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[Marvel] Who's a better shape shifter, Mystique or a Skrull? | Bonus question: Has Mystique ever interacted with a Skrull? | 54 | Skrulls have infiltrated super heroes and super villains organizations. They replaced meta humans for years before the invasion and were able to replicate their powers, personality and even fake relationships.
Mystique is more of a one pony trick for spy missions and that's it. | 85 |
[Mod Post] Regarding the "however minor" part of rule 1... | Other than repeated popular topics, one of the biggest complaints about CMV (from both within and outside our community) is top level comments that nit-pick a minor detail in OP's post. Here is an example of such complaints:
> The part I hate the most is how, somehow, the top comment is always people that respond to a seemingly collected view by dissecting one tiny logical inconsistency, in the original post, that has little relevance to the overall view. And everyone seems to think this is acceptable and a great way to change people's views, it's pernicious within that sub. And bizarrely, frequently, the OP responds with a 'delta' saying their view has been changed.
> I just can not fathom how anyone could legitimately have their views changed by ripping apart a very minor, frequently tangential, and sometimes inconsequential, point within a wholly complex viewpoint.
([Source](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/225wcp/meta_eli5_why_are_people_suddenly_using_eli5_to/cgjr1li))
I'm sure most people can sympathise with this user. I know I've been disheartened to see a small, one or two sentence comment upvoted to the top when there are better, more detailed comments below (although I appreciate that brevity is sometimes more powerful). But, as per the wording of rule 1, this is technically acceptable.
Our reaction to this was the possibility of banning "nitpicky" direct responses. Some mods would like it, some think it would be a bad idea, so [we brought it up](http://www.reddit.com/r/ideasforcmv/comments/23dh0v/should_we_ban_nitpicky_top_level_comments/) in /r/ideasforcmv. This, along with various discussions in modmail, showed us that our users are largely against the banning of minor corrections, and so we aren't going to do it. However, **it is still up for discussion**, so feel free to let us know what you think in the comments.
Something we noticed as a result of this ongoing discussion is the "however minor" part is being abused by some users as a foot in the door for agreeing and pushing OP's view throughout the majority of their comment. While we have been acting on this in some situations for a little while, we'd like to announce that we now consider this a violation of rule 1 and it will be removed by the moderators, so please report any cases you see. We don't feel the need to reword rule 1 in the sidebar, partly due to the character limit, but if you click the "however minor" part you can see some more details.
**TL;DR: Users can no longer use the "however minor" part of rule 1 as an excuse to push the OP's view throughout the majority of their comment. For example, if OP argues "Andre the Giant was right; nobody should start a land war in Asia," the response "Actually, Vizzini said that. Also, here is a laundry list of reasons why we still shouldn't start a land war in Asia" would violate Rule 1, but "Actually, Vizzini said that." (with more wording to avoid low effort) is acceptable. Also, if an OP is arguing "Gay marriage should be legal," the response "You're wrong, because gay marriage and polygamy should both be legal" is also a violation of rule 1.**
P.S The wording of rule 4 has changed. See the sidebar. If a user has hinted or admitted that their view has changed, a delta is due.
P.P.S As always, feel free to use mod posts as a chance to express any concerns or suggestions.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 75 | One problem I've been noticing is the people who post either extremely uncontroversial views or things that aren't even views but rather facts/factoids where it's pretty much impossible to debate it. You have to refute some point of their view but with their topic it's extremely hard to find anything to refute. You can't just say "no one's disagrees with you" because that's not refuting the point
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What is the latest and greatest theory of the origins of life on Earth? | I have heard that the 'Primordial Soup' model most of us were taught in grade school is largely regarded as discredited. What is the current thinking? | 31 | Some version of the primordial soup is right; there were lots of free organic molecules floating around, some how they got into the right configuration to start self replicattion. Most of the current work has been focused on what order the core aspects of life arose in and where.
Key things you need for life are 1. metabolism 2. heretibility and 3. structure that contains the other pieces.
So we have two main schools of thought; metabolism first theory, and RNA first theory. Both propose that specific component showed up, and the others came later.
Key evidence for the RNA first is that there are RNA molecules that are self-replicating. There are also reasonable precursors to RNA that could fulfill the roll that have more favorable energy characteristics.
The container problem seems to be reasonably easy; phospholipids self organize into spheres and wave energy mixing things up would eventually get the right molecules within the right sphere.
Where it happens; people have proposed life originating in deep space, or chemosynthetically at deep ocean vents as well as the warm little pond. A recent paper supported the warm pond style hypothesis by examining the proteins that all known life has in common, and concluding based on something (not sure what!) that Earth's surface temperature/pressure was optimal in some way.
Hope this helps! | 17 |
[Star Wars] How expensive is Hyperspace travel? Are there any other common and/or convenient methods of quickly traveling the galaxy? | Hyperdrives seem ubiquitous with space travel, so they can’t be prohibitively expensive (especially given the large amount of privately owned small craft we see throughout the galaxy), though I’ve never seen any numbers regarding the costs of space travel for any ship. | 26 | You wont find *any* hard numbers for vast majority of Star Wars mundane details. Best we can go by is Hans price to smuggle two people to Alderaan, and go down from there. Which IS prohibitively expensive. Yet in Attack of the clones Anakin and Padme travel in a shitty public transport ship, which is unlikely to cost thousands of credits... | 28 |
[Spider-Man 3] What happened to the piece of the symbiote Dr. Connors had? | 16 | Really good question.
If the tiny symbiote mass is independent from the rest of the symbiote mass, a separate consciousness, It wouldn't have died when Spider-Man exterminated the bigger mass that bonded to Eddie Brock. the small portion of the symbiote might even grow larger over time, assuming it wasn't destroyed before that could happen.
If the symbiote is just one consciousness that always stays with its largest union of mass, the tiny mass Dr. Connors had would've been like a disembodied finger its owner remote controlled. The tiny portion would've gone limp when Spider-Man annihilated the largest union of symbiote mass.
If the symbiote can choose which portion of its divided mass carries its single consciousness, then the symbiote consciousness could've been remote controlling its larger mass while staying safe in the tiny portion with Dr. Connors. It wouldn't have died when Spider-Man obliterated the larger mass. | 11 |
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Why were the jedi put in charge of the clone army? | With the low number of jedis, wouldn't they have been more useful as special forces or spies? Would a jedi know anything about large-scale military strategy or logistics? | 33 | Ah! This is an interesting topic that comes up a lot when studying the fall of the Old Republic.
In theory, the Jedi are a "peacekeeping" force for the Republic, tasked with negotiating, maintaining order through nonviolent means, and acting as mediators. Given this legacy of pacifism, why were they called upon as warriors as soon as the Clone Wars broke out?
Well in truth, the Jedi have a long and extensive history of militarization. During the (many, many) years of Sith-Jedi wars, the Jedi were often called to combat as some of the only units capable of taking on another force adept without massive losses or massive overcompensation. After so many years of being trained as front-line soldiers, bits and pieces of tradition still held on, even during the thousand years after the Ruusan reformation where there were no full scale Jedi-Sith conflicts.
Force-influenced charismatic leadership qualities, an ability to discern their enemy's intentions, and "battle meditation" a well documented and *very* effective ability where powerful force users can inspire their troops to work with greater unity, efficiency, and coordination, all lead to Jedi being incredibly effective leaders, especially when on the front lines. Ironically, it is these exact qualities that make them such effective mediators and negotiators.
In short, the Jedi were charismatic leaders, trained in combat, and even without their more unique abilities would likely make notably effective front line leaders. *With* these abilities, given the sheer scale and unexpected rapidity when the Clone Wars began (remember that both the Clone and Droid armies were entirely unexpected by both the Jedi *and* the Republic!), it's no surprise that the Jedi were called upon as warriors to defend the Republic with such little deliberation or negotiation. | 29 |
[HarryPotter] What does the wizarding world export? | The wizarding world seems to purchase a lot of mundane stuff (like food) from muggles. Enough that Gringotts does currency exchange as a regular service. But what do muggles buy from wizards? Wizards don't seem to make a lot of mundane stuff, and muggles certainly aren't allowed to buy property in the wizarding world. Yet without a balance of trade, the exchange rate would quickly collapse. | 31 | Natural resources would be a good choice. Locatus Diamondus or a similar incantation would allow the wizards to find something that muggles would easily accept. Or Cowus Biggus and such spells would make them highly effective organic farmers.
Effective divination could allow wizard and witch brokers to make big money in the stock market, then use that money to buy muggle goods to sell to their fellow wizards. Then they'd be paid in currency they can actually use in their daily lives.
Beyond that, possibly there is a grey market ins special magical services for muggles illegally in the know. Scrying, healing, etc. Things that are easily hidden from the outside world, but potentially valuable. | 18 |
ELI5: If the moon were to explode right now, would we see it right away or would there be a delay? | Just wondering because of the distance and the speed of light and so on.[reddiquette](/wiki/reddiquette) | 16 | The moon is 385,000 km away, and the speed of light is 300,000 km/s.
So if the moon blew up, we'd see it in about a second. That's not much of a delay.
If the sun blew up, it'd take 8 minutes before we saw it. | 40 |
It is often said that fascists misinterpreted Nietzsche's philosophy. How true is this position? | Nietzsche's disdain for nationalism is often brought up. However, fascism isn't just excessive nationalism. Nietzsche was also deeply anti-democracy and anti-socialism which is an aspect that he shares with fascism.
What are the specific misinterpretations of Nietzsche by fascists? What parts aren't misinterpreted? | 58 | The most common "misinterpretation" referred to is the antisemitism of the Nazis. Nietzsche's sister was a virulent anti-Semite who misleadingly edited many of his works to reflect this bias of her. By all accounts, Nietzsche did not think highly of anti-Semites, and even lost his friendship with the Wagners because of his other associations with Jews.
However, there are plenty of very easy to make readings of Nietzsche that would suggest his possible approval of other parts of fascism. As you say, hes famously anti-democracy and anti-socialist. Some of the most lauded people in his writings are warmongers, the biggest being Napoleon. In the Cosima notebooks, he talks about the need for a large portion of society to be slaves to a few men of genius, including of military genius. In the *Genealogy* it is hard not to take his account of the early nobles who ruled by strength as an approving one. We might think that, if it weren't for the mass murder atrocities they committed, Nietzsche would probably have looked favorably at Nazi expansionism.
Edit: Another comment points out that Nietzsche was completely against mass politics, which is true. So for that aspect of fascism he probably would've been disdainful. But he certainly would not have looked down at the militaristic and focus on "strength" aspects. | 61 |
ELI5 How do hearing aids work, and can any hard of hearing person use them? | What I mean is, are there some medical issues that make the use of hearing aids impossible? Or can you use hearing aids and then one day no longer be able to use them? If so why? | 17 | At their core they're just a tiny microphone and speaker - the simplest version fits in your ear and basically just makes everything coming into that ear louder. There's tons of different versions depending on where exactly you put the microphone and speaker. The whole system might be in the ear canal, part or all of it might be worn behind the ear, or some of it might be integrated into the frames of a pair of glasses.
Those types of hearing aids are dependent on having a relatively functional external ear canal and eardrum - if that's not the case there are still some options. If hearing is only poor on one side, the hearing aid can basically just pump the sound from the bad side over to the good ear so the person can still hear sound coming from every direction. If neither external ears are functioning bone-integrated aids are an option, where sound is basically vibrated through the skull to the inner ear, allowing the person to hear even without a functioning eardrum.
If the inner ear isn't functioning then hearing aids won't work and you'll need a cochlear implant - that's basically a microphone and a wire setup that directly stimulates the cochlear nerve, transmitting sound information straight to the brain. That's a much more invasive operation to perform so hearing aids are almost always preferred if possible.
As for your other question, yes hearing aids will eventually stop working for some people. If whatever causes your hearing loss is progressive (i.e. gets worse over time) then the hearing aid will stop working at some point. However the majority of people can use them their whole lives, they may just require occasional adjustments. A doctor who is consulting someone on hearing aids will take into account how long they can be expected to last when deciding what type of hearing aid is best. | 16 |
ELI5: Why do vehicles "smoke" more from their exhaust pipes when they first start up, and then when the engine has warmed up, stops? | 41 | The 'smoke' you actually see is water vapour, the product of combustion of hydrocarbons and oxygen into carbon dioxide and water. (CxHx + O2 -> CO2 + H2O)
When the engine and exhaust gas is cold, or the weather is cold, this condenses much quicker in the air to give a denser "fog". When the engine is running at temperature and the whole exhaust system has heated up, the water remains as vapour, rather than condensation, so the exhaust gas is largely invisible.
There are of course other things in exhaust gasses since combustion isn't perfect. Diesel fumes, in particular, really do contain sooty particulates.When a diesel runs rich (youtube videos of diesel tractor pulls!) they really so make a tonne of smoke. Lots of effort is being made ot capture these particulates, since they are very harmful to health if inhaled. | 22 |
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CMV: Ending SALT deduction of state income taxes is fair | As a UMC earner living in a high state tax state, I'm part of the population that will be most harmed by Trump's new tax bill which takes away the ability to deduct state income taxes when calculating federal income tax.
However, on every dimension I can think of, I can't really find a principled reason to support the SALT deductions.
(1) SALT deductions benefit virtually only the upper income level individuals, since lower income individuals benefit much more from taking the standard deduction than itemized deductions.
(2) Giving the ability to deduct state income taxes is a subsidy to high tax states by lowering the cost of their taxes. This is distortive because it favors high tax states at the expense of low tax states.
(3) Related to (2), ending the SALT deductions may put pressure on high tax states such as NY and CA to be more disciplined about their budget, and lower their taxes as well as spending.
Would love to hear good arguments why I should actually get to keep more of my money.
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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!* | 27 | Addressing point 2.
If a state has a high tax rate, it is going to provide more services to its citizens. This reduces the dependence of its citizens on Federal programs. The SALT deduction creates an incentive for state and local government to handle their own problems, rather than relying on the Feds to solve them. | 29 |
Does anyone have seemingly "great" ideas that you lose interest in after a short period of time? | I love programming, I love problem solving, and I love creating something out of nothing that other people ogle over because "they could never do that".
One issue that I've found I have is that I lose interest in things too easily. I start projects, that would be great in application, and would benefit myself and others if completed, but for some reason I just lose interest. I started building an iPhone Application a year ago, got pretty close to launching it, and then just got over the idea, and it's been sitting there on my hard drive in the corner ever since, collecting dust. I just have no interest in it now for some reason.
Does anyone else have this issue? What do you do when you run into that wall? | 16 | Three slightly contradictory bits of advice here.
First: be less ambitious. Get used to only starting projects you know you can finish, and build it up.
Second: keep it up. Just keep doing what you are doing and eventually it'll click.
Third: go back to old projects. You never know, you may be re-inspired. | 10 |
ELI5: How do noise cancelling headphones work? | 26 | They have a mic which records the ambient noise around you, then when your music or whatever plays, thos noise cancelling headphones play the reverse wave of the ambient noise around you, essentially cancelling that noise.
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ELI5: Why do musicians always seem to have an "era?" | That is to say, why don't they just keep churning out popular hits for their whole careers, instead of a particular decade. Very few artists transcend this paradigm of music invention. I am writing a paper about this, but have been unable to find much information that directly pertains to this phenomenon. [serious] | 23 | Popular music has always been tied into youth culture. Youth culture is ephemeral. Artists reach their fame and popularity with a specific youth demographic at a specific time, but that demographic doesn't stay young long. A few bands can cut cross generations, but the up and coming youth demographic is looking for something new and different. The cycle begins again. The older generation then associates the music of their youth with the events and experience of that time, that era. | 25 |
ELI5: If nothing can travel faster than light than why light is unable to escape the blackholes? | 15 | If you think of space like a big, flat, rubber sheet, then you pinch a part of that sheet and pull it down some, the dip you get in the sheet is how gravity works. That's a "gravity well".
Now roll a marble along that sheet - that's light. The marble encounters the well, maybe straight on, maybe at an angle, and depending on how it hits the gravity well, the marble may come out straight or it may change course (like a golf ball on a putting green where it clips the hole)
Now - PULL THAT SHEET DOWN SUPER HARD. Make the gravity well go WAYYYYYY down. Further away you get a gradual slope but right at the center? A sheer pit.
No matter how fast you shoot that marble, it's gonna hit that gentle slope first, so it's gonna angle down. Then it hits the steeper points, and its going down already, so if it hits a deep enough part of the well, there's just no way for it to go back up. It might kinda fly across the hole but its gonna hit the wall on the other side and bounce, and keep going down as it does so.
That's a black hole - light crosses a certain threshold and it doesn't matter how fast its going, its going down. | 45 |
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Would a Roman be able to digest today's food? How about a caveman? | Or going even farther back, would Lucy have been able to digest the stuff we eat today? | 25 | I don't see any reason why they wouldn't, the genetic varieties of plants have changed quite a bit but the fundamental nutrients are the same. It would be like us eating food in a foreign country, you can easily get a tummy ache but you won't starve.
The bigger problem would be the pathogens and any bacteria in the food, as the diseases have changed dramatically over the centuries. Fatal infections are very possible and diarrhea is all but guaranteed.
And the term "caveman" doesn't really apply to the majority of our ancestors, living in caves is mostly what Neanderthals did, and it is not yet clear how closely related we are to them. Neanderthals had a very different diet from our traditional ancestors, but apparently we are both of the same species. They ate much more meat than we do, up to 80% of their diet in some cases! | 17 |
How fast can a submarine surface? | So I need some help to end an argument. A friend and I were arguing over something in Aquaman. In the movie, he pushes a submarine out of the water at superspeed. One of us argues that the sudden change in pressure would destroy the submarine the other says different. Who is right and why? Thanks | 7,803 | Actual US NAVY submariner here. It would not cause the hull to collapse at all. Submarines can surface from test depth at insane speeds without issue and do it yearly for testing purposes. The inside of the boat is pressurized and the change in depth would not cause any real problems. | 9,207 |
I helped a professor draft his letter of recommendation for grad school. Am I screwed? | I feel a bit dishonest for helping him with it, but he asked me to. He’s quite a busy guy and English is also his second language. Anyways I read somewhere that this kind of thing is extremely frowned upon and could even result in having your degree revoked later on if the school finds out. I now don’t even want to go to that school if I get in just to avoid this from happening.... thoughts? | 19 | It's actually quite normal (or at least not unheard of) for students to basically "write" their own letters of rec.
If anything, it's a good opportunity for the student to let the professor know which traits they really want to show on their application. The professor may have thoughts of their own, or wording/stories that they want to add, but that's up to them.
At the end of the day, as long as the professor signs off on the letter, there's no issue.
We talk about plagiarism a lot in academia, but letters of rec are probably one of the places plagiarism isn't really possible. | 79 |
ELI5: When plants face the sun, how do they know where the sun is, and how are they able to orient themselves? | 63 | There are cells in the stem of the plant that grow at different rates depending on if they are lit by the sun or not. The ones that are not in sunlight grow more than the ones that are, causing the stem of the plant to twist towards the sun. When you watch a time lapse of a plant growing it can really look like the plant “knows” where the sun is, and is actively moving towards it, but in reality the directional growth is just caused by chemical reactions, and is completely automatic. | 70 |
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ELI5: Why did the swiss bank change the value of the franc and what effects does that have on the economy? | 33 | The Swiss Central Bank has been holding the Franc/Euro Exchange rate at a 1.20 Francs per Euro minimum rate since 2011.
Today they announced to no longer keep it this way, which made the rate shortly drop to 0.85 Francs/Euro, right now it's about parity/1:1. At the same time they announced to push interest rates from -0.25 to -0.75%, meaning you "pay" to hold Swiss Francs.
So what are the consequences? Bad news for Swiss export industry and tourism (no one can afford the Swiss Franc anymore, Swiss Market Index is about 10-15% down), Franc/Euro and Franc/USD went down, USD/Euro also went down, and bad news for people holding credits in Swiss Franc (lots of Polish people apparently, it gets much more expensive to pay off their loans). | 15 |
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[Fallout] I got a fair amount of Nuka Cola bottle caps but they're all creased and a little rusty. Will the caravans accept them? I need my Cram. | 157 | Yeah, sure. Not every cap comes from a pristine, perfectly preserved bottle of Nuka fresh from the Vendo-O-Tron. They get traded around, carried around the wastes, dropped, and generally beaten up. As long as the person you're trading with *believes* it's a genuine cap, it's a genuine cap.
I've heard back in the Pre-War days they used paper money. Paper money! Now THAT'S something that would be hard to take care of. It's not nice and hardy like a cap. | 120 |
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[Star Trek]you know how getting the ship to self destruct requires both the captain and first officer to say special verbal codes, couldn’t anyone who works in engineering achieve pretty much the same thing by just whipping out their Phaser & shooting the warp core? | 348 | The self destruct is a controlled scuttling of a starfleet ship of the line, rather than a cascade matter antimatter reaction, that will send debri flying lightyears away
The self destruct countdown also allows the crew to evacuate to a safe distance quickly but safely rather than having micro explosions rock the ship every 3.926 seconds due to plasma conduit failures.
Finally upon completion of a self destruct count down a series of events would happen, If not countermanded by the specific self destruct authorization given by the captain and first officer which would include but is not limited too: The ship's logs and black box being loaded into a deep space message bouy and launched towards the coordinates of the nearest starbase if not sector 001 itself, the computer core is completely purged and all star fleet proprietary systems such as their replicators Transporters and holodecks are given a pulse overload to fuse any and all salvagable circuitry, scuttling charges throughout the ship's super structure which would have been installed upon the ships construction in the dry docks, would be armed and detonated weakening the embrittling the overall ship and then a controlled overload of the warp core to atomize the compromized ship, with remaining matter and anti matter being vented to ensure no extranious explosive material is left to fuel the explosion.
The purpose of the self destruct is not in fact to just destroy a ship, the purpose, as seen by every time the self destruct is activated, is to deny an enemy the weapons and technology contained within the ship that something like ramming the ship into the enemy would not accomplish | 314 |
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[MCU] Who is Thor's stylist when he uses Mjolnir to 'suit up'? And related questions. | *ENDGAME SPOILERS!*
In the first 'Thor', upon earning back Mjolnir, Thor holds the mighty hammer aloft and as his powers are restored so too is his costume from earlier in the film. Okay, that's simple enough.
I forget in what capacity we see this in other films until 'Endgame' - if I recall he's pretty much just in whatever costume already whenever he needs it.
But then in 'Endgame' he's been without Mjolnir for quite some time, he has grown fat and disheveled and has presumably not 'suited up' in a long time. However, towards the end when he, once again, holds up Mjolnir, he is suited up in a costume that is more befitting his new size and grooming habits, most obviously with a braided beard.
So my question is: who or what is doing this? What unseen Norse god of style is "making it work", so-to-speak? Obviously he's not just squeezing into an older costume or else it wouldn't fit, and the braided beard thing is a look we'd never seen before. Surely some intelligent force is deciding this, but who?
At that - could *anyone* wielding Mjolnir get the same glow-up from whatever divine fashionista if they so desire (I assume the costume only appears when desired, since Thor uses it other times without gaining it)? Could Captain America have gotten a really cool viking makeover had more pressing matters not been at the forefront of his mind? | 36 | Thor did it to himself. Mjolnir makes your exterior match your interior idealized self - working with what it's got, of course. It couldn't make you thinner or have longer hair, it just grooms what you have.
Steve's hair is too short for much of a makeover, but maybe it could be slicked back or something if he thought that was the way he should look. | 51 |
If dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on serum cholesterol, why do doctors advise people to lower their dietary cholesterol intake? | 41 | 95% of serum cholesterol is produced in the liver (Marks Biochemistry), but without HMG CoA Reductase inhibitors we can't effect this. So in turn we tell people to take control of what we can modify with lifestyle changes, ie dietary cholesterol.
So basically we tell you to lower cholesterol for the same reason you're told to wear a seatbelt, it's a risk factor we **can** control. And everything else equal, it's better to work on that 5% than 0%. | 29 |
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If water boils in a vacuum, what happens if there is not much space for the water to expand into (e.g. the airless volume inside a container is only twice the size of the volume of water as a liquid)? | I was trying to image what would happen if I had some water (say a liter) inside an airtight container and it filled the space. If I could draw a plunger and expand the space to 2 liters, but no air could get in, and the container would resist the pressure, what would happen to the water. Would it become a basically a less dense liquid spread throughout the 2 liter space)? | 24 | If you have a vacuum that gets fills with water vapour, it's no longer a vacuum. As water starts to boil due to the vacuum, the pressure increases and eventually the vapour pressure would be in thermodynamic equilibrium with the water and it would stop boiling. | 46 |
ELI5: What is actually happening when my computer has "limited" connectivity to a network (yet it appears to have no connection)? | 119 | In at least one case (I guess there are others), "limited connectivity" means that the computer is able to connect to a network - for instance, the WiFi provided by the router - but not the internet - for instance, if the router doesn't have a connection to the ISP. That means it would be able to send data via network that are destined for the internet, but it will not be able to be sent there because the way out is blocked. | 45 |
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ELI5: Why do standard-transmission cars stall when stopped and in gear, but automatics don't? | 26 | Stick shifts have friction plates coupling the wheels with the engine. Stop one, and the other has to stop as well. The friction is too strong.
Automatic transmissions have a fluid coupling between the movement of the wheels and of the engine. The motion is transferred by one set of turbines being driven and dragging along another set of turbines through the motion of transmission fluid. Block one set of turbines and the other continues to have some degree of freedom. There is friction, but no solid parts pressing against each other. | 14 |
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Are the effects of gravity on earth different to those in a spinning spacecraft like Rama? | How do the effects of "real-world" gravity felt here on earth differ those of "simulated gravity" in a spinning spacecraft such as Arthur C Clarke's [Rama?](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=rendezvous+with+rama&tbm=isch)
If I stand inside Rama and throw a ball in or against the direction of spin, will I see it travel in a parabola? If I throw it just hard enough upwards, could I get it to come to rest and float in center of Rama's axis?
I'm guessing not to the latter - I think Rama is a vacuum at it's centre, so nothing would be decelerating the ball at the "top" of its arc. In a smaller scale craft with 1 bar of air pressure throughout, maybe it could. | 46 | It sounds like you've got the right idea. The gravity felt on such a spacecraft is really centrifugal force, which is called a "fictitious force" because from the point of view of some observers, there is no force; it's just the tendency of things to try to travel in a straight line (inertia).
When you throw a ball "up", then you're "really" throwing it in a straight line from one point of the cylinder to another, but from the point of view of someone spinning with the cylinder, it's just going up and down in a smoothe curve.
There's nothing that would cause a ball to float at the middle of the cylinder, if you give it some initial speed then it will keep going until it hits the wall of the cylinder again, somewhere. What goes up must come down, from the point of view of a passenger.
N.B. saying that centrifugal force is fictitious isn't the same as saying that it's not real. Maybe that would have been a consistent worldview before Einstein's general relativity, but one of the implications of that theory is that there aren't really any "inertial frames" at all, and that the most obvious force of all - gravity - is itself a "fictitious force" resulting from the squeezing of curved spacetime around massive bodies into the flat spacetime we are used to thinking of. | 12 |
In flatland, would the 3rd dimension be time? | 26 | It could be. However, answer me this.
What is the second and third dimension to us? Is it width and height respectively, or length and width?
The dimensions are arbitrary named and you would be correct if you named time as the first or second dimension.
So yes, if in flatland you declare time a dimension you are wanting to measure, then you can name it the third dimension. | 27 |
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ELI5: What makes our voice change after sleeping to be more deep, low, scratchy? | 199 | A combination of you being very relaxed when you wake up and having mucus dry onto your vocal cords during sleep, making them thicker and causing them to vibrate slower. It's often called morning voice. | 184 |
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ELI5: What makes wild boars so dangerous? | 19 | Their attitude.
In more official terms, they are very aggressive.
Most animals could be dangerous to humans if they wanted to attack. The safe animals would rather run away and hide, or find something easier to attack for food.
Wild boars, on the other hand, attack for many reasons, and they have tusks and lots of strength that helps them make an effective attack. | 21 |
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[Game of thrones] Olenna Tyrell - the queen of thorns is a sharp and intelligent woman and effective Matriarch of the Tyrell family, and her granddaughter is her gifted protege. How is it that Mace Tyrell is such an oaf (albeit a well meaning one) | How comes his character doesnt have any of the hallmarks of his mother ? | 30 | Olenna describes her late husband as a clumsy oaf, the same as her son. Which is fair because he died bird-watching, the man was looking at hawks and rode straight off a cliff.
Mace therefore takes after his father. It's also a medieval society, where Lords were the ones who groomed their sons for leadership. While Olenna might express disappointment in how the boy was raised, she doesn't have the final say. I'll expect Mace gives in to Olenna much more than her husband would have, though he would have also given in more to her than the average lord. Luthor, a well-meaning man raised his boy to become a clumsy oaf like himself.
Olenna seeing more potential in her granddaughter and having more control in her upbringing, grooms her for leadership instead. Margaery possess the same kind of beauty and wits that she herself possessed and used to get to where she was. | 28 |
ELI5: How can a company release more stock without losing it’s own share, or diminishing the value of the existing stock? | What title says | 22 | All stock is is a % ownership of the company. Assets - Liabilities = Shareholder Equity (Stock).
So, in a simple company lets say we have $1M in cash, no liabilities, and 1,000 shares of stock outstanding. Each share is worth $1,000 ($1M / 1,000 shares).
Now, lets say the company creates 1,000 more shares of stock and sells them for $1,000 a piece. The company now has $2M in cash with 2,000 shares of stock outstanding. Each share is still worth $1,000 ($2M / 2,000 shares).
Each share of stock is a smaller % ownership, but since the value of the company is higher, each share is worth the same. | 33 |
[StarCraft] How are the Zerg a viable species? | With the exception of the drones and maybe the queen, they are all alpha predators with extreme energy requirements.
They would starve after a few days when they deplete their prey as no ecosystem is built to carry these kind of predators.
And even if they had enough prey, wouldn't they have to be constantly eating meat?
This would be a challenge for zerglings and outright impossible for Ultralisks or any kind of flyer.
Stopping Terran or Protoss vehicles is always going to take a shitload of energy, no matter how advanced Zerg genetics could be.
Maybe they get their energy from creep but that introduces its own set of problems:
Where does creep get the energy from? Unless they developed an organic nuclear reactor they would be forced to get it from solar radiation. Which puts a hard limit on their operations and makes it impossible in space stations without any sunlight.
TL:DR the Zerg have a serious fuel problem
| 16 | > Unless they developed an organic nuclear reactor
They have, in a sense. You're forgetting about Vespene Gas. An Extractor is basically exactly what you describe they need, an organic power plant converting a natural resource into caloric content for the high metabolism zerg forces. | 31 |
[LOTR] How was Frodo able to freely give the One Ring to Tom Bombadil? | Was there some way the ring detected that Tom doesn't care about it and would give it back so the ring let go of the addiction? Did Tom Bombadil have an aura that let Frodo know the ring would be returned to him? | 354 | While others are correct regarding Frodo's state *in general*, it's not relevant to this question since Frodo had trouble handing the ring over to Gandalf, one of his closest friends, and was himself surprised at his willingness to give it to Tom.
The thing to keep in mind is that people aren't just getting addicted to the ring; it exerts an intentional pull on their minds. The ring's intent is always to enslave whomever it needs in order to be reunited with Sauron. Part of that process leads it to pump up the juice every time the bearer is considering taking an action which would put the ring's goals in danger, such as handing it over or trying to get rid of it. Sure, people get attached over time to the point where the ring doesn't need to do much anymore (see Gollum), but that's still a big part of what's happening inside bearers' heads.
Handing the ring over to Tom carried zero risk for the ring. Tom exists in a state that essentially doesn't interact with the ring; giving the ring to Tom is no different (in the ring's perceptions) than setting it on a table. The ring may not even be aware that it was placed on Tom's finger, because Tom is just not the sort of creature that the ring can interact with. | 428 |
ELI5: They say an object has mass has gravity, does this mean i have my own gravity? | 61 | Yes, a very, very, very small amount of gravity. So, you attract the Earth to you with the same force that the Earth attracts you to it. However, you are much, much easier to move than the Earth is (due to mass affecting momentum). So, you end up moving toward the Earth rather than the Earth moving toward you.
Kinda neat, eh? | 91 |
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ELI5: Why do alcoholics die when they stop drinking? | 24,656 | Imagine you are always driving your car with the parking brake on. The parking brake depresses (lowers) your speed. You adapt by pressing harder on the gas. One day you take the parking brake off, and because you're still pressing hard on the gas you lose control and speed into a brick wall.
Similarly, the brain adapts to alcohol (the parking brake) by removing some portions of the overall braking system (inhibitory GABA receptors) to compensate. When the alcohol is suddenly removed, the usual GABA brakes are so sparse that the brain speeds out of control into a seizure.
EDIT: While seizures are the most common serious complication of alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) and can be fatal, most AWS-related deaths are not caused by seizures. The "speeding" of the parts of the brain that control heart rate, blood pressure, and contractility (force of heartbeats) can trigger fatal cardiac events, especially in patients with certain risk factors. These are not the only potentially fatal complications of AWS. Always consult a physician before attempting to detox from alcohol, as they can advise you as to the safest way to "release the parking brake" slowly over time. | 23,909 |
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[Folklore] What would be a good combination of materials to make into a weapon for fighting "Monsters" | For example, a Cold Iron sword with silver inlays, blessed by a priest? trying to cover all of the various Monsters vulnerabilities into one neat package. | 35 | Silver and Paladium, with an iron core, tempered in the blood of a virgin and blessed by a Catholic Priest.
The Iron counteracts Fae and Spirits, silver works against most variations of Vampires and shapeshifters, Paladium kills Demons, virginal blood burns witches, and the holy blessing is just for good measure.
*edit: typos | 38 |
Why is gravitational mass proportional to inertial mass? Do both of them grow as an object reach relativistic speeds? | If they both grow, how can we explain the strong gravitational field in the object's frame of reference?
What's the difference between them on a fundamental level? | 41 | First, it's much better to think of mass in terms of rest mass, rather than relativistic mass. Almost no physicists think in terms of relativistic mass anymore; instead, it's the formulas for momentum and energy that get modified at high speeds. So we always say that an electron has a mass of 511 keV/c^2, even when it's ultrarelativistic; it just has way way more momentum and energy than you would expect for a particle with its mass and velocity in Newtonian physics.
OK, so now that we are thinking about rest masses, why is it that gravitational (rest) mass and inertial (rest) mass are the same? Per Newtonian physics this is just an accidental fact that explains gravitation nicely. Per Einstein this is a fundamental law of nature: the Equivalence Principle, which states that all objects fall at the same rate in a gravitational field. In Einstein gravity (aka general relativity) gravity is not a real force, it's an artifact of being in an accelerating frame of reference. Gravitational forces are fundamentally the same as centrifugal forces, Coriolis forces, and the force that pushes you back in your car seat when you floor it, in that they only exist when you're using the 'wrong' frame of reference. If you construct the formulae for these 'fictitious forces' you find that they are all proportional to *inertial* mass. So Einstein explains the equality of gravitational and inertial masses by saying that gravity, too, is a fictitious force, so the mass that appears in it must be the inertial mass.
Now, your question about growing relativistic mass still stands in a modified form, because Einstein gravity is sensitive to *energy*, not just rest mass. (It's also sensitive to momentum and pressure!) And the resolution is just that just as the energy, etc of a particle depend on your frame of reference, so too does the gravitational field, and everything is just right (by construction) to make the different points of view consistent. In the rest frame of a particle, though, it has only its rest mass and its ordinary gravitational field---it doesn't "know" that it's moving relativistically relative to something else. | 19 |
ELI5:Why do LED bulbs cause image tracking/persistence in vision? | I recently changed from G9 Halogen bulbs to LED in my sitting room. (2 x 5-bulb fixtures)
I've noticed significant image tracking/persistence in the room since the change - for example, when I wave my hand in front of my face I can see extra instances of my hand along the trail of movement.
A similar effect is created when I wave my hand in front of a computer or TV screen.
This doesn't seem to happen under the halogen light or in daylight.
What causes this effect and why does the type of light make a difference? | 159 | LEDs or your monitor are like stroboscopes, they don't give a constant light, but blink really fast to give the perception of constant lighting.
The still images you see are like what you see on the dance floor in clubs, the subject is iluminated for a very short time, creating a still image like a camera. | 65 |
ELI5: If electrons repelling each other means you never really touch something, how do different things feel differently? | 205 | Different configurations of electrons-repelling-you feel different. Your mistake is in assuming that you have to actually touch something to feel it- that's true for a common-English understanding of what it means to touch things, but not if you insist that touching something only counts if the atoms are knocking into each other with literally zero space between them. | 81 |
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Examples of problems that can not be solved algorithmically? | I was listening to [this podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9SFZNzF2Lo) with Sam Harris and Dr. Cal Newport, who referred to a paper by Alan Turing called "[On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem](https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf)" in which, Newport explains, Turing proves that *most problems\* can* ***not*** *be solved algorithmically* (\*however they define "problem").
What would be some concrete examples of these problems? Does that mean even the most sophisticated AI would not be able to solve these problems? Is there a name for this class of problems? Is it a certain computational complexity class like expspace or is it something else? | 20 | Formally these problems are called undecidable. And yes it means there can’t exist an algorithm that can correctly give you yes or no answers to an undecidable problem. the canonical example is the halting problem, which in a general sense is given a program (originally a Turing machine, but can apply to any formal algorithm) does it halt or go into an infinite loop? | 21 |
[MCU] what makes thanos so resistant to damage? | It takes iron man with his bleeding edge armour just to make a cut on his body, but Thor with stormbreaker can injure him like a normal axe would to an average man. Stormbreaker is said to be able to kill thanos, but what about thanos makes him so hard to kill, and what about the axe means that it is able to kill thanos where other weapons would fail? If it’s the infinity gauntlet, does that mean that iron man would have done more damage to him if thanos hadn’t been using the gauntlet? | 83 | Thanos doesn't have an "origin" for his strength described in the MCU (yet), but in the comics he's a Deviant Eternal - basically a superpowered mutant, from a race (the Eternals) created by the Celestials that were already on a par with Thor.
And it's implied (or maybe stated IDK) that he further enhanced himself with technology later on his quest for power.
So basically, imagine if Thor had a permanent Hulk-style mutation on top of his already massive durability and strength, and then he went around finding and drinking Super-Soldier Serum and Heart-Shaped Herb to become even stronger. | 123 |
x-post from r/askculinary: If I touch raw chicken, or anything with pathogens in general, then put my hand in salt, is that salt contaminated or does it kill the pathogen? | 91 | Salt is extremely good at killing bacteria. That is why food is preserved with salt. Some bacteria and fungus can survive in high concentrations of salt, they are called 'halophiles', but even then they cant survive past a certain concentration.
The problem with using salt to clean your hands is that if the salt is dry, it will not make contact with all of your skin. It is especially hard to clean in between fingers, and on the sides of your nails.
You are far better off using a product designed for quick cleaning, like alcohol-based foams. | 32 |
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The JC Penney's fair pricing failure shows consumers do not make rational market choices. CMV | A couple years back, a clothing department store JC Penney's had Ron Johnson step into the CEO role. He was tasked with bringing new life to the store, and decided on a "Fair and Square" approach. He was going to do away with many of the deceptive tactics that had been in use previously.
Before, sales were used heavily to sway customers. Items would be marked up by 20%, then placed on a 20% off rack. Generally at a given time 50-60% of the merchandise would be on sale, with some items never being sold at it's "normal price" at all. Anything that was off sale was priced at a ludicrous markup. Jonson did away with sales entirely, and marked all the shelves with the true prices. Further, he eliminated the $44.99 pricing, rounding to whole numbers. I believe coupons were also cut back.
As the title suggests, this failed colossally. Sales dove dramatically, customers left, and many predict the store won't ever fully recover. There's a few ideas why this happened, the most supported is that people like sales. Buying a $30 pair of jeans feels nice, but buying an ~~$80~~$30 pair feels *awesome*. Other factors like the .99 pricing also contributed. JC Penney's felt more expensive without the trick, despite being on paper the most honest pricing.
This is highly contradictory to the "rational consumer" model that various degrees of free market supporters often rely on. While market issues from bad choices are brought up often, the conversation is generally toward vague regulations issues, scheming boards, or X group being uninformed consumers. Here we have a prime example where no government oversight contributed to the problem, where the CEO was replacing actually deceptive practices openly, and the primary customers are fairly well off, educated, middle to old age patrons. I side with Johnson, and would have thought this successful before. That it failed, and failed on such a magnitude leads me to believe a truly free or very free market relying on choices like this one are detrimental over our current system.
The market solution here is objectively the worse one. Instead of competitors dumping their now admittedly deceptive tactics, Penney's [apologizes](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/05/01/jc-penney-ad-apologizes-to-customers/2127055/) and goes back to it's [deceptive tactics](https://www.google.com/search?q=jc+penney+sale+). Further, the competition is now incentivized to find better ways to do sales, impulse buys, or pricing tricks. I believe this is detrimental to market systems, and to the quality of life of the consumers. We should not over-rely on consumer habits. | 692 | The narrative as you tell it is the one most favorable to Ron Johnson: he tried to make pricing morally virtuous, he was too fine for this harsh commercial world, etc. But that's not the story that was being told _before_ the strategy flopped.
In reality, Ron's strategy was to change the image of JC Penney's. He didn't want stores for working-class older women; he wanted hip stores like the Apple stores he had run previously, for a younger and richer crowd. Periodic sales are a way of making things cheaper for those with less money and more expensive for those who can afford to pay to buy immediately, as well as a source of entertainment for the coupon-clipping crowd. So he got rid of them. He backed this up by changing the look, feel, and advertising of the stores as well. How do you think this made JC Penney's traditional customers feel? They knew when they weren't wanted, and they stayed away. Meanwhile the new customers didn't show up.
There is an element of consumer irrationality in this story, but there's just as much of cynical marketing gone wrong. | 184 |
[Comics] What's an interesting super power that hasn't been used in comics before? | 149 | I want to see lower-powered or super limited versions of popular heroes' powers. Laser-eye vision, but only as strong as a laser pointer. Flight, but they have to put effort into it eg they huff and puff like they're running and arrive sweaty and out of breath. Heat control, but you can't create fire or ice, you can only move heat around eg you can burn a tree but have to freeze a pond to do so. You can teleport but only as far as you can run holding your breath. Comics keep upping the powers, but it's more interesting when powers have limits. | 127 |
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ELI5: Explain this, If we made a stick 600 light years long, put it in between two space stations floating around a planet. If we pushed one end of the stick up about 1 inch, would the other space station get that signal instantly, or would it take time to get to him? | If said space station managed to stay perfectly aligned is a point to discuss, but say the space station ARE managing to stay perfectly aligned and nothing hit the stick, such as another planet or meteor(Or whatever the correct term is). | 531 | Unfortunately, unless Einstein messed up, you can't send information faster than the speed of light.
When you're pushing on that stick, it actually does take time for the "push" to reach the other side depends on the material properties of the stick. If, for example, the stick was really floppy like a string, if you wiggle the string, you can see that the "wiggle" will take some time to get to the other side. The more rigid the material is, the faster the "wiggle" will go across.
If you have a perfectly rigid object, then yeah the signal will go across at the speed of light. But it won't be instantaneous.
Why? Because objects on a small scale are not continuous - they're a bunch of molecules that have some interaction with each other. For example an iron rod has a bunch of iron atoms a particular distance from each other - close enough so that they can bond together (the reason for this distance is so that they can delocalize their electrons, but this is above a ELI5 level), and far enough so that the charges in the atoms don't repel each other.
So if you push on one end of this iron rod, the 1st bunch of atoms you push on will get too close to the a bunch of atoms in the next slice of the rod, too close for comfort, so the 2nd slice of atoms will move away from the 1st, causing it to get close to the 3rd, etc. until it goes all the way down. On a small scale, this is pretty fast. But on a larger scale (e.g. 600 light years), the "push" will be propagated down the rod like a wave that travels, at maximum, the speed of light. | 500 |
[Star Wars/ROTS] why didn't anakin just go farther down the lava river or something? | so in the big fight between anakin and obi-wan at the end, obi wan jumps onto the "shore" of the lava river while anakin is still on the metal thingy and says "it's over anakin" - but why couldn't anakin just pilot his raft downshore and then jump onto shore somewhere else?
| 17 | It's not like he was in a clear mind at the time. He had just finished murdering dozens of children, the same kids he probably helped teach for the past decade, then he sees his wife apparently betray him by bringing his mentor to fight him. He yells "I HATE YOU" a little later, which could arguably be caused by losing his limbs, but it still demonstrates his emotional state | 30 |
ELI5: Why do TV-screens attract so much dust? | Out of all furniture and objects in the living room, it's always the TV-screen, not it's edges or anything around it, that is completely covered in dust. Why and when does this happen? When it's on, off or both? | 16 | The electric current in the television ( especially in old CRT televisions) gives a small electric charge to the casing of the electronics, as well as to the air around it ( including the dust). The effect of which is any dust which happens to float by the tv sticks to it, in the same way as a balloon rubbed on your head attracts your hair | 12 |
ELI5: Why do the YouTube ads stream so much faster than the actual video? | 103 | Ads pay for YouTube.. They are on better servers with less traffic that gets full priority over regular videos.
You browse and upload for free, so you get shitty service... Ads pay to be there so they get premium servers | 30 |
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ELI5: Why are bodies able to create an entire body with it's own lifetime supply of regenetive cells, but is itself unable to prevent gradual decay over a lifetime? | 169 | It's a lot like a car.
A new car you want to repair and replace as much as you can. As the car ages, it gets more expensive and time consuming to repair, and easier to just replace the whole thing.
Now consider that evolution is about what survives and prospers as a species. And consider the innumerable dangers that could destroy an organism. Nature has a few creatures that do effectively live forever, but as a general rule, replacing constantly works better, so that is what prospered and spread.
Also note your own body does the same thing. Rather than make cells that never die, it constantly removed and replaces cells. It's such a good system that some of your cells even self destruct or kill other cells to make this happen.
Further, note that replacement allows evolution to happen faster. The shorter a creature lives before procreation and the less it sticks around after, the more changes will happen.
Edit: to summarize, it's possible, but evolutionarily speaking, not desirable. Creatures actually moved away from that as time went on. | 42 |
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ELI5: Why does being tickled make us laugh? | 77 | I remember reading that one purpose of parents ticking their children is it teaches them defensive reflexes if they are attacked at different parts of their body (or something along those lines). Like puppies or kittens playing, it teaches them valuable life skills to survive.
It makes you laugh / is fun because it is initially play. Parents wouldn't do it to their children if it hurt them or didn't get the positive feedback. So it is natures way of encouraging you to teach those reflexes to your children. | 55 |
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[Zootopia] How much is rent in Little Rodentia? | Very small apartments, but for very small creatures. Are they as expensive as the normal apartments or way cheaper? Is life better there then? | 24 | There's no way they're as expensive as other units, unless there are regulatory requirements to limit the size of Little Rodentia and prevent large creatures from assisting in construction.
It takes a lot less time and material to build a dollhouse than a full-sized house, and a one-square-foot lot is a lot cheaper than a half-acre lot.
This should have ramifications for quality of life in Zootopia - if employers are required by law to pay a mouse as much as a rhinoceros, you'd expect mice to become far wealthier in the long run, because only a tiny fraction of their income would go to living expenses. (Maybe that's why the gang is made up of polar bear toughs but headed by a rodent.) | 28 |
Why do beavers build dams? | First: I'm unaware of an "ask an animal expert" subreddit, so I hope this still fits here. Second: The most common answer as discovered by google searching suggests that beavers are seeking calmer waters to build their home. This doesn't sound like the end of the story to me. Surely if a beaver simply wants calmer water, they'd seek calmer water. I feel like there has to be more to the behavior, so I'm curious. | 43 | When asking why animals do things we can divide the question into proximate and ultimate causes. For example, the proximate cause of you eating is that you are hungry. The ultimate cause of you eating is that you need energy and nutrition to live and grow.
The ultimate cause of beavers building dams is to provide a suitable safe habitat for them to live. Beavers live in lodges, and prefer to have the entrance under several feet of water to prevent predatory entry and allow the beaver to exit under the ice in winter. Beavers are also faster swimmers than walkers, and are safer in the water.
Where a suitable body of water and embankment exists, beavers often _won't_ build dams. Instead they will just burrow into the bank and use the pond to access nearby trees. But in a narrow, fast flowing stream or a location without an embankment, they will construct a dam to raise the water level several feet. Then they can construct a lodge in the middle of the water with a suitable entrance.
So that's the ultimate reason; beavers need a safe place to live
But there's also a proximate reason. Beavers are probably about as smart as your average mammal, which means they can't work through the rather abstract chain of logic listed above, any more than your dog knows it needs to eat because of energy and nutrients. Beavers need a direct reason to build dams, a reason that will help them build dams in the right place and time and keep them repaired.
So what's the proximate reason? Beavers have a strong instinct to stifle the sound of running water. In a famous experiment a researcher recorded the sound of running water and played it out in a field near a beaver dam. He came back a day later and found the speaker buried under a pile of mud and logs and debris until the sound couldn't be heard. That's the basis of dam building. If there's a shallow area with water running over it, they'll start dumping logs and twigs and mud on it. If there's a gap in the dam with water splashing out, they'll fill it up. All this dumping debris to silence the sound of running water means that eventually the flow is stopped and a nice, calm pond remains. | 53 |
[Electrical Engineering] If electric fan knobs are made to resist a set amount of electricity, then is the amount of elecricity consumed in the fan equal regardless of the amount of resistance in the knob? | In advance, I apologize for the horribly butchered question. I wasn't quite listening during workshop class. | 100 | Firstly, fans no longer use resistors, or rheostats, to control their speed. They either use switches that rewire the coils, or dimmer controls of various complexity that use, in one way or another, triacs as switches to control the amount of power that reaches the fan. These control methods are highly efficient, so the power used by the fan goes down by a lot as you slow it down.
Even in the old rheostatic controls, they'd use less power as you turned them down. As you increased the resistance, you'd have less current flow, and as the voltage across the circuit remained constant as the current decreased, (P=VI), the power dissipated by the whole circuit would decrease. But the overall efficiency drops, as, for instance, if you used the resistor to halve the current, The whole thing would use half the power. But the fan would only see half the voltage, and half the current, so would run at 1/4 of the power. The same amount of power would be dissipated by the resistor. This is why we don't use them any more! | 49 |
ELI5: Why it takes longer to heat up two hot pockets in a microwave than one. | Same applies to any food, obviously. I just happen to be consuming a hot pocket currently while staring vacantly at the instructions. And does the same effect apply to normal ovens at all? | 93 | A conventional oven that heats up everything inside an oven including air, the oven sides, etc. That's quite a waste of heat but if you put one or two hot pockets in the oven, you won't see much of a difference.
A microwave oven is much more efficient, which is why it's fast. It only sends energy to food you put in it. Its energy output is limited though, so the more food you put in it, the less energy each part is getting. | 72 |
ELI5: Rh positive and negative and why it matters so much when it comes to having kids | Yeah yeah I'm an idiot lol. I'm sure it's all so simple but I'm pregnant and honestly, lacking quite a few brain cells thanks to it.
Can someone explain to me why Rh positive and negative matter when it comes to reproducing and even marriage?! I just read something that said Rh negative women should not be with Rh positive men and I don't understand any of it. | 2,873 | Your red blood cells might have a protein on them called Rhesus protein. It's hereditary. We call people with Rhesus protein "Rh positive," and people without it "Rh negative."
If mom is Rh negative and dad is Rh positive, the baby could be either. In the case of Rh negative mom and Rh positive baby, mom's immune system will treat the baby's blood like a foreign substance. So if any blood from the baby gets into mom's bloodstream via the placenta, her immune system will attack it by making antibodies.
If any of the antibodies from mom's immune system get back into the fetus's bloodstream, they will break down the red blood cells in the fetus's body. This can lead to the baby developing jaundice while in the womb.
Now, all that being said, it's not really that big of a deal if you live somewhere with proper prenatal care. Your doctor should discuss Rh factor incompatibility with you, and if you are Rh negative, there's medicine you can take so that your baby doesn't wind up with jaundice. | 3,061 |
How do the Great Lakes 'avoid' being salt water? | 19 | They have been and are fed by fresh water sources (rivers, springs, glaciers) and they are above sea level so they drain into the ocean. There is no source of salt that has a chance to mix with the water until it drains into the Atlantic Ocean. | 20 |
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[Harry Potter] When a person in a painting walks beyond the egdes of a painting, where do they go? | We know that painting-people can go from one painting to the other, and if you tilt a painting the people in there will slide out. Where do they go when they are between paintings? DO they have their own pocket universe there, or is it just eternal darkness between the few pockets of reality that are the paintings? | 58 | Painting in some buildings - like Hogwarts - are interconnected. The people depicted in them can enter other portraits. Like when The Fat Lady spent Christmas in the painting of the Four Drunk Monks, getting wasted.
Headmaster portraits have an additional enchantment that allows them to move freely between any portrait of themselves, regardless of its location.
Beyond that, a painting is a painting, and they can't leave its confines. | 37 |
[Tolkien] If Sauron is said to be the most powerful of all the Maiar, and the One Ring makes him even more powerful, why did he lose to Elendil and Gilgalad? | Assuming that Elves and Men are less powerful than Maiar to begin with. You would think that the two kings were incredibly outclassed. How the hell did they win? | 23 | There are different types of "Power". Sauron orchestrated the downfall of Númenor, the most powerful kingdom of Men to have ever existed in addition to most of the powerful Elves of the Second Age. He also would have defeated Middle-Earth yet again if not for the blind luck/divine intervention of two hobbits sneaking into Mt. Doom.
Sauron was one of the best smiths of magical, powerful artifacts in the history of Middle-Earth, had uncounted armies of Men, Orcs, and other monsters, had spies all over the world, corrupted the leader of the White Council, and drove the Steward of Gondor to madness.
He also lost a fight to a dog in the First Age. "Most powerful" doesn't necessarily mean physical power. | 41 |
ELI5: Why does laughter, a physiological response to humour, exist? | 130 | For the type of laughter when, for example, playing, it's a signal to the person with whom you're playing that everything is lighthearted and that they aren't hurting you. Even rats do that.
For the type after a joke, the leading theory is that before you hear the punchline, your brain is trying to come up with the answer and sending signals to all kinds of parts of your brain to find out what's coming. When the unexpected (it has to be unexpected, that's what makes a joke a joke and why they stop being funny the more times they're told) punchline hits, all that energy in your brain has to go somewhere, which results in light convulsions in the form of laughter. | 71 |
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[Marvel/DC] Who are the wealthiest / smartest people on Earth who are not also a super hero or villain? | It seems like most of the top tier superlatives in both universes use their brains and/or wealth as either a means to or a cover for caped adventuring. So are there any noteworthy billionaires who don't secretly go out and cause or prevent mayhem? Any super geniuses who don't also spend their time fighting dinosaurs via time travel? | 25 | To be fair, almost all rich superheroes were rich *before* becoming superheroes, rather than as a result of it.
That said, the first who comes to mind is Spike Freeman for me. He's a media-mogul and billionaire. He's a bad person, and sort of an antagonist, but he's not really a "villain" in any poetic sense. He's a rich douchebag who runs a reality TV show about superheroes, and he knowingly allows them to endanger themselves for ratings. | 29 |
[Harry Potter] How can owning the three Hallows make you The Master of Death? Even if you wear the cloak 24/7, you will still eventually die of old age. | 178 | The Wand gives you power over the lives of others: you can kill them.
The Stone gives you power over the dead: you can "raise" them.
The Cloak gives you power over your own mortality: You can't be found to be killed
That's what is meant by mastery of death | 239 |
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(Game of Thrones)Some questions about the Night's Watch | I am caught up in the show, and I've only just started the books. That being said...
1. The Night's Watch are supposedly all equals, words like "common born" and "high born" are abandoned after they take their oaths. So why is it, at the beginning of the series, that Garret has to take orders from Waymar Royce? According to the wiki, they both hold the rank of Ranger. Shouldn't Garret hold seniority, given his decades of experience?
2. Why was Benjen Stark allowed to leave the Wall to attend the feast at Winterfell?
| 33 | > So why is it, at the beginning of the series, that Garret has to take orders from Waymar Royce?
The Lord Commander placed Ser Waymar in command of the mission so as not to offend his father. The Night's Watch needs to maintain a good relationship with the lords to the South to keep the recruiting pools open.
> Why was Benjen Stark allowed to leave the Wall to attend the feast at Winterfell?
See above answer about good relationships. Additionally, the Starks of Winterfell are the next line of defense after the Wall, so the Watch will keep them abreast of large developments beyond the Wall. | 40 |
[The Matrix] Does the Matrix simulation endlessly replay the whole 20th Century or are the people within it living out an approximation of the 1990s for roughly 100 years at a time? | I know that each iteration of the Matrix lasts roughly 100 years before a reboot is needed, admittedly I do not know if the various reboots are completely different incarnations (for instance, I know there was a “paradise” version of the Matrix and also a “nightmare” version of the Matrix at various points). My question is, assuming the form of the Matrix we’re introduced to has existed for a few cycles and the whole “Actual late 20th Century” version isn’t just the latest attempt; did the Machines somehow get people to ignore the fact that the same decade has existed for a literal century or does the clock get constantly reset to 1900 and end in 1999? I know, at the very least, everything the machines use for their various functions as programs existed by the year 1900, such as phones for the agents to enter the world and interact. But also, the Machines do not want life to be extreme suffering for the humans, yes? Because I do believe recreating the world wars is likely beyond what the Machines can even do?
Can anyone help me out here? | 15 | The date does progress in the matrix, as does *some* technological and sociological advancement. These advances are limited and controlled though along a predetermined formula to make sure humanity both stays around the 1990's level but also doesn't break the simulation by never letting any progress happen. They don't ever give an exact "date" that the reset simulation begins at, but it's probably early 90s. Then 100 years or whatever are allowed to pass but only a decade or so of advancement is allowed | 26 |
[The Dark Knight] When Mr Lau flees to Hong Kong, and Batman brings him back to Gothom would this create an international uproar? | Would China hold the US responsible for their vigilante kidnapping a prominent Chinese businessman? Mr Lau immediately being arrested makes it look awfully suspicious, plus Batman was seen by many eye witnesses and I'm sure they have cameras. | 654 | It'll be a delicate situation for sure. Given that lau is a Chinese national china will likely sue for his deportation to Hong Kong or Beijing. They'll issue an arrest warrant for Batman as well for the kidnapping and the pilot and crew of the illegal aircraft that kidnapped him. Ultimately it'll go nowhere. Lau was already being investigated for his ties to organized crime and once enough evidence is given to Chinese authorities they'll arrest him on corruption charges and sieze his remaining mainland assets. Batman will be wanted by the Chinese government but it's doubtful he will visit china again. Lau will probably be given a plea deal in the US then handed over to china after enough evidence is gathered against the mob. It'll be a week or two of international headlines but lau will sing like a canary to remain in the US rather than face Chinese prisons. The State department will hand him over to china but wait just long enough to let the GCPD build their case. | 387 |
Are the stars we see at night mostly individual stars or galaxies? | And follow-up: If they are individual stars, why aren't they part of galaxies? | 68 | Majority of the stars we see are from our own milky way galaxy, the only non stars you can see with the naked eye is Andromeda, maybe a couple of satellite galaxies around us and obviously the planets too (edit: forgot about nebulas).
Other than that the light is far too weak for our eyes to make out. | 74 |
[MCU] Why does Captain America no longer use a gun? | He doesn't have a no kill rule and he was extensively trained with firearms in WW2. We saw him using a gun with his shield but nowadays he only seems to carry his shield. Why is that? | 102 | WW2 was war. Cap was often on the battlefield on the front lines fighting alongside with regular infantry, which is why he used a gun.
Modern day Cap is more special forces - a lot of his missions involve stealth and close quarters combat, which doesn't really rely on him having a firearm on hand.
| 74 |
ELI5: Why can't the U.S. hold their market hostage for companies that outsource a lot (through tarriffs, etc) to solve its economic problems? | Say the government gives, say, Apple a few years to move some of its factories over here from China, and if not they'll make it unprofitable to sell iPhones here. They will, because they'll take a dip in profit margins of it means they get to keep business in the largest economy in the world. If they made a lot of companies move a few of their factories doing this, they could theoretically end unemployment (after adding 8 million factory jobs here) and give a big boost to tax revenue. Politicians constantly are trying to fix the economy, why don't we force companies to employ Americans? I they move their company out of the country, we can just quadruple the tariffs on them so that companies with an American industrial base can take their place. We get more taxes, unemployment is over, and we achieve more economic independence, so things get more written on our terms.
Am I crazy? Why is this not being touched? | 18 | A tariff would decrease outsourcing but it would also raise prices. High tariffs also induce other countries to raise their own tariffs, which shrinks the foreign market for American goods.
That's not to say that tariffs shouldn't be higher, but raising them does also cause problems. | 11 |
Is nuclear energy a sustainable source of energy? | I have seen many people on Reddit advocating the use of nuclear energy, and since I don't know much about the subject I decided to research it. However, I have found many conflicting stances on the use of nuclear energy, more specifically on whether nuclear energy can be sustainable. I appreciate any clarification on the topic. | 41 | I think that it's technically a non-renewable resource-we are using nuclear fuels more quickly than they are being created. However, the amount of usable nuclear fuel eclipses the amount of available fossil fuel and thus it's considerably more sustainable than every other non-renewable resource. There are certain types of uranium in particular (238 IIRC) that would take us an incredibly long time to run out. | 31 |
CMV: Most people are intolerant of others beliefs. | At least in the US, most people are rather intolerant of differing beliefs, rules, or ideas.
For example group A wants something allowed while group B doesn't, their reasoning is that people have the right to do something but B believes it's exploitative, discriminatory, or just plain highly immoral and shouldn't be allowed.
There are a lot of things that could apply to, abortion, workers vs business, drugs, etc etc. And those things are very heated topics to debate, and as a general rule, at least one if not both believe the other side is completely unreasonable and being very dumb and treat the other side as such.
Edit: and so they they will discourage the opposing beliefs if not ban the speaking of it in their presence and while be hateful and intolerant of those who dare to speak it., and both political sides do it | 26 | There's a difference between being intolerant of a belief and disagreeing with it.
Being intolerant of someone's beliefs would be saying that those people shouldn't be allowed to hold the beliefs they do. Mere disagreement means you don't agree with them, but you still acknowledge that they have the right to believe what they do. | 23 |
[The Matrix] Why would an Agent's firearm ever run out of bullets? Couldn't the Machines easily give them unlimited capacity magazines, heat seeking rounds, etc? | Given that the Matrix was created by them and is under their control, why make Agents play by the physical constraints of real world weapons?
On the other side of the coin, say a resistance group unplugged a human who had never touched a gun in their (virtual) life and was extremely ignorant of how they worked and what they were capable of. Would feeding them a ton of bullshit exaggerating a gun's firepower and other capabilities make for a more effective fighter when in the Matrix? | 62 | The major problem is that virtual objects are not static -- they are all interacting with each other all the time -- and each and every one of them contains the elegant core code for the physics of the Matrix.
Just like fundamental forces in the Real World (strong and weak nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravity), every single object is having a dialog with every other object within its range. Query - response - query - response, etc.
The reason that Neo can warp reality is that he can influence every system necessary simultaneously in order to achieve those results. He does this instinctively with the speed of thought.
In order for a machine to do something similar, it would need to have override for the natural physics emulation code and be able to activate them all the time. And *each and every object in the world would need to have that code running as well*.
This is a nightmare from an efficiency perspective. Any programmer can tell you, if you start adding exceptions and work-arounds to make things integrate, you're going to end up with unforeseen glitches. You'll also bog down the whole system at run time when you add extra steps to check for those exceptions.
Imagine the extra server load if every single sidewalk tile, every rock and carpet, and every brick had to check every femto-second for the presence of an Agent.
That's why it's necessary that the Agents are built on the same code and operate on the same physics. They just have maxed out stats. | 60 |
[General] There are evil kingdoms and evil empires. What are some evil republics from fiction? | 416 | Debatably, the Alliance from Firefly.
Its government is never fully explained, but it seems to be run by a parliament. Its evil is of the most banal sort - faceless bureaucracy grinding the disenfranchised into the dirt; scientists experimenting on entire planets, then covering up the deaths of millions as an inconvenience; and psychopaths with badges using their petty authority to enrich themselves. | 373 |
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ELI5: How does nicotine affect our brains? | Hopefully this can motivate me to quit. | 45 | Apart from producing dopamine and causing dependency, nicotine also increases blood pressure but narrows the blood vessels and makes them less elastic. This can lead to heart failure in the long run.
With smoking, there are a large number of factors that add to health issues, nicotine not neccesarily being the substance that is most damaging directly. The cocktail of chemicals and loss of oxygen through smoke inhalation has a more serious effect on the brain than nicotine itself in small doses. But you wouldn't be smoking some random stuff unless it provided the dopamine. The way you train your brain to want to appease the craving can lead to inattentiveness, memory problems, issues with focus etc. You are reinforcing the pattern that smoking is an important thing for your body's functioning and if you can't it can make you feel and think in erratic and irrational ways. This is bad, because it takes a while for your body to get used to not fulfilling that pattern and reinforce healthier more fulfilling habits. | 19 |
[Star Wars] why/how are the jedi able to dodge and block blasters but can't dodge a punch? | 69 | Jedi can predict where an opponent will attack and respond pre-emptively. However, there are two components to this. One is simply seeing the future, but the other is **reading the opponent's intentions**, then moving in advance to counter what the target wishes to do.
The fact that there is an element of "sensing the target's intentions" is why droids are often favored as Jedi hunters: such telepathic tricks obviously don't work on them. But this also makes a Jedi's "precog" less effective against an attack that isn't consciously telegraphed. If an attacker acts as soon as muscle memory kicks in, without taking any time to consider the action, then a Jedi's precognition is less effective because there's less time to read the target's intentions.
Melee attacks are more instinctively natural for most people than firing a blaster, as the latter requires plenty of training and conscious aiming. Thus, melee attacks are generally less telegraphed, and precog is less effective against them.
It still usually does the trick, though. It's not like punching a Jedi works all that often. | 51 |
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CMV: Mentioning gender is unnecessary in all but the most niche interactions and informing people of one's sex makes more sense | To start with some definitions:
By gender, I mean the cultural identity that loosely related to sex as a concept, but is not inherently bound to it. I believe this understanding coincides with how businesses and the dictionary defines it, but I recognize I could be misinterpreting something.
In this case, by unnecessary I mean that it is almost wholly irrelevant to every situation and conversation I can think of.
The core reason I hold this belief is because any one gender does not inherently allow anyone to safely draw any other conclusions. I have known male-identifying gay friends and acquaintances who will often refer to each-other as she and are more comfortable with those pronouns (or at least, they appear to be; when I asked there was a lot of good-natured teasing and very little by way of helpful education). This unreliability is, of course, far less prevalent in those that are culturally men and women (I have no idea what the gender version of "biological male/female" is), but when non-binary people are thrown into the mix, as I understand it one can't really derive anything specific about how one should treat them based on just that information.
Now, if there is no reliable conclusions to be drawn from gender, does that not make it a little pointless in all conversations not about gender itself? Wouldn't it simply be better to, instead of indicating one's gender on a form, simply leave it at jotting down one's pronouns? Also, since more and more forms seem to ask for gender instead of sex, isn't something being lost there?
As I see it, your landlord doesn't necessarily need to know a nebulous facet of your cultural identity, they need to know what to call you and what kind of hygiene needs you have. I can't think of what benefit knowing your gender would provide to a tinder date, as long as they know what to call you. Meanwhile, even as a bisexual myself, I still thoroughly appreciate knowing what's between someone's legs before a date for preparation purposes.
Even if mentioning one's sex is uncomfortable, wouldn't it be better to just leave the point unaddressed rather than use gender as an unreliable substitute?
If it helps, I'm coming from the perspective of a cisgendered man who has never been very active in LGBT spaces. As such, I fully realize I'm not exactly on the forefront of understanding in this field, and generally keep my opinions to myself. This has just always bugged me a little and I thought maybe I could learn where people are coming from.
Also, fair warning: I'm not 100% on how to award Deltas, so a little patience on that front would be greatly appreciated. | 130 | Times sex comes into play:
* Doctor appointments
* Discussions about reproduction
* Medical discussions
These are pretty limited.
Times gender comes into play:
* When you see someone
* When you speak with someone
* When you refer to someone else
* When you interact socially in any capacity
* When you use the bathroom
I feel like gender is knocking it out of the park here.
Times I've spoken referring to biological sex in the last year are probably twice. Times I've spoken referring to gender are uncountable. | 157 |
ELI5 Why can't we breed bees en masse | In nature the bees create a queen with royal jelly. Can we not use the chemicals involved in this process to mass create bee queen's and then farm the hell out of the bee queen's to create billions of bees. Assuming the pupate at a very fast rate?
Could we not solve the bee problem this way? | 315 | The bee problem isn't due to insufficient bees. Be colonies will grow prolifically on their own.
The problem is that we've created an environment in which bees die. You can create more colonies but that doesn't change the fact that we place those colonies in a very hostile environment for bees.
And not just bees really. People overstate the importance of bees and massively understate the importance of insects in general. And insect populations as a whole have plummeted. | 528 |
How does a muscle attach to a tendon and how does a tendon attach to a bone? | Is it physical structures like microscopic hooks/anchors? Some kind of biological "adhesive"?
Edit: Question answered. Several very knowledgeable people have done a great job of explaining that there is no "attachment" rather there is no end between bone/tendon and muscle, they all just merge into each other. Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. Thanks everyone. | 5,316 | Tendons are something in between pure fibrous tissue and bone tissue. So they kinda stick to the respective bone as a very adhesive tissue that is interwoven with the bone cortex. As you follow the tendon to the where it connects with muscle, it is more fibrous is origin and resembles muscle itself in structure. Follow it towards bone, it becomes sturdier and more bone-like in quality.
So tendons are a kind of bridge between mucle and bone where in the outskirts the tissue flows in each other. | 2,720 |
ELI5: why does Kim Jong Un and the Kim dynasty keep their people secluded? | Are they trying to create their version of a utopian society? Or is it that they are just control freaks?
Surely Kim and others realize he isn't a Dear Glorious Leader or some kind of God right? | 35 | Everyone (outside of NK) knows that there are huge problems in North Korea, such as people starving, poor access to electricity, and a lack of education. The only way to maintain that kind of status quo is to make sure that people don't know what the outside world has to offer. The Kim regime is able to live a very good life while most of the people in the country are poor because most of the people in that country don't know any better, and are told that the rest of the world is worse and is responsible for their problems. If enough people realized just how bad they had it there would be a bloody revolt. | 33 |
How do oncolytic viruses recognize cancer cells from regular cells? And how useful are they really? | 42 | Many oncolytic viruses does target other cells as well however they are not strong enough to infect or spread infection in them as the immune system mechanisms in healthy cells recognizes them and initiates defenses. However, as many cancer cells often turn off immune responses in themself as part of their cancer mechanisms they cannot defend against the virus and is killed as a result. Oncyltic viruses are often insect virus as far as i remember meaning they do not have mechanisms to avoid mammal immune mechanisms. They have showed promises and is a viable means, however as far as i know they are yet to be used in human trials. | 19 |
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[Marvel] Deadpool's most underused power is - mercifully - the ability to instantly summon media, usually comics, from a reality where he and everyone around him is fictional. What's the most damage he could potentially do with a single such item (comic, trade paperback, etc.)? | 19 | I wasn't aware he had that kind of power, since it's usually shown to be only the perception of his being fictional.
The most damage he could do is to summon a complete piece of media that shows the past, the present, and the future (maybe a Marvel omnibus/character atlas?). Maybe a near-future, or something along those lines, and give it to a villain who isn't so narcissistic that they think they cannot be defeated.
The other is to make it public. Not only would knowing that their entire world and lives are a fiction throw the citizenry into disarray, but it also airs secrets, identities, powers, and base locations. People would know who has the advanced technology, where they get it, and how they made/got it. It could easily create a few super villains of their own, or lead regular villains into going after the heroes, now that they know their weaknesses, and who they are in their daily lives. | 18 |
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[How The Grinch Stole Christmas] Where is that "headcanon" of The Grinch character coming from? | I'm not really familiar with the original book but in the newest movies (2000 and 2018) Grinch is depicted as very talented at building some sort of gadgets and machines. Though the first animation, which made him like this was from around 80s - The Grinch Grinches The Cat In The Hat.
In the oldest animation from 1966, which I believe is the closest to the original, Grinch simply sewed his Santa clothes and got himself a regular sleigh. He didn't build any machines or gadgets.
This makes me wonder if the original book has ever suggested he was talented in such way or it's just now an accepted "headcanon" (interpretation) of the newer adaptations of him?
| 18 | The original book *How the Grinch Stole Christmas* doesn't really suggest that he's a talented gadgeteer. He's clever enough to pilfer an entire town's worth of gifts and decorations in a single night without getting caught.
That suggests a level of mechanical ability. He has to optimize the route for speed and to visualize how to dismantle and hoist a wide variety of items up narrow tubes. Also fitting thousands of objects into a single sleigh would require enviable packing skills. | 16 |
ELI5: what is that sinking/sickly feeling you get in your chest when thinking of losing something dear/going through a breakup? | Title says it all, we all know the feeling but why do we physically feel the pain in our bodies? | 60 | That feeling in your stomach is caused by anxiety. Anxiety triggers the ancient “Fight or Flight” response that is programmed in to your DNA. Anxiety manifests itself in complicated ways. Here are a few:
When you feel stressed or anxious, your body releases a rush of hormones. Neurotransmitters in the brain react by sending messages to the rest of your body to:
1) Get the heart pumping faster
2) Increase the breathing rate
3) Tense the muscles of you abdomen
4) Send more blood to your brain
Anxiety and stress can affect virtually every body system. This includes your cardiovascular, endocrine, musculoskeletal, nervous, reproductive, and respiratory systems. In the digestive system, anxiety can cause:
1) nausea, vomiting
2) heartburn, acid reflux
3) stomachache, gas, bloating
4) diarrhea, constipation, painful spasms in the bowel
All of these symptoms together create the feeling of “Butterflies” in your stomach. | 21 |
ELI5:would the screen rotation function work in space? | I did try to tweet an astronaut about this but I only got a reaction from someone I don't know and I didn't understand what he was talkin about:
****
@xxxxxxxxxxx @xxxxxxxxx it works, but in a weird way, considering the variability of the coriolis acceleration on #ISS: not useful
****
Can anyone explain this like I'm 5? | 199 | Phones have devices called accelerometers which feel the pull of gravity similar to how we do. Take one of these devices on a bungee jump, and it will record the increased force that you feel at the bottom of the cord.
In orbit, everything is in constant free-fall, so there is very little apparent gravity for people on-board the ISS, but the ISS is spinning slightly, creating something called the coriolis effect. Just like those carnival rides which spin and push you up against the wall, people and objects on the ISS are ever-so-slightly pushed toward the outside of the station's spin. The accelerometers can detect this and the effect can be used to force the screen to rotate. However, the force is so much less than gravity on Earth and astronauts don't really use it very much, it is likely more of an inconsistent annoyance than a useful feature. | 56 |
[W40K/Halo] How does a space marine match up against a Spartan? [xpost whowouldwin] | For simplicity lets say its a battlebrother from a codex chapter against a Spartan other than MC. | 23 | The Warhammer Space-Marine wins.
It's not to say that Spartans are weak or anything, but Spartans are designed to eventually become veterans; To eventually have a life and purpose that doesn't directly involve murdering aliens.
Codex Adherent Space-Marines are not. There are no Space-Marine veterans; There are only Space Marines with more combat experience. | 51 |
ELI5: How do companies discover that they've been hacked? | If you're a smart hacker, couldn't you figure out how to access information without anyone knowing that you did it? | 162 | If a good hacker didn't leave a footprint then the company wouldn't know about the leak, and you would never hear about the company having a leak.
The Sony hack wasn't noticed by Sony. It was the hacker group that publicly exposed the hack. | 139 |
ELI5: Credit Cards, how they work, and what is a good college student card? | Im so confused, Everyone tells me i need to build credit but how? | 41 | You just need to apply for a credit card and spend with it, but i can't stress this enough, don't spend more than you make. The last thing you want to do is to get into credit card debt, especially so early in life. And always pay your balance in full. | 29 |
[Wolverine] In the battlefield, what purpose does his yellow spandex suit serve? Better still, why is it made to stand out like that? | You'd think someone like Wolverine needs more softer black/brown colours to be more complement a more stealthy and animal-like approach in combat, not a sore-to-the-eyes "I'm HERE, Hit ME" sorta bright yellow suit. What positive does a bright yellow/blue suit serve in the battle? And even if it does serve something (Hell, everyone has weird, wacky suits) why is his one so bright and catchy? An enemy could see him coming from miles with a suit like that. Why even wear a spandex suit, you're fuckin Wolverine. Plus I don't even see any utility belt in it, is the suit for the sake of needing to have a suit? | 31 | There was an answer somewhere in this thread from earlier, but basically —
Yes, it’s an “I’m here, hit me” suit.
Because it’s much better for enemies to attack him, the regenerating, nigh-immortal mutant with an adamantium skeleton, rather than his squishier, less-immortal friends. | 86 |
[DC/Marvel] If Bruce Wayne was given the same origin story as Tony Stark, how would he have escaped the Ten Rings and what kind of hero would he have become instead? | This scenario assumes Bruce's parents died in an accident when he was a young adult to match up with Tony's timeline. Bruce isn't an engineering genius of the same caliber as Tony but still has his own natural talents to fall back on - though less refined due to not having been driven to develop them from a young age in this timeline. | 153 | He's screwed, basically - Tony was an engineering messiah who built a weapons platform in a cave to escape.
Without first becoming Batman, Bruce Wayne is just a smart rich kid - being raised by his parents for longer would only cement that.
Tony Stark was always Iron Man, only without the suit.
Bruce Wayne became Batman. | 232 |
[Discworld] How did Rincewind, a person with almost no magical ability, get into Unseen University? | 15 | He had the potential to use magic when he was a kid. That allowed him to study until he became a full fledged wizard or flunked out.
He ended up getting that one spell stuck in his head. That spell was important enough to allow the faculty to let Rincewind stick around.
After the spell leaves, the next time Rincewind is in UU he has already saved the world twice, so he is pretty much an honorary wizard.
Plus, bad things always happen to him. The other wizards realize that Rincewind is like a lightning rod. As long as Rincewind is around to take all the bad luck, everyone else is safe. | 27 |
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Why didn't the Jedi investigate Anakin's conception? | He was a pretty big deal and had a miraculous conception of sorts as far as the Jedi knew. Seems worthy of investigation. | 15 | What's to investigate? His father was the force. They knew it could happen, they knew how it can happen, and they knew it would happen. Using the force, Qui Gon knew that Shmi wasn't lying, and using the same techniques, the Jedi council knew Qui Gon wasn't telling porkies.
Perhaps the only question remaining is: "why Shmi?" ... but this line of reasoning is anti Jedi thought. A well conditioned Jedi focuses on the moment at hand, and the moments to come. The past is unchangeable, so there is no point in dwelling on it. Residing on things past can only lead to malcontent... which will lead to the dark side.
I think the only way the Jedi would investigate this further, is if immaculate force babies started popping up everywhere. This would be unexpected, and have a large impact on the future AND the present.
As it stood, there was one force baby, he was expected, and he was under close observation by the Jedi council. Things done be covered. | 27 |
ELI5 If skin is constantly renewing itself, why do blemishes remain? | 2,773 | The outer layers of the skin are formed by the cast-off remnants of the deeper layers. Blemishes exist in the underlying layers of the skin, where the cells are dividing to replace lost ones, and those get expressed on the outer layers as the cells surface and slough off. | 1,627 |
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How long is the LHC at CERN on for at a time? How long does it take before a test will be done? | Does it take a long time to actually charge up? Somebody told me it’ll take months before anything actually happens after they turn it on today, but I wanted to ask here if that’s how it works. | 221 | The ideal long-term running plan has ~10 hours of non-stop collisions followed by 2-3 hours of dumping the remaining particles, ramping down the magnets, preparing for a new fill, filling in particles, accelerating/ramping up magnets, and preparing the beams for collisions.
You can't fill in more protons once they have been accelerated, so over time the number of protons and therefore the collision rate decreases. The 10 hour number is the approximate point where it's better to accept the 2-3 hours downtime in exchange for going back to the initial high collision rate again. That gives us about two fills per day and collisions ~70-80% of the time.
The LHC has tons of components that all can have some issues, so realistically the time between collisions is often a bit longer, and sometimes these problems can stop collisions, so in practice the fraction of time with collisions is lower - something like 30-50%. That also means fills are often kept for longer than 10 hours if possible, because we know the average time to the next collisions is higher than the optimum.
Looking at a longer time frame: Every winter there is a shutdown for maintenance, smaller upgrades and so on. After that the machine parameters need to be tuned again. That means the accelerator starts with very low beam intensities to be on the safe side. After a long shutdown (e.g. like this year) it's even worse because many components are new and the operators have to make everything work together. Establishing collisions, stable beam parameters, and going to higher beam intensities takes a few months, followed by a few months focused on data-taking (with some time spent on pushing towards even higher collision rates). We already had some initial collisions, but only at a low rate and with parts of the detectors still switched off. The plan for today is collisions with all detectors fully switched on, i.e. the start of physics data-taking. The collision rate will still be very low. | 260 |
ELI5: Why do digital movies have such a hard time blending black and white, like when a person is in a dark room with a lantern? There are obvious rings as the colors fade into black. | 15 | That's called "banding", and it's due to compression. One of the steps of compression is to increase the length of sequences of the same color. This is done by combining similar colors into one. The combined results will have less granularity, and thus the distinct steps.
Banding is a reasonable trade off to have a small file size. If videos aren't lossfully compressed, even a small video would be gigantic. With that said, the result can be improved drastically by doing frame-level adjustments on which color ranges to compress and avoiding ranges where a gradient is present. But that's operationally costly. | 16 |
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Why does blue seem to be the hardest color to achieve for so many things, such as LEDs, fireworks, and paints or dyes? | What makes blue special? Also what category would this be? | 132 | Not an answer but blue is the shortest wavelength and therefore the highest energy of the visible spectrum. And higher energy is harder all around to deal with. For example, 7,000 kelvin light bulbs emit a lot of blue spectrum and many people find them to be burning and fatiguing of their vision. Another example is radio engineering, where higher frequencies are orders of magnitude more difficult to design and have increasingly erratic behavior. So it is built in to the wavelength/frequency of the light wave and the amount of energy required to generate it. | 48 |
[ELI5] Why you can't drink water couple hours before a surgery? | 431 | They don’t want you to aspirate. A lot of things that happen when they first put you under can potentially make you vomit and if that goes into your lungs (aspirating) it can block your airway or cause an infection. Having your stomach empty means that risk is much lower. | 606 |
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ELI5: Why can some insects survive high radiation levels they wouldn't encounter on Earth and others don't? | For instance take the clichéd cockroach. They can survive substantially higher levels of radiation such as that from a nuclear weapon. Surely in nature they would never encounter such high levels of radiation, outwith some stellar events. Furthermore why do only certain species have such a great tolerance to radiation whilst others do not.
It seems like genetics are coding for an unnecessary and unlikely exposure to radiation. Thanks! | 20 | They do not have specific adaptations for surviving radiation, but they are pretty tough little bugs that can survive injuries, starvation, etc. Insect biology just handles radiation damage better than mammals and things, mainly because they're much simpler than vertebrates.
There are arthropods that can survive the vacuum of space, not because they need to live in space bot because they evolved to survive *dessication* (drying out). Tardigrades are the instant ramen of the arthropod world. | 11 |
What is the importance of the prime numbers? | I've often wondered what the importance of prime numbers are, since they seem to be stressed in mathematics. I've asked this question many times (this is the first time I've asked reddit), and I either get my question "answered" with a question, or a smarmy answer.
Can someone please explain to me the applications and potential benefits from, say, one day finding *the* prime number formula? I do know that there are applications for this in cryptology, but outside of this, I'm not sure what the implications are or what the importance is. Thanks in advance for any help! This question has always nagged at me.
| 31 | Just to give an illustrative example, one of the most important properties of the natural numbers is the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic, which says that every natural number has a unique prime factorization. This fact was crucial to Gödel's proof of the Incompleteness Theorems, which is widely considered to be one of the deepest results about mathematics that has ever been proved. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems state that any axiomatic formal system that is powerful enough to capture arithmetic will always be either incomplete (in the sense of not being able to prove everything that's true) or inconsistent (in the sense that one can prove a contradiction), and that no such system can prove its own consistency. Gödel's famous proof involves attaching a number to each symbol in the formal language, and then storing these numbers as the exponents on an increasing sequence of prime numbers. This "arithmetization" assigns a number to each statement in the formal system, and because of the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic such an assignment is guaranteed to be unique. Given a number, we can write the statement that it represents, and given a statement, we can calculate the number that gets assigned to it. Arithmetization gives the formal system a *recursive vocabulary*, meaning that the system can say things about itself. For example, Gödel proved that there is a statement which says of itself "This statement is not provable." If the statement is false, then the system is inconsistent, and if the statement is true, then the system is incomplete. Gödel proved that this is an inherent property of such systems, and that there is no way of getting around incompleteness (such as by adding new axioms). This groundbreaking and frankly shocking result of metamathematics depends entirely on the properties of prime numbers. | 19 |
CMV: Universal Healthcare should mean you lose right to your organ when you die | What i mean if your country has universal healthcare you should automatically be enrolled into organ donation program no exception. If you don't want to then you should lose the right to enjoy universal healthcare.
My reason is your organ is an valuable resource and if we want some part of population to pay for our communal healthcare it logical to assume that your organ should be used to betterment of that communal healthcare. If we have surplus of organ you can sell it to foreigner to further fund the community healthcare.
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