of the year? | I understand that fruit can get sent by air all the way from Chile to the United States when it is winter in the U.S. But even within the Northern or Southern hemisphere, it seems that harvest season is going to vary by latitude. So, the regions in which cherries, or apples, or tomatoes, etc. are ready for picking will continuously vary every week. How can grocery store suppliers constantly vary where they source their ripe fruit every single week of the year? How can they have relationships with so many farmers in so many regions and even countries? Is there a website farmers can use to tell suppliers all over the world when their fruits are ripe? | 29 | About apples specifically, they're harvested when they're in season, before they're actually ripe, then kept in cold storage for most of the year and released in batches. The low-oxygen, cold warehouse keeps them from ripening until they're ready to be sold. | 43 |
ELI5: What's worse? The fact that you're inhaling hot, smoke into your lungs? Or the fact that you're inhaling actual cigarette ingredients (nicotine, tar, etc.) into your lungs? | What increases ones chance of getting cancer and other respiratory complications? Is it just smoking anything e.g. normal paper, crack, weed, etc.? Or is it specifically smoking cigarette ingredients? If someone smoked anything else other than cigarettes, as much as cigarette smokers smoke cigarettes, would their likelihood to getting cancer be the same as that of a cigarette smoker? | 53 | Cigarettes are worse for your lungs than regular paper, yes. Not that paper is OK to smoke - please don't smoke paper. But cigarettes are worse.
Your entire airway, from your nostrils down into your lungs, is coated in mucus. That sounds gross, but it's a good thing! The mucus protects your lungs by acting like flypaper - any particles floating around in the air get stuck to it before they can reach the delicate membranes inside your lungs. Dust, pollen, bacteria, and yes, smoke, all get filtered out by the mucus. Most of it, anyway. If there's enough smoke, then some still reaches the lungs and damages them. That's why smoking anything, even just paper, is bad.
Just like changing the filter on an air purifier, the mucus has to be "changed out" frequently. Your body does this with little hairlike structures called *cilia*. The cilia wave back and forth, constantly pushing the mucus (and anything caught in it) to your throat. From there it drops into your stomach to be destroyed, and new mucus is secreted to replace it. Your airway thus has a constant "conveyor belt" of mucus clearing out all the crap that you inhale.
Here's the "tobacco is worse" part: *nicotine paralyzes the cilia*. So not only are you intentionally inhaling smoke, thereby saturating and using up all your protective mucus, but you're shutting down the conveyor belt to replace that mucus! Your body can't clear out your airways anymore, making your lungs much more vulnerable to not only all the smoke you're inhaling, but anything else that could damage them, too.
If you talk to people who've quit smoking, they all tell the story of about two weeks after their last cigarette, they start coughing up this nasty black goo for a few days. That's the "conveyor belt" starting back up again - their body is finally clearing out the old layer of mucus that's been sitting there, marinating in cigarette smoke, for years. | 106 |
ELI5: How can flash memory retain its data without power? Is it possible for it to lose data over extended period of time? | 64 | Well, the thing about normal memory like the RAM in your computer is that information is stored based on whether electricity is flowing through the transistors within the memory chip. When electricity stops flowing through the transistors, they all reset to a default state and whatever was stored beforehand is lost.
Flash memory on the other hand is a type of electronically erasable programmable read only memory (EEPROM). It's sort of like a combination of RAM and ROM due to its ability to retain information without electricity as well as having the information stored on it be erasable and rewritten. Flash memory utilizes a "dam" system that is able to store residual electrons from electrical current regardless of whether there is electricity running through it or not.
There are 4 main parts to a flash transistor: a source, a drain, two gates called the floating gate and control gate, and an insulating material dividing the other 3 parts. They are in a o8o/inverted T shape, with the lower half being the source and the drain and the upper extension being the gates, with the control gate above the floating gate. The gates are surrounded by oxide layers through which current normally cannot pass through.
Negatively charged electrons are present at the source (the originating point of the electrical current) and the drain (the draining point of the electrical current) due to the type of silicon used to make these parts. However, they cannot flow naturally because of the electron deficient insulating material between the source and the drain. When you apply a positive voltage to the electrical contacts at the drain and the gates (the top and one side of the inverted T), the negatively charged electrons are attracted to the positive charge and get pulled to the drain. Some electrons also get pulled up into the floating gate through the oxide layers through a process known as quantum tunneling. Electrons that have gone into the floating gate remain there. These electrons are unable to escape the oxide layers, and will remain in the floating gate indefinitely. Flash transistors with stored electrons are akin to RAM transistors with current flowing through them. To remove the electrons, a negative voltage is applied to the electrical contact above the floating gate, which causes electrons to be repelled away from the floating gate downwards into the drain, through the same quantum tunneling process. This lack of electrons is then similar to a RAM transistor without current applied.
Flash memory has a certain number of program/erase cycles before it begins to lose its integrity. Degradation mostly occurs within the oxide layers that separate the gates. When the oxide begins to break down with repeated usage, it no longer is able to consistently prevent the flow of electrons in and out of the floating gate. Since the transistor relies on the electrons being unable to escape to store information, this causes the flash memory to become unreliable. It may still work, but may not work consistently or may lose information as a result. | 39 |
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What makes some materials oven-safe but not microwave-safe or vice versa? | 177 | The dielectric properties of the material.
In oven safe, the material has to take external heating, which will be a function of its heat transfer capacity ie if you heat it too fast, one area will expand too quickly, stressing the material and causing the break.
For microwave safe, the dielectric properties describe how well the material absorbs the energy, or how microwave transparent it is. Ideally, you'd want a microwave transparent material so that only the food (particularly the water) absorbs the energy therefore heating/cooking the food. If the bowl has a high dielectric constant, then the bowl will heat, causing the bowl to crack or be at a temperature much higher than the food being cooked. | 67 |
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How does brushing your teeth clean your mouth, and has the invention of toothbrushes affected bacterial evolution? | 1,666 | Toothbrushes mechanically helps in cleaning teeth by scrubbing off the dental pellicle layer that has been invaded with bacteria and thus preventing the formation of plaque and its accumulation, getting rid of food particles that remain on the tooth surface that might not be visible to the naked eye. Modern day brushes focus more on being less invasive towards the periodontal tissue (mainly the gums) and being more reliable in consideration to the time and amount of force that the consumer applies during their brushing sessions. Also back then when toothbrushes were not around, people often used alternative ways to brush their teeth (see miswak or teeth cleaning twigs).
In relation to toothpastes and saliva they help in regulating the pH of the mouth that occurs due to by products of carbohydrates fermintation by the bacteria in the mouth, acidic pH increases the rate of demineralization of the dental enamel and limits the mineralization of the dental enamel. Also toothpastes tend to have prophylactic components that aid in the exchange of minerals between the tooth and the oral cavity and some have anti-microbial and others with periodontal-friendly components, but mainly saliva plays an important role in maintaining the oral balance and dictating its hygiene. | 652 |
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ELI5: How is Pi programmed into calculators? | 12,114 | They don't need to put in the whole number. They just have to put it in to the point where the next digit won't change much at all. After the tenth digit of pi for example not much will change in your calculation. | 9,403 |
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[Metroid] Why does Samus seem to start every new mission without any of her suits upgrades? Wouldn't it be smart to keep all the beam weapons, visor upgrades, and other suit upgrades she found on her previous missions? | 78 | She does keep her weapons at the start of new missions. She just has a very bad habit of getting hit so hard at the start of each mission that everything breaks and she has to find artifacts to repair everything. She's also lost her suit a couple of times and has had to have it rebuilt in a very short space of time because of extreme damage (Prime 3 and Fusion). | 66 |
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Will we ever know if Pi is a "normal" or "non-normal" irrational number? Is it within the realm of possibility that we will ever find out? | According to what I've heard, a "normal" irrational number is one whose digits contain every conceivable combination of numbers (including, for example, the social security numbers of everyone who has ever had an SSID in alphabetical order), while a "non-normal" irrational number is one whose digits are infinite but do not contain every possible combination of numbers.
So I guess I have two questions:
1) Will we ever know which of these categories Pi falls under
and
2) How is it possible to have an infinite number of non-repeating numbers without any patterns that **doesn't eventually run through every possible numeral combination?**
Edit: thank you for all the awesome answers! I now totally understand question #2 and **would like to propose another question** for anyone who sees this after this edit:
What is an example of a normal irrational number and **how can we prove that a number is normal?** (Is a normal number defined as any irrational number that contains all the digits of its respective base an infinite number of times...or...?) | 4,083 | Not only do normal numbers contain every possible finite combination of digits, they contain each possibility infinitely many times.
The way that this is possible is that you do it by combination-length. There are only 10^(N) different possible combinations of digits of length N. So in a normal number, you can expect there to be one copy of any particular sequence of N digits in every N\*10^(N) digits of a number. You can try to convince yourself that
* 0.1234567891011121314151617181920212223242526...
is normal because it does this for every integer N.
We will almost surely prove that pi is normal or not sometime in the future. Though it is hard to prove things like this for numbers like pi, because it arises purely from geometry and so figuring out numerical things about it is hard. Generally, pi, as a number, is a very typical and boring. Almost every number is irrational, transcendental, normal etc, and the reason why we thought pi was these things is because pi should be like every other number. But accessing the arithmetic content of the number pi is hard to do, and so proving that pi is a boring ol' number is hard and interesting. Same goes for e and other numbers arising from other topics. Though, there are formulas for pi that are promising, as they can allow you to compute digits (which are part of the arithmetic part of pi) efficiently and directly. Not enough to prove that pi is normal, but it suggests that this information is not impossibly hard to obtain. | 1,413 |
What would it take for research publications to be free from publishers? | Inspired by some recent discussions here, it seems like an overall consensus that publishers explore research work in a pretty unsatisfactory way. Charging exorbitant fees, using our work for their profits, etc.
So why do academics perpetuate this cycle, if they all agree that it's not the way it should be? Why be a reviewer for a journal and work for free? Why submit your work for publishers to profit? I understand academia requires the prestige that comes from publishing in such journals, and we do it to progress our careers...but once you become professors, or already established in your fields, why keep enduring these practices if you don't agree with them?
Why not make a change, and why aren't there any realistic alternatives for a truly fair publishing space? | 39 | What is needed/wanted is a way to evaluate the quality and impact of research. There are very few people in the world that can truly understand the importance of most studies. So, journal prestige has become the surrogate measure for quality and significance of one's work. To be free from journals, there needs to be a different way to evaluate quality and impact, and realistically it needs to be relatively quick and easy (or nobody will adopt it). Some options that get mentioned are h-index and total citations. These are probably better, but they are far from perfect.
As a side note, convincing people that your work is high quality and high impact doesn't stop being important when you get tenure/established - you still need grants/money and you still need to recruit good students/PDs (who want papers in those journals so they can compete for good postions later). Go a few years without those high profile papers, and the money and students disappear. You're never "safe." | 34 |
[Blade; movies] Why don't the vampires wear sunscreen when fighting the reapers? | I just saw the first 2 movies, and am not familiar with the comics, so hopefully you will be able to shed some light on something that's been bugging me almost the whole time while watching part 2.
In the first movie, Frost comes outside during the day wearing sunscreen. In the second movie, the 'good' vampires go out and battle the reapers, but get their asses kicked themselves because of the UV-bombs and getting in the sun. Why wouldn't they just use sunscreen, preferably waterproof one?
The only things I can come up with breach the fourth wall... | 21 | Frost was only able to pull off his trick because he was turned and because he wasn't exerting himself much.
Pureblood vampires are more sensitive to sunlight than turned vampires. This is most clear when Frost and his minions kidnap Dragonetti (the chief vampire) and roast him with an ocean sunrise.
All the members of the Blood Pack (those who were trained to fight Blade but then allied with him against the reaper strain) were purebloods and therefore wouldn't have gained much from sunscreen anyway.
Further, remember that when Frost used sunscreen he was just standing in a park. As soon as he got physical (throwing a child into traffic), he fled. If he'd gotten into a fight, his constant motion would have inevitably made his "mascara" run even faster.
The Blood Pack didn't try fighting the reapers during the daytime until their second encounter, which put them in the sewer. Not only would they be too physically active to expect the sunscreen to last, but it would rapidly come off with the vapor and water anyway. Along with making them even more detectable through smell, it simply wasn't worth it. | 15 |
Why have Gold/Silver values not risen with Inflation? | We've all heard inflation, inflation, inflation for the last two years.
Why are gold and silver prices relatively flat since then?
Silver spot price for example has been fluctuating between 24 and 28 for the last two years with absolutely no upward trend.
How/why is it not slowly valuating with inflation? Isn't this econ 101 stuff?
Thanks for reading. | 18 | Inflation is an aggregate. Individual goods and services all go up and down in price for their own reasons/their respective supply and demand. In fact it's quite rare that individual goods/services go up exactly as inflation does. | 22 |
ELI5: How do liquids stay homogeneous and not have settling issues, such as Coke or milk? | 157 | It's the difference between dissolving and making a suspension, when something dissolves into a liquid it becomes part of the liquid, think sugar in water, no matter how long you leave it that sugar stays evenly divided over the liquid. A suspension is tiny particles hovering in a liquid. If you give it enough time it will settle. Like the kind of apple juice that still has apple in it. | 136 |
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[Dexter] Dex says he has no emotions. Except, he clearly does. He gets scared, angry, happy, remorseful, excited, nervous. What am I missing here? | It doesn't appear that this is something Dex grew into either. Teenage Dex is a seething mess of complex emotions - he regrets hurting his sister's feelings, he gets angry at his bully, he gets nervous that he's disappointed his father. And this before he supposedly learned how to "fake it". Even 20 year old Dex committing his first kill is a nervous and worried wreck, both from his father's impending death and from the stress of committing the kill. And Dex's private monologue is a cornucopia of emotional reactions, including sexual ones.
Far as I can tell, the only emotion he lacks is the ability to get freaked out by screams of terror. Is Dex just bullshitting himself, and the audience by extension? | 53 | Dexter is a psychopath, or at least on the spectrum of what is now known as "Antisocial personality disorder" which Incorporated socio and psychopathy. He *has* emotions, but they're atypical and what he actually lacks is empathy and compassion. However, Dexter is probably not a "natural" psychopath in that his condition was the result of psychological trauma at an early age, e.g. witnessing the brutal murder of his mother. This means that his lack of compassion and empathy may be conditional, and seems to be so since he does seem to have these feelings for his family and for other victims, though much of that may just be moral justification for his compulsion for violence.
TL;DR: Dexter has feelings, but since he is callous, compulsive and selfish he has to work out intellectually how to act in order to appear normal. | 53 |
[Halloween III: Season Of The Witch] What was the societal fallout of the Silver Shamrock commercial? | At the end of the movie, Challis is too late to stop the commercial from airing on channel 3.
Presumably, unless he had extremely good luck, this means that thousands of children died horribly on October 31, 1982, all across the country.
What happened after this event? Do people still celebrate Halloween? Did America blame the Russians? Are commercials now banned from TV? | 37 | The mass murder was probably just the start. We don't know what the ritual was supposed to achieve, but it was probably a big deal. Society may have more important problems than trying to assign blame, like dealing with invasions of fae creatures or combating literal wizards.
And on top of that, androids exist now. | 11 |
ELI5: If we use degrees ( ⁰ ) to measure angles, why do we also use degrees as a measurement of temperature? | 34 | The most basic meaning of "degree" is "An individual step, or stage, in any process or scale of values."
There are 360 degrees in a circle because there are 360 individual steps. (You can fine-tune a degree using arcminutes (1/60th of a degree) or arcseconds (1/60th of an arcminute, or 1/3600th of a degree).
Similarly, there are steps in temperature. 1 degree Celsius is ever so slightly cooler than 2 degrees Celsius. | 57 |
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CMV: 'Jack of all trades, master of none' actually makes you worse at your profession | I'm a programmer who's interested in filmmaking. Far from being a polymath, I know, but I have been advised against it by people, reciting the old reliable "Jack of all trades, master of none" routine. I don't understand. Would tell polymaths such as Plato, Pythagoras, Newton, Da Vinci, and even modern ones such as James Cameron this? Some people believe in this so much that they limit themselves to their field, which might be extremely specialized. For example, would you trust a endocrinologist who doesn't know anything about psychiatry? All the diabetics go to him and he treats them like crap because "I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm an endocrinologist!" I had such doctor and I ditched him for a better one. That's not all. My new endocrinologist knows beyond medicine. He knows about psychology, philosophy, and even mathematics. That's what I like in my doctor: a polymath. Not someone like the last one who didn't know shit beyond his profession, and one might think this would have made him better at it... No, it made him worse at it.
​
I think anyone who coined the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" can go fuck himself. can you change my view? | 174 | The problem with your argument is that you used the word "profession." If you are running a new startup or working in a newly invented field, you want to be a jack of all trades. You never know what skill set you might need next. But if you are working in an old field with very clearly defined and refined needs, it's better to specialize in that thing.
For example, doctors need to combine advanced scientific knowledge with humanist empathy. If they only have half that skillset, they aren't a good doctor. But they don't become a better doctor with other unrelated skills.
Endocrinologists are taught and tested on psychiatry in medical school. They also have to have an understanding of psychology, philosophy, and mathematics just to get into medical school. All of those things you describe are part of their required skill sets.
On the other hand, a polymath physician learns things that are completely unrelated. For example, being good at stamp collecting, long distance running, picking profitable stocks to invest in, etc. are all things that a polymath doctor might pick up. But they aren't something that would make them better at their profession (i.e., practicing medicine). | 112 |
[Modern day D&D] I am a Kobold. In the past, my people were persecuted as monsters. Their murderers as heroes. Why did it take so long for humanity to accept that those who do not appear like humans were people too? | For centuries.. heck thousands of years parties of 'adventurers' were able to band together and go out and kill other peoples and be praised for it.
Textbooks and history classes say it was a 'sign of the times' and we can't truly blame them as it was just the way it was. It wasn't until around the 19th century that we were seen as anything more than 'monsters'. These days we have equal rights and are protected by laws but this wasn't always the case.
It just seems so crazy to me that this could be the case for thousands of years with no change. Was the advancement of technology truly such a different thing than the magic we have always had? I mean, there is the old saying that 'sufficiently advanced technology will appear no different from magic'. Please help me understand! I have a paper due in 2 weeks. | 20 | Humans killed other humans for thousands of years too. For exactly the same reasons as humans killed kobolds. And you know what? Your kobold ancestors killed humans for the exact same reason that humans killed kobolds for thousands of years.
Have not read the histories of your people? It's as filled with stories of kobolds who slew humans by the thousands in 'their open sky dens.' But since those dark ages, kobolds have been in the forefront of technological and even magical progress, beating out other species in quite a few ways. | 29 |
Can a venomous animal die if it bites itself? | I know that venomous animals can eat their own venom (since their prey is presumably full of it) but what happens if, say, a snake bites itself by mistake? Would it be immune to its own venom? | 75 | This depends on whether the snake is immune to its own venom or not. Usually, venomous snakes have certain level of immunity to their own venom. There are those that have little or no immunity. They will die if they inject themselves with venom. | 48 |
ELI5 what determines the shape of popcorn? | I know that all popcorn is unique, but there are several similar shapes that keep reoccurring. What actually determines this? | 26 | Basically there's an initial failure point in each kernel, and where that is determines the general shape.
Make a fist and imagine holding your hand above a flame.
If you're holding it so that your pinkie finger is closer to the flame than your pointer, the heat will make the pinkie "jump" before the other fingers. But if you're holding it so that all four knuckles are evenly exposed to the heat, they'll all get hot and jump at the same time.
That's one aspect - how evenly the kernal is heated.
Next, imagine your holding the fist with knuckles down, but you're wearing a silicon sheath on your pointer finger. That finger won't fall suggest to the heat as quickly so won't jump as soon as the others.
That's the second aspect - how even the kernel's skin is.
Edit: typo | 20 |
ELI5:What's happening in my stomach that makes it "rumble" when I'm hungry and why does it do that? | 25 | The digestive system is one long muscular tube going from the mouth to the anus. It uses a system of muscular contractions, called peristalsis, to move and break down food in the tube. Sometimes gasses get trapped among the little bits of food and digestive juices. During peristalsis, it's the movement of these air pockets that creates the rumbling noise. When you're hungry, your body creates hormones which trigger peristalsis. The vibrations of your empty stomach make you hungry and the peristalsis continues moving gasses through your digestive tract, thus creating the rumbling. | 32 |
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ELI5: How can living organisms be alive if they are composed of non living atoms? | 26 | Life isn't really some intrinsic quality like that. Life is more of a series of processes. If those processes are occurring, then the material is alive.
Think of a bundle of sticks. It can undergo the process of burning and be on fire, but it isn't necessarily on fire. The atoms themselves are the same either way, but only in some cases are they undergoing the process of burning. | 49 |
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Why e in Euler's Identity (e^(i*pi) +1 = 0)? | I have never really understood Euler's Identity intuitively, until I stumbled upon [this diagram](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_beauty#Beauty_in_results) on Wikipedia (the one on the right side). It makes a lot of sense to me.
The diagram uses e^0 to start at 1. However, can't you use any real number to start at the same place? Why doesn't 2^i*pi +1 = 0 if using 2^0 would result in an identical diagram? | 25 | f(x) = e^x is special because it is its own derivative. One way to look at e^(i*pi) is through the Taylor expansions,
e^x = 1 + x^1 /1! + x^2 /2! + x^3 /3! ...
cos(x) = 1 - x^2 /2! + x^4 /4! - x^6 /6! ...
sin(x) = x - x^3 /3! + x^5 /5! - x^7 /7! ...
The reason these formulas are so nice is due to e's self-derivative nature. From these formulas you can work out e^ix = cos(x) + i sin(x), which describes a unit circle.
f(x)=2^x leaves something behind in the derivative, namely f'(x) = 2^x ln 2, so it isn't "nice" like e^x . | 33 |
ELI5: why do you always get a distinct feeling/smell/ thing when you get struck in the nose or face? | 20 | I don't think the exact cause is known, but shocks to the brain - which could come through a blow to your face - can produce these odd (metallic?) taste sensations. They're common in concussions. Presumably a taste center in the brain is being knocked and playing up. You should get any potential concussion checked out in case there's a serious injury. | 12 |
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Why is the actual ratio of base pairs in DNA (C and G, A and T) not 1:1? | According to Chargaff's rules, shouldn't the ratio of base pairs be the same? On the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargaff's_rules), the proportion of bases in humans is A:29.3 G:20.7 C:20.0 T:30.0. There is 0.7% of guanosine that seems to be unpaired with cytosine. | 79 | Yes, the ratio of base pairs are the same. The Wikipedia page is reporting what Chargaff himself measured in the 40s and 50s using chromotography, which is subject to experimental error (and in fact, many researchers discounted Chargaff's results entirely as being a consequence of error).
In release 36.2 of the human reference genome, the proportion of nucleotides is A = 29.53%, G = 20.46%, C = 20.44% and T = 29.57% (source = "A Short Guide to the Human Genome" by Steward Scherer, p9). The human reference is reported for the forward strand; the reverse strand would have the complement of these nucleotides (according to Chargaff's first rule). | 29 |
How is it that the younger you are, the easier it is to learn language? What happens to our brains as we get older that makes learning language more difficult? | 25 | There are a lot of people that don't believe this to be true. Children seemingly learn faster because of immersion. Adults can read, infer and reason. Children only mimic. Neuroplasticity is definitely a factor, but its not the end all be all. Adults also learn better and retain what they ingest, while a lot of kids if taken out of their environment will forget as quickly as they learned. If you are worried you won't be successful at learning a language fear not. Go forth and learn and have fun. Another thing kids don't have a problem doing | 10 |
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[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure] Do Stands have their own language separate from their user and can Stands be separated from their user? | Like a language that Stands separated from their user can speak to each other in that the user won't understand, and is it possible for a Stand to become a separate entity from their user entirely? Sort of like a Requiem but *entirely* separate, not still attached in some way | 16 | All stands are relatively unquine. Some are just extra abilities, others are punch ghosts, other's take form but aren't fighting... while two sapient stands could probably communicate, it's gonna be a rare meeting. | 15 |
cmv: Most cops in uniforms are not that different from LARPERS. | Obviously, not all of them, but after the recent episode in Uvalde and the release of cams, my cousin in middle school started referring to the men in uniform as larpers as they strutted around looking big and mean outside the school and doing nothing inside the hallways. It got me to thinking about the whole stolen valor situation as well. It's easy to be a cop on pleasant traffic stops, DUI, low-stress situation. It's not easy to be a cop in high-stress situation. And when you can't handle the high-stress situation, or rather, become totally immobilized in these situations, you are basically a wannabe tough guy living out some weird fantasy.
I used to want to be a cop from the age of 2 up until the age of 14. It was cool to want to be a cop and have a gun and be in situational power as a kid because that was "kid fantasy." But once I actually researched the roles of cops and the shit that they potentially might have to face, such as death, I realized I didn't have it in me to put my life at risk to protect others. It took me an hour of teenage thinking to make that decision.
So there you have it. I became an accountant, instead. Off-topic, I guess I am larping, too, because I'm not that good at math. | 212 | A big thing about LARP is consent and happiness. You don’t continue when someone withdraws consent / wants to stop. You are playing a **team** game where everyone involved is working together even the “enemy” to have overal fun and happiness for everyone.
I think its pretty clear the police you are talking about don’t do that. They are just bullies. Lets not talk down LARPers wth those cops. | 133 |
[DOOM] Seraphim exist, so Heaven probably does too. What's it like compared to Hell? | 78 | Head-canon:
Heaven is a light, golden, breathtakingly beautiful, totalitarian dimension where souls are forced to worship endlessly to fuel the seraphim war machine.
The DOOM Marine was created by the collective subconscious of mankind; millennia of stories and war preparing us. Because deep inside, where we all stuff truths we don't want to look too closely at, we have known that in order to truly be free and control our own destiny, we must defeat not just Hell, but Heaven as well. | 80 |
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[General Fiction] In a world of “peak” humans/superhumans, would traditional martial arts work better than modern ones? | These humans are always so strong that bodyweight doesn’t really play a factor in a lot of things. For example, a fictional peak human could effortlessly straight arm raise 200+ lbs with a single arm. They could easily throw a whole human simply by grabbing them. However, their durability doesn’t tend to scale as high as their strength since 2 peak humans can hurt each other with unorthodox strikes.
That being said, could the flashy style of traditional martial arts be useful in those universes, where fitness levels relative to size don’t really matter? | 41 | >flashy style of traditional martial arts
Flashiness doesn't work not merely because of weight classes, but because jumping and dancing around is a waste of energy compared to solid fundamentals. Scaling up the fighters doesn't change anything because the "modern" fighter will take the practical, efficient route to victory.
Also, the public perception of flashy "ancient" martial arts is a modern fabrication - traditional martial arts practiced for actual combat and warfare were much more grounded and practical than commonly believed. You're probably thinking of "Traditional arts" *practiced in modern times*, which are akin to rehearsed kata rather than self-defense. | 41 |
ELI5: How do bike gears change the amount of work you do but stay the same speed? | 30 | Changing gears doesn't change the amount of work you need to do. It changes the amount of force you need to apply to the pedals, but the trade-off is that you need to make more rotations to go the same speed. For instance, perhaps one gear has you making one revolution per second with a force of 100N, but lower gear might have you make 1.5 revolutions per second with a force of 67N, and a higher gear might have you make half a revolution per second, but will require a force of 200N.
Since work is the force multiplied by the distance, it's always the same, different gears just allow a different ratio of force to distance. | 28 |
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[DC] Batman has certainly been sued hundreds of times, but I imagine the court cases don't go anywhere because no one can serve the lawsuit on him. What tips do you have for highly motivated process server to deliver a lawsuit to Batman? | I am sure the Batman has been sued hundreds of times by all of the people who he brutalizes, but before a lawsuit can go anywhere a copy of the lawsuit has to be delivered to the person being sued. Given the fact that he is a vigilante wearing a mask this presents some problems.
What tips would you offer to a normal process server trying to deliver court papers to Batman?
What about one who has a ludicrous budget and flexible morals? | 40 | Sue Gotham City PD for tacitly allowing a masked vigilante assault countless people without public oversight. It would be extremely difficult to bring anything against batman himself without actually catching and unmasking him | 48 |
CMV: Popular educational Youtube channels like VSauce, SciShow and MinutePhysics cause more harm than good | These channels are often advertised as "better" alternatives to TV, especially here on reddit, and it bothers me because I really don't think that they can enrich your life in any way and might even cause people to find themselfs on [Mount stupid](http://blogs-images.forbes.com/chrisbarth/files/2011/12/Mount-Stupid.gif).
Let's use this MinutePhysics video to illustrate my point: [What is Quantum Tunneling?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTodS8hkSDg).
What has the viewer actually gained after watching this video? He obviously doesn't understand quantum tunneling, but might you argue that he now at least want's to actually learn about it? I'd say no.
The problem I have with the video, I think, is that it doesn't inspire learning at all but rather just exists to make the viewer feel as if though they have gained some understanding. He gives you an explaination and a person who does not currenty study physics will probably just accept what is said here.
What's worse is that the person watching might even feel as if he has actually understood the concept and could actually "have a say" about it. Think of people who like to say that "Biologically a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable".
So in the end the person has not only gained basically nothing but he might actually feel satiated with the simpified answer and walk away feeling as if though he now understands the concept and has actually spent time "learning" and not just mindlesly watched a youtubu video.
Edit: Sorry for writing such a shitty motivation for my view. Most newer comments seem to bring up issues I have already commented on.
#Please post in threads when possible.
_____
> *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!* | 49 | How else do you explain quantum tunnelling to people without spending several hours explaining the Schroedinger equation and how to apply it, and before that spending a year explaining all the mathematics that is required to understand Schroedinger equation.
You cannot just sit atop "mount excellence" and yell at the people in the valley below "No, you are too uneducated for me to give you an explanation of quantum tunnelling to, you will have to wait until you've had a formal education in physics and mathematics". That doesn't work. People who want answers will seek answers and that video isn't a bad answer for 1 minutes requiring no prior knowledge of the subject. | 125 |
[The Incredibles] Why do all the superheroes have powers, but all the supervillains use some form of technology to do their dastardly deeds? | None of the villains in either movie have super powers: Bomb Voyage, Syndrome, The Underminer, Screenslaver. What’s up with that? | 45 | It's implied that the government/military are more than enough to handle most villains in this universe, as compared to something like Marvel or DC. It's very possible that any villains with superpowers were quietly taken care of by a government black ops team for being too dangerous, or something similar.
EDIT: Alternatively, considering we know mind wipe technology exists, it's possible supervillains are reprogrammed to be heroes. | 72 |
[Invincible] Why didn't Green Ghost just turn intangible? | When Omni-Man killed the Guardians, why didn't Green Ghost just turn intangible and get away? Or better yet, turn herself and Omni-Man intangible so he couldn't hurt anyone? Maybe this second suggestion is too problematic because her powers only work with people she can control or something; it's not very well delineated. But she could at least have turned intangible herself and gotten away to tell someone. You might blame her horror at what was going on or her inexperience, but this is the Guardians of the Globe, the world's premier super team. I find it hard to believe that Green Ghost had never strategized facing a superior foe and planned a getaway or a way to neutralize the foes' strength with her phasing powers. | 18 | Omni-Man threw ~~Red Rush's~~ Darkwing's corpse at her, her instinct was to catch him, which required her to be solid, and then he followed it up with an immediate killing blow. It was 100% calculated on the part of Omni-Man. | 53 |
[Star Trek] A tiny amount of red matter is used by Spock, why is there a massive amount on the ship? | Im going by what I remember from the first reboot movie- Spock apparently uses a tiny bit of red matter to...do whatever it was he needed to do- but on the ship he was on, there seemed to be a massive amount. Plus, want it what the Romulans used to destroy Vulcan too?
Why would such a large amount be held on any sort of ship, when a tiny amount can totally destroy a planet like Vulcan? | 49 | We can only guess. Maybe larger collections are safer. Maybe Spock's future ship was designed to study the red matter, or use it as a scientific instrument, and a large clump was needed for his work. Maybe it was part of an experimental engine or weapon. Maybe owning red matter was a war crime in the future, and it all needed to be stored on a ship permanently to preserve a Federation-enforced legal fiction that it was perpetually in transit.
We'll almost certainly never know. For sure, old Spock wouldn't be flying around with *that* much of something *that* dangerous without good reason, though. | 56 |
[Star Wars] By herself, how competent as a leader was Queen Amidala's doppelganger in Phantom Menace? | 24 | At least according to those new books (queens shadow and queens peril) Padme's main double Sabe was one of the best to do the job, and at times could fill for Padme exactly. She's not however expected to be an actual leader. Or, more specifically nobody was supposed to see through the disguise, and their initial setup was to hold handmaindens in confidence, so Sabe could be relatively sure to make decisions that Padme would make herself. | 26 |
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ELI5: Why is the steering inverted on motorcycles at high speeds? | E.g., when I turn my handlebars left and I'm going 40+ mph, the bike tilts and turns to the right. | 44 | You are turning the front wheel to the left, the wheel goes left slightly, and the entire bike (and you) keeps going straight. The bike goes from looking like
this: l
to looking like this: /
See how the bottom of the bike moves to the left? you have turned the front wheel slightly left, moving the bottom of the bike to the left, and now you and the top of the bike are leaning right. In order to keep from falling over, you bring the handlebars to the right and make the turn to the right.
This happens the same at any speed, but feels more drastic at higher speeds. Most people don't think about this motion when you turn, but it happens in motorcycles and bicycles. This is just how they turn. | 51 |
Does a nuclear weapon detonating in a vacuum create the characteristic double flash? | From what I've read, the shockwave of the nuclear detonation briefly obscures the light from the nuke, which creates the double flash used by satellites to verify an atmospheric nuclear test.
But would a nuclear detonation in space cause the same effect? I did not see any mention of it for nuclear weapons tested in space. | 15 | Wikipedia says,
> This signature, with a double intensity maximum, is characteristic of atmospheric nuclear explosions and is the result of the Earth's atmosphere becoming opaque to visible light and transparent again as the explosion's shock wave travels through it. [...] The effect is unambiguous for explosions below about 30 kilometres (19 mi) altitude, but above this height a more ambiguous single pulse is produced.
Without air you won't get this effect. | 12 |
[harrypotter] can you perform the Killing curse without a wand? | I know that some magical cultures don’t use wands so can they use Ava kerdava? With no wand? | 22 | Yes. Wands (and rings, and staves, and whatnot) are just focusing devices. Spells can be performed without them by a sufficiently skilled wizard. That said, it's kind of hard to practice the killing curse, so getting enough practice to do it without a wand (you have to learn it separately from learning to do it with one) has most likely not been successfully done by anyone. | 36 |
Supposing Trump wins, as it seems he might, what impact might this have on (graduate) research funding in the US? | Is a Trump presidency another reason to not do a PhD? | 115 | I was just wondering this same thing. A quick search reveals much the same as his views on just about every other subject. He supports it but has no clear plan. He answers questions when asked, stresses it's important and he will do something about it. But he hasn't stressed it unless directly asked.
So, he's basically a black box. | 67 |
ELI5: Why do you sometimes taste blood when you over-exert yourself during exercise | 54 | The small sacs called alveoli in your lungs is where blood exchanges CO2 and oxygen. The blood is brought to the alveoli through small capillaries sometimes only 1 blood cell wide. These capillaries are incredibly thin to allow for the CO2/oxygen exchange. When you exercise your heart rate and blood pressure can increase quite a bit. Especially with intense activity. This increase in pressure can sometimes cause these capillaries to burst and blood will leak into the alveoli. The more/faster you exhale the more blood you’ll taste. The blood doesn’t actually get into your mouth. If you have blood in your mouth while exercising and it’s not from an open wound you’ve got bigger problems. | 62 |
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Is it possible to create a bell large enough, that when struck, it will ring at a frequency below standard human hearing (~20Hz?) | Would there always be harmonics in the audible range that would sound like a bell reverberation, or could you actually make it all sub-audible (aside from the sound of the clapper hitting the bell). | 24 | When you're striking it, you're making it vibrate in a bunch of different modes and there would always be some in the audible range, though they don't have to be loud. But you could avoid the audible overtones if you only vibrated the bell in a certain way, e.g. by resonance | 11 |
What is academia's take on proofreading of theses? | Hello everyone,
I am an "English as a second language" author. I published few papers before. However, they have all been proofread by my supervisor/co-authors, and significantly improved. In all cases of my writing, there were no severe coherence and cohesion issues. Mostly a suboptimal academic tone, and some unclarities (super long sentences). Anyway, I'm expected to submit my thesis in September. And i wonder what is the general consensus in academia regarding proofreading of a thesis by a third-party. My university policy allows it, and in fact some colleagues were required to do so by examining/ supervisory committee.
I'm not very happy with my writing skills. I tried taking some short online courses but I only improved marginally. My thesis is already completed and i began the polishing stage. There are no editing and style issues I'm very well familiar with the ACS style. It's just the language that I'm not very happy with.
What are your thoughts on this? I'm quite reluctant and feeling a bit guilty and embarrassed to seek for help in this. My supervisor offered to help a bit in proofreading, but of course he's very busy, and I don't think he'll have time to properly proofread a 60000 words document. | 70 | Do you have any labmates or grad program peers to get feedback from? I’d say it’s encouraged because scientific writing depends on getting feedback to improve - you can double check with your advisor if it’s okay. | 56 |
[X-Men,Marvel] Why is there such a low number of X gene positive mutants in Wakanda ? the only one I can think of is Gentle and his X-gene was blamed on his foreign father. Do Wakandans not carry the gene even though it was proliferating in the human species before Wakanda existed? | Where are all of Wakanda's mutants??? | 44 | Wakanda famously existed in almost complete isolation until recently.
If there weren't any X-Genes in the population when they went into isolation- very possible considering how rare it is- that's it. No mutants. | 47 |
Eli5 - how are western economies sustainable? | I live in the uk, but the more I think about it, the more I realise that it just seems to be series of office workers propping up each others salaries. There’s no (or small) base that actually produces goods, the farmers or the labourers as such. Why? | 58 | Modern and wealthy economies tend towards being service based (it is one of their defining characteristics. Think about a typical "wealthy" society - just the basics but it can be extrapolated
1) Food - how many times have you encountered dysentery? Food containing things that will kill you in days/weeks? How about malnutrition? Where does the infrastructure for food safety and distribution come from?
2) Healthcare - We expect specialist care, modern and available treatment. Something like COVID-19 spreading even 150 years ago would have multiple times more death. Few people die from treatable diseases and many more diseases have become temporary inconveniences rather than a death sentence. If we fall and break an arm or leg, we don't expect that there is much chance of amputation or death through sepsis - yet that wasn't the case just a few hundred years ago.
3) Education. Where does the infrastructure to support specialist training, the basic education needed, all those things we take for granted. Basic education and literacy being universal, etc are all fairly modern. Just go to less developed countries - this kind of thing doesn't come automatically. Scientific research, technological progress can only take place within a society that has the resources to foster education from the bottom up.
4) Safety - How many people die in factories and workplaces? How many have their health and lifespan destroyed by their working environment? Contrast this to poorer nations. How are these regulations enforced? How are these improvements put in place? The legal framework and enforcement mechanisms, inspections, licensing, etc are there for a reason.
Entertainment, transportation, communication, finance etc etc. The modern economy is complex and delivers a standard of living for the average person that not even kings of 200 years ago could experience. If 80% of the people are working the land or engaged in primary production, there is zero chance that there would be enough leftover labor and resources to deliver these outcomes to the average person. | 68 |
When your body creates new blood what happens to the blood that it's replacing it with? | The question says it all I hope. | 74 | The Kupffer cells in your liver go to work. The iron gets taken out of the hemoglobin to be used in the new cells (that's why humans do not need much iron in their diet). The rest of the hemoglobin gets converted to bilirubin (a building block for bile in the digestive tract). The cell itself doesn't have a nucleus so it usually just gets pooped out. | 35 |
ELI5: How do newspaper companies print so many coloured newspapers, selling them dirt cheap, and yet if I printed a single newspapers-worth, I'd easily spend 20x the price of a newspaper on ink. | I hear all the time that we are often paying for the ink, rather than the printer, but how much of a scam is it and are there cheaper alternatives? | 24 | Not all printing methods are created equal. Your personal inkjet printer is a marvel of technology (and the cost heavily weighted toward tiny capacity consumables) but it is not the least expensive method of printing. Most high capacity printing is going to be done by what is called "offset printers", a method where metal plates are etched with a pattern that conveys ink to a rubber blanket and from there to the paper.
Using an offset printer requires significant expense and lead time to make the metal plates and set up the run, but once going it is an extremely inexpensive method to make printed media in huge quantities. A high upfront cost spread across hundreds of thousands of pages becomes trivial. The limitations of this method are obvious though, it cannot deal with variable data (you want to print different things) and the machine itself will fill a large room rather than sit on your desk. | 31 |
[Snowpiercer] SPOILERS | So does humanity go extinct at the end of the movie? Because 2 people are not enough to repopulate the human race,and its been said that everyone else on the planet is dead. | 19 | Everything in the movie up to that point - humanity trying to stop global warming, Wilford building the train, Minsoo's decade-long hoarding of explosives, the rear passengers doing what they had to do to survive, the long string of failed rebellions - is an unbroken chain of failure and corruption. But it is also a tale of unlikely redemptions, of love and hope, of people refusing to accept their end, people fighting not just for themselves but for each other.
That polar bear at the end of the movie is a living restatement of the movie's premise. It is proof that life is possible, that there is hope - but the embodiment of hope is also the embodiment of terrible danger. (That bear had to be fucking pumped to have a trainful of tenderized humans and frozen steaks delivered to it.)
Are there only two survivors? Are they probably doomed? Is humanity itself doomed? Any answer but "yes" would betray Snowpiercer's integrity.
But will they fight, to the very end? Will they try to survive, and more than that to remain human? Will they hope, and love, and fight for each other? Again - Snowpiercer must say "yes."
I fucking LOVE that movie. | 16 |
ELI5: how come when you pour water out of some glasses it pours smooth but some times it goes down the side? | 15 | Water tends to want to "stick" to glass, and other surfaces. This is called adhesion. This is one of the forces acting to turn the water as it pours. The faster you pour, the more force that is required to turn the liquid to keep it attached to the glass. At some point, the water is moving too fast for the adhesive force to turn it, and it detaches from the surface.
Here's a kind of similar analogy... Imagine you're running down a hall with a hardwood floor in socks, and there is a corner you want to turn around at the end. If you're running slowly, you can probably stay close to the wall. If you're sprinting, you're either going to slip or you have to take a wider turn and "detach" from the wall.
| 13 |
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Do any plant cells undergo apoptosis in a similar fashion to animal cells? | 505 | Yes. All the time for hollow cavities, shedding leaves, and things like that. From DNA damage is also possible, but far less common than in animals because any tumors would be far more localized so it's not as important to prevent. | 152 |
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[X-Men: First Class] What happened to the nuclear energy Sebastian Shaw absorbed? | 21 | When Magneto sent the coin through Shaw's head, Shaw was full of energy. He was primed to detonate like a nuclear weapon. It seems that the energy remained in his body. If his death were any more physically jarring, perhaps he would have detonated. | 15 |
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How do celestial bodies become tidally locked? | 30 | As they spin the side closest to the source of gravity gets slightly pulled towards the middle more than the other side elongating it slightly, as it spins the elongated side keeps changing slowing the spinning until one side stays constantly facing the centre | 15 |
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ELI5: Why are individuals given a much lighter sentence if they accept a plea deal and plea guilty versus if a jury finds them guilty? | 19 | Because that was the agreement, if they plea guilty, they'll face a lighter sentence.
It's in the interest of the entire justice system for cases to not be bogged down unnecessarily, if someone is willing to not waste the courts time and money proving them guilty then they're rewarded with a slightly more mild sentence.
Also in some cases the prosecution (people who are against the guy being charged) might not have a 100% solid case so a plea is less "risk" from their perspective. | 29 |
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Why can the human body experience debilitating
pain? | I know pain, in general, is useful for a "don't do this!" warning. But in many circumstances it just really outdoes itself. I can think of various situations that the person can't do anything to fix, but which nevertheless give extreme pain. I would think that this would be selected against, because people lying around in agony are not on the ball. What gives? | 15 | This has more to do with pain tolerance than the actual amount of pain. This is why adrenaline can cause you to withstand more pain (or outright ignore it at times).
As for pain from things you can't stop or can't be fixed, that's because the pain function in the body is a very simplistic one. It alerts you to damage or distress, and it continues to alert you for as long as that condition exists. It cannot objectively determine whether or not you can use that alert constructively, nor do you possess the ability to turn your pain off for obvious reasons. | 11 |
[DareDevil] Why does Matt Murdock pretend to be blind? | Okay, I get that technically he IS blind, but with his superpowers and echo-location he can basically 'see' everything around him, other than maybe colours or writing.
So why the need to act like he can't see at all? If it's to make it less obvious to his enemy that he's DareDevil, why cover his eyes when he fights?
Does he claim some kind of disability allowance for his condition? | 25 | His eyes don't work. They don't look like they work, they don't behave how other peoples do. He can't pretend that there's nothing wrong with them, so when he acts like he can see then questions start to get asked; how is he doing it, how good is it, his ability to sense stuff is eerily similar to that DareDevil fellow isnt it? It's best really just to not open that can of worms. | 47 |
[Star Wars] Was Palpatine a 'good sith'? | In regards to the Rule of Two, and the ideals set forth by Bane, was Palpatine a 'good sith', or could it be argued he defied the Rule of Two utterly, which is what lead to his death and the downfall of the Sith as a whole? | 52 | It's true that Palpatine flouted the Rule of Two, but that's because he understood that the Rule of Two had a purpose, namely to strengthen the Sith Order so that they could eventually destroy the Jedi and rule the galaxy. And he did that.
So think of it not as Palpatine showing contempt for the Rule of Two. Instead, think of it as Palpatine being a *culmination* of the Rule of Two, the ultimate Sith Lord that generations of Sith have been building towards. | 113 |
[Spider-man] How does Spider-man stick to walls with gloves and boots on? | I've always wondered this. I know he sticks to walls in general with his cilia, or whatever it is that lets bugs cling to things, but he has gloves and boots on! How does this work? | 37 | He doesn't actually have little hooks in his fingertips. He has the power to "enhance the flux of inter-atomic attractive forces on surfaces he touches, increasing the coefficient of friction between that surface and himself." This works through fabric if it is thin enough.
He has some suits that are made of thicker material (e.g. invisibility suits, armored suits etc.) but he's a scientific genius and has presumably invented a way to make his other costumes equally sticky. | 24 |
ELI5: Most animals are symmetrical. Why are some animals like lobsters exceptions to this rule? What lead to this? And why isn't it more common in other animals, or even humans? | 41 | Lobsters are mostly symmetrical, the functional differences between a pair of front claws is just that, functional adaptation. Bilateral symmetry is very common in pretty much everything higher than worms and starfish. Sponges and such are usually thought of as the truly non symmetrical organisms | 41 |
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CMV: If a man doesn't want a child, the woman should not be able to give birth anyway and come after him for child support. | As a society we've pretty well decided that abortion is okay (or at least legal), and the woman gets to decide whether or not to keep the baby. It makes sense, since she is the one carrying the child and her body is most effected. Fine.
But then if a man doesn't want the child, the woman should not be allowed to go after him for child support. Otherwise this imbalance in decision becomes a form of indentured servitude.
This should not apply in cases where it's too late to get an abortion (late term), and the father suddenly says he doesn't want it. This is for early on, after the woman realizes she's pregnant, and before an abortion would do more harm to her body than giving birth. A man at that point should be able to say "nope, I want no part of this", just like a woman gets to.
I'm open to justifications for this policy, as I haven't been able to come up with any on my own.
And for the record - I lean toward pro-life from a moral standpoint, but pro-choice from a utilitarian standpoint. I do think abortion, especially late term, is wrong. But I also recognize several tangible benefits abortion brings to society. I am not here to have my view changed about abortion. I'm here to have my view changed about the effects on men having an imbalance in this major life changing decision. I only place this here for context.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 46 | The right for a woman to have an abortion is not founded on her having economic independence from a child. Abortions are allowed as they have the right to their own body.
Women and men are not making the same decision and therefore we do not have to treat it the same. | 33 |
ELI5: How Do Hotel Star Ratings Work? | Who decides what star rating is awarded to a hotel? What are the most important sources for these ratings? Who decides which hotels get reviewed by "professionals" and which ones get rated on websites like yelp? | 223 | Most hotel star rating systems indicate the amenities/luxuries available at a hotel, rather than their quality. A one star hotel offers basic services (room and bath, table and chair, reception staff, etc). A two star hotel adds things like a reading light, breakfast buffet, offer of toothpaste and other toiletries. And on up to valet parking, concierge, 24 hour room service, one hour ironing, turndown service and other luxurious features. | 101 |
Can our DNA be used to guess at our fingerprints? | Or vice versa?
Are the patterns on our hands and feet are result of specific alleles in our genes, or are they a result of our environment instead of our DNA?
| 83 | Not much is known about the specifics, but enough is known to answer your question.
We know that there is a genetic component to fingerprint formation. For instance, a mutation to the regulatory gene SMARCAD1 can yield adermatoglyphia--a rare condition that results in no fingerprints forming.
We also know that environmental factors must be at play in the womb, as identical twins do not have identical fingerprints. | 47 |
[Fallout] How people are still phisically intact? How come they don't have a leg sticking out of their asses or have four arms and stuff? Why are they ''normal?'' | I mean, there are no mutated-weirdo people other than ghouls. And how in the hell ghouls live that long? Shouldn't they die sooner than normal people due to radiation poisoning? | 101 | Mutations dont really work that way. The few animals seen with extra heads or something are extremely rare cases of animals surviving, adapting, and mutating in irradiated zones for generations.
The nuclear war left many areas only slightly irradiated. Many humans not in vaults were able to survive by not being near any blast zones, and they knew enough about radiation to avoid heavily irradiated zones, and also possessed the technology (like Rad Away) to stave off its effects.
Ghouls dont get radiation poisoning either. They are people that have mutated to not only survive, but thrive in irradiated places. They are immune to radiation, and anatomically, no longer human. | 149 |
CMV: Apple is a deceptive company that relies primarily on brand image to sell its overpriced products. | Apple Inc. used to be a pioneer of technology in the late 20th century with the Macintosh computer and iPod devices, but today they have become a company that relies on inferior rehashes of old technology that they deem as "innovative" and market for much more than what they are actually worth.
A prime example is the iPhone 7 and its missing 3.5mm headphone jack. Removing a smartphone component and replacing it with wireless earbuds that are much easier to misplace, AND requiring the user to purchase a separate lightning-to-3.5mm adapter that costs $10 and is described as "fragile" and "poorly made". One could say that this is intentional and forces the user to spend more money to replace these parts once they break or are lost.
Now let's look at the software. Mac OS is exclusive to Apple products, which forces me to pick up one of their $2000+ Macbooks if I want to even touch their operating system. People often say that Mac is better for developers than Windows, but having used Windows, OS X, and Linux, I can say with certainty that OS X is the least capable of the three. The amount of available software that can run on OS X is minimal compared to Windows. For developers, Linux is superior, with greater customization and an enormous online community for help (as opposed to having to contact Apple tech support). And the best part? Linux is FREE.
Compatibility between hardware and software is also an issue. Apple has specifically designed it such that their devices will only function with THEIR equipment. Want to add some songs to your iPhone? Better open up iTunes! Need a new cable? Time to go the Apple Store!
But people will still buy it, because it's Apple, after all. They want to walk around with their fancy white earbuds and their Apple-branded bottles and T-shirts. The company has done such a great job at establishing their brand image over the last few decades that they can send out overpriced, mediocre products and still make money. People are so distracted by the brand that they fail to see this. Apple knows that they will always have dedicated consumers who throw money at them, and as a result, they no longer feel the need to innovate when they can recycle the same concepts year after year.
EDIT: After reading some responses, probably the one that changed my view the most was that if a person sees an item as being valuable, they are justified in spending money on it. In this case, the demand for an Apple product is not so much the brand image as it is the perceived uses of the product from the perspective of that person. Therefore it is not "overpriced" if people *are* willing to pay that much for it.
Anyway, these comments have provided some new perspective for me. I probably won't get through all the responses but you can consider my view at least somewhat changed. :)
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 1,661 | No one is required to purchase anything from Apple, and something is worth exactly what someone else is willing to pay for it.
If Apple can find a million people to pay $1000 for their phone, then that phone is worth $1000, by definition, to those million people. It isn't "overpriced", or they wouldn't agree to pay it.
All you have really argued is that Apple's products aren't that great, and that's fine. To YOU, an iPhone isn't worth $1000, and as a result, you won't be paying $1000 for one. But to someone else who values what Apple is offering, then it may very well BE worth that much, and you can't objectively tell them that they are wrong. | 573 |
Why can Hubble take amazingly high def shots of distant galaxies, but Pluto remains a blur? | 17 | If a galaxy is a billion times as far away as Pluto, but a trillion times as big, it will appear 1000 times larger in the sky. The Andromeda galaxy, for example, is 5.3 billion times as far away from Earth as Pluto is, but is 560 trillion times as wide. That's why it's so much bigger in the sky.
There's also the issue that galaxies emit a lot more light than Pluto emits or reflects, so you have to devote a lot more telescope time to Pluto than to a galaxy to get the same quality image, other factors aside. | 31 |
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ELI5: Why does food have to be labeled "not a significant source of ___" | I knew my diet green tea wouldn't be a significant source of calories from fat or iron. I figured that would be a given. Is there a reason they have to include that label on everything? Also why not do it with everything else rather than just the limited few? | 306 | The FDA requires all food items to have nutrition labels. Certain substances are required on these labels, like fat, protein, carbs, sodium, cholesterol, Vitamins A and C, iron, and calcium (I am unsure if this is a complete list). If a food item however has no significant amount of any number of these items though they are allowed instead of listing zero to list that, it can help to save space especially if it is true of many of the required categories. | 89 |
ELI5: Why are metal shavings flammable? | im just curious how Metal shavings of something like Steel can be flammable even though the metal itself ( and most others) do not combust like that. | 143 | Metals can oxidize- this is what happens when they rust or otherwise react with oxygen. Usually this happens slowly, since only the surface is exposed to air and rust/oxides on the surface actually block the air from touching fresh metal underneath.
Rusting/oxidizing produces heat. A rusty nail is rusting very slowly so the heat is easily dissipated and not noticed.
If you shave the metal super-thin, thee is more surface area that can react with oxygen, and if it's thin enough it will react *very quickly*, and the small amount of heat will help feed the reaction even more.
Rusting is just burning *really slowly*. | 79 |
ELI5: What happens when you "unpop" your ears? | 16 | U open up a tube known as the Eustachian tube which connects the middle ear to your pharynx. This balances the air pressure in ur ear which is what u hear as a pop. Some examples would be popping ur ear during a flight, esp during take off/landing. | 11 |
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[Jurassic Park (1993 movie)] Why were the dinosaurs getting sick? | They make a pretty big deal of it with the Triceratops (pustules, weakness, balance issues, dilated pupils and of course the cyclical, every-six-weeks nature of it, but never say.) Then, later, when a brachiosaurus wakes Dr. Grant and the kids in the tree, they notice that it too, is sick. And yet, as far as I know the question of what was wrong was never answered. Considering how much time was spent showing us this, I can’t believe there isn’t supposed to be an answer. | 15 | Triceratops have gizzards. They weren't finding the berries in the feces because they weren't eating them, they were accidentally taking them in when they swallowed stones, and regurgitating them with said stones. While there's no paleontological evidence for triceratops specifically having a gizzard, it is known that its relative Pisttacosaurus had one, so it isn't too surprising, it just wasn't something Harding had figured out since the Trikes started getting sick.
Cloned dinosaurs are way, way too expensive for Hammond to let them kill and dissect one of each species just to figure out details of its anatomy. | 25 |
ELI5: If alcohol is a sedative, then why do some people get hyperactive, energised? | ELI5: If alcohol is a sedative, then why do some people get hyperactive, energised?
I remember the first couple time I drank alcohol I used to run around and felt extremly energised. | 24 | Alcohol isn't a sedative. It's technically speaking a neurotoxic psychoactive drug and nervous system depressant. So basically it gets into your brain and affects it's function. So you shouldn't have any hyperactiveness but outside the brain your adrenal glands get stimulated by alcohol and releases adrenaline. The adrenaline gets you energized. | 16 |
CMV: Spoons are the most versatile utensil, and knives are the least | First, lets denounce knives. Knives are only good for cutting things such as meat. In every other aspect a spoon and a fork are more efficacious. I think we could all agree on that so I will make this a debate between forks and spoons to make it easier.
Out of spoons and forks spoons are the most useful utensil. They can scoop foods, such as rice, more than knives. They can cut meat arguably as well as forks, if anything slightly less. They can generally scoop things up better. Forks admittedly are better at eating spaghetti. But the trump card is that spoons are by far the best at eating cereal, oatmeal, soup, and other pseudo drinks. They are also by far best at distributing food and mixing food.
CMV please
Edit: sporks etc are not included, I only mean between forks knives and spoons
Edit 2: I apologize for missing details. I'm referring to food, because then you bring up many other areas and before you know it you include forklifts as forks, swords as knives, and shovels as spoons. I'm just referring to the eating utensils in terms of eating, forks spoons and knives.
Edit 3: I have been partially convinced in the sense that other utensils are very important, and forks are the most useful, but I still retain the opinion that spoons can complete more functions
| 21 | Sure they CAN do these things, but in practice, the fork is king. Unless soup is present, at any random meal, if you're going to have just one utensil people would overwhelmingly be happier with a fork than a spoon. That's why prepackaged plastic cutlery often skips the spoon.
The bottom line is that a spoon is significantly more awkward at doing what a fork does, and the things that a spoon does are done far more rarely.
Just try this experiment. Have a potluck and invite people to bring an assortment of random dishes. Invite as many people as you can and tell them they can only use one utensil. Unless there's a soup people are particularly excited about trying, dollars to donuts the fork will be by far the weapon of choice. And even soup can just be sipped from the vessel if you don't care too much about manners, which you've left behind anyway in this experiment. | 14 |
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