post_title
stringlengths 5
304
| post_text
stringlengths 0
37.5k
| post_scores
int64 15
83.1k
| comment_text
stringlengths 200
9.61k
| comment_score
int64 10
43.3k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
ELI5: What happens with the water that ends up in your lungs when misdrinking? | Sometimes we drink and it goes "the wrong way", ending up in the lungs. What happens to that water? Does it evaporate? Is it slowly absorbed?
It can certainly not be stored there forever, we would feel it. | 37 | The cell walls of your lungs are coated with a thin layer of water to aid oxygen absorption, but the layer is highly controlled excess water can be absorbed back into the cells, alternatively there are tiny hairs cilia which sweep away debris which is collected in the lungs and these can also remove excess water. | 23 |
ELI5: Why isn't the gas tank fill port standardized to be on the same side for every vehicle? | Wouldn't making the port be on the same side for every car make getting through gas stations more uniform/efficient? Seems like this would be a no-brainer. Is there some practical reason why they aren't? | 59 | Simple engineering. There is no uniform standard, so automakers move it around based on what's best for the design of the vehicle. Older cars can have gas caps behind the license plate, to accommodate gas tanks below the trunk.
The location of the gas tank is a big challenge when designing cars, especially more compact ones. | 39 |
[Star wars] is Ashoka Tano a Jedi at the end of the Clone wars season 7? | 18 | No. A Jedi is a Force-wielding member of a very specific religion. Ahsoka Tano *is* a Force user, Ahsoka Tano *does* use Jedi weaponry, and Ahsoka Tano *does* have considerable Jedi training, but she is not a Jedi.
>!Rex even attempts to use this loophole to get her out of Order 66, but nobody buys it.!< | 38 |
|
ELIF: Why are nail salons so frequently operated by Asian women? | I realize it's not exclusive, but really, they just have a knack for it? | 22 | It's mostly due to family and ethnic networks.
Many of the first Asian immigrants to the US started business, they went for simple service sectors with low cost overhead in areas that weren't already saturated by Americans, such as nail salons or bodegas or small convenience stores.
Years later, when new immigrants come to the country, they tend to settle either with extended family or in ethnic pockets along with other recent immigrants from the same areas (ie, Little Italy, Chinatown, etc) and learn the trade from them. So they work in existing nail salons for awhile and eventually learn enough about it and make enough money from it to open their own place. In their new locations, they tend to "pay it forward" by providing jobs to newer immigrants or newer family members and the cycle continues. | 26 |
ELI5:Do black men actually have bigger penises? And if so, do black women have deeper, wider vaginas? | 25 | From metapedia:
A 2007 peer-reviewed study appearing in the Tropical Journal of Medical Research has noted that contrary to "the popular belief that the black people generally have longer penile sizes" that in reality "there is no convincing scientific background to support the ascription of bigger penile dimensions to people of the Black race". In fact the study discovered that "the average erect length of the American Caucasians was surprisingly longer" than Negroidssampled, but that the latter were longer flaccid. | 20 |
|
[ATLA] Why does the Fire Nation have tripwire trap rooms installed into their ships? | In the pilot episode Aang trips a wire in an empty room of an abandoned Fire Navy ship, which shoots a signal flare and locks them inside the room. I think I understand the intent of this (as a security measure for the Fire Navy to quickly notice a captured ship and maybe trap the captors, as the captors are more likely to trip something they don't know about- I've seen some old jails that have a similar mechanism along the wall) I'm just curious why they would spend space on what seem to be empty trap rooms when that space could be used for artillery or officer barracks or any myriad of more useful, less situational things. Is there just one of these trap rooms on a ship? How do they hide this mechanism? If all the ships are uniform, intel about the booby trap is more likely to make its way to the enemy.
EDIT- So rewatching the scene I noticed this isn't even an empty room, it's the ship's *bridge*, which makes this WAY more impractical of a design. Why put a tripwire in the middle of what is likely one of the busiest rooms of your naval vessel? Especially one that sends an SOS and locks everyone inside the room? | 16 | It's very unlikely the trip wire was set up during day-to-day operations. It's more like part of the evacuation procedure in case of the ship being captured. Remember that the waterbenders did not fight their way onto the ship, they surrounded it and encased it in ice, pushing it out of the sea. The firebenders, now run-aground, abandoned ship and set up the tripwire so that if the waterbenders come aboard, they will be unable to retrieve sensitive information and would signal nearby fire nation vessels. As it happens, the southern water tribe did not have the means to launch a counter attack, all soldiers having already left to fight, so no one bothered going aboard to scavenge. | 50 |
CMV: "ACAB" is ultimately going to hurt America more than it will help. | My view on the phrase “all cops are bastards” is that while it is a convenient way to express distaste with policing in the US it doesn’t allow any room for what is good and working.
For example: I recently saw a video where a person was getting arrested on the street. One cop cuffing him, another standing in front, and a third walks up and points a rifle to the suspect’s head inches away. In the comment section I saw a lot of “ACAB” type comments and there were discussions over if any of those cops were “good” and it seemed that the conclusion was “the one cuffing him may be the only one there doing good, but he’s a cop so he’s not.”
From where I sit there has to be good cops, and cops that want to do better. Cops still play a vital role in the country and while many seem to be questionable there are always going to be things that cops have to do.
How “ACAB” will ultimately hurt the situation is that with defunding and restructuring police in America we will still have cops, and I imagine many cops right now will still be cops then. At some point we need to accept that there are good cops, but “ACAB” doesn’t allow for that step. It’s an all-or-nothing point of view that doesn’t stem from any critical thinking nor does it allow it.
Note: this isn’t a view about police reform, social injustices, or anything other than a mindset that while may help changes things right now, will inhibit change in the future.
Edit: My view isn't about the person behind the badge, it's about being able to accept when the system is better/good.
&#x200B; | 109 | Consider the phrase "stranger danger". This is not say that all strangers are dangerous. In fact, most strangers are probably awesome. However, we suggest that people _treat_ strangers as dangerous so as to stay maximally safe.
Similar, it's reasonable to treat cops as _dangerous_ or as _bastards_ (as "bad cops") because the implications of encountering a bad cop are so incredibly dangerous that it's unwise to do anything other than regard the cop you might be encountering as a bastard.
So...it's not a specific cop is indeed a bad cop or a bastard, it's that we ought approach them as if they are because it is unwise and dangerous to not do so. | 22 |
ELI5: If I am allergic to peanut butter and I eat a jar everyday, will I become un-allergic? | 66 | There are some allergy therapies that try a version of this. You can build up resistance to peanut butter if you are exposed to VERY SMALL amounts ever day. Starting with a jar will just send you to the morgue. | 112 |
|
ELI5: Agile methodologies in software testing | In general terms, how does this methodology work? | 30 | The basic concept is that you decide on details regarding implementation and testing while developing.
In more classical methodologies you generally spend a lot of time in the beginning of a project to plan everything on a high detail before writing the first line of code.
In agile developement you make a very rough plan and decide the details as you go along. It is more of a "Try and error" method that is a lot more flexible but have some other drawbacks. | 16 |
[Star Wars] Why did the Rebels not evacuate Yavin when the Death Star was approaching? | For comparison, when the Imperial fleet launched a surprise attack on Hoth they managed to evacuate almost everyone, while under enemy fire.
Yet on Yavin they send up 30 one man fighters, then just sit there waiting for the Death Star to get close enough fire. | 37 | The Yavin IV attack was more surprise than the attack on Hoth. Though Leia Organa Solo was suspicious that Millennium Falcon was being tracked, the tracking beacon was never found. When the Rebels received the Death Star plans they began analysing them for weaknesses. When the first Death Star fell out of hyper space in the Yavin System, the Rebels had a battle plan ready to be put to use. The Empire did not know of any weaknesses to the station, Grand Moff Tarkin viewed the fighter attack as a futile effort.
The attack on Hoth was not a surprise attack. The Imperial Recon Droid gave away the element of surprise. As Commander Solo indicated after he destroyed the droid, it was a good bet the Empire knew they were there.
There was also a significant difference in fire power between a Star Destroyer and the Death Star. The Death Star could fire any transport vessel out the sky on an attempted escape. Hoth's Ion Cannon was able to temporarily disable the Star Destroyer's offensive capabilities allowing transport ships to get through.
| 46 |
[Alien] Can you save a infected person with surgery after a facehugger releases him/her? | 21 | From the avp wiki:
>>"Arguably the most biologically intriguing stage of the Xenomorph's life cycle, the Chestburster is not implanted into the host as an embryo but is in fact akin to a cancerous growth; it begins as a tumor that causes the host's body to literally construct the infant creature from its own biological material.[1] This process causes the developing embryo to take on some of the host's physical traits via a process known as the DNA Reflex,[2] including bipedalism, quadrupedalism[6] or even possessing the mandibles of a Predator[7] and other body structure changes. Over the course of 1–24 hours, and sometimes up to several days in the case of some Queens, the tumor develops into a Chestburster, at which point the creature emerges, violently ripping open the chest of the host, killing it. Owing to its cancerous nature, Chestburster development is typically fatal for the host even if the growing organism itself is surgically removed.[8]"
Relevant citation (8):
Dave Hughes, Lee Brimmicombe-Wood. Aliens, Vol. 2 #11, p. 31 (1993), Dark Horse International.
So...
Typically, no. It'd be like treating Cancer by removing the individual tumors. It helps, but the problem is more complicated than that. | 45 |
|
Difference between a “Psychotherapist” and “Psychologist” | When I look up the question above for myself , the info it gives just seems the same for both. Are these both two different terms to describe the same position? | 40 | A psychologist holds a doctorate (PhD or PsyD) in psychology and doesn't necessarily provide psychotherapy to clients, but can do so under the title of psychologist.
A clinical psychologist is traditionally trained as a researcher and practitioner, and may focus on either. Someone who gets a PsyD, also a doctoral degree, focuses on practice, and is a psychologist. A PhD in experimental psychology is a psychologist, though it is very rare for these psychologists to practice or gain licensure, and they normally investigate aspects of psychology that often have nothing to do with treatment.
All others who are licensed to provide psychotherapy are not considered psychologists. They can be officially assigned various titles depending on the nature of their education, location, and work. A licensed clinical social worker can provide psychotherapy. A psychiatrist can earn licensure to practice psychotherapy. A counselor can practice psychotherapy. Anyone who practices is often colloquially referred to as "a therapist", except for psychiatrists, oddly enough. They're often just called psychiatrists. | 22 |
[LoTR and Middle Earth] Elves that chose not to leave for Valinor and stayed in Middle Earth, what would of happened to them and the areas they lived on | What I mean is, lets say everyone in this sub reddit were Noldor Elves and resided in Rivendell. If we chose to stay in Rivendell for the entirety of the Third Age into the Fourth and so on, what would of happened to our bodies and ultimately Rivendell. | 18 | Ultimately, our spirits (fëar) would consume our bodies (hröar), and we would be left as houseless spirits, a kind of wraith.
When Men die, their fëar depart the circles of Arda for whatever lies beyond - the Gift of Iluvatar. The fëar of Elves, on the other hand, are bound to Arda until its ending. If slain, the fëa of an Elf can go to the Halls of Mandos in Valinor, and ultimately be reincarnated into a new hröa.
This weakening of the hröa is due to the marring of Arda by Morgoth, and the cause of a great deal of grief to the Elves. The Rings of Power were made to prevent this; when their power was lost with the destruction of the One, this process can only be avoided in Valinor. This is why Galadriel told Frodo that, no matter what happened, the time of the Elves in Middle-Earth was over. If Sauron was overthrown, it meant that the power of the Three would be undone, and in time the bodies of all the Elves in Middle-Earth would be consumed by their own spirits. | 19 |
ELI5, why do viruses and bacteria have many of the same symptoms when they infect a human? | Soar throat, sniffles, sneezes, coughing, vomiting, diarrhea- any combination of these could be covid, flu, common cold, adenovirus, astrovitus, strep, etc | 27 | All of the above are the body using various methods to expel or combat the virus. They're similar for many viruses because those are the tools our body has to fight viral infections (though obviously it's not all the tools) | 64 |
[Star Wars] What do Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader do during their 'off-time'? | 65 | Vader sits in a bacta tank, trying not to think of his dead wife and kids and wallowing in his own negative emotions.
The Emperor probably gets about 5 seconds of true down time in any given year, and spends it working on his evil laugh. | 130 |
|
ELI5: What is the use of a birth certificate? | 54 | It proves you were born here and are a citizen. Without one, and without a record of one, they could try and deport you as an illegal immigrant.
It also, you know, proves your age. For age-related things like getting into public school and getting a drivers license. | 40 |
|
[Matrix] Why does 01 have so much defense? | So, the humans are all underground. The machines know exactly where they are, and wipe them out every 120 years or so. There's maybe a dozen hovercraft that leave the city, which can be easily destroyed by a small group of sentinels.
Why the hell does 01 have about 200 heavy battleships just sitting there for a threat which, except for Neo (which would never have been predicted), nothing is going to approach? | 47 | One of the problems with having full intelligence and independent, but still artificial, personalities, comes the issue of personality disorders and problems. Even though the machines don't have genetics and brain chemicals affecting their moods, they still can get caught with faulty logic, endless looping cycles and blatant lying. This means the machines can still fall victim to horrible human issues like rampant paranoia. This paranoia makes them constantly prepared for another war with humans they logically know will never happen, but are still terrified of losing.
They have SOME precedent of being afraid of humans, even if they seem to be completely under machine control. Humans displayed unpredictable, savage and horrible behavior before and during the war, so it would be a mistake for them to think humans were still incapable of such things. This underlying fear of the human capacity for violence, a logic loop keeping them paranoid long after the war, and an entire planet's worth of resources to build their defenses and you end up with a single city being defended by giant battleships.
(Plus, on top of all this, there's a short story that says the machines are also aware of hostile aliens and are defending Earth while at the same time dealing with humans. That could also explain their overwhelming physical firepower.) | 42 |
[Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra] How much authority does the Avatar have? | I think we can all agree that the Avatar (a living god) is very much widely respected throughout the world due to their role in maintaining balance as well their predecessors doing noble things like stopping a genocidal Fire Lord from burning the Earth Kingdom to the ground.
But how much authority do they actually have? On one hand, they’re treated almost like royalty and people will gladly hear them out. However, then there’s Korra, who was (unfairly) kicked out of Republic City by order of President Raiko, despite the fact that she was instrumental in stopping a violent, revolutionary anti-bending terrorist organization as well as saving the entire world from the Avatar universe’s equivalent to what amounts to Satan/the Anti-Christ (who was gonna put the world under 10,000 years of darkness and chaos until the next Harmonic Convergence). This would be like if George Washington came back to life at full health and was of sound mind but then Trump suddenly declared him to be persona non grata. | 40 | The Avatar doesn’t have explicit authority to order any world leaders around, but between their unparalleled bending prowess, the wisdom that they gain during their travels around the world, and their near-universal respect that they have among the general population, it would be foolish for any world leader to ignore them if the Avatar took any kind of stance on an issue. Their word would have a great deal of influence globally, even if they don’t actively intervene in political affairs. Also, if any kind of global crisis occurred, world leaders and civilians alike would be looking to the Avatar to provide guidance and support in dealing with that crisis. | 53 |
ELI5: What happens to fish during a hurricane? | And can they predict it coming? | 33 | Sharks can sense the falling barometric pressure associated with a hurricane and leave the area. But other creatures are stuck. Fish and invertebrates can get driven onto land and stranded by the storm surge. Fish nurseries may be upset. Coral reefs can be completely destroyed; those that survive can take years to recover. Hurricanes have been known to kill fish, sea turtles, crabs and many other marine organisms.
ELI5: its like when you make splashies in the tub. The top is all wavy but under its not as crazy. You can feel it on your toes though, can't ya? Well, your toesies are the fish deep down and your fingers are like the fishes at the top. | 31 |
[28 Weeks Later] What kind of morons are running the NATO cleanup efforts? | Firstly, who decided that the _janitor_ should be able to get into a quarantine room? That's just basic procedure.
Secondly, why, upon hearing that said quarantine had been broken, did they herd ALL the civilians into an enclosed space with multiple doors, one of which leads directly to the now-broken quarantine room, AND LEAVE THEM ALL UNLOCKED!? Are they not familiar with the expression "putting all your eggs in one basket"?
If measures like firebombing and flooding the streets with gas were effective, why didn't they just do that first? They clearly don't seem to think collateral damage is much of a risk.
And why don't they have coastal air/sea countermeasures? I mean, if just one specimen gets into the European Mainland, the potential for a catastrophic, extinction-level event is present. Surely the military notified their non-local command structure that containment had been breached. They've been approved to use napalm against civilian targets, which means they're less concerned about the potential for friendly fire, and rightly so. So how does a helicopter take civilians directly into a populated area without putting them in quarantine, if not just being shot down no questions asked?
And lastly, why on earth would the order be given to _snipers_ to fire on all moving targets in a given zone if they have jets with firebombs and chemical weapons ready to scramble? Putting aside the inefficiency of such a task, and the immense psychological strain it puts on the snipers (which are highly trained and valuable assets), it's just plain stupid to not even prioritize infected over clean. Every healthy person you evacuate is another person to fight the infected later on. An infected is just an angry bag of unusable biologicals.
I saw this movie about a year ago, so this is just what I remember off the top of my head, but what it boils down to is that the leadership of the operation was supremely, phenomenally, stupendously idiotic. I'm frankly shocked they're able to walk and talk at the same time. Moreover, that such an individual would be judged fit for such a massive, high-risk operation with potentially apocalyptic consequences is such an incredible error in judgment that whoever put the ignoramus in charge of the Isle of Dogs in his position should probably be shot. | 153 | Like all large-scale, high-profile endeavors, the repopulation of the British Isles was carried out with a mix of political grandstanding, hastily-constructed taskforces, inefficient budgeting, and minimal research. The decision of who got to be there was based on which bureaucrats and generals were trying to make a name for themselves more than logic and need. Member nations and their politicians all wanted a say in the composition of such a historical undertaking.
As a result, many staff positions were filled with junior or under-qualified personnel. People and departments who had never worked together were forced to make daily compromises in pursuit of their own particular missions. From the outset the project suffered from excess in certain areas and scarcity in others. Protocols were often convoluted and sometimes even contradictory, coming from multiple disciplines and areas of expertise.
The fact that they got as far as they did was simply because everyone *wanted* it to work. They were willing to cooperate and not overthink everything in order to make history and enhance their careers. | 68 |
CMV:Capitalism is a better economic system than Socialism | I will start my premise by saying that I believe capitalism is better than socialism due to the fact that it allows competition between different businesses. This is crucial to keep growing a stronger economy and helps goods become cheaper than they would be under a socialist government.
My problems with socialism (And I'll touch upon why I disagree with Bernie Sanders' "Democratic Socialism after) are that the government wishes to control all industries and social services. This is rather worrisome to me because if the government is in charge of things like healthcare, tuition, and means of production, I don't think people will have the incentives to work as hard as they would in a competitive society. I also feel like coal would lose its use if the USA became socialist to preserve the environment. I personally like the use of coal, but that is another topic to discuss.
Now, to the closest socialism that we could've experienced around this time was if Bernie Sanders' had won the election and implemented his Democratic Socialism. The problem that I have with Democratic Socialism is that I believe it is in a contradiction with itself. I will cite information from a official Democratic Socialism [website](http://www.dsausa.org/what_is_democratic_socialism) itself. I will take out the most relevant parts though in case you do not wish to read it.
The meaning of Democratic Socialism:
>Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few.
So the way they intend to reach this goal is by:
>Today, corporate executives who answer only to themselves and a few wealthy stockholders make basic economic decisions affecting millions of people. Resources are used to make money for capitalists rather than to meet human needs. We believe that the workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own and control them.
The only way I can see this working is through hard government control, which is why I call it a contradiction.
I think capitalism is the best and some good examples are NASA and spaceX. Before, any relevant company pushing towards the knowledge of space and space travel was NASA and NASA only, but with the recent surge that spaceX is coming out with, I am sure that NASA will start kicking things up a notch. I believe science is very important in moving our society and economy.
Besides countries like Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, socialism has failed most of the times it is attempted to be implemented. I also have to disagree with the people who say that socialism is possible because countries like the ones listed above do it. I disagree with this because it is hard to compare a country like those to the USA because of factors like population, which I feel is the most important because it is easier to share wealth among less people. I also do not wish to pay higher taxes for government subsidy programs.
_____
> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 239 | Free market capitalism has a few weaknesses. One is monopolies. Another is public goods.
Monopolies form naturally in a free market economy. They remove competition which allows producers to ignore consumers’ desires. How do you prevent or break up monopolies? Anti trust legislation and the judiciary system. But those are socialist policies.
Public goods are things which society desires, but they are not profitable to produce, so society goes without them in a free market. Examples are clean air, national security and health care, lighthouses, and street lights.
Let’s say you live on a dark street in a purely free market society. You want a street light. So do your neighbors. So you all agree to build a street light and pay for its electricity. Everything goes great until one neighbor stops paying. Now you all have to pay a little more and your good for nothing neighbor still gets to enjoy the light! Now another neighbor pulls the same stunt. Now the rest of you have to pay even more! This continues until you are the only one paying for the street light. You realize you can’t afford it on your own so you stop paying and now you and your lousy neighbors all live in the dark.
So how can you provide public goods to society? You ask the government to get involved and make everyone pay a small tax to support the public good. But that’s socialism!
Edit: Democratic socialism combines the best of both worlds: free market policies where the market works and socialist policies where the free market fails. | 166 |
CMV: Churches don't do enough for the secular communities | My personal (anecdotal) experience with churches is that while they may do a lot of charity works, a lot of those works are religious in nature. For example, providing daycare to their religious members, or providing funeral/wedding services, or providing religious counselling sessions.
&#x200B;
I argue churches don't do enough SECULAR works, such as helping people WITHOUT all the religious baggages. For example, even when churches feed the homeless, they often add in bible reading, which implies if a homeless doesn't want to be taught the bible, they cannot receive the food.
&#x200B;
And don't get me started on the growing trends in megachurches where their donations don't even go towards the communities but instead use for flashy concerts and expensive buildings.
&#x200B;
To change my mind, you would have to show me DATA that MAJORITY of the activities that a church does with its money is beneficial to the NON-RELIGIOUS folks (or people from a different religion, e.g. Hinduism). | 19 | Battered women’s shelters don’t help homeless men. Cancer charities don’t help homeless veterans. The Red Cross doesn’t build houses in third world nations. Charities don’t help everyone, they help who they are set up to help. If you don’t like churches because they don’t help all people while refraining from mentioning religion, then you have to be mad at all other charities. | 21 |
How do buildings throughout history disappear in to the earth? | Some examples, such as [Nero's Golden House ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domus_Aurea) were purposefully buried and then built over, and structures in the deserts of Egypt would naturally be covered by sand, but this can't be the explanation for every building that's ever been swallowed up.
I'm really interested in the different reasons that human made structures disappear below the surface. I imagine that quite a few of you out there have experienced different reasons for the same end result. Please share!
| 62 | I once stood in a museum in Budapest, Hungary that was dedicated to this topic. Basically, trash, plants, soil, rubbish, other buildings/roads etc slowly build up over time. First floors become basements become foundations become gravel. There was a whole wall encased in glass that showed about 35 feet of the city starting at street level and working down to pre-city times at that site. You could clearly see architectural changes of the time by examining the material of the aggregate. | 23 |
With the connectivity of the modern world and mediums like skype and gaming, could local accents begin to fade out? | Hi social scientists, I've been sort of scratching my head this afternoon trying to put a locality to my accent after someone asked me what accent I had. I realised that my accent didn't at all fit with the accents of other locals in my area and when I first arrived at university the same problem arose in that nobody could tell where I was from. So after a bit of thought I came up with the theory that I may have pieced together an accent from years of talking to people online, I'm 20 now and from about age 12-16 I played a ton of world of warcraft, this meant skyping with 19 other guys from all over Europe almost every night for around 5 hours a night. I'm wondering if I picked up on different pronunciations and accents from here and pieced it together into the way I talk today. I don't mean to say that regional accents would die out atall but I'm from Somerset in England and I have an alien accent for the area. So my question is, Is this the case? could increased connectivity in the world begin to create broader accents? and is there any published research into the subject? Many thanks! :) | 49 | the latest research into the effect of online virtual communities suggest that the rate of accentation is accelerating. world of Warcraft and eve online are developing their own unique dialects that tend to isolate the communities. | 15 |
Why aren't bullets cone shaped? | I can't seem to understand why some rounds (eg. [9mm](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/9mmLuger.jpg)) are rounded not cone shaped. Isn't a cone the best shape to pierce air? | 29 | Intuitively, it may seem that a cone is the best shape but keep in mind that there are multiple factors in play. One of which is torque.
- A blunt object is subject to less destabilizing torque than a pointly one by having the leading edge closer to the center of gravity.
- Spin is induced to resist torque. It is easier to spin a cylindrical object on it's axis than a cone shaped one.
| 16 |
Would a microwave heat up heavy water (deuterium oxide) just like regular water? | I tried to find the answer on Google but couldn't come across anything. | 20 | Yes, they have almost the same electrical dipole moment. It wouldn't be _exactly_ the same, since H2O and D2O have ever-so-slightly different properties (specific heats and so on), but that applies no matter how you heat them.
| 12 |
Does the battery still drain if I hold down the electric motor, stopping it from spinning? | I have [one of these little frothers](http://i.imgur.com/XzjpC4d.jpg). It's just a little battery-operated electric motor.
If I turn it on, but hold it with my hand to prevent it from spinning, there is no movement and hence zero work done (right?). But the battery still drains, no? How exactly does that work? Where is the energy going? Heating? How exactly does it heat up? | 23 | You are right that there is zero work done in this situation but that is only because the motor is 0% efficient in this situation. None of the electrical power is being used to do useful work but is instead being converted mostly to heat. When you stall a motor like this, it is in fact drawing the maximum amount of current possible (voltage applied divided by the resistance of the motor windings). Because the motor isn't moving, there are no losses due to friction or air resistance or any magnetic core losses in the motor's iron. Rather all loses are due to I^2 R losses in the motor's windings. | 33 |
ELI5: what happens when a pair of shears hits that creamy smooth glide-cut and what causes this? | 88 | The first thing that you need to understand is that when you use scissors in the open close motion, you're not really "cutting". You're tearing the paper. You're just doing it really really.... really precisely. Put a piece of paper on the edge of a desk. Hold it down with one hand and pull the part hanging off in a downward motion and you can see it "cut" along the edge of the desk. And this is the same process that scissors use.
Now the thing about the scissors themselves is that they're just two knives bolted or riveted together. So, when you find that sweet spot where the scissors glide through, this is where the blade of the scissors is actually cutting. The paper is no longer being ripped between two edges, it's hitting one of the blades and slicing to either side of that blade. Just like if you took a sharp chefs knife and sliced through it. | 113 |
|
ELI5: How sunburns occur, and why they can cause pain for days after receiving the sunburn. | The only thing I know about the burns is that the UV rays cause the burn.
I have no understanding of how the pain occurs, or why it lasts days after getting the initial burn. On top of that, why (when the burn is bad enough) your skin may secrete/drain(?) fluid from the burned area. | 15 | When you get a burn, what you are doing is causing damage to the DNA in your skin cells. There is a chemical called thymine that is one of the bases in your DNA. When it is hit by UV light, it can get knocked out of place and attach to a thymine next to it. This forms what is called a dimer.
When many dimers form in your DNA, your body knows something is wrong and starts the process of healing. Several signals are sent using proteins. Among these is a trigger for the area to get increased blood flow (resulting in redness and warmth) and increased sensitivity to pain.
Intense sunburns can cause blistering as the living tissue underneath the skin dies from heavy DNA damage. This causes layers to separate and the empty space to fill with fluid. | 10 |
Why do fruits get sweeter the longer you wait? | 23 | The sugars in fruit are there to encourage animals to eat it. The idea, evolutionarily speaking, is to have an animal, which can move, carry the plant's seeds far away. The seeds will eventually end up in a new place, most likely in a nutrient-rich pile of manure. This benefits the plant by helping it to reproduce and disperse.
But the seeds take time to mature, and if an animal eats the fruit before the seeds are ready then they won't be able to grow, and the plant will have wasted its energy. So unripe fruit is full of starch instead of sugar. It doesn't taste as good, so animals don't eat it, but when the seeds are mature the plant can easily convert the starches to sugars using enzymes. The longer the fruit has been ripe, the more starch has been converted to sugar.
Fruits are also often sour before they ripen, which further discourages animals from eating them too soon. Some fruits, like peppers, even have chemicals that discourage mammals from eating them by being "hot," but don't affect birds (which travel farther). | 21 |
|
CMV: I think putting jelly on first when making a PB&J is the superior option. | Just a thought that popped into my head while making today's lunch: the sandwich maker should always put the jelly on first. My main reason for this is that it keeps jelly out of the peanut butter jar and vice versa. Jelly is easier to scrape off the knife or spoon than peanut butter, leading to less cross contamination. This is both me being picky and me being practical. My wife is allergic to peanuts, so if she went to put jelly on toast and there was peanut butter in the jar, she could have an allergic reaction, which is a very bad outcome for something easily avoidable.
To CMV, I'd probably need to see the benefits of applying the peanut butter first outweighing applying the jelly first. In my experience, I have yet to find one.
Edit: In this scenario, like most I would assume, peanut butter goes on one slice, and jelly on the other. | 82 | As someone who took many a bagged lunch back in the ole school days, if you're talking about the "superior" way to make a PB&J there is no better construction than a light layer of peanut butter on both pieces of bread, with the jelly nestled safely in between. There are multiple reasons for this.
1) A traditional PB&J sandwich (one on each side) must be consumed fairly quickly. The jelly will soak through the break and create a soggy mess of a sandwich. Creating a barrier of peanut butter on both sides prevents this from happening, and allows for maximum lunch box storage.
Not all PB&J eaters are school-goers however. Which brings us to...
2) The aforementioned PB pocket keeps that jelly in there. There's nothing worse than picking up a sandwich and realizing you put a bit too much jelly on that sumbitch because it leaked out the bottom and ruined your freshly cleaned pants. Nobody wants that. It's no way to live. Putting PB on both sides insures that the edges will somewhat stick together, providing maximum jelly spillage prevention.
And finally...
3) Have you ever tried to make a PB&J, you scoop some cold jelly out onto your bread, but in trying spread it around evenly half your battle is just making sure the bread itself doesn't rip? Look, we're eating PB&J in our homes, on a weekday - we're probably not springing for any fancy, thick cuts of hearty Italian wheat. We're talking traditional PB&J white bread here, and that stuff breaks apart faster than a Kardashian marriage. Jelly isn't smooth; it just globs there requiring some effort to spread it around. Get a good layer of peanut butter down first, lay that ground work, and the jelly goes on just fine. It's like pouring the concrete foundation, and now that jelly isn't going anywhere except into your belly, and not onto your pants, because of reasons we fully covered in point #2.
And that is why the truly "superior" way to make a PB&J is to not only put the peanut butter on first, but also second, followed by the jelly. Good day. | 60 |
[marvel] since ghost rider can detect innocence, has he ever become a lawyer? | 16 | Likely not, as the Spirit of Vengeance is a little more Old Testament in it’s thoughts on innocence and punishing the guilty while the justice system probably doesn’t accept what’s essentially eyewitness testimony from a flaming skull. | 31 |
|
CMV: Nationalism and other forms of tribalism are counterproductive. For all. | Most of our bigger issues can't be solved effectivelly as long as different human societies dont get together under some sort of coordinating body.
Examples of the issues I'm hinting at: Achieving world peace, terminating world hunger, effectively fighting climate change, stopping the biodiversity loss: Managing working conservation policies, etc.
A succesful case where this has been performed to an extent is the E.U.
As a Spaniard born and raised in Brussels I can tell you that E.U. influence has been very succesful in raising our economic level, political stability, introducing democratic values, augmenting our opportunities and a whole lot of other things. I'm sure citizens of other southern European states (set back because of fascist authoritarian regimes) or Eastern Europran states (set back because of communist authoritarian regimes) will share my views on this one.
Some ways in which a tight international coopertion and coordination (which in the end is some form of world federation) might serve to fight the aformentioned causes:
A) If we interwine the different economies, promote mobility (and hence have people from all over working and making ties with all places) and have a coordinating body, war becomes very very unlikely (just like war hasnt broken within E.U. since its inception). You also create an umbrella world identity to which people can appeal instead of the classical tribal approach of hating the neighbourg.
B) If all food production ultimatelly falls under the authority of a single organization, its easier to pass policies that adjust food production and repartition to the needs of the population.
Etc. | 101 | Well, how are you going to unite the entire world? How are you going to make it so all cultures and races can coincide with eachother peacefully?
When Hannibal Barca attacked Roman land in the Second Punic War, it is said that one of his greatest achievements as a general was uniting multiple cultures and races under his banner due to making them loyal to them, how do you hope to achieve this in a world wide, permanent scale?
&#x200B;
Also if food production falls under the authority of a single organisation then you have incredibly dangerous prospects of authoritarianism. | 30 |
ELI5: Why do big banks refuse to raise their interest rates for savings accounts? Is there no incentive to at least coming close to the 2-3% online banks offer? | 24 | Banks offer interest on savings accounts to attract customers to deposit money, because then the bank can loan that money out to someone else for a higher rate.
Banks are flush with cash right now, and fewer people are looking for loans. They don't need more cash.
Before the pandemic excess cash reserves of US banks hovered around $1.5 trillion. At the start of 2022 excess reserves were more like $4 trillion. WAY more cash than they need. Right now that number has dropped closer to $3 trillion as the result of the Federal Reserve's efforts to combat inflation. That's better, but still higher than it should be. | 25 |
|
[Green Lantern] Why is it so many humans are chosen to join the corps? | Are humans just that willful of a species compared to others in our sector? Also are there other species out there that get so many chosen from their ranks to join the Corps? | 37 | This is a relatively new phenomenon. Prior to Hal's joining no human had ever been selected into the corp. With his great success it is speculated that the rings/guardians have decided to test more humans to see if humans in general can be that successful. Additionally Kyle's selection was more from desperation rather than design.
As far as other species are concerned it is highly rare to have so many of a species in the core at the same time, but many species have histories stretching back millennia of Lantern membership. So countless species have had many more lanterns than the measly 5 that the humans have produced.
| 24 |
[Flash] Why doesn't he just take Captain Colds gun off him? | There are many different versions of the Flash and many stories that don't quite all match up, but in all of them the Flash is phenomonally fast and can usually move faster than a normal person can blink. Another consistency is that Captain Cold is just a guy with a fancy gun.
So why doesn't the Flash just run up to him (taking a slightly roundabout route so he comes up behind him) and just take the gun out of his hands? It seems like that would solve the problem pretty quickly. You could follow up by running away a bit and hiding the gun or dropping it in a handy ocean. The same solution could probably apply to Heatwave, Pied piper, Trickster, Weather wizard, Captain Boomerang. | 45 | The Flash has a lot in common with Superman in this regard. Both are akin to overwhelming elemental forces of nature that could operate 24/7 on levels that are staggering for us to comprehend but because they are also human/human-like they dial themselves back towards our end of the spectrum. Free Will matters to them and letting people decide to do wrong when you have the power to prevent it (literally nano-seconds before you’ve finished contemplating it) is a type restraint that is alien to us. You might think less of them for not swooping into Gotham City seconds after the Joker escapes to toss him back into a cell but being godlike and acting godlike is a slippery slope. Kingdom Come gave us a preview of a possible future where the Flash decides to let go of his humanity and operated as a god who lives between the ticks of a second. In fact all of the JLA seemed to slide towards god-like behavior. GL became Hephaestus creating an Olympus in the heavens from which they scanned the planet. Superman became Zeus, dictating order to the lesser gods and the humans on how to behave. Wonder Woman was the militant enforcer of his will. By crossing over that line –taking action at a speed and level beyond comprehension they made humans afraid of them. Villain and Hero alike banded together to end it all.
So, if the Flash ripped the gun from Captain Cold, stripped Boomerang of his gear before he even said a word or stole the Wand from the Weather Wizard before he even slipped his boots on –it would unnerve the good and the bad alike.
| 47 |
[DC] Does Superman have to work for his strength? | Let's say superman just stopped everything and he ate crap food for a few months would he lose muscle mass and get fat? If this happens will he get weaker? | 23 | It depends, but in most versions no; his strength isn't a function of his muscles, its sort of an energy field, and his perfect physique is somehow automatic. It's all expressly a function of his superpowers in some way or another.
He does, however, seek out *combat training,* because in the DCU, a really good martial artist can hold their own against a person who has infinite strength and no idea how to use it. He's often shown to need to practice to get fine control with his flight, as well. | 43 |
[Dragon Age] The Grey Warden that recruited me got completely wasted at the local tavern and blurted out what actually happens during the Joining. Is there any way to increase my chances of survival or is this completely random? | The grey warden that recruited me got completely drunk and confessed that the Joining consists of drinking Darkspawn blood and that most recruits end up dying.
I was a criminal before he used the right of conscription on me so if i try to leave him I'll get arrested or worse, and in all honesty i still want to help against the Darkspawn threat because if they win i won't have anywhere to go either.
So, is there anything I can do to increase my chances of surviving the Joining? | 32 | Yes, many. All of which will be done in advance of your joining, some seem to be totally natural parts of training, some seem slightly odd like being given potions or herbs, some like having magic users around doing unknown things and some trainees being disqualified without reason given seem extremely strange. At the end of this process the joining happens, and frankly most people still don't survive. | 21 |
ELI5: Why aren't all economics professors rich? | 19 | Because economics, even microeconomics, isn't "how to become a rich individual". It's the study of how markets and economies work.
Knowing how supply and demand work, or what the best international trade strategy is, or the most effective way to go about structuring the tax system, doesn't mean that you have a product people want to buy, the means to produce it, a way to bring it to market, or the political influence and mandate to implement your plans without compromising. | 39 |
|
ELI5: What stops whales from dying of dehydration through osmosis when they gulp in multiple gallons of salt water at a time when they catch fish? | 30 | Baleen whales (filter feeders) don't swallow all the water they take into their mouth. They push it back out through their comb-teeth, and then swallow just the stuff they want to eat and a smaller amount of water. But, they do end up swallowing a lot more salt water than you could - they have big, super-efficient kidneys and excrete a lot of salt. | 48 |
|
ELI5: What is freemasonry? | 89 | They control the British Crown, they keep the metric system down.
They keep Atlantis off the maps, they keep the Martians under wraps.
They hold back the electric car, they make Steve Guttenberg a star.
They rob cave fish of their sight, they rig every Oscar night.
| 83 |
|
CMV: Internal monologue should be more normalized in films and television. | You ever see a scene in a film or a show that just makes you go, "uhhhhhhh, what were you thinking?"
I find that there are many scenes in film and television that are a little too open to interpretation. Often it would be helpful for the audience to know exactly what a character is thinking, and it's a massive insight that books and comics can give that film tends to avoid at any cost. For example, in the Amazon show The Boys (FIRST SEASON SPOILERS AHEAD), the main character Hughie >!kills Translucent with an explosive planted inside his body.!< Before the act itself, and earlier within that episode, Hughie is seen looking at a poster contemplatively. The scene implies that staring at the poster made Hughie reflective, but there's never a good explanation as to what exactly that poster did to change his mind. [The scene in question.](https://youtu.be/_W7hIHnYbc8) What was it about that spaghetti-covered baby that changed Hughie's mind? Was it the phrase, "Keep your hands clean"? Is it a rebellious streak? Did he actually just do it on a whim? We don't know, but I feel like that's a great opportunity to learn.
This is simply one example (I haven't finished the season, so if there's further explanation in the show, don't discount my point just on that). An example of what I'm talking about would be from David Lynch's Dune: [Gom Jobbar Scene](https://youtu.be/A54yfyi00dI). Throughout that film, several characters have an internal monologue, such as Paul's mother noticing someone else has something on their mind and is holding back information. As problematic as that film can be, I think that's the best feature. Knowing what someone feels is a huge reason why folks who see film adaptions often feel the book was better.
Also, I want to leave the caveat that this does not really include narration. Narration is a 4th-Wall break, as a character is speaking directly to the audience, and is often done in the past tense. This isn't to say narration is bad (I actually quite like narrators), but that it is functionally different from a character's internal thoughts. | 56 | “Show, don’t tell” is a common technique in storytelling for good reason. It makes scenes more vivid, dramatic, and full of action.
I would put it to you that if a character’s motivation is not clear, it is because the creators or the performers did a bad job at showing why they did that thing, not a reason to have an inner monologue tell the audience what they’re thinking. If you came away from watching The Boys and it was not clear why Hughie did that, it suggests to me that the writing or acting was at fault, not that they should have included a voiceover of Hughie mulling over the decision.
In other words, the actions taken by the character should demonstrate who they are, they should not be explaining that to the audience. | 49 |
What is a sore throat? | An ordinary sore throat you get when are ill. What part of the throat is the pain coming from? Are certain glands swollen? Does it affect the trachea or oesophagus? And what causes this to happen? | 1,833 | Viral pharyngitis (sore throat) is much more common than strep pharyngitis, even among children. Sore throats from an upper respiratory virus occur because the viruses infect cells of respiratory epithelial origin, including the nasopharynx (nose and back of throat), The presence of multiplying viruses in the cells cause lymphocytes in your body to detect changes on the infected cell surfaces, release inflammatory cytokines, and destroy the cells. Inflammatory cytokines cause vasodilation (dilated blood vessels) causing the throat to be red, hot, and sore. Also, respiratory epithelium contains numerous mucus gland cells, and mucus is secreted in large amounts when the epithelium is inflamed. This causes the stuffy nose and post-nasal drip (mucus running down the back of your throat) which causes more throat irritation.
Source: MD
Edit: typo | 1,388 |
[Marvel] Which superhero can single handedly stop a World War? | or prevent it from happening in the first place? | 103 | It depends by what you’re measuring. Captain america has a lot of public influence and could turn a country around.
People like Tony stark, Reed Richards and black panther could likely build equipment that massively shifts the flow of a war.
People like the hulk, captain marvel, but also the thing, torch and invisible woman could do things a normal attack won’t.
So either by big effect or targeted operations most super heroes would have a big impact. Of course in the marvel universe in most wars there is a reason or opposing super beings that balance out the conflict | 111 |
[QUANTUM MECHANICS] Is the famous double slit experiment widely accepted - does an observer really have an influence on physical reality? I just can't understand how a single particle can be in multiple places at the same time. My mind is raging with curiousity. | 30 | It's not in multiple places at once, it just doesn't have a well defined location until it is forced to. The word observer here doesn't mean a dude looking at it, it's just something that forces it into a specific state. | 36 |
|
ELI5: Why is it OK to kill a hundreds of bugs/insects but not OK for "bigger" animals? | A life is a life, right? Why is an ant's life more valuable than a bird or (sorry, Reddit) cat? | 25 | Because that's how society is. Why is it not okay to eat a dog (in America), but it's okay to eat a cow?
Now, there are some "objective" ways that you can judge whether treatment of some animal is cruel or not. A lot of people have decided that it's okay to kill certain animals based on how intelligent they are. So, it's okay to kill an ant because it's stupid and inconsequential on its own, whereas a cow is reasonably intelligent, can feel pain, can suffer, all that stuff.
It's also not totally clear whether or how some animals feel pain or not, so some people try to justify it that way (you'll hear that from people who only eat fish a lot, for example).
Really, though, it's just a societal thing. It's really hard to come up with an objective reason for why we do these things, and if you can, it's usually just a rationalization for something we'd be doing whether we could justify it or not. | 20 |
Why does switching the batteries around in a remote make it work for a little bit? | This always seems to work with most electronic, battery-powered devices. The most obvious reference being a remote control. | 26 | The electrical contacts on the battery and/or battery holder build up a thin layer of corrosion that resists current flow. Moving the batteries around scratches the contacts and exposes fresh metal, improving conductivity. | 26 |
What's wrong with this argument against evolution? | [From a young-earth creationist's blog](http://kabane52.tumblr.com/post/148365096520/watching-evolution-work):
>The critical factor in evolutionary change is not actually time. Instead, it’s population size and generational turnover. This is because the requirement is that substantial variability be provided (by population size) and many opportunities for selection to whittle down a generation and act on that variation. This is very important, because it means that what Darwinists claim we can’t see, we actually can see. We can examine what occurs, given a certain amount of evolutionary resources. Malaria has existed on this planet for several millennia, and operates by invading hemoglobin, eating it from the inside out, and destroying it. Its structure is such that it can only survive in very warm climates, however.
>
>Given the enormous population of malaria across the planet and the rapid generational turnover- each infected person has billions of malarial organisms that multiply exponentially- malaria *has the same evolutionary resources that any mammalian lineage has had since its descent from sponges in the Precambrian.* Think about that.
>
>***Malaria has never adapted to be able to live in a slightly cooler climate. Never.***
>
>This is what is supposed to have created the human brain?
I suspect there are some fallacies here, or misconceptions about evolution. How would you respond to this person? | 16 | It's pretty clear that this person doesn't know what they're talking about. "Malaria" is a disease, medical conditions can't evolve. The pathogen that causes malaria, and that is capable of evolution is (primarily) Plasmodium falciparum (Plasmodium). Plasmodium doesn't invade hemoglobin, which is a molecule, and hence dozens of orders of magnitude smaller than plasmodium. Plasmodium has a complex life cycle, one stage of which involves living inside red blood cells.
&#x200B;
Plasmodium has evolved to live within Anopheles mosquitos, and only some of them. In a lot of mosquitos, the host reacts to, and destroys the plasmodium.
&#x200B;
So the real question is: why have Anopheles mosquitos capable of supporting plasmodium not been able to spread across the globe?
&#x200B;
So what this authors argument actually boils down to is: If one species is not capable of colonizing the entire earth, then evolution is false. Which is a stupid argument. You might as well argue "because there aren't polar beers in Africa, evolution is false". A species is by and large specialized for a specific environment. A species generally, cannot get away with being extremely general, as then in every niche an animal which is perfectly specialized for that niche will perform better, and out compete the general species. So there are mosquitoes that live all over the earth, it's just that the anopheles mosquito is specialized for tropical environments. And a different species is specialized for sub-tropical environments. If an anopheles mosquito formed through mutation that could survive to some extent both in tropical and subtropical environments, it would almost certainly be out-competed by the original anopheles which is specialized for tropical environments and whatever mosquito is specialized for sub-tropical environments. | 79 |
ELI5: How do Mattress stores stay in business? | In my town (of ~100,000) they're about 20 mattress stores. How do they stay in business? It seems like a front. | 28 | Sloppy math explanation:
Let's say a mattress gets 10 years of life. (Manufacturer recommendations and consumer behavior both vary between 5 and 10 years).
Let's also say that the average person owns one mattress. (Yes, many couples share, but many also have guest beds... so let's stick with one mattress per person to keep the math simple).
That means, in your town, there are around 100,000 total mattresses in homes, and about 10,000 of them are replaced each year. If there are 20 stores, then each store sells on average 500 mattresses per year, or more than one per day. If it's an owner operated business with no additional staff, that means he only needs to make $200 profit on each mattress (after rent and other expenses) in order to have a six-figure income. As others have noted, profit margins are often much higher than that.
Another critical factor:
Cars, homes and mattresses are about the only things that consumers won't buy online, both because shipping is problematic and, more importantly, because they want to actually test it out in person before buying. | 28 |
CMV: There's not a single thing that conservatives in the US advocate for that liberals and progressives don't have a better plan for. | When it comes to healthcare, education, judicial issues, criminal justice issues, fiscal responsibility, taxation, the environment, foreign policy, the American left has got a better stance than the right.
There's a lot of fucktards on the left, but they're generally just the loudest, most viral assholes. When it comes down to the issues and policies, the average liberal is in the right more often than the average conservative by a wide margin.
Most often, I hear conservatives talk about how liberal spending and tax policies are why they vote conservative. But when it comes to actual wasteful spending, spending that goes unchecked and is irresponsibly dumped into wasteful programs with horrible ROI, it's by and large people on the left that want to reign it in.
The tax cuts the right vehemently advocates for disproportionately benefit the ultra wealthy and harm the lower and middle classes. The actual economy sees little to no benefit, but the stock market booms and the rich get richer.
Edit: Gonna take a break from replies for a bit. It's late where I am. Hope that doesn't upset the mods. I promise I'll get back to replies in a bit, I just want a clear head when I do. | 18 | This rather relies on your definition of 'better' don't you think?
&#x200B;
>The tax cuts the right vehemently advocates for disproportionately benefit the ultra wealthy and harm the lower and middle classes.
If you are a wealthy person, and don't really care about the lower and middle classes, this is most definitely the 'better' policy. | 38 |
I do not think that non-essential charities should exist until every person on earth has their basic needs met. CMV. | When I say non-essential, I mean things that are not providing food, water, shelter, or health-related services to the less fortunate. While I think that the desire to help people in non-essential ways is great and should be encouraged through specific volunteer work, I simply cannot see a justification for charities that provide toys to children in Africa when there are children in the next village over who will die from malnutrition or dehydration. I believe that all the money that goes to such charities should be repurposed for meeting the basic needs of all people before it can enrich the lives of those who are already, by definition, more fortunate.
I recognize that this is an unpopular view. I am friends with many who monetarily support charities such as Operation Christmas Child but no charities meeting the basic needs of the impoverished, and I have been met with anger and opposition when trying to express my views and to understand why they ought to be changed. Reddit, please help CMV. | 54 | Do you, therefore, give all of your money, save only that amount that is absolutely necessary for you to live in poverty, to help those who need it in order to live?
Because you are the smallest non-essential charity there is, or that there can possibly be. If you're giving yourself a nice meal or a haircut, you're literally taking money away from those who need it in order to simply survive, for "non-essential" reasons.
Or not... you see, it's ok for people to have different priorities and to please themselves with the fruits of their labor. If someone is pleased by giving gifts to less-disadvantaged children than those starving in Africa, praise them for prioritizing *anyone* above themselves. | 98 |
What is the purpose of eyebrows? | I was pondering this question earlier today while thinking about extremist groups that shave their eyebrows. What is the anatomical function of eyebrows? | 15 | Eyebrows are hypothesized to have two main functions: to prevent debris, such as dirt, sweat, or dust, from falling into the eyes from above (in addition to the protection offered by eyelashes) and to offer an additional means of facial expression. | 15 |
[The Terminator] What would have happened if Sarah Connor named her son "John Reese"? | 19 | There's fundamentally no change. Ignoring the entire paradox situation John is the destined destroyer of skynet. It will always know his name even if it's changed. In fact the only reason skynet even knew where to find John in the sequel was because of his foster paperwork that would have any name changes listed as well as his birth and adoption records. We even see in the Sarah Conner chronicles that using altered names and alias doesn't work as Skynet still finds records of him existing pre-judgment day.
The only real changes would be Kyle Reese may suspect that there's more to his appointment as Sarah's protector than just a coincidence that they share a name. It still wouldn't dawn on him that he's John's father until he goes back to 1984 but he may clue in faster. | 19 |
|
ELI5: Why are giants always shown as being so slow in movies? I know they would be heavier and need to move a lot more weight, but don’t they have the proportions of a normal person? Their muscles would be bigger allowing them to move at a normal speed. | Sorry if this is stupid. It’s just been on my mind for ages. | 68 | In movies, it is because it looks right. But it is also realistic, due to the 'square-cube law' - that strength increases by the square of length, but mass increases by the cube. So you'd expect animal 3 times bigger to be 9 times stronger, but 27 times heavier - proportional to it's mass, the bigger animal is 1/3 as strong.
This is why small fleas can jump so high, but elephants can't jump at all. | 150 |
ELI5: why don't taxi drivers just become Uber drivers? | 20 | Because Uber drivers are paid less, have to use their personal cars, get no insurance, and are increasingly being cracked down on by cities for being unlicensed taxis.
Uber sold the age-old concept of unlicensed cabs with a lot of hype to convince people they were doing something new. All they did was make an app and then convince a bunch of chumps to take all the risk while they rake in all the dough. | 34 |
|
CMV: If I was about to be put to death by firing squad or some other form of execution I wouldn't just stand there and take it, I would find a way to fight back | I understand that some executions are going to come from horrible people/groups and that I'd run the risk of suffering an even worse death/possibly torture but when I see one person shooting a whole line of people I would turn around and fight the person. You're already faced with death and you're either going to die waiting to get hit in the back of the head so why not fight? Even if it doesn't work out, you were going to die anyway. I know there are countless different scenarios people can be faced with but I feel like I'd try and fight for my life, especially if it's one person with a gun who is shooting 8+ people in a row. Of course there are probably other factors I'm ignorant too as well but I'm open to any arguments so go ahead, CMV!
_____
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 72 | Many times a person undergoes many fake executions, they rebel and fight back and then get punished and realise it is only a fake execution for PR and that fighting back is both useless and gets you punishment. Better to save your strength/resolve to a time when you are more likely to escape. The real execution comes around and you believe is fake they actually execute you and it is too late. | 87 |
ELI5: What is it that gives a material the ability to be polished? | I've always wondered what it is that allows you to polish metals to a mirror finish, but not wood or plastic, for example? I assume its something to do with light scattering and reflection from the internal structures of the material? | 147 | There are two things that go into why a material can have a mirror finish. First, is whether light that hits it reflects straight back or gets scattered in many different directions. Smooth surfaces scatter less of the reflected light, and will be shinier than rough surfaces.
Any material can be polished.* Polishing is just making the surface smoother. Generally, the smoother a surface, the shinier it looks.
So the real question is, why are smooth metal surfaces extremely shiny and other materials not so shiny?
The second part of the story is that light is reflected any time it encounters a boundary between two materials with different indexes of refraction. The bigger the difference in the index of refraction, the more light gets reflected.
For visible light, metals have very large indices of refraction. The huge difference in the index of refraction between the metal and air can result easily in over 90% of light being reflected.
Explaining why metals have such high indices of refraction for light is a little more complicated. Metals have lots of free electrons that can move around inside them (that's why they conduct electricity). All these electrons interact strongly with the electric field of light.
Things like wood and plastic do not have many free electrons so they don't interact nearly as strongly with light. For example, when travels through air and hits a glass surface, only about 4% of the light will be reflected.
* It turns out that it's a lot easier to polish a metal than it is to polish wood. | 27 |
The brightness of the actual dark side of the moon? | With the extremely thin atmosphere on Earth's moon, and a complete absence of cloud cover, foliage, etc., what sort of luminosity would the various stars and Milky Way provide on the moon's night? Meaning - if both Earth and the Sun were 'behind' you as you were standing on the moon, would it truly be pitch black, or could once expect a level of light to at least, say, see enough to not walk into a boulder? | 108 | Not much darker than a "dark sky" spot on Earth.
The Earth's atmosphere mostly reflects back urban light. But go out in the desert, or out at sea, at least 100 km away from any city and town - it's a pretty dark place. Luna wouldn't be very different - a bit darker maybe, but not much.
Most people have lived in cities their entire lives and have no idea how dark a moonless (and Venus-less) night can be at a dark sky site.
Dark adaptation is very important. When at a very dark site, it takes something like 20 or 30 minutes for the eyes to fully adapt to darkness. Even a short glance at a light annihilates this adaptation.
> could once expect a level of light to at least, say, see enough to not walk into a boulder?
You could avoid big boulders, but there will be plenty of rocks that will twist your ankle - as many astronomers fumbling in the dark around telescopes will attest.
Human eyes in low light have very, very poor resolution. But boulders should be big enough to distinguish, for a dark-adapted pair of eyes. Fist-sized rocks, not so much. | 29 |
Religious people are often just as logical as non-religious people, they just start from different assumptions. CMV | For context, I'm an atheist but I find that many of my non-religous friends seem to think that if someone is religious they have to be completely Illogical, but I don't think that's the case. They actually are logical, they just start from a different set of assumptions.
For Example:
A=B
B=C
A=C
Is valid
But
A ≠ B
B= C
A≠ C
Is also completely valid but you wind up with different conclusions. For Christians, they start with the assumption that say, the bible is true or at least a truthful if metaphorical guideline. And since atheists reject this premise (Even if it's they're justified in doing so) they wind up with rather different end points. But neither Christians nor atheists commit a error in reasoning here. So CMV! | 38 | Assumptions can themselves be judged on terms of rationality. Christianity assumes, as an epistemic standard, the contents of a book, with no prior principles to show why the contents of this book are necessarily true and should not be judged by their own merit.
Atheism, since it denotes a lack of belief, does not depend necessarily on any particular epistemic standard, but a very commonly held epistemic standard among atheists is empiricism which states, in simple terms, that experience is the base of all knowledge. Reasoning from the available evidence, one is not able to find anything that resembles, to any surprising or convincing degree, the unusual things stated in the Bible; in particular, there is no solid evidence of God.
I suppose if you want to claim that empiricism and "the contents of this specific book are true a priori" are equally rational epistemologies, we can discuss that, but if you concede that they are not, then your case falls apart. | 54 |
Does being exposed to confrontation/danger on a daily basis naturally increase testosterone levels? | 34 | Perhaps it's not the question you are really trying to ask, but the implication would be women and children who have lived with threatening partners or parents for large portions of their lives would then have extremely high levels of testosterone. Not sure that pans out.
Testosterone isn't the stress hormone, cortisol is, and some studies indicated constantly elevated cortisol suppresses testosterone. Probably more of a balance between the two and whichever has control will determine whether you fight or fly. | 18 |
|
I think Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, isn't that good, and nostalgia blindness has led to it becoming one of the most overrated games of all time. CMV | As someone who didn't play the game upon its original release in 1998, I recently got around to playing it. After all it is the highest rated video game of all time on metacritic, and I did really enjoy the few other zelda games I played (Twilight Princess and Link's Awakening). So when I played it, while the controls were tight, the level design was intuitive, there was plenty of side content and things to do which was great, and the world really felt populated and dynamic. Like I said, a good game. However the best game ever? Not even close, this game had some pretty glaring flaws, the pacing was slow at points, the story was dull, the characters came in two shades, either over the top and stupid or bland and uninteresting. The side quests were dull and often pointless, the combat was fairly repetitive and lacked variety and it all tied together to make a good, but limited game. Let me know if there's another reason for people being in love with this game other than nostalgia!
| 33 | Games like twilight princess take so much from ocarina that they couldn't exist without it. OoT brought the series from top down adventure without a whole lot of character to 3d adventure. Along with Super Mario 64 they were the driving forces to push us into the 3d world for videogames. It's combat was revolutionary at the time, nothing else had done anything like it, something that they're still using for the 3d zeldas. It's world feels somewhat unpopulated because of the early restrictions of the system, but at the same time the world was huge. The map was so expansive for its time that really proved you could make a world that just felt gigantic.
It's popularity isn't merely for nostalgia, it's for being revolutionary. It was one of the big driving forces of gaming and all LoZ games that have come after have been almost carbon copies of the game, TP especially. | 37 |
How realistic can hallucinations actually be? | I'm not sure how many people have actually seen it but a few years ago on FX there was a TV show called Wilfred. In the show, everyone else sees Wilfred as a regular dog, but Elijah Wood plays a guy who sees him as a human in a dog suit. The show revolves around their friendship. They hang out, smoke weed, go on "adventures" and have full on conversations the entire time, but (spoiler alert) in the end you find out that Elijah Wood had been imagining Wilfred the entire time.
Is something like this possible? Can somebody have a hallucination that intense and for such a long period of time?
For reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_(U.S._TV_series) | 21 | To nitpick, your question seems to be getting at how 'organized' or 'consistently structured' hallucinations can be, as opposed to how 'realistic' they are. To be clear, **hallucinations are absolutely real to the people experiencing them.**
Now, is it *possible* for this type of highly organized hallucination to occur? Sure, but it is exceedingly improbable given current data.
Media portrayals (e.g., A Beautiful Mind, Shutter Island) of hallucinations are often full-blown people with complex histories and personalities who are capable of interacting with the environment.
However, the vast majority of hallucinations are **monomodal** (i.e., involving only one of our sensory systems like hearing or vision). Further, the vast majority of monomodal hallucinations are auditory and tend to be negative in content/valence (e.g., hearing voices in your head saying you are horrible/stupid/undeserving of love; hearing the sound of a child screaming for help).
A final nitpick, a key criterion of hallucinations is that the perception occurs in the *absence* of a stimulus (i.e., no light is rebounding from an object and striking the retina; the person is seeing something when there is nothing to be seen as opposed to mistaking an object for something else). This is how we differentiate hallucinations from illusions and related phenomena. As such, Wilfred would not be a hallucination, as there is still a dog to be perceived. | 21 |
How does a spacecraft Measure its speed in orbit around a planet? | So I was just watching an episode of sci-show space, where they talked about the Juno probe and the work it is doing while orbiting Jupiter.
They mentioned that one of its jobs is to map the gravity field of the planet, and it does this by detecting speed changes in the orbiter, with higher speeds meaning higher gravity.
How does a probe such as Juno measure its orbital speed to such accuracy that it can accurately map the gravity field around Jupiter? It isn't like it has GPS out there..... | 34 | Speed is typically determined by measuring the location at different times. This is done by measuring the location of (or more precisely the perceived angle between) certain celestial objects on the sky.
When only the change in speed (acceleration) needs to be known that can be done with accelerometer sensors (that measure the forces felt while accelerating) | 12 |
How well supported is this claim made by my economics textbook? | My economics textbook states this as a fact: "Income redistribution discourages productivity, thus actually aggravating poverty." As it did not really couch this as an opinion nor offer evidence, I would be interested in seeing what research or theories support or dispute this statement. Thanks! | 16 | Certainly iffy. The more sensible statement would be that redistribution could lower total output, but that doesn't necessitate an increase in poverty. Total wealth could decline while the poor still end up better off (depending on the size of the wealth transfer and the losses due to decreased incentive to work). | 16 |
Why do theists often say that God is "outside the reach of science"? | And not just theists. A lot of people seem to think that the existence of God is not a scientific question. Well let's recall what the scientific method is. First you make and observation. Then you formulate a hypothesis to explain that observation. Then you make predictions based on that hypothesis. And then you test whether or not those predictions are accurate.
To say that a certain hypothesis is not a scientific hypothesis is to say that either the hypothesis wasn't formulated to explain an observation, or the hypothesis makes no testable predictions whatsoever, making it entirely inconsequential whether it is correct or not.
I doubt many theists would say that they propose the existence of God for no reason at all. Many of them say that they propose God as an explanation for fine-tuning, design, etc, which are observations. I also doubt that many theists would say that the existence of God is inconsequential.
So what gives? The existence of God seems like an entirely scientific question to me.
Here's a rebuttal that I sometimes hear: "but God is immaterial. Science only deals with material entities". This is false. Revisit the scientific method laid out above. There's *nothing* in it that prevents you from making a hypothesis about immaterial things. If such a hypothesis is posited to explain observations and makes predictions, it is a scientific hypothesis. Whether it is about material or immaterial entities is entirely irrelevant. | 29 | I’m not sure you’re right in claiming that if a claim has no testable predictions, it is inconsequential whether it is correct.
For a claim to make testable predictions for us, it must be possible for us to specify a set of observations which would lead us to think the claim was true or false. This could fail to be the case even the correctness or incorrectness of the claim made an enormous difference.
Suppose proponents of the cosmological argument are correct. Then, were God to not exist, there would be no observations of any kind. But, there is no particular set of observations we can specify.
If proponents of the problem of evil are correct, then there is too much evil for the world to have been created by God. But, first, arguably moral evaluations are outside the scope of science. Second, there’s a philosophical controversy over how much evil is consistent with the existence of God.
I think the catch with finding testable predictions relevant to the existence of God is these either explains everything or nothing, so there’s no particular set of predictions we can specify as confirming or disconfirming, unless maybe if we allow science to deal in moral evaluations.
A possible exception to this would be the fine tuning argument, but if that is evidence of God, it is because it is evidence of a more narrow thesis - that the universe was designed for intelligent life to emerge, or something like that. And even theists can imagine a universe not like that. | 44 |
ELI5: What ecological disaster happened on earth in the movie “interstellar “ ? Is it an actual possibility ? | 32 | There was a fungal or bacterial blight that was killing off crops. In the movie they mention that it "breathes" nitrogen, or something like that.
They don't really go into detail (nor should they have), but basically all of the food crops.were dying off because of the blight.
It's a possible scenario, but largely improbably. | 23 |
|
When a clock is so accurate that it "only loses one second in X billion years," or something, how can we possibly know that? What do we compare it to? | It used to be that to gauge the accuracy of a clock, you'd compare it to the position of the sun in the sky. But we've since learned that the Earth's rotation is always slowing, so that's not terribly accurate.
And now that we have atomic clocks and a second isn't even [defined](http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-1/second.html) as 1/86400th of a day anymore, how do we know how accurate any given atomic clock is? Do you compare it to an even more accurate atomic clock? And how accurate is that one? And so on... | 84 | We know the definition of the second as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."
If we state that a clock only loses, say, one second in a billion years, it means it measures each of its seconds as the equivalent length of approximately 9192631769.9999999999999999683119 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. (I used a value of 24 hours in the day, and 365.25 days in the year to calculate that number, which aren't accurate but whatever.)
They lose time because they don't keep seconds as accurately as the definition of the second implies. | 69 |
[Star Trek] When the Captain needs to make it somewhere fast, they usually tell the helmsman to kick the engines to warp 9.9, but all other times, they'll just casually go warp 5,6, etc. Where is the speed threshold where you're overclocking the engines, and damaging them long-term? | 112 | This is true up to a point in the canon, afterwards it's not an issue: but use of high warp factors were found to damage space time via subspace tears, so "speed limits" were introduced to limit damage except in special cases. | 109 |
|
ELI5: When I boil water, why am i supposed to use cold water? | Wouldn't warm or hot water just speed up the process? | 19 | This originated in countries with municipal hot water that was run through metal piping. The hot water is a lot more reactive than cold and pulls all sorts of crap from the metal pipes with it. For example lead piping was still used in some parts of Russia in the 90s. You would definitely not want to drink hot water that ran through that.
If you have a fairly modern local water heater and plastic piping between the heater and the tap, it makes no difference. | 25 |
ELI5, How is the immortal jellyfish immortal, and why is it not a major point of research? | 33 | I’m gonna use an vague analogy but hopefully this makes sense: imagine a caterpillar that grows into a cocoon which births a butterfly, now when the butterfly is at the end of its life cycle, it sheds all the parts that make it a butterfly and become a caterpillar again repeating the cycle.
| 49 |
|
Does a substance at -1°C and the same substance at 1°C heat up and cool off at the exact same rate when placed into an environment that is 0°C? | 26 | Nope. Heat exchange rate by conductivity and/or convection changes *non linearly* based on the temperature of both the substance and the environment. Even in the same environment, the same substance does not behave the same at different temperatures, it's not a simple linear proportion. Also, this is more thermodynamics and phisics than chemistry. | 20 |
|
ELI5: How is it possible that a pair (male and female) of an animal species can populate an entire territory? | I mean, I've heard of cases were a certain pair of fish/bird/etc populate an entire territory causing numerous problems with native species. However I have also read that once there are less than 30 or so specimens of some animal species the gene pool is not big enough to carry on and they will eventually become extint (like the California vaquilla). Wouldnt that imply that for instance the lion fish in the caribean sea wouldnt have a big enough gene pool to invade that sea?
Note: English is not my mother tongue, be gentle kind Reddit <3 | 3,338 | Think back to school when you were asked a question “Would you rather have a penny doubled every day for 30 days or $10,000?”, and how if you chose the penny option you would get around5 million dollars. Well now say we have some 2 bugs were that just dropped in a new area, and they had 10 children. well a year passes, the first 2 bugs die, mating season began, and the 10 children had grouped into 5 pairs and had 10 kids each, totaling 50 new bugs. The next generation has 250 kids and so on. (If you remember graphs the equation would be (.5•x)•10). By the 10th generation assuming all live to reproduce you will have 19,531,250 bugs.
Now the most dangerous parts of inbreeding are called “recessive diseases”. Essentially if you inherit 2 parts of a bad gene from your parents you have a disease. Well say by the 7th generation these bugs start to get them, say it kills off 20% of the bugs. well at the 7th generation you have 156,250 bugs, when 20% die you are left with 125,000 bugs. now the next generation has 625,000 bugs, and by the last generation you have 10,000,000 bugs. While by the 7th generation they started losing 1/5th of the population due to inbreeding, they were still able to reproduce at a higher rate than they died.
What stops a lot of organisms from expanding out of control are called “limiting factors”. This can be anything from the sunlight that reaches a given area to the predator population. One of the biggest limiting factors is food and space. Say with the bugs at the 10 generation have ate too much of the food, and no longer have a stable population because they are starving. This kills more bugs until an equilibrium is established or the ecosystem collapses. Say these bugs nest and at a population of 10,000,000 there’s not enough space for all the nests and many bugs are left outside where they freeze/get a virus/eaten.
Now Immagine if the 10,000,000 insects had no limiting factors aside from the inbreeding, well they gotta eat, and the next generation is queued for 40 million. This puts a strain on the ecosystem and they can eat till there’s nothing left, at which point they die until an equilibrium is established.
**TLDR** To answer your question in short: They do die from inbreedinf inbreeding but they have so many offspring it doesn’t matter, so it’s up to other limiting factors to essentially put up barriers to keep them from spreading. But Invasive species are frequently a problem wherever they are. | 1,993 |
I'm having trouble grasping the concept of energy. | I understand all the equations that I have been given and see how they all relate, but I can't help but feel that it doesn't exist. Energy to me feels like a common variable that is used to relate other variables together. Can somebody help me materialize what energy is? I think if I have a mental image of what energy is or looks like I will be able to understand it better. | 25 | In general, conserved quantities result from a symmetry in the problem. For example, angular momentum conservations comes from rotational symmetry (like how a sphere looks the same from all directions). Conservation of energy comes from time ~~inversion~~ *translation* symmetry. That is, if you replaced time with ~~(-time)~~ *(time + deltatime)*, the equations that govern the evolution of the system will still act the same. In a sense, it is just a construct that humans made up, some combination of variables. But it is a combination of variables that is conserved because of time symmetry that is inherent in the processes involved in the problem. | 11 |
Why specifically does consuming too much sugar make one experience nausea/vomiting? What's going on in the body to upset the stomach and cause an adverse reaction? | 36 | Excess sugar in one location, in this case your stomach, draws a lot of water from surrounding tissue to balance the solute concentrations on both sides. That influx of water in your stomach causes nausea and vomiting. Burgers and other things aren't broken down as fast so you don't have such a huge shift in sugar drawing in water. | 14 |
|
[Godzilla] So a kaiju is attacking my city/town. What are the best actions I can take in order to beat ensure my safety? | 17 | It depends on the town. Ideally you just stay in one of the skyscrapers and they all get lowered through the ground. If your city doesn't have the budget for that, they likely have shelters for this. And if it's the first kaiju attack or they don't have the budget for even that, then try to evacuate before it gets there, and if that's not possible, I'd say do the same thing you'd do for an Earthquake. There's nothing you can really do to avoid being stepped on, but there are things you can do to avoid being killed by debris or by the building you're in falling over from the ground shaking from it stepping too close. | 13 |
|
How do you decide when to call it a day? And how many hours a day do you spend doing "real" work? | I've tried leaving school/ the library at a set time, but I could never get what I want to get done done.
I've tried only finishing the day when I've finished what I intended to/need to get done, but I end up losing sleep and getting a bit burned out.
And no, I am not aiming too high or being too hard on myself. I track the time I do "real" work and it's usually not that much. Also I basically can't get any work done if I'm not at school or at a library, even coffee shops won't do (which might be a positive in some way) so now I feel bad every day about not getting things done and yet I still stay up really late doing non-work and end up getting up late and starting the day late and just don't know how to break this vicious cycle.
I know I should probably build some routine into my life but I'm simply not tired enough to fall asleep at maybe even 2 am, and if I make myself get up really early then my brain just won't function for the day and I end up drinking too much coffee just to get some reading/writing done and then can't sleep due to the coffee. Tried working out in the evenings and at night, didn't help much.
Help? | 24 | A good friend would say that if he did 4 hours of pure productive work a day, excluding everything else, from coffee breaks to bureaucratic meetings to surfing the net, day in and day out, he’s happy and as productive as he could be long term. | 35 |
[Marvel] Will the fingerprint of the Hulk be like a bigger version of Bruce Banner's fingerprint, completely matched or something else entirely? | 91 | It will probably match the overall pattern, but the proportions may be distorted. Hulk's fingers are stubbier relative to the length of his hand than Banner's are. Everything is stretched laterally.
There also may be ridges or striations from the underlying musculature. | 75 |
|
ELI5 What is actually happening during acupuncture, does it actually work ? | 26 | In Acupuncture and in most of traditional Chinese medicine, there is a belief that an invisible life force (called qi) flows through our bodies using certain pathways (called meridians). Illness is generally caused by an imbalance in qi within our bodies, so acupuncturists stick needles at certain meridian points in the body to balance the flow. You can think of our body as a series of pipes, with qi being the equivalent to water, and the needles as valves. If there is something wrong with the water flow in any area of the body, then you manipulate the valves until the water flows correctly.
Whether any of this works or not, is the real question. Right now, there does not seem to be any conclusive proof that acupuncture is actually effective at what it does, so it is often considered a form of quackery. | 25 |
|
[James Bond] Do the M in the Brosnan universe and the M of the Craig Universe just both happen to look exactly like Dame Judi Dench? Or are these two characters the same person? | I just can't figure out any way that Die Another Day could be canon with Casino Royale. Let alone if we go back to *Goldeneye*.
These are just two separate timelines with equivalent people becoming M, right? | 358 | The Craig era is a reboot, a totally separate continuity to the 'classic' continuity from *Dr. No* to *Die Another Day.*
Judi Dench plays two separate characters. In *GoldenEye,* the implication is that M is a political appointee, a bureaucrat with little meaningful experience in intelligence, especially working in the field. Contrast this with *Casino Royale,* where M hints that she is a veteran of the intelligence community who remembers the Cold War. On top of this, *Skyfall* states that M was chief of station in Hong Kong in 1997, the same year *Tomorrow Never Dies* was released and is presumably set. | 270 |
ELI5 — Why is the Christian year (2012) used by
everyone around the world, including Jews and
Hindus and Muslims? | 18 | In short, because of Western-European cultural imperialism and dominance.
In what we now call the year 525, a Christian monk named Dennis the Short (Dionysius Exiguus) devised an era system based from the birth of Jesus, and deemed (erroneously) that Jesus was born five hundred and twenty-five years ago from that standpoint. He prefaced all years from the year "1" onward with the phrase *Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi* (Latin: "In the year of our Lord, Jesus Christ"), which eventually became shortened to *Anno Domini*, and then abbreviated as we know it today; *AD*. That is why we call the current year 2012 AD.
In the 8th century, Saint Bede the Venerable was calculating the dates for Easter, and came upon the necessity to tabulate years prior to 1 AD. He called those years *Ante Christum Natum* (Latin: "Before the birth of Christ"). He knew not of the mathematical concept of "zero", so the year immediately prior to 1 AD was deemed 1 ACN (later translated to English as "Before Christ"; abbreviated to 1 BC).
This system quickly became the predominant year era system in the Western world, and as the West's influence spread, so did the common use of the era. There are other eras in existence (Jewish year—*5772 AM*; Islamic year—*1433 AH*), but they are secondary to the Christian era for convenient civil use in virtually every civilized country on Earth. | 27 |
|
Why is radiation contagious? | I understand radioactive decay and how that can damage cells by polarizing the DNA.
What I don't understand is how a non-radioactive material can become radioactive to a dangerous point. I would think that the material would get hit by the decaying particles, get damaged and that's it. Instead, the material can also become radioactive.
For example, Marie Curie's notebooks are reportedly still too radioactive to be safely handled. How does paper become radioactive just by being exposed to radiation? | 25 | There are two ways in which objects can be 'activated':
The first is that radiation from the original radioactive material hits the nuclei of the object, and through the reverse process of radioactive decay create an unstable nucleus. This however very rarely happens, unless you put something in a very intense radiation field (near the core of a nuclear reactor for instance).
What probably happened with Curie's notebooks is that radioactive material got transferred to her hands, and from her hands to her notebook. Where they still radiate. This is why radiation hygiene is very important when dealing with radioactive materials. For instance, the same radioactive particles were probably transferred to food that she than ingested. Inside her body is where the radiation could do most damage.
| 40 |
CMV: Affirmative Action should/should've been based on economic status rather than (mostly) race. | Although I feel like Affirmative Action had a good intention, I feel like it has failed and has actually done more harm than good.
I have two reasons for this
1. I have difficulty seeing why it is in society's best interest to help a black person suffering in poverty over a white person suffering in poverty. While I understand what institutional racism has done to the black community, I feel like most issues facing the black community are more correlated with income than race; or rather, I have difficulties seeing how Affirmative Action could effectively combat the issues that are truly the result of racism. For example, how would Affirmative Action deal with unfair treatment in the justice system?
2. Affirmative Action has made some white people feel like, "the real racists are X race and not white people!" I do not believe this; in fact, I find it extremely childish to even think something like this. Yet, considering Affirmative Action has failed in its goal, I feel like changing Affirmative Action would help certain individuals in this country feel like X race is not out to get them and maybe reduce the amount of negative racial discourse in this country.
I am generally a very liberal person and really do want my mind changed regarding this. I just feel like it is really hard to justify why black person X should get the Bill Gates Scholarship over white person Y when they came from similar economical areas and the income of their families is similar. I understand that example is not Affirmative Action per se, but I feel like the same principal applies. | 29 | > Blacks/minorities who benefit/benefited from Affirmative Action rarely use their money/influence to restore their communities
That's a pretty bold claim. Can you provide a source for this?
&#x200B; | 28 |
CMV: The plural noun ‘guys’ is gender neutral in most situations | Like in several other languages, it is common to have a plural noun that is used when talking to a group of ambiguous gender. (For example the Chinese tāmen (plural form of he/him/she/her/it.)) however, English doesn’t have a specific word that fits this description in every way. They/them works when talking about a person/group but doesn’t work when you are talking directly to the group. The slang ya’ll fits this but what I want to argue is that the term guys also works.
Since English speakers outside of Some American states don’t use the phrase ya’ll when talking to a group of ambiguous gender, I think it is acceptable to use the term guys instead. However, this only applies if the gender of the group is either majority male or ambiguous. I think girls is the right phrase when talking to a majority female group or fully female group. The ambiguous situation is the one I think is open to debate. But my argument for it is that it is not disrespectful to simply call a group Guys when you talk to them because there is no simple alternative. | 202 | If it is, and we agree that the singular “guy” is masculine then we’re going back to asserting male as default.
The reason “guys” works as neutral is the same reason “Latino” works for groups that include women: because male is dominant. If we’re goi g to use “guys” the same way, then it’s *exactly* like using congressman or policeman to represent both men and women. | 40 |
[Comic books] Could Deadpool catch Covid-19? Who else would or wouldn't have to worry about catching it or spreading it? | 17 | In theory, yes.
In practice, he has a healing factor, so it probably won't bother him much. Also he wears a mask all the time, which covers his nose and mouth, and he has no compunctions about killing people with swords, so people are probably keeping a safe distance from him, so the odds of him infecting someone else are lower than average. | 34 |
|
ELI5: Why is investing not seen as the same way as it is gambling? | 20 | Investing is gambling, but a type of gambling with favourable odds. Unless a company goes bankrupt, their stock will trend upwards over the years. It may not go up this year, or in the next ten years, but over the course of a lifetime, it will probably go up.
Investment isn't normally called gambling because gambling is a term often reserved for betting on improbable things. In casino, for example, every game has unfavourable odds, so people call that gambling. It is the same with other things in life. Education could be called a gamble because after getting a degree, there is a chance that you will not get a job. However, unless you get unlucky, you will probably find a way to make money from you degree. This is why education is seen as an investment, not a gamble. | 20 |
|
ELI5: What is fire, really? What makes a material flammable at the atomic level? | It can't just be heat, because some materials will just never catch fire. What is it that triggers it, and what is it, other than just energy? | 17 | Fire is hot gasses that result as a product of combustion. Most commonly in our day to day experience, this combustion is due to reactions with oxygen.
Oxygen is highly reactive. Given heat and fuel, it will literally rip the fuel molecules apart, generating more heat as it does so. That makes it self-sustaining; if you continue supplying fuel (and more oxygen), the reaction will continue.
Some materials don't catch fire, because oxygen doesn't react with them. The form factor of the material matters as well - for instance, a huge cube of zinc wouldn't burn, but powdered zinc would burn.
| 10 |
[40K] I know the god emperor of man is technically alive inside the golden throne... But does his mind exist outside the warp? | I mean is there any direct interaction between the golden throne and humanity in this universe?
| 26 | The Emperor is capable of it, but such communications are rare, limited only to averting immediate perils to the Imperium as a whole. There's a lot on his plate, and the Imperium can ill afford the consequences from even a minor disruption of his focus.
I don't think we ever get to see these audiences directly, only their aftermath. When the Ecclesiarchy got a little too big for its armored britches Alicia Dominica, the head of the Adeptas Sororitas, was brought before the throne. Before, she was a fanatical devotee to Gorge Vandire, the Grimdark Pope, but after leaving her audience with the Big E she marched right into Vandire's cathedral fort and chopped his head off, thus ending a religious schism that threatened to topple the Imperium from within.
| 29 |
[Star Wars] Why did the Emperor and Vader tolerate the ineffectiveness of the Stormtroopers? | Why did the Emperor and Vader tolerate the ineffectiveness of the Stormtroopers? Vader was shown to force choke those under him not meeting his expectations, why did the Stormtroopers remain somewhat ineffective during battle after battle without intervention? | 53 | Storm Troopers were actually not usually ineffective. They were the elite fighting force of the empire, more skilled than the average imperial soldier (as depicted in Solo). In general, we see them as fairly effective, from storming the Tantine IV in a New Hope, to successful invasion of Hoth in Empire Strikes Back. What is interesting is to look at that times they were ineffective, and see what went wrong.
I: The hunt for the droids on Tatooine. Here, the explanation is pretty clear. The rural garrison on Tatooine is really not trained for much besides keeping the planet under Imperial rule. They were good at brute shows of force (massacring Luke's family and the Jawas), but weren't really good at investigating and finding people, because that's not their job.
II: The death star. First, they were caught by surprise. The death star was not a combat assignment, it's more like staffing a base. Nobody imagined that anyone could even get loose in the death star, and so no one was prepared for it (maybe it's another drill). Second, by the time they were alert and prepared, they were instructed to let the heroes go, so they could be traced back to the rebel base.
III: Endor. This is were Lucas' fuzzy Vietcong analogy is relevant. The stormtroopers were on a "uncivilized" planet, where the natives didn't even have laser weaponry or space travel. They were in no way prepared to be brutally massacred by spears and stones, just as modern, developed military's forces fail miserably when faced with a surprise attack from insurgents. Lucas was referencing Vietnam here directly- the Empire's forces being the US.
Tl;dr: Stormtroopers are generally effective, the times where they messed up were situations they weren't trained for. | 75 |
How are we able to flex each digit of the hand individually when the flexor digitorum is one muscle that has attachments to the 4 digits? | 261 | Because there are separate tendons, and the individual fingers have their own extrinsic (superficial) muscles that are primarily responsible for finger movement.
Also, it's nigh impossible to flex your pinky without also flexing your ring finger. Try it. | 71 |
|
ELI5: Can I get sick from myself? | If I am sick and eat out of say a peanut butter jar straight out of it with a spoon and a week or so later when I'm no longer sick eat out of the same jar can I get myself sick again? | 50 | If you are sick from viral infections: no.
The immune system works in a way that it builds immunity from previously encountered viral pathogens. This prevents you from getting sick from the same flu strain a week after it has cleared your body.
If you are sick from a bacterial infections: yes.
When you put e.g. diarrhea causing bacteria on your food and eat from it a week later you might get sick again with the same infection. These bacteria could be in your stool and get onto your hands and transferred to your food. | 53 |
[DC Comics] What's in Batman's file on Captain Atom? How would he neutralize him if needed? He's easily one of the strongest members of the Justice League with no clear weaknesses | 62 | His clear weakness across all continuities is that if you can puncture his containment suit, he'll go up like a nuclear bomb.
It varies from canon to canon on whether he can recover from that afterwards; sometimes it's what kills him for good, other times there's enough "Atom essence" clinging to the inside of the suit that you can pump him full of fresh energy, tape up the rips, and he'll be good to go.
Assuming it's not instantly fatal, it's a two-to-three step plan- crack the suit, get Atom the hell away from anything you don't want irradiated, and get a green lantern to pop a force field around the explosion for good measure. There's no version of this plan that Batman could execute without superhuman assistance. Fortunately, Captain Atom has tight ties to the government and tends to turn on the rest of the superheroes at an above-average rate. He is, personally, one of the strongest arguments Batman could make that having contingencies against superheroes is a good idea. So assuming you'll have the heavy hitters in your corner to deal with him is a pretty good bet. | 86 |
|
Why does water that has been sitting for a while taste different than water directly from the tap? | Also why are there bubbles on the glass | 752 | Very little Dissolved Oxygen. Bubbles observed on the walls of the glass of water, is evidence of the out gassing process. Higher Water temperatures hold less Oxygen and also makes the water seem to taste not as "fresh". | 237 |
[Fallout] Is it possible that the Children of Atom are right about nuclear explosions giving birth to new universes, and the Fallout universe itself was born in the bombing of Japan at the end of WWII (which is where its events start deviating from real history)? | In terms of resonating with the series' established themes, I'd say it sounds like a pretty strong theory, but it does leave the question: how would realities subsequently created by additional atomic explosions within the *Fallout* universe, such as the hundreds during armageddon, respectively diverge? | 127 | A major theory of mine is that Fallout endured what was similar to what we Elder Scrolls fans call a "Dragon Break" Back when ESII had multiple, very different ending they explained that massive impacts and events can sometimes result in massive breaks in reality that can diverge universes. A universe may split in two and one could be wildly different from the other. Sometimes the universes converge again and people are left wondering what the hell happened.
Perhaps when the US dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the impact was so disruptive to the universe it resulted in a similar phenomenon. Some people have even speculated that paranormal events like the Dunwich Building or Listening Point Bravo might be points where the two realities cross. | 86 |
Eli5: Why aren't baseball fields all the same size? | Why wouldnt there be a regulated size every field has to have | 57 | Because the rules allow for stadiums to design fields within certain parameters. That design is in order to benefit the team.
Baseball teams play half their games outside of their own field, so it evens out. Every team gets half their games in their home field which is tuned to their advantage.
The result is that teams win more often at home. Since most people who attend baseball games live nearby, that means fans see their team win more often, which means they have a better time, drink more $10 beers, and come more often. | 77 |
[Fallout] Arthur Maxson unites the factions on the northern East Coast to purge the Super Mutants and Ghouls. What happens and is this successful? | Title.
Let's say Maxson gets Acadia, the Institute, Minutemen, Railroad, and Gunners to align themselves with the Brotherhood to completely eradicate Ghouls and Super Mutants on the northern East Coast (from DC to Maine). What are the results of this alliance? | 17 | Id imagine it collapses pretty quickly over matters of synths and synths rights. While they may have been United over a common enemy (mutants), beliefs are gonna flair up and the alliance will collapse into infighting | 16 |
ELI5: Why are large truck brake failures common enough to require the failure lanes on mountain roads? | 629 | Trucks are *heavy*. Driving downhill means the brakes need to constantly be slowing down their heavy loads, building up heat in the brakes. Unfortunately brakes become less effective as they get hot, meaning longer periods of braking are required which makes them *more* hot, etc.
Overusing brakes can result in the loss of braking ability which would lead to a massive uncontrolled load hurtling down the mountain. A slope and some sand built beside the road is a minor investment to prevent a likely lethal crash. | 850 |
|
Why is there Bombings in Volgograd? What does Chechnya hope to accomplish by bombing russia? Independence? | http://www.independent.ie/world-news/new-explosion-in-russian-city-of-volgograd-kills-at-least-15-people-29874600.html
Why are people bombing other civilians?
Thanks for helping me understand. | 29 | Chechnyans have been bombing the land for decades now, most of the times they just don't get that much coverage. But now there's the Olympics which intrigues Western media as well. But they're doing it for freedom, yes. Keep in mind, Russia has and is terrorising Chechnyans just as well but because it all happens on Russian territory, nobody hears about it. | 21 |
ELI5:What the difference is between x264 and x265 video encoding and which is better | 40 | The actual encoding is called h.264 and h.265; x264 and x265 are an implementation of that standard.
The h.264 encoding is older and more widespread. There are a ton of devices that can do h.264 very quickly and/or very energy efficiently. The h.265 encoding is newer and claims to outperform h.264 in many ways, though many devices don't support it (though virtually all PCs, tablets, etc will support both; the devices that won't are very low power, embedded devices and the like).
In practice both encodings have a *lot* of knobs and dials to play with: you can get a lot of performance out of either, or you can tune either to be absolute garbage. On average, you should expect h.264 to take less processing but to leave you with a bigger file, while h.265 will likely take much more processing to encode, somewhat more processing to decode, and will leave you with a smaller file.
Which one is better depends on your use. If the goal is to wind up with as small of a file as possible (e.g. if you're trying to archive a bunch of videos on a hard drive with limited space) then h.265 is going to be the way to go. If you're trying to compress videos to watch on your tablet then perhaps consider h.264: the lower processing load means that you'll get a bit better battery life. In most cases expect h.265 to be the better choice; it's the more modern standard, though hardware hasn't quite caught up with it yet.
As for x264 vs x265, these are software projects that are fairly widely used in programs like FFmpeg or HandBrake. The x265 project is based on the x264 code so they're very similar to one another, though obviously they implement different encoding. The choice between them should be based on h.264 vs h.265, not on the features of x264 vs x265. | 19 |
|
Why does riding a bike last so long in muscle memory? | It's the archetypal phrase when it comes to long-term muscle memory:
"It's like learning to ride a bike"
What is it about bike riding that once it is learnt it is never completely unlearned?
Is bicycling unique in this way or do all dextrous skills "stick" with us for life once we've become competent at them? | 20 | Balance and praxis (learned sequences) are largely moderated in the cerebellum as they are learned, not in the muscles.
Like almost anything that you learn and rely on daily, the neural circuits for them are reinforced, strengthening them, so that even if you don't use them for a while, they remain accessible. | 13 |
[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia] Just how much money does Frank Reynolds have? | 45 | He's definitely a multimillionaire. He writes Dee and Dennis a check for eight million dollars in Season 11, Episode 2. Of course, he thinks it's still 2006, so who knows what he's worth now, but in Season 11, Episode 3, he buys Party Mountain, with plans to frack it.
So I'd say pretty fuckin' rich. Not Scrooge McDuck rich, but definitely rich. | 53 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.