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[MCU] How much of Captain America’s life would actually be in Rogers: The Musical? | I assume most of *The Winter Soldier* and *Civil War* is classified information, so how would that be represented in the musical? | 48 | Winter Soldier is 100% public since Natasha dumped the files and then testified to the Senate. The musical probably covers his creation and WWII adventure as Act I, Act II is probably him being unfrozen and forming the Avengers and finding Bucky. It probably ends with Civil War. Act III is probably the fight against Thanos, reforming the Avengers, and then a dramatic death scene since the public doesn’t know what happened to him. | 65 |
[MCU] How is the Winter Soldier a covert operative? | Hydra is a very subtle, secretive organization, right? If that's the case, shouldn't their main assassin be someone who sneaks around and blends in? A masked man with a metal arm would raise a lot of red flags at most secure installations. How does the Winter Soldier enter and leave these places without every law enforcement official on the planet chasing him?
Edit: we saw him commit 3 assassination attempts. The first was with a small army disguised as cops, the second was a .50 caliber sniper, and the third was him pulling a guy out of a car on a freeway. How do they insert and extract him quietly? | 189 | The Winter Soldier is stealthy in the same way that a B2 bomber is.
You don't see him coming, but when he gets there he blows everything and everyone the fuck up.
Don't think of him as a "secret agent", but rather as a tactical ballistic missile | 223 |
[40K] In his final confrontation with Horus, the Emperor of Mankind executes Horus without allowing him a duel and emerges unscathed. Is mankind any better off? | Everything occurs as it does in canon, except after seeing the corpse of Sanguinius at the feet of Horus, the Emperor makes his judgement: there can be no redemption for Horus. Rather than engaging in the duel that left him so horribly wounded, the Emperor of Mankind immediately unleashes his wrath upon Horus and obliterates him.
Is mankind any better off? True, he would still have to return to the golden throne to hold the breech in the webway closed, but he would still be able to at least communicate, and would not be slowly dying from his wounds, allowing for some possibility of rectifying the golden throne situation. | 21 | Of course.
With the Heresy defeated, an unscathed Master of Mankind would likely would have been able to figure out a solution to the Webway breach in the Imperial Palace. The Emperor has held the breach shut for 10,000 years despite being a few cells from becoming a complete corpse. If He hadn't suffered the terrible, terrible wounds at the hands of the Archtraitor, He not only would have likely been able to reseal the Webway (given enough time), but would be fully conscious and able to direct the course of the Imperium throughout the ages.
A sealed Webway and a healthy Emperor? There wouldn't be anything left to stop the Emperor from reconquering what was lost and ushering in a Golden Age for humanity as He originally intended. | 30 |
ELI5: When and How Was Earth Discovered to be Round? | Before you ask, no I didn't have any encounters with people who claimed Earth was flat. I'm just curious. | 16 | There was once a man named Eratosthenes in Ancient Greece.
He found in some books a record of a notable occurrence in a town called Syene, in which on the summer solstice at noon, objects would not cast shadows, and you could look all the way down wells.
He realized that meant the sun would have to be EXACTLY overhead in that moment, and since he knew for a fact that on that day and time in Alexandria (where he was) shadows DID get cast, he realized that the apparent angle of the sun must be changed with the distance. The only way this would work would be if the Earth were a sphere.
Since Syene was almost directly south of Alexandria, he took the known distance between to two towns, and the length of shadows in Alexandria on the solstice, and using some Trigonometry found the size of the Earth.
He was less than 1% off modern figures with this crude method | 43 |
[Marvel/DC] Are technopaths susceptible to computer viruses? | 31 | Depends on the technopath and depends on the virus. They aren't gonna catch some random adware designed for PC any more than someone using a MAC would, but a specially designed virus could do it. It also somewhat depends on the technopath, some control the technology as a form of limited telekinises as opposed to interfacing with the code, those would be a lot harder to do it to.
tl;dr: Yes | 19 |
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[SCP Foundation] What is life like for those in the employ of the foundation? | Whether voluntary (security, MTF, agents, scientist, support staff) or involuntary (class D or others like them). What's life like on base for those that live there, and what's life outside of work for those that just have a 9-5? Do they get paid reasonably Well? Turnover rate? Mortality rate? Getting sucked up into a cloud made of spiders rate? | 53 | For most, horrible. Boredom, bureaucracy, rumors, and dread, punctuated by moments of extreme stress or fear. The constant need to lie because of your job, and the knowledge that your superiors are also lying to you because of *their* job. Either you die horribly or live long enough to see your friends die horribly. Having to work with people who have had memories erased, and always avoiding *that* subject. Wondering if your own memory got erased, and your friends are avoiding *that* subject with you.
But for a select few, wonderful. Certain people get to tell another human being, "Go touch that weird thing and see what happens," and no matter what happens, you are never held accountable! Certain people get to torture, experiment, vivisect, test to destruction, throw people into the cage of a monster as they plead for mercy. And you get away with everything! And they *pay* you! For those few, twisted individuals, it's the best job you could ever possibly have. Those people also die horribly, but it's so worth it. | 55 |
Eli5 what is it about alcohol/fermentation that makes it almost universally make everything drunk? | Insects get drunk. Elephants get drunk and everything in between. Is it the only chemical that has this type of effect on everything that consumes it? | 48 | Ok I’m not sure how ELI5 this answer will be, but I’ll try and I’m happy to clarify anything.
Alcohol acts as an intoxicant for a few reasons. First it can pass the blood brain barrier in humans and virtually all mammals, and for animals without such a barrier it’s even easier for them to become intoxicated. Second, alcohol binds to receptors in the central nervous system that would normally bind to a substance called GABA, which is the primary way these nerve cells are down regulated in all mammals (and quite a few other animals besides). That depressive action is what leads to most of what we call getting drunk.
Humans, and in fact all animals, share a LOT of the same basic genetic information which codes for metabolism, basic functions of life, and neurotransmitters like GABA. The use of things like chloride channels is almost universal, unless there’s a specific selection pressure to alter it (such as an evolutionary arms race with a neurotoxin).
Alcohol is by no means the only things that is universally intoxicating either, for the reasons mentioned above about conservation of genetic material coding for basic functions. Some animals such as humans, which have an evolutionary history of eating overripe fruits, have evolved metabolic means (in the liver) to rapidly break alcohol down using an enzymatic pathway. For animals like elephants, they lack that same robust response, so a much smaller amount of alcohol will be more intoxicating to them, and leave them incapacitated for a longer period of time. | 54 |
[General] I'm a fat guy who recently started working out. I've lost about 20 pounds and was hoping to lose another 80 or so. Last night I was turned into a vampire. Am I stuck this way forever? | I've done a lot of reading but I don't see any fat guys in vampire lore. What are the macros for blood? Is it even worth it to keep working out? What are my options? Help, the clothing sizes in this leather fetish catalog only go up to XXL. | 19 | Depends on the vampire.
Strigoi, traditional Slavic Vampires, always become thin and almost skeletal.
Strain Vampires become the same.
Blade vampires seem to have normal metabolic functions, and can get fat if they consume too much or are too sedentary. This indicates they can also lose weight.
Anne Rice vampires remain as they are when turned, so you'd be screwed.
Dracula is unclear. It seems that a Vampires health and vigor changes as they feed, so you may be able to lose weight if you abstain from eating... But vampires also manifest unearthly beautiful appearances when well fed, so you may automatically get leaner and more muscular.
Warhammer Vampires... Well... There's a horrible, predatory bat-monster living under your skin. Fat is the least of your worries.. | 33 |
[Marvel] Don't the heroes have any problem with how SHIELD works? | SHIELD is an overbearing militaristic organization without any oversight. Its jurisdiction reaches the whole world, its competence is limitless. Given the right circumstances, SHIELD's director can take complete command over the three branches of power in a country, essentially becoming a non-elected dictator. They have detained and brainwashed people, their operatives consistently torture their prisoners.
**Sovereignty, Will of the People, Due Process of Law, Fundamental Human Rights, Checks and Balances.** SHIELD takes a huge dump over all those concepts. How none of the heroes have a problem with that? How can Captain America work with (and often for) such an organization when that organization has powers that go completely against his own beliefs? | 43 | They have a very big problem when S.H.I.E.L.D. violates due process and sovereignty. This was pretty much the theme of the Secret War and Civil War storylines. In Secret War, Captain America straight-up punches Nick Fury in the face and in Civil War he leads a superhuman resistance against the superhuman registration act. | 47 |
[DC] If Batman intentionally acted like he couldn't solve a riddle and allowed Riddler to believe he was smarter, would Nygma go away? | I know Batman has to save people, but some of his riddles are just simple riddles and I'm curious if it would be better for Batman to just humor him. I mean proving his superiority is basically Edward's reason to exist. | 52 | Not really.
Riddler has a very explicit compulsion to prove that he's not just smarter than Batman, but pretty much everyone else in the world. Batman just happens to be the person perpetually in front of that line to Edward.
If he thought Batman was actually beneath him (which he actually perpetually does because of his ego, regardless of his constant failures) to the point of not being worthy of his attention anymore, he'd just look for someone else to compete against.
And unfortunately for everyone, Riddler's idea of matching wits involves engineering crimes which put other people, and not just his primary targets, in mortal danger. | 50 |
[Avatar] Does Toph have any way to defend against a flying jump-kick? | 33 | Probably, she would detect them jumping off the ground, and as long as they can't change directions mid-air, she could just throw up some rocks in their face. Which is why she had so much trouble with Aang-he could change directions mid-air without touching the ground, so she had no idea where he would be going. She's also got a pretty great sense of hearing, so it's not like she wouldn't hear them jump up in the air at her.
The only time she's really struggled are:
-Against Aang, who was an airbender and she couldn't sense his location (Also almost nobody has any idea how to fight airbenders)
-With metal before she developed metalbending
-Unusual surfaces (she can't see as well when walking on sand, and she had a hard time crossing the ice bridge since she's walking blind as well).
-Underwater or in the sky, since she's not near earth and can't see much.
Otherwise, she's almost unstoppable without resorting to trickery or overwhelming numbers. | 66 |
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ELI5: How did "s" become the letter that pluralises nouns ("one apple, ten apples") in so many languages? | 1,403 | Around the time of the late Roman Empire, c. 400 a.d., the western Roman Empire was breaking apart. Latin broke apart with it. North and west of the Italian peninsula, we think, people started to speak their latin in a different way than people to the east and south of the Italian peninsula. In the west, they started generalising the rule for plurals in the latin accusative case (adding -s) for just, all nouns in all cases. In the east, they used the nominative case instead, leading them to make their plurals by changing the final vowel. The western latin evolved into French, Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese, while the eastern Latin evolved into Italian and Romanian. (So this is how we get Spanish hombre/hombres but Italian uomo/uomini). Sardinian, right on the dividing line, is more similar to Latin and Italian but has -s for plurals.
In a later, totally weird coincidence, Anglo-Saxons in Britain at some point started forming lots of plurals with an -as ending, which eventually became -es and then just -s. -as (or -az) was already a normal plural pattern for nominative case words with certain endings in proto-germanic; in English it was just generalised to lots of other words over time. Why this happened in English but not in Dutch (which forms some, but not all plurals with -s) or German (which dropped the -as plural completely) is not entirely clear. Possibly it could be because of contact with Latin and Old French? But English preserved a lot of 'irregular' plurals from its Anglo-Saxon roots anyway. | 1,154 |
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Why is there ringing in your ears in complete silence? | 35 | there are little tiny "hairs" in your ear that are actually very sensitive cells that detect vibrations in the air that you brain interprets, thus, you can hear things.
Sometimes, these little "hairs" get flattened out, by a very loud sound or by a natural quirk in your body. The ringing you hear is the the cells straightening themselves back out slowly. Imagine them like carpet that was under some furniture that you just moved. Your brain is wired to interpret any movement from them as sound, so you get that phantom sound at a low level as they stand back up.
Edit: Children of Men was an AWESOME movie, but the whole swan's song theory (that when you have ringing in your ears you will never hear that pitch again) is a common misconception. | 22 |
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[Mass Effect]How did The Illusive Man earn all his money, before Cerberus? | I’m not asking about how Cerberus earns its money, that’s well established, but how did TIM get Cerberus going in the first place/how did he make his bank before it? | 16 | What we know is that he was a regular civilian before becoming the Illusive man and his first action to gain notice by general media was an email calling for humans to dominate and rule every other species. Basically he started out as an internet troll who gained some clout for getting on the news. He was able to get lucky when contacting like-minded people and his little group eventually gained support from powerful people. After he had sufficient funds, that's how he was able to get the ball rolling. | 19 |
How is behaviour innate? How can animals replicate behaviour that they have never observed? | So, I know that some behaviour in animals is innate, I also understand why, but I don't understand how (except reflexes). Like, how do animals know mating rituals, or what to do when they see another animal, or how to hunt, or howl, etc.. And I know that there are instincts, but where do they come from? As in, what part of the brain, is it all subconscious? I'm sorry if I'm not explaining it well. I can't seem to find an answer on Google. | 17 | Those types of behaviors are similar to reflexes, they are “hard wired” and are initiated by an environmental cue. Often it is a series of behaviors that are initiated...an environmental cue initiated one behavior, and that behavior initiates a second behavior, and so on. Essentially, they are behavior patterns that do not need to be learned. Some texts that give a quick overview are Pierce and Cheney Behavior analysis and learning and Powell et al Learning and behavior. | 12 |
ELI5: How were people like Galileo and Newton able to make such accurate theories about space and the solar system using such simple telescopes? | 21 | The solar system bodies Galileo was theorizing about were visible to the naked eye, without telescopes. Most of the data their theories explained (ie. movement of the planets, the sun and the moon across the sky) were recorded in great detail by his predecessors. They also already had multiple models(including the Ptolemy's and Copernicus' models) all of which provided reasonably accurate predictions for the position and movement of planets.
Galileo's telescopes added crucial data(Venus' Phases, Jupiter's moons) that could be explained by the heliocentric model and not other models that were proposed at that time. But the accuracy of the predictions had less to do with the telescope data and more reliant on the planet movement data and the geometric calculations done to show that the models and the data matched. | 11 |
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ELI5: What does polarized mean in the terms of sunglasses. | 318 | Imagine light is a bunch of little frisbees.
It's not, but bear with me. It's not waves or photons either.
Polarized glasses are like a set of vertical bars. The only frisbees that can get through are the ones tilted on their sides to pass between them.
Most light is randomly oriented, so while a bunch of the frisbees will hit the bars, a lot will also get through. You can see stuff, it's just dimmer.
The trick is when you consider reflections off of things like water. The vertical frisbees will sink into the water instead of bouncing, so the ones that bounce off towards you tend to be about horizontal. These are the ones your glasses mostly block!
So the end result is that polarized glasses tend to make reflections and glares much dimmer. | 776 |
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ELI5: why is necessary to keep water running when running disposal? | 67 | To cool and lubricate the grinder, and to wash off the screen inside. A garbage disposal basically grinds stuff up until it can pass through a sieve so anything that hinders that process will wear the system. | 67 |
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[Terminator] Back in the Cameron films, how did Skynet actually build the first Terminators and war machines? At the start of the war it seemed like it was just software on a bunch of servers. | 23 | Skynet hacked into various Pentagon, military contractor, and robotics computers, then downloaded all of their blueprints and software and designs. It then ran simulations to determine the optimal combat configurations needed for its war with humanity, then hijacked various automated factories and foundrys and started mass production. As the war waged on, Skynet then used iterative changes and additional simulations to update its arsenal against the human threat, until it got to a point where the weapons and robots and crafts seen in the movies bore little resemblance to their original, human-developed designs. | 33 |
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If an astronaut in the vacuum of space released a bag of flour, would the powder stick onto him/her? | You know...due to gravitational pull, since the human body (and the space suit) would proportionally weight a lot more than a speck of flour. This is also assuming there are no nearby objects with a greater gravitational pull.
Edit: Wow, thanks for the detailed answers.
Edit 2: I was thinking more along the lines of if static, initial velocity from opening a bag of flour and so on were not a factor. Simply a heavy object weighing 200ish pounds (human body with suit) and a flour specks with no initial momentum or velocity. It is good to know gravity is a very weak force though. Thank you all. :) | 460 | Intermolecular forces like electrostatic attraction and Van der Waals forces would be much much more significant than gravity for these small particles. In fact, the first dust bunnies that started coalescing when the solar system formed and would eventually become planets were first attracted by these weak forces, not gravity. | 401 |
ELI5: basic beliefs of Taoism | 61 | Taoism can be summed up pretty generally as it all focuses pretty much around nature and being a natural and forefilling person;
Daoism (Taoism) 道統 (Daoism and Taoism are the same thing)
- A way of life (in China may be referred to as a religion)
- 'To go with the flow', be positive, to agree with most things, to enjoy - life to the fullest, to life the high-life.
- Dao - translates to Way/A Way
- Daoism is Chinese because it originates in Chinese culture and it is most clearly understood through the Chinese language and views of being.
- Daoism is considered a 'religion' because it involves an orientation towards and relationship with, 'the sacred'.
- Fundamental Daoist ideas/concerns include:
~Wu wei : Effortless action, to behave in a completely natural and uncontrived way
~Ziran: Naturalness
~Zhenren: realized/perfected person, to be enlightened and aware of the world
~Dao: Way, path, route, such as choosing the right path to take in life
| 24 |
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The difference between copyright infringement and piracy | Can someone please explain the difference between copyright infringement and piracy. | 24 | Piracy is just a word used by the creative industries to demonise copyright infringement. Generally, ‘pirate’ is used to describe people who copy some kind of media (game, film, book, album) without the appropriate license.
It's essentially a bit stupid. Ok, copyright infringement is illegal. It is **not** in any sense comparable to seafaring murderers and thieves. | 18 |
ELI5: Do dogs understand concepts like fish need water to live and humans need to be above water to live? | Im referring to videos like this: https://youtu.be/gBx1bi9BHDg
AND the constant drowning saving videos. | 100 | That dog is not trying to save the fish. He or she is trying to hide them so other dogs won't find them.
When dogs bury stuff, it doesn't look like it does in cartoons. It's exactly like in that video - they use their snouts to cover it up, and then carefully re-arrange the surroundings to make it look undisturbed.
Now, dogs might be able to understand that a human is in distress. But definitely not to the degree you're implying. | 39 |
ELI5: how does corn pop into popcorn, and are there other seeds with this ability? | 46 | The water content of kernel expands as it is heated, turning to steam. When the internal pressure gets high enough the kernel explodes and the steam is released, leaving the starches crispy and perfect for crunching.
As to other seeds, it depends on hull thickness/toughness, water content, and potentially oil content. While there are other seeds you could get to "pop" they wouldn't have the same texture as popcorn. | 16 |
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ELI5, How does an enclosed environment like a birds egg support a growing animal compared to a mammalian womb? How are waste products removed, are there hormones involved and how does the embryo receive oxygen? | 10,350 | Egg has two layers. When egg cools after being laid, the inside layer shrinks a bit, making an air pocket.
Egg has garbage sack called an allantois. Garbage sack does gas exchange through the air pocket and tiny holes in egg surface. Garbage sack holds liquid waste.
More or less.
Edit: several people have expressed concern about eating the garbage sack. Because egg has no baby chick, garbage sack has no waste | 8,179 |
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ELI5 Why do truck wheels (the metal part) always go outwards in the front and inwards in the back | 64 | They are the exact same wheel. All of them. Now you don't have to carry 3 spares based on whether an inner dual or outer dual or front wheel blew out. Cheaper to make one type too.
Take off an outer wheel on the back and you'll see the inner looks exactly like the front now. Flip the outer rear around and you'll see it looks exactly like the others now.
Edit: You can now see why they are so deeply dished compared to passenger vehicles. The mounting surface has to extend beyond the face of the tire in order for this to work. You'll also see the mounting surface is the same on the concave or convex side of the wheel. | 34 |
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When we fall asleep what's to keep us from staying asleep? How does our body know when to wake up? | 39 | When we sleep, we are in an altered state of consciousness. We aren't consciously perceiving the things around us, but we still maintain a level of unconscious awareness, albeit the threshold for stimulus recognition is a bit higher while sleeping. So, that brings us to a couple of ways our body wakes up. We can either be awoken by external stimuli which alert our nervous system to become conscious (e.g. an alarm clock), or when no stimuli are present, our body will wake up in accordance with our circadian rhythm, which is essentially a periodic pattern of brainwaves which follow our sleep-wake routine. Our circadian rhythm is sensitive to a few factors, such as exposure to light throughout the day, how much sleep we had during our last rest, etc.. | 15 |
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ELI5: How does a pressure cooker work? How does it cook the food faster and why the whistle? | 30 | When you bake cookies in an oven, a recipe specifies a certain temperature. But when you boil pasta, recipes only specify lengths of time, and those change depending on elevation. This is because substances undergoing phase transitions (with boiling, water is changing from a liquid to a gas) are restricted to one temperature. No matter how high or low you turn your stove, boiling water will remain at the boiling point. The boiling temperature, however, changes with the pressure. At higher pressure, water molecules are pushed together more and they can't "escape" their mutual attractions to become a gas as easily, so the boiling point is pushed to a higher temperature. Inside a pressure cooker, the water is able to reach a higher temperature. This cooks the food faster. The whistle is a pressure valve to keep the pressure inside the pressure cooker from reaching an unsafe level and turning it into a bomb. | 56 |
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How does LHC detect the subatomic particlesit discovers? | Or better. How will it detect unknown particles or anything alike if we dont know them or about them already? How can we detect something we ignore its existance? | 52 | The LHC has several detectors that work in different ways. This could be by particles impacting the sensor, disrupting a magnetic field or seeing tiny amounts of light given off.
The sensors detect something and the scientists can work out what set them off by the information they get - the mass of the particle hitting the sensor, the path of the particles through the magnetic field, the amount and wavelength of light given off and so on.
They can detect things they've never seen before because they still set off the sensors but give different information from other particles.
Think of your own body's sensors - New things can hit then but you can still detect them even though the information is different from anything you've experienced before n hence you can register new sights, sounds, smells, tastes... | 11 |
What's the difference between carbonite and carbon dioxide? They both have the same formula . . . | 177 | Carbon dioxide is a neutral species. On the other hand, carbonite is a double charged ion, which can be written as [CO2]^(2-). In other words, if you find a way to remove the two excess electrons from carbonite you can get carbon dioxide. | 93 |
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[DC] Is there truth to the rumour that, if Flash went fast enough, he'd accelerate his ageing process? | 19 | No. He's gone faster than the speed of light, broken the barrier of speed itself, and run past the end of the universe. He still looks mid-twenties.
He'd age if there were some outside influences, but not from running alone. Besides, IIRC, one of the reasons Jay is still alive and active is because the Speed Force helps slow his aging. | 13 |
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[Fallout] Whats Mr. Houses goal? | Setting up a lovely casino in the middle of the desert seems a rad underwhelming considering the resources he has at hand. Why is he merely interested in restarting Las Vegas as leaving the rest of the Mojave to itself? For one of the most powerful figures around, it seems rather underwhelming. | 18 | He wants to rebuild civilization under his guidance. He's doing that by temporarily making deals with other major powers to avoid conflict while accumulating wealth and influence (hence rebuilding the Strip to bring in money). Meanwhile he's looking into ways of gathering enough military strength (Platinum chip to upgrade the Securitrons) to drive out the NCR and Legion and establish his own rule. He eventually plans to begin expanding, using his technology to secure areas and then rebuild them as he has done the Strip. Honestly, it's arguably a better fate for the Wasteland than either the Legion or the NCR offers, because he can provide the safety the Legion promises without all of the rape and murder.
Why did he choose Vegas? Well, it's not politically or militarily significant and didn't have a huge population, so it wouldn't be targeted by as many nukes as say, California or the eastern seaboard. He also believed it had a unique spirit that he wanted to preserve and take into the new world. | 29 |
Why can I sometimes see low-lit objects better with my peripheral vision as opposed to when I directly look at said object? | I'm thinking of looking at objects like stars at night - sometimes I feel like some stars are brighter in my peripheral than they are when I directly look at them. | 25 | Your eyes consist of two types of receptors called rods and cones.
Cones are good for high detailed and colour visual perception while rods are good better to detect movement especially in low light.
There's usually more rod receptors in your peripherals. | 26 |
[Pokémon] Why do some eggs from electric group hatch into a Pikachu and some eggs hatch into a Pichu who later develops into the Pikachu? | 26 | Eggs of the Pokemon world are not exactly eggs as you and me know them, but more like containers for baby pokemons to grow in.
And since Pichu evolves into Pikachu through leveling with high friendship with its trainer, I'd say an egg has a chance of hatching into Pikachu if the trainer bonded with the egg early on and made strong emotional connection | 13 |
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ELI5: why are our voices deeper in the morning and more prone to cracking when trying to talk in a higher pitch? | 54 | I always thought it because our vocal cords relaxed while we slept, in effect making them longer and therefore producing deeper sounds. Like if you pluck a longer string you get a deeper sound than if you pluck a shorter one. | 10 |
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If an alien satellite comparable to Voyager passed through our solar system, would we see it? | I've always been fascinated by the Voyager satellites and the images and sounds they carry on their golden records. If a technologically comparable satellite from an alien race passed through our solar system, what are the chances we would discover it?
For those interested, here are images of some of the stuff sent on Voyager: http://imgur.com/a/CvEvO | 113 | Not unless it was broadcasting a signal that we could receive. Despite being fairly large, these types of probes are tiny compared to other objects out there in space.
Tldr: No, unless it was broadcasting a signal.
**Edit for more info**:
As an example, Voyager 1 is about the size of an SUV. That may seem fairly large but looking for something of that size in the vastness of space is pretty difficult, even if you know it's there. The chance of stumbling across one of these things is extremely low. The best way to find a spacecraft like this would be if it was transmitting a signal of some type that we could detect, such as a radio signal. To make the odds even better, it would need to pass very close to Earth. The chance of that happening is again very low since Earth isn't a very massive planet with an expansive gravity well. In a normal scenario, the only way that we would find something like this is to simply get lucky. You'd have to be looking in the right place at the right time with the right equipment to even get a glimpse of one. Even then, you'd have to follow up on it and not just dismiss it as some technical glitch.
Now let's say that a spacecraft was launched in the early universe. Say, 700 million years after the big bang, so we have stars and such and let's assume life took off that quickly. Let's again say that this spacecraft traveled at Voyager 1's max speed of 38,610 mph (62,136 km/h). If it survived the ~13 billion years that followed then it could potentially have traveled 750,000 light years. Our own galaxy is 100-120 thousand light years across so it could have potentially come from anywhere in our galaxy and possibly a few of the surrounding galaxies such as the Magellanic Clouds. Even then, the odds of the craft being aimed precisely for earth and not being destroyed in its journey are unfathomably low. The odds of it still functioning and broadcasting are practically zero unless it's a technology that we don't have. | 33 |
ELI5: What exactly do the UK porn filters do? | I can still browse porn like I could before... So... Why is everyone so mad? | 15 | They only exist in the bigger ISPs, and only apply to new installations.
They work by compiling categories of websites, and refusing access to sites which match those. Based on the blocks in place, Claire Perry MP and others in support feel that children suffering from gender identity/sexuality issues, or wanting information on drugs, or eating disorders should be denied this information. Because that always helps resolve problems. | 18 |
ELI5 If we know what chemicals make us happy and how, why cant we create a food or something that keeps us in a good mood permenantly without ruining our dopamine receptors? | 21 | We are only just scratching the surface in our understanding of how the brain works. We have seen that activating the dopamine and serotonin receptors tends to make people happy. But, there is an ocean-sized gap between that basic understanding and making a drug that will always make people happy with no side effects.
It's entirely possible that the human brain simply isn't capable of maintaining a permanently happy mood without long-term damage. It might be like trying to run a car at top-speed all the time and not expect the engine to break down. | 27 |
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[LotR] What evidence of the first, second and third ages remains extant to present day? | Say I'm a billionaire with a passion for archeology and the Red Book of Westmarch. If I wanted to find evidence of the world the book posits actually existing, where should I look? Further, what should I be looking for both on Earth and off of it. | 51 | The most obvious should be Venus. The Star of Eärendil is supposed to be just that. That's both a relic of the Year of the Trees as well as the First Age since the Silmarils predate the First Age.
The other place I'd go looking for relics would be the ocean. Both Numenor and Beleriand got sunk and there should be some remnants of them in the oceans still. Nargothrond, Menegroth and Gondolin could be home to some pretty dope coral reefs. | 33 |
CMV: Instead of an effort to keep immagrints out from Mexico, we should just fix Mexico. | This is something I've never heard anyone suggest so there may be something im not seeing that would render this idea obsolete.
But atm it makes sense to me to just fix the issues that make people want to leave Mexico in the first place like the corrupt government and Drug Cartels.
An argument i made to myself against this is idea that people would complain about not helping other countries and why we should only help Mexico. They are our neighbors and our country is almost as Mexican as it is American, especially in the south, i live in Texas and Mexican culture is so dominant here.
Now, I also can think of reasons why some wouldn't want to help, and thats for their own profit. Fixing Mexico would cease a lot of dirty money pipes and black market operations that make a lot of people rich. Also racism and fear. | 33 | If we really wanted to fix Mexico we’d have to do more than give them money etc. By doing so we could be infringing upon Mexico’s sovereignty unless the Mexican government asks us to do so and even then it’s iffy. Global politics is just messy and you never know what could lead to conflict. | 14 |
Steps to becoming a professor? | Hi Academia! I'm currently getting my MS in Biology (Evolution and Ecology) and am trying to put together a plan for my future. I have 1 year left and then to defend my thesis. I will most likely go on to my PhD after, though I'm newly married so we have to figure out plans for a baby maybe in the next year or so and everything else as well. I enjoy research and recently discovered I really enjoy teaching people about biology. I answer a lot of questions here on Reddit, have done the same on other forums and mostly seriously love science. I think it's incredibly important and I like to pass that knowledge on! I'd love to become a professor and was wondering if anyone had any pointers? A few questions I can think of right now:
* I am not currently a TA or GA for my school, but will try for it for my PhD. I applied but didn't get it for my MS. Is it absolutely necessary though for future teaching?
* Do I need to take education courses or does it not matter if you have enough research from the PhD and Post Doc?
* What are the hardest parts about getting a position?
* Anything else I should know that I'm not even thinking of?
I know I've got a ways to go, but if I can start preparing now it'd be great. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
EDIT - I know there is a difference between teaching a classroom and just enjoying teaching in general. I'd like to split my time between teaching and research. | 19 | >What are the hardest parts about getting a position?
There are very, *very* few of them, and you'll be in competition with people who are more established than you. People with a solid grant history and a list of publications as long as your arm. | 17 |
ELI5: How do copper wires and fiber optics (light) transmit data? | Hi,
I am currently studying computer networks and I have been reading about how data is transmitted via copper wires and fiber optics.
I understand the very basics of computers, data, logic gates and binary code.
However, currently I am struggling to wrap my head around how data can be transmitted by copper/light? It just does not make sense to me!
Can someone shed light on this? | 21 | Consider that you and a friend are on two hills far enough that your voices cannot carry but within sight of each other. You both have flashlights and know morse code. So by flashing the lights at each other you can send messages (ie data).
Instead of flashlights, assume you have a wire between the hills and one side has a switch and the other a lamp operated by that switch. You can now send the same data by flicking the switches on and off according to morse code.
Now replace the wire by a long internally reflective tube. By flashing a light on one end, the flash appears on the other, so you can send messages again.
This is how copper wire and fibre optics work - just an agreed upon method to interpret the on-off signals. As long as both parties agree what certain sequences mean, then you can send information. | 33 |
can we perceive without interpreting? | 22 | Jacob Bronowsky discusses this a bit in *The Origins of Knowledge and Interpretation*. The illustration he gives is the way that the eye converts light into the electrical signals that transmit it to the brain where it's reconstructed as images. The general implication of all this is that perception is, itself, an act of interpretation. Take away that interpretation of light into synaptic signals, and we're no more perceptive than a stone. | 10 |
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CMV: Despite the court ruling, public officials blocking social media users is NOT a violation of the First Amendment | I today read about a lawsuit filed against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for blocking twitter users. I then backtracked to New York court rulings on Trump blocking twitter users, deeming it unconstitutional, in violation of the first amendment. So it’s a court decision that’s going to be a problem for elected officials of both parties. I just don’t see how using a feature on a privately owned website violates the First Amendment. No journalists are “censored” because Trump blocked them. An individual is not being censored because another chooses not to interact with them on social media. Even if you are a public figure, social media isn’t some state-sanctioned political forum. I don’t see how it’s any different from a public figure blocking a phone number. Also, blocking a user from a page does not prevent access to that page. I would say it could count as censorship if say, someone like Trump or AOC could use the block feature to prevent a target IP from accessing a site, but you can still get on to someone’s twitter or Facebook if only your account is blocked.
I think this court decision was made more to take a stab at Trump than anything else, but is long term going to be an inconvenient rule that will just be an annoyance for tons of people from any side of the political spectrum. Furthermore, I feel this will be heavily exploited by people who use the first amendment specifically to agitate with legal protection. Trolling and brigading are just a common thing on social media, and preventing political officials from making the choice to block people for any reason just gives agitators more righteous authority, and doesn’t really protect any of our freedoms. On what grounds is this unconstitutional? | 20 | This is one of those situations where it is very important to read the actual decision, rather than what the talking heads are saying about it.
There is a very important, but rarely mentioned, aspect of First Amendment law regarding _public forums_. The gist is that when the government establishes a public forum for discussion of ideas, policy or action, the government does not have the ability to stop people from contributing to that public forum simply because they dislike the viewpoints being presented. This was held in _Manhattan Comm. Access Corp. et al v. Hallek et al_ (among other cases) which said:
>When the government provides a forum for speech (known as a public forum), the government may be constrained by the First Amendment, meaning that the government ordinarily may not exclude speech or speakers from the forum on the basis of viewpoint...
This lays it out pretty clearly - if you _as a government actor_ have a public forum, it has to be a _public_ forum and you lose the right to kick people out simply for disagreeing with you.
The court, in this case, determined that the nature of the @realDonaldTrump account was a public forum - the POTUS uses it to announce official decisions and _openly allows_ discussion of those decisions in the comments section. Moreover, it is used by people _other_ than Trump himself to announce official business from the White House or official positions of the POTUS _acting in their official White House capacity_. Regardless of when the account was created or for what original purpose, its _current_ usage is that of a public forum to announce and discuss Presidential actions.
Since it was determined to be a public forum, the existing restrictions around public forums apply - you can't stop people from voicing their opinion in that forum simply because you disagree with what they have to say. That would limit their ability to redress the government, and that violated the First Amendment. Yes, maybe they can use work arounds to deal with this, but the point is they shouldn't have to do that, no matter how light the burden of doing so may be. If the government provides a platform for people to discuss its actions (and the @realDonaldTrump account is clearly such a platform) then it can't add difficulty to people using that platform simply because it doesn't like what those people have to say. People cannot converse with each other (or with the POTUS) using their established identities (accounts) and that is an undue burden that the government cannot impose.
This was a very logical decision based on existing case law. | 30 |
ELI5: How come when you film a computer or TV screen it appears to have black bars running through it that you never normally see? | 18 | Simplest explanation is because of the way old monitors/TVs display their image at a slow frame rate and how the camera is recording at a different frame rate. During playback they’re out of sync so you start to see partial scans on the display.
Kinda like how a fast spinning wheel can look like it’s spinning backwards. | 13 |
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ELI5: What causes sunflowers to face towards the sun? What mechanism allows it to move on its own? | 80 | The fascinating phenomenon of flowers following the sun across the sky is called heliotropism. The sunflower plant contains hormones called auxins. These hormones are sensitive to sunlight and do everything they can to seek shade! Therefore, they migrate from the part of the plant bathed in sunlight to the shaded region in the stem. Once there, the auxins (which are essentially growth hormones) stimulate the growth of cells. This causes the stem to become bulkier in the shaded region, so the flower ends up bending in the opposite direction – towards the Sun! As the Sun moves across the sky, the auxins also continue to migrate to the part of the stem that is shaded, continually making the shaded part bulkier by stimulating cell growth. That’s how the sunflower continues to face the Sun – constantly bending away from the bulkier part of the stem. | 99 |
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ELI5:Why was Greenwich Mean Time changed to Coordinated Universal Time? | 22 | It wasn't. GMT was changed to UT1.
GMT and UTC are actually completely different: GMT is time based on the *sun*. "Mean" in GMT refers to the fact that it is based on *mean* (i.e. average) solar time. On the other hand, UTC is *atomic* time, based on vibrations of radiation given off by atoms. At the precision of milliseconds, the Solar day is variable in length, Earth's rotation is slowing, and a solar day is no longer exactly equal to 86,400 seconds. These clocks therefore tick at different rates.
But it makes sense that atomic time should roughly agree (i.e., be "coordinated") with solar time for practical purposes. That is why, every once in a while, a leap second is added to UTC: to keep it within 1 second of GMT (or really, GMT's successor, UT1).
TL;DR: GMT (or really, UT1 now) is solar time, whose rate of flow is slower now than in the past, and varies at the level of milliseconds because of changes in the Earth's rotation rate. UTC is atomic time, with an absolutely constant rate of flow that must be periodically adjusted ("coordinated") to stay within 1 second of UT1. | 20 |
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If kids in Fallout and Skyrim are invincible, why don't we make armor made of children? | . | 315 | Have you not noticed? You are special, you can kill a whole bandit camp no problem and heal the bullet to the face with a bottle of water. While most people are down and out with an arrow to the knee you take one to the balls, pull it out, spit on it, and shove it down your enemies throat. Facing 5 Super Mutants with Laser repeaters, no problem, you slow time down and somehow can carry every weapon for every occasion. Ever find it strange that a flying, spell breathing dragon always happens to land next to you for a fight?
Yes you are blessed, but with these blessings comes curses, like never being able to kill kids. Those little motherfuckers could chase you across the ends of Skyrim, or the Barren Wastes, and there would be nothing you could do but run.
So that is why you can't make armor out of the kids, they are no different than normal humans, but for some reason, as a cruel joke, or maybe as a way to mock your unmitigated blood lust, the gods have cursed you with the inability to kill children. | 247 |
Is it okay to create and name my own principles in my philosophy paper? | I was assigned a philosophy essay with a very traditional prompt. It's pretty open ended and has to be less than 2000 words. I kind of got carried away, becoming passionate about the question and I wrote what I think is a stellar paper. It's still less than 2k words, ready to be submitted, but I just feel like I was too pompous in a particular area. That's because I became proud of a main argument in my paper, so much so that I gave it a name like this: "Principle of *\[blank\]*". I even made an abbreviation for it so could reference it multiple times in my paper. I just feel like as an undergraduate student and someone who isn't even a philosophy major, I do not really have a place in putting that kind of material in the paper. Does anyone agree/disagree with this?
Part of the reason I have all this doubt is because it seems rather similar to what Peter Singer wrote in one of his books. He revolutionized the "Principle of Equal Consideration" of equal interests (PEC) and referenced it all throughout *Practical Ethics*. I can see that Singer absolutely has the privileges of doing this in his great book, but not me with this measly 5-page paper. | 79 | This strikes me as a pretty tiny concern. Is the principle meaningfully defined? Does it avoid being unnecessarily duplicative of something in a source you were supposed to use? Is your use of it justified in the paper? Does it help you answer the assignment? Worry about the terms of the assignment, not some little technical move.
Instructor sensibilities differ, but this would not phase me at all. | 84 |
[Lord of the Rings] Why was everyone at the council of Elrond OK with Frodo taking the Ring? And since everyone went with him, why did the hostility towards each other about Elves/Dwarfs/man having the Ring just vanish when Frodo stepped up? | I understand it isn't necessarily Science Fiction, but I couldn't think of a better subreddit other than you guys.
Everyone at the Council was fighting over who should have the responsibility. Dwarfs didn't want Elves to have it and vice versa, and no one really wanted man to have it (since that went so well last time).
However, a 4 foot hobbit says he'll do it, and no one bats an eye and just hands it to him. I'm assuming there was more tension in the books?
Also, why wasn't Gimli or Legolas upset that the other was accompanying the trip? Being part of the fellowship was basically having control of the Ring (or at least having a say in its location). *All* tension vanished at that point. Why? | 63 | The reason people calm down when a Hobbit is given the ring is that Hobbits have little to no history or violence, at least on the scale of men and elves. They wont use the ring to conquer and control
They can be trusted because they have nothing to gain by abusing the rings power unlike the rest of the middle earth.
Frodo is sort of like a middle man between the races | 92 |
ELI5: According to Statista, the District of Columbia has a per capita GDP of $178,442. Second place is Massachusetts at $75,258. How does DC generate such a massive GDP per capita when it is primarily the seat of government? How does government generate GDP? | [Link](https://www.statista.com/statistics/248063/per-capita-us-real-gross-domestic-product-gdp-by-state/) to Statista page.
[Link](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1065920/district-of-columbia-real-gdp-by-industry/) to page with breakdown of GDP | 548 | It has to do with how GDP is calculated.
If you live in DC and work as a lobbist making $500k per year by a company that is headquartered in California, your income counts towards DC's GDP.
Because DC is where the most valuable lobbying occurrs, as well as the most prestigeous lawyering, on behalf of groups throughout the country, there is a lot of incentive to hire the best, and thus most expensive lobbists and lawyers to represent your group to the federal government. | 451 |
I think that the whole self-driving car technology is overhyped and that there are a number of much more important aspects of automobile innovation that we should be focusing on first. CMV | This kind of started off as an argument with my roommates and I, however I recently noticed on thread here on Reddit (the one on what people 100 years from now will find barbaric that we find acceptable now) that my opinion seems to be the unpopular one on the matter.
I live in Toronto, which for all intents and purposes is a fairly large, densely populated city (~3 million in the city proper), and so yes I deal with congestion, gridlock, and generally stupid drivers on a regular basis. Nevertheless I still love driving. Part of the reason is because of how inefficient our public transit system is one could still get around the city in the same amount of time as it would to drive, even in rush-hour traffic. Sure parking might be an expensive inconvenience from time to time, but I like many people drive not just as a mode of transportation, but because its actually an enjoyable activity for me.
I understand that self-driving cars *could* eliminate gridlock and save "countless" lives by removing the human error that comes with driving (I emphasize the could because from what I know there aren't any actual statistics or studies that I am aware of that can support this). That said, I think people forget that even extremely simple technology does fail from time to time. If anything were to go wrong in a self-driving car, how would someone be able to intervene? I mean if we were introduced to self-driving cars tomorrow, I wouldn't be as concerned because most people would know how to control the vehicle. But if years from now, when people have become accustomed to self-driving cars, would they know how to control the car if the self-driving mechanism fail, or would it be just a matter of placing complete faith in a computer technology created by the same humans who's error we're trying to avoid?
I personally think it would also take what enjoyment there is in driving away from the experience. As mentioned, if I wanted a mode of transportation where I didn't have to do anything (at all) I would just take public transit. I enjoy driving because I can control both my speed and my route (if I want to go out of my way to take a more scenic route home, I have the option), all in the comfort of a private vehicle with my own music playing and my own company. Although a self-driving car wouldn't affect the latter, the former (which is the reason why I drive rather than ask others for rides) would be compromised.
There's an entire culture and community around driving that revolves around making improvements to what you drive and I can't help but feel that'd completely disappear with self-driving cars. I wouldn't be opposed to people buying self-driving cars if that's truly what they want (no different that people who chose to buy cars with automatic transmissions) or even if there were the option to turn on a self-driving mode (which I'll admit would be nice in bumper-to-bumper traffic where you're really not even driving anyways), but my view is exactly that to have the **option**. So Reddit, I apologize for my long-winded post but I look forward to you changing my view so that I might be more open to the idea of this technology that so many people are sure might become the new norm !
EDIT: I completely forgot to include the second part of my argument. I just personally feel that rather than focus on some novelty (which is how I see it) like self-driving cars, we should focus on things that improve the driving experience altogether, like higher fuel efficiency or cheap, affordable electric engines. | 22 | It just makes sense that machine driven cars can drive more efficiently than humans. Google's self-driving cars have yet to get in an accident after almost 300,000 cumulative miles on the road. This is with the cars being surrounded by humans who constantly make errors in judgment due to any number of reasons. Being in a hurry, being drunk, not paying attention to the road, etc. If all of these cars acted in a way that was predictable because they are machine controlled then you're going to have fewer teens who die in a tragic car accident because they took a turn too quickly, or because they swerved into oncoming traffic while drunk.
Even assuming there are still humans on the road, machines will be able to react faster and with more precision to conditions that could create an accident. Hell, if the kid who was drunk had an autopilot in his car then there wouldn't even be any chance of him crashing into someone and he wouldn't have to take a cab home.
Machines do fail, but their failures can be corrected. Glitches can be fixed more easily than human error. Drunk drivers will exist as long as there are humans, but code can be changed to correct the errors that machines make.
Self driving cars will make the roads significantly safer for everyone involved. Just look at google's first attempt and how successful it's been, and it's their **first attempt.** The technology can only improve. Also note that there is still a manual mode.
Thrill seekers will always have the option to buy cars that can be driven manually, and there will always be ways to jury rig your car so that you can drive it manually. The culture of people who enjoy driving is not going to die off with the introduction of cars that can self-drive because they're still going to enjoy driving.
It's not a zero sum game, improving self driving cars doesn't mean we're not working on fuel efficiency. The two are vastly different fields and the people doing one can't be easily converted to another. If we were to stop all research into self-driving cars it wouldn't mean that these other fields would do any better.
Horseback riding is still around even though we've invented cars, isn't it? | 28 |
CMV: We shouldn't group people into generations, because all it does it pit people against eachother. | The generation groups that are currently alive right now are the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millenials, and Generation Z
My view is that people should not be grouped into these kind of generations, because all that it does is turns people against eachother, and doesn't provide any benefit for any of the listed "generations"
The "generations" seem to love to criticize the generations older or younger than them and place stereotypes on them.
Some examples of generalization that I've heard (thru real life conversations and the internet):
"Generation Z is obsessed with social media and are always on their phones, have a short attention span, and are attention seekers"
"Millenials are self-centered, entitled, want everything handed to them, and are easily offended"
"Generation X is cynical, don't work well in teams, and have a negative attitude towards everything"
"Boomers ruined the economy, are spoiled, out of touch, stuck in their ways, and will never learn to use technology well"
"The Silent Generation places too much value on authority, are stuck in their ways, and are overly loyal to brands, and have out-dated opinions"
Obviously, these are just stereotypes and are not true for the majority of people of those "generations". Those sterotypes could also apply to anyone of any generation (for example, ANYONE can be cynical - not just generation X).
If there is any truth to these sterotypes, they may have more to do with human nature or age. For example;
Boomers and the Silent Generation are labeled as "out of touch, have difficulty with technology, and are stuck in their ways". But one day when Millenials and Generation Z are in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond, we too will be "stuck in our ways" because as people get older, it becomes harder and harder to change your ways that you've known for decades. And there will be new technology by then that we too will have difficulty learning how to use.
Generation Z and Millenials are labeled as entitled, self-centered, with a short attention span. However I think that's more to do with being young. As we get older we will become less "self-absorbed". Bommers and the Silent Generation were also likely self-absorbed and entitled in their youth too.
All this negative labeling of the generation is just causing people to turn against eachother. How often do you hear the phrase "OK Boomer" on the internet followed by an article or meme criticizing a middle aged person's views or behavior. And how often do you hear the term "The young people of today ..." followed by a rant about how easy the young generations have it or criticizing their views or behaviour.
If society stopped group people into generations based on the years you were born, society as a whole would be kinder to people outside of their age group, because these dumb negative sterotypes would not exist. We could get along better at work and be more productive, and finally we would not get into useless arguments about young generations vs. Old generations. | 146 | But it's useful for tracking cultural changes. For instance, the television technology and norms of boomers (not many networks, lots of shared experience), GenX (reruns, cable explosion, widely diverse experiences), and millennials (prestige TV, streaming, marathoning) is incredibly useful for studying how the medium changed and affected people in turn. | 43 |
ELI5:How did id Software's Quake engine lose ground in the '90s to where the Unreal engine became the game engine of choice? | 17 | Unreal's Engine was, quite simply, available.
Id was massively successful at licensing the Quake engine. The Q3 engine powered both the Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Call of Duty, for example.
The problem was the next major release to come from the studio was Doom 3. As Doom 3 suffered long delays, so did the release of the next id Engine.
Studios were faced with the choice of buying UE2, which was available to them immediately, or waiting who knows how long for the Doom engine to be finished and released. As a result a lot of studios went with Unreal.
When it finally did release it had rigid hardware requirements that prevented older graphics cards from working with it, that competing engines didn't have. It was also optimized for dark, spooky interiors (*a la* Doom 3) and had difficulty handling large, expansive outdoor environments, which meant it had narrow appeal. This was the last version of the engine to be offered to external proprietary licensees. | 12 |
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Why do matter and antimatter annihilate when they come into contact with each other? | 27 | Because each can turn into a particle with less mass in the process. That then increases the entropy of the system since there's more available ways of arranging the kinetic energy between the resulting particles. | 10 |
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cmv: There is no moral reason to not criminalize paternity fraud and mandate paternity tests at birth. | Paternity fraud is one of the most legitimately evil things still legal almost anywhere. No man should be tricked into unwillingly raising a child that is not his own.
It seems that legally, many places are actually moving in the opposite direction on this issue, such as France banning private paternity tests. This was apparently done to stem social issues apparently coming from infidelity being exposed and resulting in the government having to support far more single mothers.
Morally, those consequences seem far better than the reality of paternity fraud in my mind. Nobody deserves to be stuck in a relationship with a cheater, and removing the option for testing results in far more of these relationships staying together, which may result in less social upheaval, but is extremely unjust to the man in the situation.
In addition, men who have children by affairs would also be caught by this and be on the hook to support their own child, rather than someone with no relation.
Even if the fraud were criminalized and paternity tests allowed, there would still be a stigma and implied distrust if a father insisted on one, which is why these tests should be mandated at birth. That way, the stigma would be gone, and far more of these cases would be caught.
Edit:
Mandated -> Standardized: Change from being required to being standard procedure
Criminalize -> Illegalize: Change from being considered criminal to being considered a civil offense | 879 | So you want to mandate that men give up their DNA? What if they don't comply? Because either you force men to give their DNA for examination or fundamentally its still their choice if a paternity test happens | 313 |
eli5 Why were Blue LEDs so hard to make that the team that did it won a nobel prize in physics for it. | Why was it so difficult to make blue LEDs. It ook 30 years longer apparently to make them than red and green ones, and they won the nobel prize in physics for it. | 1,276 | The actual invention of the blue LED was not that complicated and was not what won a Nobel prize. We figured out that adding magnesium to GaN would make a blue LED pretty early on.
The Nobel prize was won because the people figured out how to mass produce them.
The material behind the blue LED, Gallium Nitride (known as GaN) turns out to be a pain to make. It’s a crystal that has to be grown right, and also really does not like impurities being added to it and will shatter if done wrong. Impurities are important in semiconductor physics, which works much due to doping, a process where other elements like magnesium are added to a crystal like GaN or silicon to change their conductive properties.
The Nobel prize was awarded for figuring out how to add the magnesium and other stuff into GaN without shattering it.
Interestingly, GaN has some very good properties otherwise and is currently being researched as a replacement for silicon in our computer chips, which will hopefully make them more power efficient and faster. Silicon is a decent semiconductor that is mostly used because it is easy to manufacture, GaN would likely have been used if it were easier to handle, which it now is thanks to the work of those researchers. | 1,946 |
[The Devil Went Down to Georgia] How was the winner of the fiddle contest definitively decided? | The pieces both the Devil and Johnny play are so strikingly different to the point that you could argue your preference for either one. With no judges present, how did both agree that Johnny had bested the Devil?
Since he's infamous for, you know , being the Devil and more or less the centre of all evil why didn't he just declare himself the winner on account of personal taste? | 283 | The Devil conceded. He's clearly an honourable gentleman who didn't anticipate actually losing.
Or arguably the Devil considered losing to be the better play. Isn't it pretty much implied that Johnny is still going to hell simply for making a deal with the Devil? | 340 |
CMV: In the "Trolley Problem" Scenario, I would never pull the lever. | **The Trolley Problem**
You witness an out of control train cart speeding down the tracks towards five people, who are tied to the tracks. However, you see a lever which will divert the train cart if pulled, and send the train down another track, but towards another person, who is also tied to the tracks.
Do you pull the lever?
Most people would pull the lever, but I wouldn't. I think it's because people take the utilitarian view that "More lives saved = Better". However, I think this view is misguided. The question is asking "Would you rather murder one person, or allow five people to die?".
I'd much rather be indirectly responsible for five deaths as a result of my inaction, than directly responsible for one death as a result of my actions. Had I not been there, the train cart would have killed those five people regardless. I would not see myself as to blame for not pulling the lever, as the alternative would require me to murder someone. | 36 | I find it interesting (maybe troubling!) that you find the action of making a _choice_ one that you're not culpable for, only the action or inaction that derives from this choice. You've exerted equivalent effort in decision making in the scenario where you _choose_ the individual over the group, yet you put culpability only on the _action_.
Let's continue the exercise:
1. what if you didn't have to take physical action at all? the level ir tied to your brain. doest that change your culpability for making the correct action? Is it the physical action that matters and _not_ the choice?
2.You imagine a world that exists _without you_ that continues without you as a variable in it. You're _independent_ in your logic from the circumstances rather an intricate part. You believe somehow that _inaction_ is the equivalent of you not being there and things continuing as if you weren't. That is a _very_ odd conceptualization of reality - you are there, you are part of the circumstance - there is no scenario where you are't there. The "not taking action" isn't neutral at all, it's one of the two possible outcomes of which NONE don't involve your choice. You've created an artificial scenario in which you're an outsider to the situation. that's not how reality works! The "allow" is somehow the path with our physical action as if you weren't part of the "scene" and the "pull the lever" is one where you're involved. The reality is you're equally involved in both and it's only an intellectual exercise that lets you see things from the abstraction where you're not part of the scene. If you can believe the scene exists with you at all, you can also believe that the scene is _all about you_ and your relationship with the lever. You orient your thought around the train going down the track with a "natural course". Why not orient the scene around whether you pull the lever or not? Both are equally "real". In the later the entire scene has an outcome based on your decision, wherein your original conceptualization the scene's outcome is based upon an fabrication of the idea of the scene where you aren' there at all. That's a less real version of the scene. | 35 |
ELI5: Why is customer service waiting music on the phone so low quality? | 33 | Phones don't send audio at very high quality, just enough to allow you to understand what the other person is saying. In particular, a very common standard for phone call audio is 8 kbps, meaning you only get sound frequencies from 0 to 4000 Hz.
Now, 4000 Hz may seem pretty high (you can look it up), but all kinds of instruments and voices emit "harmonics", which means superposition of different frequencies. So even lower "pitches" can contain frequencies above 4000 Hz.
When you transmit audio over a phone, frequencies above 4000 Hz are cut, which not only cuts very high frequencies, but also "removes harmonics", making music sound "weird". | 40 |
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ELI5: Meth. Why is it so horrible and what does it do to people? | I have no experience with meth but I see it referenced often. Shows I watch portray meth in vastly different ways.
What's the true nature of meth ?
I'm never going to try it, just curious. | 25 | It's so horrible because suddenly nothing else is of value anymore. You choose it over everything. It's always on your mind.
It does a variety of things to people. Being a stimulant it keep a you awake and suppresses appetite for around 24hrs. People often binge it so that this happens for days on end. They hallucinate and become paranoid, anxious because of sleep deprivation. They become incredibly thin and frail. Your cardiovascular system is under stress for a very long time, you overheat, you dehydrate, you forget general hygiene, your mouth begins to go red and sore.
Psychologically, it plays on your reward system, dopamine. This is where the addiction sets, as dopamine is released when we do basic survival stuff, eating, sex, etc. Soon enough the brain associates meth with this same survival reflex. | 42 |
Why can't bots read Captchas? | I've just always wondered. | 152 | In short: Captchas are designed to be unreadable for machines, hence bots shouldn't be able to read theb (but they are gettin better at it).
Programs that transform images into text face the problem that they get is in essence a big grid of color values. It says "well, pixel (x,y) is pretty black, pixel (x+1,y) is kindof grey ..." and so on. It isn't possible for the computer to look at the whole image as a human does. Instead it traces pixels that border on other pixels which have a large difference in color. This way it detects edges.
These edges give you some shape you can work with, for example, you might get four lines, one is a long vertical one, the other three are horizontal and shorter. Two of these intersect the vertical one, while one doesn't connect. Using some kind of pattern recognition your program could recognize this as an 'E'. However you have to account for small errors that occur during edge detection. This works well enough (but not perfectly) if you give the program a nice scan of a black and white, printed document.
You run into problems pretty quickly when you encounter low resolution scans, skewed lines or worse, handwriting. The latter is especially difficult to recognize, since letters aren't uniform. Some methods that work are programs that simulate neural networks, that can learn how to read a specific handwriting with some training.
Captchas try to distort text in such a way that computers cannot recognize it, by advertently introducing the problems I've mentioned above. For example, if you take a text like "Foo" and run a horizontal black line below the text and a vertical white line through one of the 'o's, the program will probably be trown off course and read something like "Eeo". Most of the time humans can read it, but somtimes even we fail. That shows us how good these captcha-bots have become.
Because bots are getting better at reading texts, captchas are moving away from text to things that are much harder to do on a computer. For example challenges such as "find the animal that is not a cat" while presenting you eight dogs and one cat. Easy for a human but very difficult for a machine. | 96 |
ELI5 why do we have to install a specific Android OS for a specific phone when we can install Windows or Linux on any machine(x86) and expect it to work without too much problems? | Like, If want to install a custom rom(LineageOS) for my Galaxy s9, I have to use a build specifically built for the s9.
But when I go to install Windows10 or a Linux distro on my laptop, I can use one version of to install on any x86 machine.
Why do we need to make specific versions of android operating systems per android phone? | 100 | In comparison to phones, computers are very standardized in terms of their software architecture. Computers also enjoy an advantage in that an OS manufacturer (like Microsoft) can include a whole host of drivers to work with any combination of hardware, even if you don't use them all.
Phones don't have that advantage. Consumers want their phones to be fast, lightweight, and streamlined- and the hardware on them is fixed. That means trimming all the excess fat off an OS so it fits exactly to a specific phone and its hardware, not to mention adding carrier-specific tweaks and features as selling points.
The trade off is that by doing that you lose a lot of compatability as each manufacturer's flavor of Android ventures farther and farther from the original software.
It's an interesting example of real world evolution. Phone software too far removed from the original OS isn't compatible with it, while animal species with common ancestors too far removed from each other can't interbreed. | 100 |
ELI5: Why exactly will the sun expand? | I'm trying to learn more about astrophysics, and one thing I can't wrap around is how the sun and other stars will expand near the end of their lifetime. The reason people give is that when the hydrogen in the core depletes, a star fuses heavier elements together and therefore the inner pressure "wins" against gravity.
What I don't really understand is how fusion of heavier atoms would increase the pressure. Wouldn't that mean that fusing them together creates more energy than the fusion of hydrogen? Which isn't true if I understood fusion correctly. | 15 | You have it backwards. The higher pressure *causes* the fusion of heavier nuclei (not atoms - electrons don't stick to nuclei at the temperatures found in stars).
More precisely, the chain of events looks like this:
* Before a star is born, a hydrogen cloud slowly collapses under its own gravity. Initially, this raises pressure and temperature at the center.
* Once the pressure and temperature at the center get high enough, hydrogen fusion ignites. That fusion produces a lot of energy, which makes the core very hot. And as you probably learned in high school chemistry, heating a gas increases the pressure it exerts. (Okay, technically the material here is a plasma, but the same laws more-or-less apply.)
* Because higher pressure increases fusion rate (and thus energy output) and lower pressure decreases it, the inward pressure of gravity and outward thermal pressure reach a stable equilibrium.
* This stable equilibrium lasts throughout the star's time on the main sequence. As fusion products (mostly helium nuclei) build up in the core, the fusion gets less efficient, which means gravity wins out just a little, increasing the star's core temperature until the outward pressure rises enough to counterbalance it again. From the outside, this manifests as stars getting slightly hotter (and thus slightly larger, since the higher temperature puffs up their outer layers) as they age.
* Near the end of the star's life, so much helium has built up in the core that hydrogen fusion slows down enough that the core collapses to a very high density, much higher than in previous stages.
What happens then depends on the star's size:
If the star is quite large (about twice the size of the sun or more), this is enough to raise the pressure and temperature enough to ignite helium fusion, which raises the star's energy output and re-establishes the equilibrium that had persisted throughout its time on the main sequence.
But for smaller stars, we need a little more physics.
Up until this point, the thermal pressure from the extremely high temperatures from the energy released by fusion has been the dominant force holding a low-mass star up. But as the pressure rises higher and higher, the nuclei in the core begin to physically run out of space.
It's a general rule of particle physics that two particles (more properly, fermions) can't be in the same place at the same time *at the same energy level*. So when the space runs out, the nuclei in the core have to jump up to higher energy levels - they can no longer stick around in their ground state. (Imagine, say, a stadium that fills up so people have to start sitting on each others' laps.) Pushing particles up to those higher energy states, and keeping them there, "consumes" some of the pressure that would normally be compressing the matter further - or, as we usually think of it, results in an extra outward pressure on top of the thermal pressure that has been involved so far. This extra outward pressure is called *degeneracy pressure*, and it quickly comes to be the *main* force stopping further collapse (outstripping the thermal pressure pushing outward).
This continues until the pressure and temperature get so high that that helium fusion ignites. But *unlike* the earlier ignitions, this ignition *doesn't* immediately establish an equilibrium, because thermal pressure is no longer doing much. If you have 1000 units of degeneracy pressure and 1 unit of thermal pressure, then even heating the core by a factor of 100 doesn't change things much - you go from 1001 units of total pressure to 1100. So once fusion ignites, there's a temporary runaway reaction that isn't stopped by a new equilibrium for a relatively long time in particle physics terms (a couple of minutes). This is called a *helium flash*, and for those couple of minutes, the star produces energy at a rate comparable to whole large galaxies.
Eventually the flash makes the core so hot that thermal pressure once again becomes the main force, reestablishing the equilibrium.
In either case:
* Now that helium fusion is lit, the outward pressure from fusion (possibly assisted by degeneracy pressure depending on the star) re-establishes the equilibrium from earlier - but the output of the now-very-compressed core is much, much higher. That causes its outer layers to puff out, since there's more outward push from the energy flowing from the core. (This actually makes the star's *surface* cooler, because it's spreading an increased energy output over a drastically increased area.) The star is now a red giant. | 27 |
[Halo Universe] If there wasn't a massive Covenant war happening, do most of the humans have pretty good quality-of-life? Do they live in a post-scarcity economy? | 18 | Outer territories sent the majority of their resources to core worlds like Reach and Earth, and this had been going on for long enough that they had entered a state of more or less open rebellion. The Spartans' first deployments were against human targets.
While the insurrection never officially ended, these outer worlds were the first to be wiped out by the Covenant, so their priorities shifted. | 27 |
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[MCU] How much do the MK50/MK85 suits Weigh? | The armors are stored as nanobot dust inside of Tony's chestpiece. Even if the nanobots were stored with perfect efficiency at the density of Osmium the suit could at most only weigh a couple kilograms. | 15 | Its mass isn't fixed.
I imagine it runs on the same weird physics that allows the Hulk to grow from normal human size to weighing several tonnes.
The Law of Conservation of Mass is more like a mild suggestion in this universe. | 18 |
ELI5: How does the cooking method impact so much on the actual taste of the food? | Obviously I'm not talking about what you add during the different preparations, but just about the way you cook something.
Like boiling VS roasting broccoli. Boiled broccoli smells and tastes like death and despair, but the second you roast them they're absolutely delicious.
Or eggs, hard boiled eggs taste completely different from when they are cooked in a pan.
Or again meat, roasted meat is completely different from boiled meat even if you add little to no other ingredients during the cooking process. | 15 | There's something called a Maillard reaction involving browning food, browning happens when you roast in the oven or sear in a pan on the stove, that intensifies the flavor of food. You can't get that when you oil or steam something. | 11 |
CMV: The “Africans sold their own people” statement as an argument to justify or dismiss American Slavery and the triangular trade is invalid. | If I had to take a shot every time I saw this statement on Reddit and Twitter whenever race is mentioned, I’d probably overdose. I’m not going to take a stance on any racial issue unless someone else decides to, but when people argue slavery the number one argument I see meant to dismiss (And sometimes even justify) slavery is the fact most slaves were sold as POWs to the Europeans.
Well first off who didn’t have prisoners of war? I’m not going to deny this. However I need to point out a couple of flaws in this statement as an argument.
* (1) The POWs sold to the Europeans **were clearly not willing**. Hence “Prisoners”. IIRC it was a tribal/culture thing back then, so they already had many prisoners in reserve. They were disproportionately male, suggesting they were *soldiers* or political prisoners. Meaning these men were either sent to attack another group or were attacked by a group. There were so many men that the American settlers had to come back to specifically acquire female slaves for... “Slave breeding”. ~~Kinda hurts to actually type that~~
So there were people in a position of power, abusing that power out of spite or for financial gain. You know, kinda like the Romans or other European kings back in the day. The slaves themselves did not choose to be in that position, and most likely were soldiers in the first place out of cultural obligation rather than their own will so you cannot claim “They knew the risks”. Even so, who’d predict a light skinned foreign army coming to abduct you?
* (2) Even if the initial slaves chose to live this way, whether or not they knew they’d be abused, **their children didn’t choose this**. I believe the triangular trade fell out sometime in the late 1700s to early 1800s, as an mentioned before with “Slave breeding” young black children wee born into a life of slavery. If an African slave decided “Yup, slavery is the life for me!” and willingly migrated, they decide to have a child with a fellow slave. The child born then and there is automatically a slave, but did not choose this life. They were simply born.
You don’t choose he circumstances of your birth, I’m sure if these kids knew, they would likely have chosen to be born in Africa. These kids had kids, and they also had kids. Of course it’s natural we reproduce, but many African Americans are born into slavery and do not choose this. African Americans today, like me didn’t choose to be here. While I am mostly content in America, it’s weird knowing my ancestors most likely did not migrate here intentionally.
To paint a picture, if I am not vaccinated because my mother chose not to vaccinate me, and I contract polio at 10, is it my fault I have polio? If my State decided to dismantle all educational programs when I was born, no one makes an attempt to teach me anything despite me wanting, and I can’t perform basic math at 4, is that my fault? If my own country decides to select me personally to become a slave so that can make a quick buck, is it my fault?
As for the people in Africa, who are descended from the rich bastards that sent my ancestors on slave ships, I don’t blame them.
Just like most whites people. They are not responsible for what their ancestors did to mine, what they *are* responsible for is to use the power they inherited from their ancestors to make things better for them if they aren’t in a good position, to understand how bad it was, and to not repeat the offense.
So if a white person wants to stand by and actively, openly justify what their white ancestors did to the Africans, they should come up with a better argument than “The Africkanz did it first!” | 75 | Most slaves from Africa were born slaves. Had they remained in Africa, they would have still been slaves (along with their descendants). Slavery still flourishes in Africa, as it has for thousands of years.
Of course slavery is wrong. Who's fault was it though? Was it the American buyers or the African sellers? I'd say both.
Some people feel that white people inherited the blame for slavery, even though only a small minority of whites owned slaves, and only a minority today descend from a slave owner.
If blame is inherited based on skin color, as some people feel, then it could be argued that black people inherit the blame for the black slave traders who sold those slaves to Americans.
The statement isn't to justify or dismiss American Slavery. It's to show that the slavery problem was more complex than kidnap-and-sell (as many believe), and it's to show that if blame is inherited based on skin color, then white is not the only color to blame. | 59 |
ELI5: How air conditioners take hot and humid air, and make it drier and cold. | 35 | Kinda hard to eli5
But basically 3 parts and a refrigerant.
A refrigerant is basically a substance that can change it's temperature based on pressure so when you drop pressure it makes cold.
An air conditioner is a evaporator condenser and compressor.
The refrigerant gets compressed so it's at a high pressure. It then goes then goes to the evaporator, which usually has a small limiting valve at it's entrance. This takes the high pressure refrigerant and only lets some through.
The refrigerant is now lower pressure. It then literally sucks the heat out of the room as it moves through the coils. A fan usually blows over the coils to help spread the cold around.
The refrigerant heats up and eventually dumps it's heat at the condenser. This is the hot side of your air conditioner. Usually it faces or is completely outside of the area.
The refrigerant is compressed again. And it keeps going around.
This process is extremely efficient and can even be reversed. That's what a heat pump is. | 47 |
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[Back to the Future] Would Marty's family be more or less strangers to him in the "good end" timeline? | (Excuse if I flub something here, but I haven't seen these movies in a while.) But I know that Marty's post-first-movie family is better off and quite different from the movie's starting timeline, right? Would he have to tread lightly to not mention possible discrepancies from his timeline around them, or is there some timey wimey handwave for this whole situation? Would he even be comfortable here? | 43 | There would be a lot of changes in his family, his actions completely changed how his parents see the world and themselves. However it seems that instead of little changes in the past completely altering every thing in the future, while details may be different, the broad strokes seem to remain. For instance, the McFly's still have the same children of the exact same age, they live in the same house, etc.... Perhaps the flux capacitor works to limit the amount of paradoxes that is possible by keeping things broadly the same.
So in the end, while there will be differences in what Marty remembers and what his "new" family experienced, they are still his family and he will fit in perfectly fine. | 37 |
do your teeth move at night? | ik this sounds weird lol but i think i remember someone saying/reading somewhere that your body swells a little bit while you sleep. but when i stay up way extra too late it feels like when i bite down my teeth aren’t in the right place.. if that makes sense, just slightly shifted.
so are your teeth included in this? or your skeleton i guess | 62 | Your teeth don't move on their own at night, unless you are missing several, then they can shift slowly. It can also happen obviously if you are going through orthodontic treatment. It is more likely a muscle issue in the jaw's joint, the TMJ. If you clench or grind your teeth during the day your jaw muscles can fatigue, which may be why it feels like your jaw relation is off. If you are grinding your teeth during whatever you're doing staying up (gaming, tv, whatever) it makes sense, rather than resting your jaw during sleep. | 21 |
[Ender's Game/WH40K]Ender Wiggin is given tactical command of an Imperial Warfleet. Given his success against the Formics, how does he fare against a Tyranid Hive Fleet? | 43 | Ender beat the Formics because of his incredible ability to empathize with his event, to love them. And when he knows them so well that he loves them he utterly destroys them. Ender could never empathize with the single-minded all consuming hunger that is the Tyrannid hive. All he would feel from them is an overwhelming desire TO EAT.
That said he is also an extremely capable tactician, and could doubtless become a very high ranking Admiral. He couldn't end the war of course, but he could definitely cause considerable trouble for the Nids. | 33 |
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[Jurassic Park] What ever happened to that sick triceratops? | During the ill-fated tour run, Dr. Sattler is talking to someone from the park, trying to figure out why the trikes get sick every 6-8 weeks. She thinks it's pharmacological, related to some nearby poisonous berries. She looks through the dino...dino-d-droppings? but can't find any evidence that the trikes have been eating them. It remains a mystery as they get back to the tour, and it's never really resolved due to the ensuing catastrophe.
So why were the trikes getting sick? Was this covered in the book? I haven't read it in years and I don't have a copy anymore. | 29 | Yes, this was covered in the book (though in the book it's the Stegosaurs that are getting sick.) The dinosaurs weren't eating them, they were accidentally consuming them when they swallowed gizzard stones and being poisoned that way. Many animals, apparently including Stegosaurs/Triceratops (depending on the version) regurgitate gizzard stones after they become smooth rather than excreting them-- if Dr. Sattler had investigated dinosaur puke rather than droppings, she would have solved the puzzle. | 31 |
ELI5: What causes trucks to get stuck on railroad crossings? | 65 | Often it's the grading (sideways tilt) of the railroad track which is at odds with the layout of the road, creating what's effectively a large bump in the road. Grading is needed to keep the trains stable in turns. Vehicles long enough that two sets of wheels can sit on either side of the bump, can get the bump jammed up their undercarriage. Shorter vehicles are lifted by the bump and roll right over. | 66 |
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[Transformers] Why are the new bots decepticons? | In "Revenge of the Fallen" Sam gets ahold of a piece of the Allspark, and when he accidentally creates new Transformers, they all appear to be evil and Decepticons.
If the Fallen is the first Decepticon, that means Primes and perhaps Autobots too were older and the "standard setting". Is the Decepticon "mode" the standard setting these days? | 16 | The all spark creates new transformer life, "Decepticon" is a faction created by Megatron. They're the equivalent of wild monkeys flinging poo when they're brought to life by the allspark, only their poo is live ammunition. They work together because they must recognize each other inherently, and their instinct to assert dominance over any different life form, which is why they attack Sam. | 14 |
[DC] Is Captain Atom wearing something or is his "costume" his skin? | His costume looks so plastered on him that it's impossible to know if he even has genitals.
Edit: this also applies to Major Force. | 124 | It's Dilustel. An alien material bonded to him in an experiment & which contains his quantum energy. It can be cut (Even though that's incredibly tricky to do) & when that happens he'll leak quantum energy.
He's shown the ability to transform into a regular human form though. Like with his disguise of 'Cameron Scott'. | 70 |
The US Gov. dept is 25 trillions. It seems incredibly high, but how does that compare to other countries? How high is the risk that one day the balloon will pop and the US economy will crash? Is the USA at risk of losing its status as a superpower in relation to that debt? | 99 | It's more of a how much of the fiscal govt budget is going towards servicing the debt and the debt/GDP ratio.
The bigger the portion of the fiscal budget goes towards servicing debt, the less money there is to spend on other programs.
In global context, Japan nearly spends half its receipts on servicing the debt and their debt to GDP is around 250%. However, their debt is mostly owned by domestic institutions and the government debt "bubble" hasn't popped for decades now. Even though it has its own problems, there's really no tell-tale sign of disastrous collapse for Japan.
The United States last paid roughly 17% of its tax receipts towards debt servicing, with a debt to GDP ratio of 103-105%. The debt servicing is growing(and it shouldn't continue), but the economy won't crash from those numbers. The balloon won't pop since there's still plenty of room to service the debt, the balloon will only pop if the government defaults on a interest payment. | 25 |
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[Starship troopers] why the armor? | I mean its ineffective against bugs, and even bullets, so why have it at all? | 19 | This is clearly about the film and not the novel, since the novel mobile infantry are what directly inspired Space Marines from both Warhammer and Starcraft, but are even more badass than both. Plus, one of the points of the novel is exploring the further dehumanization of war. From armies marching shoulder to shoulder for centuries, to small squads crawling through cities in the 20th century, to finally soldiers completely alone in their combat areas, with only radio communication between themselves. But they are also more machine than human in the end. It's a great image among the essays about service.
The film is the COMPLETE opposite. In the film, it's very ambiguous if the government is actually behind the asteroid and bug aggression or not. But even if they aren't, they're certainly using it for their own political purposes. That's why the film takes place through the eye of internet-ish propaganda videos. The government isn't fighting a war so much as it's telling a story to the general public. It gives its soldiers just enough training and equipment to feel safe and look good while marching, but still isn't enough to save them from the real horrors of war. It gives a compelling narrative of hopeful young soldiers going to war, losing their innocence, then begging the people back home to help. Mostly through increased spending and donations directly to the bank accounts of the people in charge.
This narrative continues at the end of the film, with new technologies being deployed and a hopeful message splattered on the screen. In order for a war to continue to inspire the people, your soldiers can't constantly lose. So improvements are doled out bit by bit so the soldiers feel like they have a chance and the people feel safe at home. As long as the common folk are being ground down by the endless war against the most convenient enemy in the galaxy (no way to humanize and sympathize with the bugs!), they will keep following those in charge. | 28 |
CMV: Blocking Syrian refugees is a reasonable measure by state governors, in the interest of national security | I am not anti-immigration, I hate hearing Donald Trump rant about his harsh stance toward immigrants, and I love the fact that the US is such a diverse country with such a great immigrant population.
However, at times we have to make some sacrifices for our own safety. These governors are being called xenophobic for doing what they are doing, and I think that's unfair. I can't stand Greg Abbott (governor of Texas), but to call him or Texas anti-immigrant is plain ignorant. An enormous portion of Texas's population is composed of immigrants, from many countries beyond just Mexico. Houston has a bunch of immigrants from the Middle East and parts of Asia as well. So the notion that Texas is xenophobic because of this is simply ridiculous.
The attacks in Paris were a very sobering reminder that the western world is not immune to the impact of these scumbag terrorists, even after 9/11. We hear about all the shit going on the middle east and subconsciously think "good thing that won't happen here." Well, unfortunately, it can, and we have to be extra cautious about it. Security takes priority.
My heart hurts for the Syrian refugees. I don't WANT them to be refused entry to a new country, and I don't even like the decision by some governors to refuse them entry. However, I do understand it. Sometimes the safety of our people trumps other matters.
I don't like that it's come to this, we must focus on the safety and security of our own until we can take out ISIS.
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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!* | 131 | Except there is no evidence that terrorists come to the West as refugees. What you are doing, along with a lot of the governors and other people calling for exclusion of Syrian refugees, is racial profiling. Just because the terrorists are from the Middle East and are Muslim doesn't make all Muslims from the Middle East a security risk.
You need to remember that terrorist groups are well funded. Terrorists don't come to the West on dinghies, or by asking for asylum. They come like any wealthy foreigner might come: with a visa and a plane ticket.
Until you can provide some evidence, aside from racial profiling, that the Syrian refugees pose some actual, tangible, security risk, you have no legitimate reason to exclude them. | 129 |
To what extent does the planet Jupiter actually "shield" the earth from meteor impacts? | I've been reading reddit today, and found out that a large object collided with Jupiter, and was [captured on video](http://www.flickr.com/photos/19299984@N08/7976507568/) by an amateur astronomer. Not long after, I came across [this io9.com article](http://io9.com/5942203/jupiter-may-have-just-saved-earth-from-a-devastating-impact-event?utm_source=gawker.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation) claiming that Jupiter may very well have "saved" the Earth from a catastrophic impact. If my physics and astronomy lessons still mean anything, shouldn't Jupiter still be incredibly small compared to the vast size of the Solar System, regardless of it's gravitational pull? Also if my memory serves correctly, there are innumerable asteroids floating around the solar system, both inside and outside the asteroid belt, both near and far from Jupiter. I wanna know whether or not Jupiter has any measurable effect on capturing rogue objects hurtling through the solar system which would otherwise impact Earth, or whether or not this is indeed measurable. | 15 | Truth be told, had Jupiter not existed, the object would have probably missed Earth anyway. Gravity is cool, but it's still quite weak on a very large scale, such as our solar system. It doesn't really make the "bulleye" that's necessary much bigger.
Now that that's out of the way, imagine trying to shoot a basketball flying through the air with a bullet, except you're blindfolded and only get one bullet every few years.
EDIT: More stuff
Also, keep in mind that Jupiter's gravity well is big, but not big enough to pull any objects that are about half a planet length into hitting it. Jupiter's "Shield" size is not very big.
Also, keep in mind that we have entire periods of time when Jupiter is on the other side of the sun. The amount of time that Jupiter would actually shield Earth is minuscule. | 10 |
CMV: Black people have a pass in Modern culture to make racist remarks | In 2016, BLM Toronto Co-founder Yusra Khogali was on record stating having white skin makes you “subhuman”
Nick Cannon recently went on record calling white people “Savages” saying white people are “a little less” and saying “we are the same people who they want to be”
This week, NBA player Montrezl Harrell called Mavericks player Luka Doncic a “bitch ass white boy” for his remarks telling him to stop flopping
Boxer Devin Haney remarked earlier this year that he will “never lose to a white boy” in regards to his opponent Vasyl Lomachenko
If any of the aforementioned public figures were of Caucasian descent and the remarks were directed towards those of African descent, the repercussions would be immediate and brutal. they would lose all sponsorship and promoters, get fined, fired from their jobs, make national headlines, change my mind. | 67 | I think you overestimate just how severely a white person is treated when saying something racist.
Take Biden’s comment about “not being black” or Trumps more overt “Mexico is sending rapists” (these aren’t the exact quotes, but i believe they were along those lines)
Both have been heavily criticised. However what actually happened? Trump is president of the US. Biden is probably going to be president in November (even if not, he’s running for president)
They certainly haven’t had “immediate and brutal” repercussions. | 19 |
[Star Wars] How did Owen Lars not realize that he had previously owned C-3PO? | In a New Hope he buys 3PO from the Jawas, yet we see that 3PO was on the Lars homestead after he was presumably sold along with Shmi, so what gives? | 35 | One, protocol droids are pretty common, even on the Outer Rim territories. Two, droids are like appliances, and hardly regarded with much thought. Anakin and Luke are actually pretty unique in how they speak to their droids. Finally, C-3POs casing was completely changed, and 3PO didn't act as if he knew Owen, so why would Owen care? | 74 |
Why are fish unable to breathe oxygen from air when they are able to absorb it from water which is so much more difficult? | 23 | It is because fish use gills in order to obtain oxygen. Which means that the greater the surface area of the gills of the fish, the more the blood vessels are exposed to oxygen.
While outside of water, the gill arches essentially collapse, reducing that surface area to zero. The projections on the gills float in the water in order to allow for the easy passage of oxygen. | 18 |
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Can a submarine get stuck to the floor of a body of water? | When I was younger I heard a scientist in a submarine during a documentary explain that they needed to be careful and not sink all the way to the floor as the submarine would get stuck and not be able to float back to the top. Is there any truth to this and if so what's the science behind it? If not, where could this thought have originated from? | 133 | Yes it is possible but the likelihood depends on the shape of the sub's hull and the type of sediments composing the ocean floor. In regions where the seafloor is especially muddy, mucky, or oozy (yes those are all scientific terms!) it is possible for the sub to settle into the sediments and the suction below the hull can anchor the sub when it tries to lift off. The specific risk depends on the characteristics of muck and how much positive buoyancy the sub can generate. Subs with a flat bottom would seem more at risk. | 60 |
Does the study of formal logic necessarily make a person more logical or being able to construct more reasonable arguments? | As stated in the title, the laymen seem to have the idea that studying of logic makes a person more logical, which I wonder if there are any consensus within philosophy about the actual importance of logic? That is to say, for example, a scientist could make logical arguments and predictions without learning formal logic; would learning formal logic be of any benefits to him/her? Thanks! | 15 | Most poor arguments out in the wild aren't lacking in validity (at least, once their unstated premises are charitably explicated), but rather due to biased justifications of the soundness of the premises.
Someone with a keen sense for logic will likely still be as biased as any other human. | 22 |
[MCU](Far From Home spoilers) About Mysterio's powers... | **LAST SPOILER WARNING, you sure you wanna be here? Okay? Okay.**
Anyway, how were Mysterio's illusions achieved in a tactile sense? Imagery and sound I get from the drones, and I know most physicality was the drones firing bullets at destroyed scenery and cloaked one-shot kill targets, but how did Mysterio convince people that they were touching what he wanted them to think they were? How much of Hydro-Man was actual water and how was it getting moved around? How was Spider-Man convinced that he was getting dog-piled by a horde of himself? | 26 | For Hydro-man, the drones had those shockwave projectors (a fun bit of Stark Tech that's been floating around on the edges since Incredible Hulk) that could have been directed upwards to create physical splashes of water to correspond with any illusory splashes that would impact the walkways.
For Spidey getting dogpiled, it could have been as simple as a crush of drones pressing down on him. The physical force would still have been interpreted as other Spider-men, even though the physical sensation wouldn't correspond to actual limbs or torsos. Our brains will do a lot of work to convince us that the things we're feeling correspond to the things we're seeing. | 22 |
[General Sci Fi] Tanks of the future? | Been brain storming with my brother on tanks and we came to an argument on the various parts of tanks including mode of propulsion, arnament and viablity of tanks in the future.
I'm arguing on the mode of propulsion that Hover Tanks would rule the future but he says that the sheer reliability of threads and the ease of repairing them would make it unlikely to change from it. Wjo do you think is right? Do you one of us is right or are we both wrong? (Spider leg tanks?)
On the arnament, we don't exactly come to an agreement if tanks would be better off with conventional, laser, railguns(both solid and explosive rounds), plasma or rockets.
Finally, I've been thinking of the viability of tanks in the future. This is more for my self really rather than an arguement between me and bro. Would they still be good or the introduction of a more stable and reliable "helicopter" like vehicle which boast heavy arnaments make them obsoleate? | 20 | You should both real the Bolos series.
Hover systems likely to be a secondary system until they are super-reliable and energy efficient.
Proper arms depends almost entirely upon the combat environment. The relationship between the tanks and what the tanks are there to destroy.
I doubt missiles will ever be the main armament because you can't carry many. They're for lighter vehicles that need to hit a tank or hitting aircraft.
Any sort of helicopter is still going to have the "glass jaw" or a rotor. Any hit there and crash. | 15 |
Is it inconsistent to apply both utilitarian and deontological frameworks when thinking about ethics, depending on the situation? | Example : A person who believes that killing any innocent person is immoral is inconsistent if they also believe that having some collateral damage during a bombardment is justified if this brings prosperity latter on?
I am also thinking that in terms of politics and policies: A healthcare system might be considered good if it provides free and decent care, even if that means that due to budget and workflow reasons some small percentage of people might be misdiagnosed, but if a specific doctors misdiagnoses a patient of theirs (especially due to budget and workflow reasons) this is considered not only legally wrong but ethically as well. | 44 | So in some cases it seems like Deontological and Consequentialist concerns can lead to contradictory duties or obligations. But some applied ethicists think that what is happening is that both theories give rise to worthwhile and legitimate ethical concerns and ethical truths, and it is our job to parse those out in borderline cases. Some ethicists think that many moral theories have merits that are legitimate, and we should consider all of them.
Many, though, like Singer believe that a single moral framework has the most explanatory power and can be used to the exclusion of other moral frameworks. Thus, any moral intuition that a Kantian might have is either false or explained and validated by a utilitarian framework, for example.
Still some others believe that an amalgamation of many major moral theories serve as the validating foundation for ethics. Such as Parfit who seems to argue in *On What Matters* that kantianism, utilitariansism, and contractarianism are all, in a qualified sense, compatible to some extent. They are “climbing the same mountain”— (there are various ways of reading what this means itself though). | 25 |
ELI5: What makes different types of cheese taste so different? | 18 | To make cheese, all you really need are three ingredients: milk, salt and live microbial cultures including rennet. The specific strains of microbes added to the milk play an important role in giving each variety of cheese its distinct flavor. | 13 |
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ELI5:Why does everything in the universe seem to want to spin? | I was just watching a video of the Sun rotating over a three-year period.... I thought to myself, "Why does the Sun spin anyway?".
But my thoughts didn't stop there. Stars spin, planets spin, galaxies spin; but even at the micro-level atoms and quantum mechanics seem to involve a whole lot of spinning.
[This visualization of gravity provides some insight. I understand how the ... curvature of gravity ... can cause rotation.](http://youtu.be/4yyb_RNJWUM?t=6m59s) However, this doesn't quite satisfy my inquiry.
Now that I think of it, I feel like we are grossly underestimating the importance of spinning in our universe. The more I ponder it, the more spinning seems to be a profound and integral part of all existence.
Why is everything spinning? | 28 | Imagine a bunch of little rubber balls positioned in a loose 3D grid to create a hollow sphere. If they were in a universe all to themselves, gravity would pull all of them towards the center. If they were position exactly the same distance apart, they would come together until they formed a perfectly uniform shape when they finally touch, and it wouldn't spin. Now image that that sphere isn't exactly perfect. Image just one of those balls is slightly offset. What is going to happen? If we image that the ball is slightly "to the left" of where it should be, now instead of everything pulled directly to the center, everything is pulled just slightly in that direction. This little hitch is going to cause the shape not to be completely uniform. It's still going to pull everything towards the center, but it will also cause everything to spin just a bit in the direction of that non-uniformity.
So in the real world, when big giant clouds of hydrogen start to get pulled together by gravity, because the hydrogen isn't uniformly distributed, it starts to spin as it collapses. Things that spin tend to bulge out on an axis relative to the direction of that spin. When the inner portion of that cloud reaches a certain density, a star is formed, and that outer bulge gets left behind to solidify into planets. These planets then orbit around a spinning star, all roughly in the plane of that bulge. | 29 |
CMV:Despite the "big government sucks!" rhetoric, the American right wing is pretty authoritarian, and their policy generally is pro-government. | As with any group, I'll begin this with saying that not all conservatives or republicans fit this description. I'll also say that a lot of these issues exist with the democratic party as well. I'm not here to debate whether a policy is just or favorable or anything. I'm simply talking about whether said policy is objectively authoritarian, libertarian, pro government, anti government, etc.
That being said, I know that ever since the Obama administration, the call of the republican party, the tea party, fox news, and any others on that part of the spectrum has been "stop big government". Back during Obama, there was some truth to those factions being opposed to big government in some regards. There was the trend of filming police to expose injustice, opposition to the NSA, gun rights, tax cuts, etc.
However, as time went on, this started to change. I first noticed this shift when the "blue lives matter" campaign started. The idea that working for the government and carrying a gun makes you some kind of hero is directly oppositional to the idea of libertarian small government. Its even more authoritarian to use a narrative that police officers are some kind of marginalized group that faces discrimination because of their job. What I get out of that kind of rhetoric is "don't question authority, don't hold the powerful accountable for their actions. Cooperate with them and thank them for keeping you safe". I don't see any way that this kind of movement could be considered pro liberty, or pro small government. You've all seen taxpayer money going to armorized tanks rolling down the street, and SWAT teams breaking down doors stealing drugs, money and guns. (Yes, theyre taking your guns, google Baltimore raids). Some may argue that this much government control is "a necessary evil" or "the lesser of evils" or even that its morally just for whatever reason. But I dont see any way one could deny that it is authoritarian, or at least that its just as much "big government" as partially subsidized healthcare is.
I also took notice of the policies proposed in response to terrorist attacks. Travel bans, ICE raids, outright Muslim bans, stop and frisk, etc. Once again, some may argue that these are necessary, but how can anyone deny theyre objectively authoritarian?
Then there's abortion policy. The amount of legal restrictions on womens bodies that have been proposed over the years.....I could go on for so long, but I think you get what I mean.
Gay marriage is a big one, too. I know that now as opposed to 10 years ago, the Republican party has become less opposed to gay marriage, and theres a whole lot of LGBT republicans. However, the anti-gay rhetoric still is present in this tangent of the right, and the idea that the government can tell 2 adults they cannot be married doesn't seem to fit the "American freedom" rhetoric.
I am not trying to debate whether these policies are right or wrong (though I'm sure you know where I stand on them). I'm just curious to know in what ways these policies and positions correlate to the libertarian, small government, principles of the American right. I'm well aware that democrats have pushed the exact same policies at times, but the right does this while fearmongering about "big government!! taxes are socialism!!" etc. Because the way it looks to me right now, is that either
-"big government" in the context of these factions means subsidized healthcare or education, gun control, and censorship. Also, that "civil liberties" only covers the freedom to say racial slurs, the right for some people to carry firearms, low taxes, and legal weed.
or that
-This tangent of the right knows that their policy, is in many ways in support of a strong government, and is ok with high taxes, so long as they're not going to welfare or healthcare. Yet some groups continue to use this "stop socialist big government" rhetoric to support the narrative of the right as the rebel underdogs fighting the establishment.
Maybe somebody will have a point that makes me change my view, or maybe I'll just get called a commie cuck or something, lets see. | 84 | Libertarians and the “right wing” are actually separate entities.
Liberals are both socially and fiscally liberal, conservatives are both socially and fiscally conservative, while libertarians are socially liberal but fiscally conservative.
You’re hearing two separate groups speaking and think that they are one-in-the same, but they’re not. To the extent that “true” conservatives are against big government, it’s mostly in terms of taxation, regulation and wealth redistribution (fiscal issues). They’re all for big government when it comes to outlawing marijuana, abortion and same-sex marriage (social issues).
Libertarians on the other hand are the truly anti-big-government ones, as they oppose both the taxation element *and* the social element. This group is generally pro-marijuana legalization, pro same-sex marriage and pro-choice, while also being against regulation and wealth redistribution.
The reason both groups *appear* to be on the right is because America has an almost-exclusively two-party system. The liberals don’t want anything to do with the libertarians these days, so libertarians as a whole tend to be associated with their fiscal conservatism rather than their social liberalism. But because of the two party system, libertarian candidates are rarely elected to government positions. That is why much of the policy that arises doesn’t follow the “big government sucks” mantra that you are hearing from the “right.” | 21 |
Mentorship |
How do you find deep mentorship in a lab where the PI isn’t super accessible? There are several labs I’m interested in rotating in, but they are larger and the PIs are somewhat well-known I’m the field and as such are busy people! Aside from that, they seem like great people, just not people I could pop in and ask a question without setting up a meeting. The mentorship they give would be great, there’s just not enough of them to go around, if that makes sense. I feel like I want more mentorship and guidance, but understand the demands that PIs have.
I don’t want to let this deter me from working in a great lab with exciting science being done. Any advice? | 18 | Larger labs with busy PIs usually have something like an upper management level. There are usually staff scientists, research scientists, postdocs and similar more senior people that manage research projects and students. Of course, ideally you should also have semi-regular meetings with your PI, but the senior scientists are usually the ones handling the day-to-day affairs. | 20 |
ELI5: Why are advanced stage colon cancer patients expected to live only 21.4 months after diagnoses? What actually kills them? (What will actually casue my death?) | 17 | At later stages, the cancer spreads to other systems, such as your pancreas, lymph nodes, etc. The most common is the liver.
What is bad is that most of these organs affect the entire body so once the cancer gets into that system, it can travel anywhere, like a freeway. Then it is just a case of how well those organs can function with cancer taking up space, pinching, cutting off blood supply, etc.
Good luck with treatment. Bring a good book to chemo, and be sure to buy Gatorade for at home. Half Gatorade, half water, and drink as much as you can stand. | 13 |
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ELI5: Why is snow almost a solid white, while other frozen forms of water are clear? | 43 | Snow is a whole bunch of individual ice crystals arranged together. When a light photon enters a layer of snow, it goes through an ice crystal on the top, which changes its direction slightly and sends it on to a new ice crystal, which does the same thing. Basically, all the crystals bounce the light all around so that it comes right back out of the snow pile. It does the same thing to all the different light frequencies, so all colors of light are bounced back out. The "color" of all the frequencies in the visible spectrum combined in equal measure is white, so this is the color we see in snow, while it's not the color we see in the individual ice crystals that form snow.
Basically, if you just had a big block of ice, light can pass right through it, where as with snow, light is being reflected and bounced around many many times, through many crystals of snow. | 34 |
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[MCU] During the Blip, what happened to the economy, and how is the world able to meet the all the resource needs when everyone comes back? | When half the world disappeared, the money supply wouldn’t have changed. Did all that extra money lead to crazy inflation? Was the world able to do some kind of universal basic income while they recovered from the snap? | 487 | I think that we will see more of this elaborated on in the coming eps of Falcon & Winter Soldier: But if the start of Endgame is any indication, the world looked to have come to a standstill. 5 years on, and New York looked dead with cars still on the bridges and the Avengers going around solving small crisis after small crisis to keep the world turning.
Then we had a line from Hayward in WandaVision that went something like, “You people that came back have the benefit of Hope; you have no idea how bad it was” So, I’d think that while there will be headaches while putting everything right after the blip, in the middle of everything was worse overall. | 330 |
[Death Note] With the exception of outright selling it, what would be the best way to make money with a Death Note? | Maybe shorting the stocks of companies with famous CEOs and killing the CEOs causing the stock to go down? Companies unexpectdly losing their figure heads should take a hit. | 68 | In the anime, a board of directors of a corporation were using it to kill off competition and assist in corporate takeovers.
Holding people for ransom would be a great way to amass wealth though. All you need is a name and a picture and you can kill them whenever. Once it gets out that there is someone who can kill anytime, anywhere, then it's easy to demand money and it's easy to sell your services as a Assassin. You could literally hold a auction to kill a politician with options to buy votes that you could invest towards kill or not kill options. In the US at least, political parties are so polarized that there would be people of the opposite party perfectly willing to donate a few bucks to killing the opposition party's elected officials. | 58 |
ELI5: Why can't a person with Alzheimer's have a fact sheet in front of them at all times reminding them of every truth about them, including the fact that they have Alzheimer's, and that they are expected to be constantly confused? | 1,294 | Because it will add to their misery. This is not like the forgetting that non-sufferers may experience as a result of an injury or hangover; it goes much deeper and has a shorter cycle. You can tell an Alzheimer's patient a "fact" one minute and it's gone in 30 seconds. The *truth* for advanced patients may bear absolutely no resemblance to fact, because a humane approach most often involves meeting their uncertainties with whatever words bring comfort, not pounding them with proof that they're wrong. | 1,155 |
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CMV: It is inhumane to leave homeless people on the streets. They should be given housing, and those with mental illness or addiction should be given residential treatment whether they want it or not | I don’t understand how we reached a point in society where many states feel the right thing to do is leave homeless people on the streets.
I’ve read that 25-40% of our homeless population are addicted to alcohol or drugs. I’ve read that up to 20% are schizophrenic. Finally, I’ve read that 45% have some type of mental illness.
I watched Pete Santanello’s videos on the homeless in California. It was clear that leaving them on the street is not only harmful to them, but also everyone else living in the area. For example, the one woman said she needs to steal $150 worth of goods daily to feed her habit, and discussed how there are networks of thieves working the area. Here is one of his videos…
https://youtu.be/jzdHQUKYS3Q
Here is another about the fentanyl crisis in the state, which also affects the homeless population…
https://youtu.be/H6PcxY_JUTU
The crazy thing is that many ultimately end up in a state sponsored facility, but not the one they need. They end up in JAIL.
There are shelters for those who will accept them, but many do not accept it, often due to mental illness and/or addiction. I don’t understand why we give them a choice. If a guy is running around waving a gun, we’d detain him. If he was actively slicing his wrists, we’d detain him. But if he is slowly killing himself with drugs, pooping on the sidewalk, blocking the entrance to businesses, and stealing from those businesses, we conclude “He’s living life on his terms.” That’s nuts.
My Suggestion: We should create a nationwide network of government-sponsored therapeutic facilities where they can receive the help they need.
It is my understanding that we had a greater network of mental facilities in the USA in the past, but most psychiatric hospitals were closed due to mismanagement and shady practices. Let’s do it right this time…
1. There should be a building on the property for people in crisis. It would be staffed by doctors, nurses, mental health professionals and security guards. If you are brought here, you can’t leave until given clearance from a doctor.
2. There should be a less “locked down” section for people who are making progress and can handle more freedom to walk the grounds and interact freely with other residents. There would still be intense therapy and support. Some people would stay here temporarily while others might require this level of support indefinitely.
3. Finally, there should be a transition housing area. This is where people would live in their own apartments, perhaps with roommates, and receive the therapy and support required to reenter society.
Why is it more humane to leave these people on the street? If it was my family member out there, I’d pray for this level of support.
I work in a hospital. If a patient is a danger to themselves or others, we are allowed to hold them, even if they don’t want to stay. But our ability to be this proactive with support is limited to current patients. We cannot find people in crisis and bring them to the hospital. Why not? | 336 | You gave the reasons why we logistically can’t house all the homeless in your own argument. Many of them are indeed mentally ill or drug addicts and these are problems that won’t fix by just being given housing. Most drug addicts and people with severe mental illness can’t handle the responsibility of having a house. They don’t only put themselves in danger but their prospective neighbors as well with risks ranging from drug dealers to unpredictable outbreaks of violence to basic sanitary issues. The question becomes do we want to force people into therapy, rehab and other treatments to eliminate the problem of homelessness? Would it even work for everyone in the first place? | 122 |
ELI5: How are financial markets any different than Ponzi schemes other than layers of professionalism? | 17 | Because they trade in actual instruments that have value - shares of companies and debt. Owning a share gives you a stake in ownership of a a company, claim on their profits and assets. Debt gives you a financial claim to be repaid at some point in the future with interest. Financial markets trade in these claims, through a variety of instruments but unlike Ponzi schemes the underlying claims produce value - companies sell goods and services and generate profit. | 38 |
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CMV: Recess should be a requirement in High schools | In elementary school , Recess was the best part of the day. It was 30 minutes of the day used to go outside and play around or so we thought. The truth is those 30 minutes were used to clear our mind and to relax. In middle school, recess didn't exist. In high school , it seemed we were too old to play around. But it was more than playing around. The time was used to rejuvenate the students mind. According to a NYU study on high schoolers and their stress reported that 49% of high school students reported feeling daily stress. Bringing back that relaxation time would help a lot of students get the break they need throughout the day. This time would be different from physical education or lunch time. It would be a specific time throughout the day were students could read or get a chance to go outside and breathe fresh air. It would help relieve stress and give students a chance to refocus. It offers cognitive, social, emotional and physical benefits.Several studies demonstrate that recess, whether performed indoors or outdoors, made children more attentive and more productive in the classroom according to *Jarrett, O. J. Education Research, 1998.* This is not al*l, Sibley B, Etnier J. The relationship between physical activity and cognition in children. Pediatrics Exercise Science. *2003 reports that recess allows a student time to rest, play , imagine, think , move and socialize. It's actually better for their education if the students get a time like this to move around and clear their head. | 68 | As a teenager/young adult, you probably don't see 30 minutes of "free time" at school as being very free; after all, they still require you to stay on campus.
It's an extra 30 minutes of the school day that gets added to each student's schedule. That is a half hour that they could instead be spending at home, doing extra-curricular activities, etc.
| 25 |
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