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CMV: Being promiscuous is not morally bad | A lot of people in the world view promiscuous people as immoral and it is taboo in many parts of the world. I think as long as someone is an adult and is having sex with consent and both parties are single and not cheating then it is okay to be promiscuous.
I don’t think it’s morally bad. It’s only bad in my opinion if someone was cheating on their partner and doing it but if they are single and doing it with consent then it’s okay. Usually religious reasons are why it’s still frowned upon in many places in the world. I’m not religious however and I think people should have the right to make their own decisions.
That’s why I don’t see promiscuity as an immoral thing. As long as it’s with consenting adults and not cheating it’s fine. CMV. | 78 | Sure being promiscuous is fine as long as you have a zillion addendums
-you don't spread STDs
-you don't get anyone pregnant against their will or yours
-you don't unintentionally or intentionally mislead anyone about the intent of the relationship
-you always make sure its with someone you can trust
-you don't make unwanted advances on people that ruin other relationships
-you don't dedicate a large portion of your life to it which detracts from your other life goals and priorities
Etc.
Essentially the more promiscuous you are the more likely that you will violate these addendums which many people would says is bad.
Edit:grammar | 31 |
[/r/AskScienceFiction/] Why is there no FAQ? What could be put on it? | 35 | I would put that roleplaying is optional but not mandatory. and mentioning a certain book or episode is okay. You don't need to pretend to be a Starfleet engineer to answer a question about warp drive.
Also, every question here should be an actual question. | 28 |
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ELI5: Why does your stomach grumble when you're hungry? | Title says it all. | 32 | When your intestinal muscles contract they push stuff around. If there's food in there it doesn't make much noise; if there's nothing but stomach acid and air it'll make a gurgling sound as gas pockets move through the liquid in your guts. | 30 |
[Tolkien] There are five wizards, right? Gandalf, Saruman, Raddagast... Who are the other two? | 99 | The Blue Wizards, Morinehtar and Romestamo, traveled into the East early on. They attempted to stir up rebellion against Sauron's rule and undermine his strongholds in the area. Tolkien went back and forth on how successful they were, but his latest writings suggest they did quite well. Otherwise Sauron's eastern armies would have far outnumbered the free peoples of the West and he would have conquered them long before LotR. | 121 |
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ELI5:Why are we told to exercise damaged muscles to restore normal function, but wear glasses for our eyes? | 19 | If one leg is longer than the other you're not told to fix it with exercise. Vision problems are most often caused by eye geometry problems. There are tiny muscles that control focus, and they are the strongest muscles in the body by mass, but workouts for them won't change the geometry that put your retina too far back into your head or chemical changes that make the focus lens less elastic. | 31 |
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[DC] How can Batman perform well on the Justice League but still challenged and sometimes bested by Joker, Poison Ivy, Riddler, Penguin etc? | How can Batman perform well on the Justice League against extremely powerful villains but is still challenged and sometimes bested by Joker, Poison Ivy, Riddler, Penguin and other street level villains? | 52 | Joker can best him because he's an A-Lister. He's knocked out an iteration of the Suicide Squad in literally seconds with no harm to himself. He managed to track down and kill the Black Glove's members mostly on his own. The United States Govt once declared war on him during a particularly nasty rampage. Don't underestimate the Joker, he's not some dude with a skin condition, he's evil Batman with a skin condition. And that's exactly why Batman's villains can keep up with him. They're smart. They don't have to outfight him, just outmaneuver him. | 58 |
ELI5: What happens to extra blood vessels when someone loses a substantial amount of weight? | 21 | In the short term, nothing at all. Only after a long time of disuse will there be remodeling. Think of the cells and blood vessels like houses. When somebody moves out of a house, it's not immediately torn down. It's kept in case you need to fill it again, with people, or with fat deposits. Only after a long time with no one using or caring for the house does it get bad enough to be torn down, and all the internal piping and wiring with it. Same with the empty fat cells. Your body invested a large amount of resources and energy making those cells and vessels, it's going to keep them until it's absolutely sure you don't need them anymore. Incidentally, this is also why weight loss requires a long term change of lifestyle. If you lose fifteen pounds over a couple months, then go back to normal, your body will just fill back up the old infrastructure it had, storing up just in case. | 13 |
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ELI5: What causes us to age and what would have to be done to prevent aging? | I've been wondering about this topic for quite a while now. Especially after hearing about the "Singularity" theory, which says that the newer generations are basically living forever already because anti-aging medicine would develop faster than we could age. | 109 | When your cells split in half to make more of themselves, the ends of the DNA get damaged a little bit. It's a bit like tearing paper in half: each time you do it, the chance you'll get a perfect split is lower and lower. Eventually, the DNA gets damaged to the point where it cannot transmit it's information as accurately, or perhaps at all. This causes our organs to degrade and no longer fill their purpose.
As for anti-aging, it is possible, to some extent. Unlike normal cells, reproductive cells (sperm, eggs) do *not* get damaged when reproducing. This is because the reproductive organs produce a special chemical that repairs the ends of the DNA, thus making sure every cell has a good set. This idea could be applied to the DNA of all our cells, essentially preventing us from decaying. We don't know enough about it yet to really utilize it, though. | 73 |
cmv: sleeping with women you deem as "ran through or easy makes you just easy | Edit: title is supposed to be "Sleeping with women you deem as ran through makes you just as easy" , sorry
For anyone who doesn't know, ran through means they have been with a lot of partners sexually.
But I see too often women get called sluts for having sexual partners , but there's no shortage of men that will try to sleep with them.
And I understand society ties our values to our sexual life while men's are more financial, but its so crazy how easy the hypocrisy is overlooked. If a woman doesn't value herself in your eyes bc of her sexual life then why would you sleep with her? That makes you just as easy as her and clearly you aren't respecting yourself just like her.
It's sad that we're deemed sluts for willingly sleeping with men that wanted to sleep with us. But as soon as we decline, we're still the bad guys. We're "wrong" either way. And I won't even get started on how many people it takes to be deemed a "slut" bc it could be any number depending just how stupid someone is willing to be. I was deemed one just at one sexual partner.
Its disturbing women are attacked for willingly sleeping with men who want sleep with them too.
Double standards exist everywhere, and I'm not sure why we don't point out the illogical thinking in them.
And this isn't to say all men are like this, or even that's its only men who think like this. People who uphold this thinking are all equally stupid in my eyes.
Also please note, I'm not saying anyone has to date or marry these women, no one is arguing that. | 23 | It's a double standard, sure. And it might seem unfair. However, men and women are, generally, quite different.
One key difference is how easy it is to find sexual partners. Women, without a doubt, have a much easier time in this regard than all but the most desirable men. It isn't that impressive for a woman to rack up a high body count, especially in the modern dating environment. A woman does not need to be particularly attractive in order to get plenty of casual sex, she just has to be willing to have it and men will pursue her. It isn't "earned" in any meaningful way. More than anything, it shows a lack of restraint- which is unattractive to many men.
Contrast this with men- men are generally the "chasers" in the dynamic. Men have to put in a lot more work in the dating scene. For one, men generally have to approach women in today's dating world. Furthermore, men have to work harder to stand out from the crowd- a woman who is active in the dating scene has options.
The pursuit dynamic is very important in casual dating. For men, being attractive means it is easier to have sex. For women, it's a game of selection- being attractive might mean you have more and better options, but options are generally there regardless. It is often more attractive to have the options, yet choose not to.
Obviously, this is not universally true- there are always exceptions. | 32 |
ELI5:mm numbers and the power/lethality of a firearm | Is a 15mm more dangerous than a 9mm? What does .308 mean? | 27 | It's confusing because we don't use consistent measurements.
The caliber (like 9mm or .308) is the diameter of the bullet. Other things being equal, bigger is more powerful. A 10mm is more powerful than a 9mm, partly because it makes a bigger hole, but also because it's heavier and hits you harder.
Those are both measured in millimeters. For other calibers we measure in inches. Common ones include .22, .38, .357, .40, and .45. Any time you see a decimal in front, it's an inches measurement.
Everything I've listed so far is a pistol caliber. (Well, mainly, .22 is also used in rifles, and any pistol caliber can be used in a "carbine" which is basically a rifle using a bullet mainly used for pistols.) By and large, bigger is more powerful, but an exception is that .357 is more powerful than .38. The reason is that .357 cartridges have a lot more gunpowder, so the bullet goes faster. More energy, more impact.
Which brings us to rifles. Most rifle cartridges have lot more gunpowder than pistol cartridges. You have that long rifle barrel, and with lots of gunpowder you can accelerate the bullet the whole way. If you used that much gunpowder from a pistol, a lot of it would burn after the bullet leaves the muzzle, making a big flash and a lot of noise but not pushing your bullet that much more.
So generally rifle calibers are a lot more powerful even though they might be smaller. The military uses .223, almost the same size as .22 but it goes way faster and will do a lot more damage. (Actually they use 5.56 mm, almost the same but with slightly different specs...but any 5.56 rifle can fire .223.) And of course you can shoot a lot farther with rifles.
.308 is a bigger rifle cartridge, better at penetrating cover and shooting long-range. It's the smallest rifle caliber commonly used by snipers.
Shotguns are completely different. The common sizes are 12-gauge and 20-gauge, and the 12-gauge is bigger. The measurement works like this: take a lead ball that just fits inside the barrel. How many lead balls do you need to make a pound of lead? That's the gauge. | 39 |
ELI5: what is happening in our brains when a song becomes "old" to us? | For instance, I will be listening to this one song I really like, but after overplaying it I lose my appeal and actually start to dislike it. Why? | 61 | One theory of music is that the composer/performer is playing a sort of game with the audience. They provide patterns for the audience to try to anticipate. When the audience can't see any pattern at all, it just seems like boring noise. When the audience can follow the pattern perfectly, it is also boring. When they can follow some of the pattern, they are pleasantly surprised by the exceptions to it.
This means that when you've perfectly learned all the twists and turns of a song, it no longer surprises you, and becomes boring.
I don't know if there is an objective "right answer" to this question, but this seems to fit. | 70 |
ELI5: How exactly do movies and tv shows work when an actor or actress starring in them is also the one directing it? | I am referring to major roles, not just cameos. For example Aziz Ansari directed a few episodes of Master Of None and he is the main character. | 65 | In cases where the director is also on-screen, not much is different. Prior to filming a scene, everyone involved will have a meeting to discuss challenges and other talking points. This makes sure everyone is on the same page, everyone understands their blocking, discussing last minute script changes, etc. This little pow wow is standard practice and minimizes reshoots.
One of the biggest differences with an actor-director is that they themselves are going to have twice the work to do, since they have to create and direct a scene, review and approve dailies (all the scenes that get shot over the course of that day), send progress reports to the producers, wrangle the crew and any other 3rd parties involved with the shoot, etc; all while also fulfilling the full time duty of an actor.
As far as actually directing the scene, directors say and do very little while a scene is filming, since all of the finer points should have been covered prior to slate. Though we see it a lot in Hollywood movies about Hollywood (director storming onto an active set yelling "cut cut cut") this happens very little, as it's a sign that person is not a good communicator, and poor communicators make very poor directors. Most of the time, after discussing the scene and possibly doing a dry rehearsal, the actor will take their place before prepping the crew and then either they or an assistant will call "action" and the scene will start filming.
In the end, it's really just more work for an actor, as now they don't get to stop working/caring once the scene wraps.
Source: have worked theater, family working in Hollywood. | 39 |
ELI5: How do the flashing lights, alarms and gates at train crossings know when to start and stop when trains pass by? | 35 | They run a small electric current down the rails. When the train is coming the axles of the train cause act like a short between the rails which causes the behavior of that current to change. The crossing guards can detect this change. Because the nature of the change is a function of how far away the train is from the crossing a smart crossing can figure out how far away the train is, and how fast it's moving, and use that to figure out when it needs to close & open the gate. | 19 |
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What happens to astronauts' stomach fluids in zero gravity? | http://i.imgur.com/58Vy3.gif
I saw this the other day which made me wonder...if this astronaut can drink this free-floating water, what do his stomach fluids do?
What keeps the liquid/acid in his stomach or bowels from coming up? His muscles?
If so, are those fluids floating in his stomach but the muscles of his esophagus are what keeps it down? | 419 | Your digestive tract has several sphincters (muscles that form a ring) that act as doors. Further more, your digestive tract is "potential space" meaning it expands like a balloon when you consume things. This would greatly reduce any floating around-ness. Finally, peristalsis, the action that pushes substances thru the tract and lets you drink water upside down, occurs throughout the digestive tract which again, would keep things under control and moving to the exit. | 521 |
[The Dark Crystal] Were the Skeksis good rulers of Thra once? What exactly happened to them to become those corrupted evil monsters? | 33 | The original movie explained this quite clearly. The Mystics and the Skeksis are the Good and Evil sides of beings that were divided when the crystal was cracked. The Skeksis themselves were never good in any way. | 37 |
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[DC] Why did Bruce Wayne spend years training in martial arts before he knew that he wanted to be Batman? What was his motivation as a young man? | Here's my understanding of Batman's origin.
He witnesses his parents get shot as a child. As a young adult, he travels the world training to be one of the greatest fighters of all time. After a number of years, he returns to Gotham. At first, he's not sure what he wants to do. But then, he witnesses a bat crash through his window. Upon seeing this, it occurs to him that criminals are a "superstitious cowardly lot". He decides to dress as a bat in order to frighten criminals and clean up the streets of Gotham. Hence, he begins his career as Batman.
But, what exactly was his motivation during the years when he was training to be a fighter? He apparently didn't decide to become a super hero until shortly after returning to Gotham. So, why all the training? What was going through the mind of 20 year old Bruce Wayne as he was learning martial arts in Asia? What was his plan? | 17 | IIRC, his intention was always to fight crime, but as Bruce Wayne. It was only as an adult that he realized he needed a disguise. When the bat crashed through his window, it gave him the perfect inspiration for a disguise that would be both effective and intimidating. | 34 |
ELI5 - how is dry ice an industrially effective cooling method? | i would think that whatever equipment you used to get the carbon so damn cold would be more effective as a refrigerant than ice that rapidly evaporates, so why is dry ice used to cool things down instead of a freezer? | 33 | Dry ice is used to keep things cool when you don't have a freezer - for example when you transport things. The main advantage of dry ice is that it *sublimates* - while normal ice goes from solid to liquid, dry ice goes straight to gas, without transitioning to liquid first. This way, whatever you cool remains dry (hence the name "dry ice"). | 15 |
[House] Is there anyone House won't be rude too? | Seriously is there any way you can get this guy to act like a normal person to you? | 24 | House doesn't see "rudeness" as disrespect but as a way to challenge people and push them in ways to get what he believes is right. He greatly respects a number of doctors on the show, just not always for what they want respect for. He actively comments on who is the best surgeon, who is the bleeding heart best able to get through to the patient, who is most willing to break rules. | 32 |
ELI5: Why would anyone want to buy Berkshire Hathaway's stock if they never pay dividends? | 23 | Instead of paying dividends, the company reinvests in itself, so therefore you would expect stock prices to rise faster than a company that does pay dividends. So the value you get from the stock is the increase in the value of the shares you own over time, instead of a cash payout of dividends. As mentioned, Berkshire Hathaway's stock has, historically, performed extremely well so it is a valuable stock to own. | 10 |
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ELI5:The Mt. Gox situation | I am a casual observer of bitcoin and how it operates, however, I cannot understand what role Mt. Gox interacts with the bitcoin community and how it has effected bitcoin in recent news. Any simplification would be greatly appreciated!
edit: Also, what are the long term ramifications of the current Mt. Gox situation? | 235 | Mt. Gox was a bitcoin exchange. Fundamentally what they were doing was holding other people's money and facilitating transactions exchanging one currency (US dollars, for example) for another (Bitcoins).
In their role as an exchange, Mt. Gox also was sitting on considerably large amounts of Bitcoins that technically were owned by other people. De facto, Mt. Gox had become a bank. Mt. Gox was not equipped to act as a bank. Their software was implemented very badly and was vulnerable to attacks that interfered with their customers ability to withdraw bitcoins.
At this time it is unclear what happened to the bitcoins Mt. Gox was sitting on. They have not been returned to their rightful owners. We have not received any statement on the status of those coins. Some think they were stolen by malicious actors. Some think Mt. Gox itself is a malicious actor and stole the coins. Some think Mt. Gox retains possession of those coins and might eventually be able to return them.
Long term this is deeply damaging to public trust in bitcoin exchanges. Incidents like this really highlight the need to have much more careful scrutiny over software implementations and also highlights the risk of having totally unregulated currency. When a bank fails in the U.S. the FDIC (federal deposit insurance commission) will cover losses to depositors up to $250,000 per deposit. There is no such protection for bitcoins deposited at an uninsured, unregulated company such as Mt. Gox.
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When we say that a rotating gyroscope's axis is 'fixed', it is fixed relatively to what? | Certainly not relative to Earth, as we can actually use gyroscopes to detect Earth's rotation. But does the gyroscope stay stable if we rotate the entire galaxy? What if we rotate the entire universe: will we, from inside the universe, observe the gyro rotating in opposite direction? The more I think about it, the more gyroscopes seem to violate the laws of relativity of frames of reference. Help! | 230 | > gyroscopes seem to violate the laws of relativity of frames of reference
This applies to linear motion, not to rotational motion. There is no "absolute zero velocity", you can always pick another inertial reference frame to change the observed velocity of all objects.
But there is an "absolute zero" for angular velocity. Any object in uniform circular motion (eg an atom of the gyroscope) experiences an acceleration that grows with the square of angular velocity. Only at zero angular velocity does that acceleration go to zero. | 66 |
My local highway passes through farmland, and a lot of flying bugs die hitting our windshields. By killing all these bugs, could our cars be exerting evolutionary pressure? Note: there is a grass median between the north & south lanes -- a sort of island ecosystem. | Second time asking (with revised text) because no answers the first time. | 37 | Actually, there was a study done in western Canada on the wingspan of swifts that lived near highways. Over a period of time (I believe a few years) the swifts wingspans shrunk. Mostly because manoeuvrability was more important than being able to fly long distances (as the human activity also meant lots of food nearby).
TL;DR yes. | 33 |
I can understand how natural selection for traits works. But how do complex processes (such as metamorphosis) come about through evolution? | My friend and I were discussing evolution and we don't understand how processes that are so complicated and dependent on sequential events come about in the first place. From the molecular level (e.g. metabolic pathways) to the physiological level (e.g. metamorphosis), are there any general principles to explain this? | 95 | This is probably better suited to ELI5.
If you look at insects as a whole, the extent of the change between nymphs and adults (and the duration of pupation/metamorphpsis) is highly variable.
Some animals do not undergo metamorphosis at all. Some pupate but are not significantly changed and it essentially serves as a method of hibernation through cold and/or dry seasons.
Which establishes the baseline adaptation upon which all other changes become available and radical differences between nymph and adult form can begin.
After a time, some of these species would be present in areas where the hibernation aspect was unnecessary, and a new range of changes becomes available.
And, eventually, you arrive at today where folks assert that intermediate steps are an impossibility.
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eli5: Why can’t you combine a telescope and microscope? | This is one of those things that I know doesn’t work, but I don’t know the exact reason WHY it doesn’t work. I remember asking a friend in 7th grade biology why I can’t just put a telescope up to a microscope to see even more detail, but he just laughed and no one I’ve ever asked has given me an answer | 16 | Telescopes are generally limited by the size and perfection of their optics rather than what you can see. You could tack on some optics to look at a narrower portion of the telescope, but the narrow portion wouldn’t contain any more detail. Kinda like how digital zoom doesn’t increase the number of pixels, it just crops away the outside of the image and stretches the center to fill that space. | 15 |
Could a refrigerator be replaced by a chamber that periodically irradiates food? | So a refrigerator keeps food cold to inhibit bacterial/fungal growth and I know that some foods like fruit are irradiated before transport to increase shelf life. My question is if instead of keeping food cold, we had a radiation chamber that would periodically turn on to kill any foreign contaminants, would that be more or less effective than refrigeration? Does refrigeration protect against food spoilage that isn't caused by biological contamination? Would irradiation be more or less effective at inhibiting bacterial and fungal growth? Would radiation cause adverse health effects once the food was eaten? | 43 | It would inhibit a lot of bacterial growth, which is a major cause of spoilage, but do nothing with the other major one, oxidation. You have to remember that we are living in an environment with a highly reactive, somewhat toxic compound that slowly burns/rusts many things it comes into contact with, oxygen. It is why butter becomes rancid and why fruit becomes discolored.
Another effect, desiccation, would also be negatively affected. Basically, since fridges fundamentally affects all chemistry, they are the most economical way to keep a variety of food unspoiled for longer. | 19 |
ELI5 Why are bananas and avocados so.. soft? | Why is the flesh of fruits and vegetables like a banana or avocado soft, like you could scoop it with a spoon and eating it without really needing to chew?
But other fruits like apples or cucumbers you really have to chew or use a knife to cut up, like they have more structure to them.
Idk I was just high and eating a banana and this question popped into my head.
I tried to google it but the results were all about overripe fruit and I couldn’t find anything when searching this sub | 21 | Because of how they're held together or how their "inner stuff" interacts, just like an ice cube is significantly harder than snow but they are both solidified water, an ice cube's inner stuff is held tight while snow's inner stuff have a great freedom to move around, thus when you step on snow it's way easier to leave a foot print than steping on ice. | 11 |
ELI5: what’s the use of the cart that pushes back the airplane? Can planes not reverse without it? | 5,740 | They technically could using reverse thrust but it uses a lot of fuel, can suck in debris, damage the gate, and hard due to the pilots not being able to see the rear of the aircraft. It just makes more sense to have the ground crew do it | 6,541 |
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[The Elder Scrolls Oblivion] What happened to the old Sheogorath? | Apparently the player becomes Sheogorath in that game. The transition is subtle, so you don't feel much like a god in-game and conveniently takes longer than the player will play.
But what happened to the old Sheogorath? Does he become a mortal and die? | 41 | he became jyggalag, daedric prince of order and pissed off somewhere and we have yet to hear from him again, however do to how mantling works in the elder scrolls the player dident just take up the title of the old sheogorath, they became the same entity as jyggalags split personality, hence why when we encounter him in skyrim he looks, sounds, and acts very similer to the original, but still makes references to the adventures of the hero of kvatch, because he is both of them | 64 |
[General Sci-Fi] Since the human brain does not stop developing until a person is in their 20s, does that mean a child who becomes immortal will never fully mature? | 53 | Depends on what kind of immortality you're talking about. The sort of return to a set template after injury type would seem to freeze a person at whatever level of development, but it's a poor sort of immortality that can't tell the difference between growth and damage.
Most kinds actually can tell that kind of difference, and so don't run into this kind of problem.
That said, it's all down to the rules of whatever specific universe you're looking at. | 38 |
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ELI5: When the Milky Way and Andromeda collide, what will happen to their supermassive black holes at their centers? | 171 | The chances of them colliding with each other during the initial collision is extremely remote.
It's moderately likely that they will absorb one or more stars during the collision before they, like 99.99% of the other stars in each galaxy, pass out the other side unscathed.
The courses of all the stars and massive objects in the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will certainly be distorted heavily and the shape of each galaxy disrupted as they slowly ocillate between 2 distinct galaxies and a single amorphous galaxy. Over many millions of years the 2 galaxies will eventually completely merge and it's likely the 2 black holes will one day merge after they eventually come within an very small distance (~1 light year which is tiny on a galactic scale) but there is no certainty that the 2 will end up in the exact same region until many millions, even hundreds of millions of years have passed. | 52 |
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ELI5: If prepared foods should not be left unrefrigerated in the "danger zone" for extended periods of time for fear of bacteria growth, why do we treat baked goods differently? | Is it some property of baked goods that prevents leaving them out from being problematic? Or do they still pose a risk but we just treat them differently due to the fact that refrigeration tends to compromise the texture of baked goods? | 42 | For sweet baked goods, the sugar added functions like a preservative to prevent mold growth.
For non-sweet baked goods like bread, baking generates a crust where the water has been baked out. The lack of water makes it more difficult for mold to grow. You'll find that mold grows much easily once you cut open the bread and that the mold often grows on the white part of the bread where it is much more moist. | 65 |
How accurate was the new Kurzesagt video? | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ
It acts as more or less an overview for what the modern post-industrial economy is. Comparing it from a zero sum game of yore to now a positive sum game where we want everyone to be as well off as possible. How accurate are its claims? | 16 | Mostly accurate. Innovation and efficiency expand the total capacity we can produce.
There are complexities they overlook, pulling 3rd world countries out of poverty is difficult and there are many ways these efforts can stall and backfire. As well there are disagreements as to how best facilitate this growth... is it as simple as providing capital? Is education required? What political safeguards must be in place? How do we prevent criminal elements from capturing most of the benefits? Etc... And to what extent does this require them to give up what they currently have (culture, taditions, religion, autonomy, etc...).
Also unmentioned, with current technology it isn't feasible for our planet to support that many more people living at Western standards. In terms of food production, energy usage, waste generation, water usage, and such. If we suddenly moved 7x the world from poverty to wealth, it may result in environmental issues we don't currently know how to resolve.
To me, wanting to increase the pie and make everyone better off isn't controversial at all. The "how" is the difficult element. | 20 |
Why doesn't the current fed chair have a degree in economics? | I thought that would be a requirement? | 108 | The fed chair is a political appointment, usually given to people with expertise. A degree is (or can be) certainly valuable in showing that you have expertise. But it is not a requirement.
Powell has experience in finance, and has been a part of the fed board for years. That gives him sufficient expertise. | 144 |
Since paper comes from wood (and trees are obviously cellular lifeforms), could you look at a piece of paper through a microscope and see plant cells, or does the process of turning it into paper destroy or cover up these cells? | 19 | Nope, no cells left. Paper is mainly just cellulose fibers, and doesn't have to be made out of wood - historically hemp, flax, cotton and others were used, and rag-and-bone men would collect old rags to sell to paper-makers. Making paper out of wood didn't come along until the 19th century, first with mechanical pulping and then chemical. 'Pulping' being the process of breaking down the wood and getting the fibers.
Unlike plants, wood contains lots of the substance lignin, a massively branched polymer which is basically the defining difference at the cellular level between wood and other plant matter. Chemical pulping involves breaking it down to liberate the cellulose fibers from the lignin. High quality paper has all the lignin removed, because it's the lignin that degrades and causes paper to yellow, not the cellulose. (So mechanically pulped wood paper in a book from 1840 has typically yellowed much much more than cotton paper from 1740, all else being equal) Anyway, in the Kraft process used to make paper today, wood is first broken into tiny chips, and then boiled in a digester full of hot lye and other chemicals that break down the cells and lignin and other stuff. (which is usually recovered and burned to power the process; paper mills are often self-sufficient on energy)
So in an electron microscope, paper just looks like a mess of fibers, there are no cell structures visible since there's nothing left of the cells after digestion.
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CMV: The Nordic countries are not socialist | First of all, I should say I don’t consider myself socialist, but I agree with a lot of the criticism against capitalism.
What has baffled me is this - I see a lot of people here in reddit state that the Nordic countries are socialist, but I hadn’t heard this point of view anywhere else. I’m Bulgarian and my country has a socialist past and if I compare that to the Nordic countries now there’s almost no similarity in how the systems work.
Socialism is about state-controlled market, but the Nordic countries have a free market. Also, in socialism all businesses are nationalized, as was the case in Bulgaria, but in the Nordic countries most of them aren’t.
I read someone mention that in Norway the oil industry is state-owned, and the state has a bank (but not all banks), but that is still far from the idea of socialism.
I also haven’t heard anyone from the Nordic countries describe their model as socialist. I feel people might be mixing up the words social and socialist, but social policies can be found in a lot of countries and they do not result in a socialist system.
I am really curious to understand why people consider the Nordic countries socialist.
Edit: In addition, someone recently referred this article to me - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model - as proof that the model is socialist, but it even goes to say that it is based on free market capitalism. It does mention social policies, but I still don’t understand why people take that to mean socialist. | 17 | Words are defined by who uses them.
And there are a lot of people who use the word socialism for things that by your definitions are merely capitalism with a social welfare system.
This is especially prevalent in the US, where the term socialist is often used by the right to criticize normal government welfare projects on the left. Parts of the left have responded by embracing the term, taking away the danger of the accusation by changing the definition to be something positive.
As a result, the meaning, especially in US contexts, often doesn't refer to governement controlled economies, but just to social welfare systems. | 21 |
[MCU] is it really so hard for Bruce Banner to believe the Avengers broke up? | In Avengers infinity war Bruce Banner is in disbelief after Tony Stark tells him the Avengers are broken up (like the Beatles). This is pretty weird considering the last time he saw the Avengers together they were pretty upset at him and Tony for creating Ultron.
Not to mention then Bruce himself was ready to leave the Avengers and bring Natasha with him. When Bruce left the Avengers, they were pretty close to breaking up, he really shouldn’t be that shocked. | 28 | Yeah, but remember, he's waking up two years later after having just made up with Natasha and settled things with the Avengers. They left on good terms. The last thing Bruce would remember is falling into a pit, and by that point things were okay. | 44 |
[Star Wars] Is there ever any discussion about other galaxies throughout the universe? | I've watched all the Star Wars movies numerous times throughout my life and I've read up on a lot of the lore, so I would say I'm kind of an intermediate Star Wars fan. However, it only just dawned on me as I was playing Mass Effect Andromeda that Star Wars all takes place within the same galaxy, rather than across multiple galaxies. That blew my mind a little bit.
So, my question is, is there anything (either in the EU or cannon) about aliens from other galaxies, or just anything about other galaxies at all? Can Force users sense life from other galaxies? | 15 | In legends, there is a massive invasion by the Yuuzhan Vong, pain-worshiping aliens from another galaxy. This was a huge part of the legends continuity- the empire was built to prepare for their invasion, and their attack dominated the post-empire continuity.
However, in Canon, they appear to be gone, and Palpatine's motivations are very different. Apart from the technicality of the Rishi Maze, a dwarf galaxy just outside the main one, in Legends there seems nothing of interest outside the galaxy. | 24 |
[DC] Why does the Flash not fly off the Earth and into space when he accelerates to near light speed? | The Earths gravity is not enough to keep him grounded. He has to be pushing down on something, or be able to control his own Higgs field... | 36 | The Flash's powers are completely misunderstood, which have led to some confusion. If he was actually running at .99c, the friction from the air would strip is skin and turn his skelliton into plasma after the first few steps - not to mention the g-forces, which would crush his body into a liquefied mess the width of a hair.
Flash obviously does not move very fast, but only appears to from a non-Flash frame of reference. The Flash's actual power is the localized manipulation of time - specifically the Planck constant. Flash essentially creates a tiny universe which contains him and his immediate surroundings, and which has different physical constants, allowing him to break many (but not all) universal laws. Gravitrons interact with his universe as normal, but other particles, like the photon, do not. This creates a very interesting situation where he can completely break the universal speed limit (c, E = / =mc^2 ), as well as vibrate through solid objects (atomic electrostatic forces in his body no longer strongly interact with those in our universe, allowing him to pass through the empty space which make up 99.99999% of matter) etc but not fly into orbit at top speed.
The Flash is an extremely underrated hero, and has the potential to become the most powerful of them all. His powers are much less defined than most others, and he is likely capable of many things which it simply has not occurred to him to try. | 19 |
[Black Panther] What did the CIA want with a little chunk of Vibranium? | It didn't seem like they knew it's potential outside of an indestructible metal. | 25 | >It didn't seem like they knew it's potential outside of an indestructible metal.
That on it's own sounds like a perfectly reasonable reason for trying to obtain said material for future research. | 79 |
Eli5: When a cold is "going around," how does the first person get sick? | I'm struggling to phrase this right. If cold viruses are transmitted from person to person, then who infects "patient zero"? | 34 | What we call the common cold is actually caused by hundreds of different viruses, they all just happen to have similar enough symptoms that they get lumped together. Further, those viruses are around basically all the time, you can find someone (and probably lots of someones) somewhere in the world who has one of them. Conditions such as time of year, climate, etc. can affect how widespread the cold is or when different areas see more cases. Further the viruses can mutate, so a strain that isn't currently causing much symptoms might get stronger and cause more symptoms as it goes around.
Stepping away from colds to answer the general question, for new diseases the first person to get infected is going to get a mutant version of a previously existing virus, either they catch a version from someone else that mutates within them, or they catch a version of a virus from another animal that has already mutated to be able to now affect humans as well. The latter are called zoonotic viruses. | 61 |
CMV: parents shoud always try to explain their decisions to their children. | I feel like parents make their decisions look way to arbitrary to their children even when they have legitimate reasons for their decisions.
Furthermore the fact that parents don't need to explain themselves sometimes allows them to make decisions that *don't* have good reasoning behind which can just hurt the child. This mentality from a young age can also hurt a childs critical thinking skills later on in their life because they are used to accepting decisions that have no good basis.
That's it. CMV.
Edit: Shoud should be should.
Edit: a lot of people are saying the same arguments so I will try to explain myself better: a. I'm only talking about instances that concern the child directly like when they want something the parent doesn't want to give them than it's not healthy for you is better than just No. Also I don't expect a parent to pursuade the child just to show the basic reasoning behind their decision. Like in every conversation the child is welcome to disagree or not accept the reasoning but at least the parent tried to cover the core of their reasoning. | 1,466 | Obviously, as a rule of thumb, parents should explain their decisions to their children. But you have to make room for exceptions.
- Timing, some actions need to happen on a quick timetable, you don't always have time to explain yourself in the moment.
- Maturity, some actions require a high level of maturity to understand - economics, legal issues, political issues - these sorts of things are not appropriate for 5 year olds a lot of the time.
- The decision itself is arbitrary, but it is important that parent and child be on the same page. You cannot explain non-existent reasoning. Sometimes you just have to make a choice and roll with it. "Why are we having fish tonight" "Mental Coin Flip". | 520 |
ELI5: Why do some fabrics get softer when they're washed a lot, while others get rougher? | 8,777 | It depends on the textile. With wearing and use, some materials relax and become softer and looser because the thread is bent, pulled, and twisted through mechanical motion, much the way that crumpling a sheet of notebook paper over and over makes it very soft. Wearing the clothes often contributes more to this than the washing by itself.
However other materials may contain oils, waxes, and other materials naturally present in the fiber such as lanolin. Washing, and especially bleaching, removes these soft, greasy, fatty substances which can make the fibers dry, scratchy, or cause them to begin to fray or lose their water proofness. The primary purpose of fabric softeners, is to help replenish these substances, but it's always a downhill battle short of soaking the clothing in lard or oil.
Lastly, some synthetic cloth can become brittle with use, similar to the way that bending a plastic spoon back and forth in the same spot will cause it to snap. The fabric begins to get creases and folds in it that don't come out with ironing. They don't exactly get scratchy, but they become stiff like folded paper, and don't bend and take the shape of the body as well.
As fibers wear and break and tear, it has an effect of reducing thread count. Thread count is the number one thing for comfort up close to the skin, with higher thread count cloth feeling softer and silky versus lower but thicker thread count like a knitted sweater which can feel rough. | 2,414 |
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[DC] How does Batman prepare his young sidekicks for the grittier, more macabre side of crime? | Batman is (usually) not a total ass; he is one of the most compassionate heroes. That being said, he also mentor young sidekicks, who he has few qualms fighting hardened criminals.
But what about the more gruesome, macabre side of crime, e.g. crime scenes, rape, murder etc.? Does he teach them how to handle it in the field, which is arguably the best place to learn? Or does he wait until they're older/wiser, even if that gives them comparatively less time to learn? | 20 | It usually depends on the Robin, iirc.
Dick took to crime fighting *super* easily. He was genuinely just kind of a prodigy in a way that the others weren't; in line with this, it's likely he took to the grimmer parts of the job just as well. Seeing his parents die also likely hardened him, so the death and misery he saw in the field weren't quite as much a shock.
Jason wasn't quite as naturally skilled as Dick; this was a problem, because Bruce made the mistake of treating them the same. This meant he neglected Jason in some key ways because he assumed he'd take to it just as easily. But, Jason instead just had rage and fury; partially, the reason he's considered Bruce's greatest failure is because he *didn't* prepare him properly.
Bruce barely wanted Tim to be a Robin in the first place, but he insisted and basically forcibly earned his way in, thinking that Bruce needed a Robin to keep *him* from growing too dark. He was already an amateur detective, and got the position by deducing Batman's identity. Bruce was over-cautious because of Jason's fate originally, and tried to keep Tim in a support role, but eventually let him into the real stuff once he proved he could handle it.
Stephanie Brown's father was a supervillain, and she was already pretty engrossed in the nitty gritty by the time she was a Robin.
And Damien... Uh, he's gonna be just fine with all of it. Maybe a little too fine. | 41 |
What experiments would help science progress a lot but aren't conducted because of ethical problems? | 73 | Directly testing products on humans would speed up drug therapy development, the process is very long and tedious to even get the drug to clinical trials... but frequently the animal model is not similar enough to humans and the drug fails immediately in trials after years of successful experiments. We've cured cancer many times in rodents... | 37 |
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[LotR Fellowship of the Ring] how did Gandalf get his staff back when escaping Isengard? | (If using book canon instead of movie canon, please just mention so -- I'm not familiar with the books)
Looking at the events of the movie:
1. Saruman takes Gandalf's staff and traps him on top of his tower
2. Gandalf stays there for some time without the staff
3. Still without his staff, he jumps onto the back of an Eagle and flies away
4. At the council in Rivendell, Gandalf is clearly holding his staff again
How exactly did he get his staff back?
I know this isn't Science Fiction, but /r/askfantasy is apparently private. | 18 | This sub is fine with any type of fiction; it's more "ask science + fiction" than "ask + science fiction".
(Book)
A Wizard's staff is mainly of symbolic importance, and does not actually contribute any power to its owner. Because of this, there was no reason for Saruman to confiscate Gandalf's staff and so Gandalf had it with him even when imprisoned atop Orthanc.
(Movie)
It's possible he was able to summon his staff back at some point, since Wizards seem closely attuned to their staffs. Alternatively, he may have made a new staff that simply looks very similar to his old one. | 38 |
Progesterone Cream (USP) is rubbed into skin to be absorbed into the bloodstream in an hour. With this understanding of skin permeability, is it known if chemicals/bleach used in hair dying could also get into the bloodstream, or react with skin in some way to be absorbed into the body? | I recently learned that many women rub Bio-identical (USP) Progesterone cream into their skin, to get it quickly into the bloodstream, blowing my mind, as I thought skin was way more impenetrable than that. Now, all the various strong chemicals people (especially women in pursuit of beauty) put on skin seem scary. Which ones can be absorbed into the body? | 29 | Rule of thumb is that chemicals comprised of small-ish fat soluble molecules penetrate the skin more easily when applied with a fat-based medium, like cremes and pastes. The more water soluble a substance is, the larger the molecule is and the less fat based the medium is (either water based or solid/dry/powdery), the less likely it is to actually penetrate the skin, enter the blood stream and act throughout the entire blood system. The larger the skin surface you rub it in the more will penetrate, and the more damaged the skin is (wounds, inflammation, infection for example) the more will penetrate, the thinner the skin is (skin at the back vs skin on the scalp) the more will penetrate. That being said, we're still talking about trace amounts entering the central blood stream in either case, as the skin doesn't actively resorb substances, instead substances have to diffuse throughout the skin into the blood stream. Rubbing a large surface of your entire body with progesterone cream (progesterone being entirely fat soluble and a small enough molecule; the body doesn't need much overall progesterone at all) is a different story than putting a bit of dry make-up on a couple of select few surfaces on your face. The main component in bleach based hair dying products, hydrogen peroxide, is constantly produced and metabolized in the body in trace amounts already, and the miniscule amount added by resorbing through the skin (which can lead to skin irritation and chemical burn) is metabolized before it can even hit the blood stream in meaningful quantities. Additionally, in some legislations cosmetic products have legal limitations in how deep their main components are allowed to be able to penetrate the skin. | 16 |
CMV: It is ok for a person with non-mainstream tastes in music to impose their music on people who like mainstream-music, since the world imposes pop-music on everyone, regardless of their taste. | Of course it's "ok" to do this in the grand scheme of things. That being said, when I have house guests, or I am driving other people in the car, I feel that in order to not be rude I should play music that most people will like. When this happens, it is almost always music that **I** don't like.
Example situation: Let's say I am a fan of heavy metal (which I am). I am having a party and my friends want me to play Despacito and other "songs of the day". I politely say that it is my party, I am tired of listening to Despacito, and I would prefer to play Motorhead. Perhaps one guest complains throughout the night that the music is annoying, or "hurting their head". I argue that changing the music to pop-music will simply transfer the annoyance and "head hurting" to me, instead of them, and since it's my party I get to choose what music we listen to.
Is this a straw-man? Well, in reality I would absolutely compromise. I would stop playing Motorhead because continuing to do so after explicit complaints would be rude. Perhaps I would put on something less aggressive, like Black Sabbath. Or perhaps something soothing like Opeth's Heritage album (the actual bands/songs don't matter, just the general idea).
However, I feel that even the compromise is wrong. Living in a society where pop-music is forced upon you (stores, restaurants, radio, bars, clubs, tv, advertisements, facebook etc), and you don't like it you're experiencing an aural assault that makes me feel culturally out of place and uncomfortable. There is little reason why others should feel entitled to avoid this discomfort when a large proportion of the world is basically catering to their musical tastes. | 561 | Pop music is designed to be inoffensive and catchy. Heavy metal is designed to be loud, aggressive, and dissonant. Being a good host is about making your guests feel comfortable, and in a mixed crowd bland pop music is better at doing that than heavy metal.
Consider another example: you've been asked to make dinner for a group of white, American friends you barely know. Do you prepare:
* Hamburgers / veggieburgers (the safe option)
* Korean kimchi (a flavorful food that has a powerful odor if you're not accustomed)
If you get the buy-in, then kimchi and heavy metal would make for a fantastic party. But as a host, you need to make compromises. It's not just politeness--people are more likely to trust you if they find you're flexible and caring. Maybe then they'd be willing to give new music a chance.
From the perspective of a music fan: did you get into heavy metal because it was forced on you, or did you explore on your own and discover what's great in a safe, trusting environment? | 403 |
How can I quickly and accurately verify a science or history book is not making claims debunked by the academic community? | I have recently taken an interest into listening to audiobooks focusing on history or areas of science I am not as familiar in to expand my knowledge. I've started to notice many of the reviews are focused less on the accuracy of the books and more on the readers experience and the descriptions/critical reviews are often hand picked to sell the book, which has made it hard to differentiate between the popscience books and academically respected books (especially in the fields that are easily politicized or monetized like medicine or neuroscience).
To be honest, I am an embarrassingly gullible person so I am worried about picking books from areas I am unfamiliar in but interested in learning more. This is especially so since I already recognize some of the more obvious self help books disguised as science books in the medicine category. An example that comes to mind is that book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" which has been wildly popular but I have heard misrepresents the facts from communities familiar with the subject material. Is there an easy way to check on the accuracy of the claims of a book? I've tried googling books but it's often reviews done by people as ignorant of the subject matter as I am taking the author at their word that show up on the first page. It's also hard to tell with so many people crying "fake" at things they don't want to hear or actual misinformation being spread as facts.
I don't have a particular field of study or title, I am just trying my hand at educating myself outside of the structure of a university.
I'm from the US with a bachelors degree in Radio Television Film of all things, so I would like to expand my knowledge of various fields of science I may have neglected when I was younger. Any help on how to sort the the noise and find academically approved books would be greatly appreciated by this gullible amateur brushing up on their self educating tools. Thanks in advanced guys. | 33 | I'd honestly start by reading intro text books. You can find used old editions on Amazon pretty cheap ( <$10). With that foundation, you will be better equipped to judge what is plausible. Another (easier, but less beneficial in the long run) way would be to google the background of the author. Not the most reliable method, but it can give decent context to whether the person knows their stuff. | 22 |
[Fairly Oddparents] Do kids with developmental disabilities get their fairies at 20 or something? | 16 | The ones who get teased heavily, and are aware enough to suffer because of it do. Usually, as there aren't enough fairies to go around. The main thing is that most of those kids then wish that they were "normal" and then no longer get teased and don't need fairies anymore. | 16 |
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[Star Wars] I'm a Grey Jedi stuck in a room with Palpatine. What happens? | Does he try to convert me into a Sith, or do we just chill? | 36 | He won't try to "convert" you to anything.
You're either powerful enough to warrant becoming his apprentice or not. Most likely not. There are only ever two sith and if he already has an apprentice that is worthy of the mantle then he cares not for you.
He may decide you have some skill and decides to dominate you and turn you into a servant of the new order.
Most likely though...he will kill you without a second thought, he doesn't tolerate rivals. | 38 |
[SW] Hey everybody! Just got out of The Academy. Can’t shoot for shit, but they made me a Stormtrooper anyway. Just arrived here at the second Death Star. The thing isn’t even complete yet, and I’m a bit nervous because of what happened to the last one. Any advice to calm my nerves or kill time? | 59 | I guarantee you that is the safest place in the universe. Do you REALLY think that the strongest governing body in the universe would allow the terrorists to hurt them again? The new Death Star has external shielding AND is protected by practically the entire fleet.
When a restaurant closes down due to a bug infestation, the only time you can be 100% it's clean is right when it reopens. The emperor himself is going to be joining you soon. So you better believe that it is fucking impenetrable. | 62 |
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ELI5: Why does "hard resetting" seem to fix just about anything like phones or gaming consoles? | 124 | All computers have memory. When they start up they copy the instructions they need to run into memory. If something goes wrong, the instructions in memory can break. Computers don't work when following broken instructions. When you turn off the computer, it removes all the instructions from memory. When it turns back on it copies the correct instructions back into memory, and everything works again. | 114 |
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ELI5: How much of what we say do dogs actually understand? | Is it only basic words like their name, out, food, treat, ect; or do they understand more of what we say? | 27 | they associate sounds with a result. let's say cookie, they know they will get a treat to eat, but don't understand the actual meaning. If you say "nookie" instead of cookie, there is a big chance your dog would still act like there is a treat coming. | 23 |
Why is fluoride added to municipal water supplies and then again in tooth paste? [chemistry] | A recent discussion popped up on our community web site asking if fluoride was added to the local water. Links were posted by those opposed to it, but those links seemed more like anti-vax type web sites. Other links popped up supporting the ADA position, but some people didn't trust that either. This is one of the links posted in the discussion that I consider anti-vax-ish, http://www.nofluoride.com/food_and_water.cfm | 108 | Because flouride is good for our teeth.
Very very good for them.
Eating or drinking it (via water or table salt) helps to increase your teeths lifespan, and prevent cavities.
Smearing it on your teeth (via toothpaste) also helps to fight off cavities, (it's a slightly different kind of flouride).
The amount of flouride required before it becomes toxic is multiple times what you get from either source, so having it in both water and toothpaste ensures that most people get enough of it, generally without the danger of it becoming toxic.
(You would need to drink some 10 litres of average fliuridated water in one day before it started to become toxic)
Edit: 100 liters. | 68 |
What percentage of Starfleet is human? | 15 | Starfleet separates ships based on life support requirements. A Tellarite will be able to survive on a human ship but they will never be comfortable. (And the loud mouthed pig nosed grass eaters will let you know about it too.) Conversely a human will be uncomfortable on an Andorian ship for reasons entirely different then the make up of the air.
Some species life support requirement are inimical to other species, such as sentients from ultra high gravity worlds, or those from worlds where intelligence developed in water rather then on land.
As such, you tend to see mostly humans on an Earth designated ship, Vulcans on a Vulcan designated ship and so on and so forth. Although there are usually exceptions especially among the hardier species, such as Vulcans, that can live in a wider range of environments then humans and generally make few concessions to comfort. | 12 |
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ELI5: How are naked four-legged mountain goats successfully able to traverse mountainous cliffs, while two-legged humans require climbing gear? | 26 | Well, they're not naked (they have hair) and they've got four feet instead of two... which is a help, not a hindrance.
They also have uniquely designed hooves to help them balance and climb over rough terrain, and they're far more dexterous than we are. They're also acclimated to the habitat. | 31 |
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ELI5: How are memories stored in the brain? | 127 | We don't know.
All of the answers in this thread which sound authoritative are just someone's guess. We have various unproven hypotheses, most of which are vague enough to be possible and not easily disproven. | 214 |
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CMV: You don't always have to be smiling if you are having a good time | In a party, event, gathering, holiday or whatever, it is absolutely fine not to smile/laugh and it isn't even necessary to constantly be showing or proving how much of a wonderful time you are having to other people. As an introvert, it is difficult to do this and my resting face can make it seem like I'm possibly not enjoying myself. But in my opinion, it is a lot more tiring to always be faking or forcing a grin just to please other people.
An expressionless face in my view, is fine and natural even in some huge celebration or event. It could still mean you are having fun - I don't understand how people are so superficial and think you have to be laughing all the time if you are enjoying yourself. I've been questioned at a wedding because my face apparently had no "expressions" - I wasn't smiling, laughing, crying or being angry. I'm just not artificial and like to stay true to myself, and having no friends/no one to talk to didn't exactly help.
Even if someone isn't having such a great time, it is none of your business. We don't know what could be going on in their life and many people forget these things and tend to be judgemental and disrespectful. That doesn't make them a "party pooper" or a "buzzkill". People who like to pinpoint others in public clearly are not content themselves, which is why they resort to such behaviour. | 26 | Hassling someone about their facial expression is a dick move, and people shouldn't do it. Nothing's more counterproductive than, "Give me a smiiiiile."
That said, the people around you make judgements about what you're thinking and feeling based on your facial expression. Yours is pretty impassive, by default.
Most folks smile and laugh a lot when they're happy, and because of that they unconsciously interpret your impassiveness as you not being happy or enjoying yourself.
Your face is a medium for communication, just like your words are -- there's nothing fake or dishonest about smiling to *show* that you're happy, if you're happy. At the same time, you shouldn't feel an impulse to lie with your face any more so than you would with your voice. | 14 |
[Marvel/DC] With all those heroes that can do impossible, why isn´t either Earth basically a paradise? | I mean, if you have reality warpers , insanely smart people , why no one goes and cure cancer, deal with famine etc.? | 19 | In general, the heroes are too busy keeping the world from falling apart from cosmic beings going awry, alien invasions, attempted world conquering events, and sitting down to make a plan to fix the world and make it a paradise just doesn't happen because as soon as they get started, here comes a supervillain team-up.
Likewise, when an incredibly hero tries to make the world a paradise, they usually go too far and the other heroes end up having to stop them and restore the world back to its original state. | 24 |
ELI5: Why is the existence of a middle class important in assessing the strength of an economy? | Is it because they spend their money while having some saved up in case there is a downturn? Or is it something else? | 16 | That's a big one, yes. Compare an economy where there is a middle class to one where there's only very rich people, and very poor people. How will the economy continue to perform when the poor masses have little to spend to fuel it, and the few rich even though they can buy a lot probably won't do so, purchasing only what they need in terms of necessities and perhaps hoarding money instead of spending? | 17 |
Can you create a sonic boom underwater? | 24 | According to Frank Heile, P.h.D. Physics, Stanford University:
"Yes, there will be a sonic boom if an object travels through water at faster than the speed of sound in water. Even though water is relatively incompressible when compared to air, it does transmit sound waves and therefore it will indeed have a cone shaped sonic boom emitted from the leading edge of any object that is moving through the water at faster than the speed of sound. At 20 C and 1 atm of pressure, the speed of sound in air is 768 MPH or 1236 km/hr whereas the speed of sound in water is 3316 MPH or 5336 km/hr so it is almost 4.5 times faster than in air.
One difference between an object moving through air versus moving through water is that when the speed of sound is exceeded in water there will be supercavitation - there will be a region behind the nose of the object where the water pressure is below the vapor pressure which causes a bubble of vapor pressure to form behind the object. This can greatly decrease the skin friction of the object since only the nose of the object will be in contact with water." | 17 |
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[FMA] Can anyone become an Alchemist? | Just thinking. We see plenty of Alchemists in the series: Ed, Al, Azumi, Mustang and so on - and of course we have plenty of none alchemists as well: Riza, Havok, Hughes and so on - so, is there a reason why the non-Alchemists don't learn Alchemy?
Is it a skill that can be learnt (Well I mean, you obviously learn it by study, that's how Al and Ed learned it - but can *anyone* pick up a book and start practicing?) or is it something only a select few can use? What is it that prevents some from doing Alchemy? Is it genetic? I mean, there are examples of alchemists who's children can't or don't use alchemy, I would say who but I can't remember how to spoiler tag so... | 18 | It's a skill everyone *can* possess but few actually do and even fewer can use it on the same level as Ed and Al.
In FMA, Alchemy is just a form of science. But it can transmute matter into virtually anything because of the natural energies of the planet. So long as one fully understands material science, chemical science, physics, and mathematics, along with the base principles of FMA alchemy, they'll be able to transmute stuff.
As to why Ed and Al are so good at it, both are essentially science prodigies and they started learning about alchemy at a very young age. Basically exploiting the advantages of being younger and inborn abilities. Additionally both studied a wide variety of sciences instead of specializing a specific field, making them more powerful than most but not absolute masters of the craft.
Now for characters like Roy, who almost only uses fire, it's because he's a specialist. Roy is perfectly capable of transmuting anything like the brothers. But he's a scientist who focuses in fire, which is why he's so powerful when using it.
EDIT: Syntax | 23 |
ELI5: Do we actually sweat out toxins? What are these so-called "toxins" and does our body do it with alcohol as well? | 276 | No, sweat is just water that's a little salty. Almost all of the toxins your body takes in are expelled in urine.
Anything that could do damage to a cell is called a toxin. There is an endless number of them, but some well-known ones are alcohol, cyanide, arsenic, mercury, caffeine, nicotine, chlorine, and many animal venoms. Notice how most of the things on that list can kill you? That's why it's important to get them out.
Your kidneys filter them out of the blood, and they are sent to the bladder, where they are mixed with water and urea (a natural byproduct very similar to ammonia, this is why urine is sterile) which dilutes and denatures the toxin, and then expelled using the orifice preferred by your sex. | 167 |
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Do the planets aligning actually do anything? | You always hear how the planets aligning causes things like changing tides, changing the tilt of the Earth, or others more fantastical things, but do planets aligning have any effects even if they're minor? | 367 | Scientifically speaking, the only way they could affect us is via gravity. But they are so small and so far away, that the net effect is zero no matter what.
They actually do something when they are aligned: they provide a beautiful view in the evening. | 397 |
I think world news are useless to me. CMV | I live in Wroclaw, Poland and I think that almost every news I see is useless to me (eg Syrian Civil War, Fukushima toxic leak and even any news about Polish government about recent vat raise, I will pay it anyway) because I don't really have any influence on those things. I will never be politician and I have no interest and/or ambition in changing world.
Infos about my family, what's going on in my city(traffic, parties) etc. are important to me, because they have direct influence on my life. Change my view. | 19 | World War 2 happened when Germany invaded Poland. When one country in Europe invaded another in Europe. This would be considered "world news" in England. In the US. In India, in Australia, in Japan, in Italy.
Yet it affected all those nations equally. It was not any kind of sudden thing, either. Thousands of small factors, and plenty of big ones, combined to be the cause of the Second World War.
The butterfly effect is why it is all important. The Syrian Civil War is important because if the USA decides to act, it could have very, very, far-reaching consequences. Fukushima toxic leak being important is debatable, but the fact that a nuclear reactor is leaking is definitely very important. Considering that nuclear energy is fully likely to be a huge energy source, which will directly affect you as you'll probably have to pay less.
Everything that happens in the world affects you. You might think it's useless, but the horse that lost its shoe thought it was nothing to worry about. | 20 |
ELI5:Why are lights standard in refrigerators but not in freezers? | Pretty much every refrigerator has a light in it, but freezers hardly if ever do. Why? | 15 | An incandescent bulb regularly going through such temperature changes would probably greatly increase their rate of failure, and they generally aren't as large or accessed as frequently as the refrigerator. | 13 |
ELI5, How Do Compression Socks Work? | I’m curious as to how compression socks help your legs when you have bad circulation. What is the science behind it that allows you to be on your feet without getting fatigued and swelling when you wear them. | 23 | Due to the compression, the arteries can relax and the veins get a boost. It's important for people at risk for circulation problems. It's highly questionable whether it improves blood flow for athletes, but it doesn't do them any harm, and it may have a psychological effect. | 23 |
Why do whales die when they're beached too long? What is it that kills them? | I have always wondered this.
**Edit:** Thank you for your responses, everyone! | 550 | It's not dehydration or starvation, which would take a long time, but suffocation. Whales are normally supported on all sides by water, which means that they don't have to support their own weight against gravity. When they are beached, the weight of the parts of their bodies that are above their lungs is pushing down on their lungs. They will have to work incredibly hard to expand their lungs to breathe. Eventually they don't have enough energy to expand the chest cavity to draw in air, and they suffocate. This is the same mechanism by which people would have died through crucifixion. Holding your body up by your arms forces you to work hard to breathe and eventually you can't do it any more and you suffocate. | 649 |
Analogous to pupils dilating and constricting with light, does the human ear physically adjust in response to volume levels? | 2,777 | The human ear cannot dilate like an eye, however it does have the ability to pull the ear drum taut when a loud noise is experienced. A taut ear drum is less prone to damage.
Some people have the ability to voluntarily flex the muscle that pulls the ear drum taut. If you're able to do this, it sounds like a crinkle/crunchy sound when you first flex it followed by a rumbling sound.
Head on over to r/earrumblersassemble to learn more.
Edit: spelling | 2,237 |
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[General] Is a vibroknife (with vibrating blade) worth the fuss? Does it cut better, faster, or deeper? | 20 | A vibro-knife works using the same mechanics as a chain saw. Instead of having to press down with immense strength, the knife cuts 'for you' through a powered high-frequency vibration.
In effect, this makes the blade 'sharper' in that it requires less effort from the user to cut through stronger/more dense materials. | 32 |
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Why doesn't the universe carry an overall positive or negative charge? | 21 | As far as we know all interactions in the universe conserve charge. So for the universe to have overall positive or negative charge, we'd have to look at the initial conditions of the universe, where a lot of our current models tend to break down or lack predictive power.
As for why charge should be conserved, it comes about as the result of a particular symmetry associated with the electromagnetic field. | 13 |
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[General Superheroes] Hey, who the hell gave Hasbro permission to make an action figure out of me? | I do a serious job and I don't need these guys making a mockery of it. What if a villain who didn't know me before buys the toy and uses it to get a leg up on me? Can I sue? | 73 | IP, trademarks, and copyrights all require an actual identity. If you don't have a problem with your real identity being public knowledge, go nuts and trademark yourself.
You could have a trusted ally do it, but then when that supervillain looks up who owns the "Awesome-Man" IP and finds out it's your wife... well...
And of course, any IP is only as good as its owner's desire to sue. There's no agency that just enforces IP for the heck of it - if someone infringes on it, you have to be willing to spend a lot of time, money and effort in litigation. And do you REALLY want to file a court case against LexCorp or OsCorp? You'll be in court for the next ten years.
So yeah, sorry - you're out of luck. | 56 |
Where does the energy for exchange particles come from? | The weak interaction uses a W boson to transfer momentum, but it's much heavier than a proton and seemingly spontaneously comes into existence for the purpose of the interaction and then vanishes. I'd like to know how this complys with the conservation of energy because it doesn't really make sense to me. | 16 | You are correct. If you interpret virtual particles as things that literally exist, you are led to nonsensical conclusions.
The mass of a W boson is much too large for a real one to be produced during beta decay of a nucleus.
Virtual particles don't literally exist; they are just an artifact of certain calculation methods in quantum field theory. | 21 |
[futurama] Coud Fry just... you know buy robot hands? | I mean maybe not quite as good as robot devil hands, and fry is poor as shit anyway, but it seems like robot hands wouldn't be out of reach at all and then he could go back to being a musician? | 31 | True, but if they don't meet the standards of the robot devils hands, they might not let him play what he wants.
And even if they did, Fry is unbelievably stupid, so there's no reason to assume that just because something makes perfect sense he'll do it. | 32 |
Imposter Syndrome overdiagnosis | To start out - I fully believe that imposter syndrome is a real thing that qualified programmers experience.
That being said, I've seen multiple posts here and in other communities where people list an extremely shaky list of credentials (e.g., I just finished a bootcamp), express concern of job-preparedness, and finish up with something to the tune of "man, my imposter syndrome is really flaring up right now."
I'm a full-time software engineer at my dream company. I worked damn hard to get where I am - I went through formal CS education, took 6 internships/residencies, and programmed full-time for 2 years at a startup before finally landing my current position at one of the companies I've always wanted to work for.
It feels like people expect to go through some basic training (a bootcamp, a 2-year degree without on-the-job training, etc) and be fully prepped to enter into one of the highest-paid, most-in-demand professions out there. Then, when the reality of their unpreparedness starts to set in, they've already been conditioned to think of it as "just imposter syndrome" when in reality it's a perfectly reasonable response to being under qualified.
I'm not saying this is the fault of those under qualified individuals. The programs and boot camps are the real villains in my mind. Regardless, I just wanted to express this sentiment and see if any other professional coders feel similarly. This hyper-pervasive "imposter syndrome" sentiment has really soured my experiences on programming forums recently. | 38 | The main issue here is boot camps and programs like them tend to over promise on the kinds of opportunities they can provide. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with the concept of boot camps, getting enough training to start doing basic coding work and then building upon that foundation later is fine but it becomes an issue when boot camps are promising people serious engineering roles after a few months of training.
Unrealistic expectations are set to justify the prices they charge and then people finishing those programs assume they must be doing something wrong or just aren’t really confident enough to get the positions they were promised. | 24 |
[Pokemon] What exactly IS hyper-beam? What is hyper about it? | It's a beam of energy, right? What kind of energy? What is it about the beam that causes damage? Can it be created in smaller amounts? Hyper is a level of potion along with "super" and "max". Is there a "max-beam"? | 30 | Hyper Beam is an incredibly dense ray of light that slams the target with incredible force. As to the size, it probably requires a break-point to reach the appropriate levels of density, but width and diameter of the actual beam would remain unaffected. So a larger creature could focus a "wider" beam than a smaller creature, without sacrificing the intensity of the beam. | 34 |
[WH40K] Okay, Abaddon here, I can't figure this thing out | Yo, fool. Yeah, I bet you thought I'd be speaking slightly differently. Well, you were correct, lowly moral. Continue to cower behind your pict screen, you may yet survive another pitiful night in your broken Imperium (*spits*).
Before I conclude with flaying you alive in the Garden of Slaanesh for an eternity...I have a question for you. Answer correctly and I shall grant you a quick death. Why then, during the Siege of Terra, didn't Horus the beloved Warmaster, simply launch virus bombs and destroy the loyalist fools with ease? If I recall the events correctly, we were in control of the air and we must have had access to virus bombs or at the least enough firepower to destroy Terra from orbit.
My question is, why did we subject ourselves to a prolonged siege when there were other options? | 17 | Do you have any fucking idea how important Terra is? You want to virus bomb that?! You don't take the Emperor's Golden armour then proceed to go "Yeah.. They'd make good toilet paper." You fucking wear it! You own Terra and it's people, in tact, you own the universe. No wonder they call you Failbbadon, you'll never amount to anything Horus was, especially without your arms. | 35 |
CMV: Having ulterior motives isn't a bad thing | Ulterior motives should not automatically be a bad thing. They should only be a bad thing when used for bad/evil/harmful/etc reasons. I think we should demonize the harmful/selfish behavior, but not be offended by ulterior motives themselves.
The association of ulterior motives with evil intentions, harmful manipulations, etc has sort of poisoned the concept. I see this as different than "if you cheat on your wife and she never finds out then nobody gets hurt" because you are hiding far more than your intentions, you are actually hiding a potentially harmful act that you committed. Someone might argue "if you keep your motives secret than how can I trust...?" But trust is built on deeds, not on internal desires. If a saint secretly wanted the world to burn, but their entire life behaved as a saint should - then they warrant trust. If a person secretly wants the world to be a good place, but they burn shit down all the time - they do not warrant trust.
**A contrived example invented to illustrate my specific point**: Person X has a car that still works, and wants to get a truck some day. Person X's spouse, person Y, would veto the purchase because they think X's desire is silly. A year later (the discussion of trucks long forgotten) person Y needs to buy a vehicle for regular life. X & Y go car shopping, and person Y likes 5 vehicles, one of which is a truck. Person X has no real preference, but when Y says "how about the truck?" person X says "yeah let's get it". (*Here is where the calculating part happens*) Person X encouraged Y to get a truck predicting that in a few years, Y will want another vehicle and X can have the truck. The entire time, Y is happy with the process, is happy with the purchase, and in a few years the truck goes to person X. Two years after that, X tells Y the reason the truck was encouraged - Y gets angry.
In the above example, person Y is probably upset because they perceive ulterior motives. But X if the motives were overt, person Y would've rejected the truck. Having kept the motives quiet, everyone was happy and had what they wanted, without having to manipulate/deceive/harm anyone. So the only way to get this (good) outcome is through ulterior motives. | 30 | The definition of ulterior has negative connotations. "going beyond what is openly said or shown and especially what is proper". Having a motive you don't voice, and having an ulterior motive, aren't necessarily the same thing. | 34 |
[Marvel]How did the ancient Wakandans extract vibranium? | The material is strong enough to deflect modern bullets and survive explosions. | 15 | Vibranium isn’t indestructible until it’s processed. We see that unstable Vibranium needs the sonic railway to be transported safely, and produces the kinetic loading in Black Panther’s nano-suit. So unprocessed Vibranium has different properties than stabilized Vibranium. | 18 |
[40k] Is there any chance that more chaos gods could be born? | So we all know there are already the 4 gods but is there any chance of any more being born for other emotions?
Thanks | 18 | Definitely yes.
Just like slaanesh was born, another powerful entity could raise from more emotions which reflect on the warp, but the scale of the event would need to be massive.
Some heretic theories say that the emperor himself is already another godlike entity on the warp as he is being fueled by the worship of trillions of his followers.
While heretic in nature, this theory really demonstrates the scale of the required emotions you would need to cradle a new god.
Also, bear in mind that the four current chaos gods are primordial in nature, meaning that most of human emotions are already impersonated by one of them.
| 27 |
In Australia, a young (10-34) male is 3-6 times more likely to get robbed than an equally aged female, and 24-29 times more likely to get robbed than an old (65+) person. Why? | I stumbled upon this statistic: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/cfi/141-160/cfi150.html
Mind=blown. One would expect robbers to go after easier targets, i.e. women rather than men and perhaps old people rather than young. That seems to be common sense. Yet according to this statistic these supposedly more vulnerable people actually get robbed many times less. Any explanation? | 17 | One problem is that these groups may not be comparable. This could be because younger men may be in areas, at times, or in different circumstances in which there is a higher likelihood of getting robbed. As an example, many women are reluctant to go out at night alone while men may not have that same aversion and therefore the men in this case may be more accessible targets. There are so many covariates that could track with age and sex that it would be able very difficult to make reasonable comparisons between groups. Most times this type of data is used to see if within a group the rate is changing from year to year. | 17 |
ELI5: How do banks know that it’s not you using your card when they send out those fraud alert messages? | So I just woke up this morning, made my coffee and was scrolling through Reddit.. And I got a Fraud Alert text from Chase telling me they declined a purchase of $153.60. I buy stuff *all* of the time with my chase debit card.. online, in store, sometimes run it as credit.. and I never get those fraud alert messages.
But, the first time that someone somehow stole my card numbers and tried to make a purchase, they declined it and flagged it as fraud. And thank god they did.. but how did they know it wasn’t me? | 27 | The credit card company knows a good deal about you. They know where you live, where you usually shop, what you usually buy, etc. If they detect a purchase that deviates from your patterns, they will flag it as potential fraud.
So, if you normally buy food, gas, groceries, etc. on your card in one particular part of one city, then someone buying electronics in a different city is going to raise flags. | 49 |
If an object is producing a pitch of, say 440Hz, and is moving away from you at the speed of sound, is its perceived pitch 220Hz? | And how fast would the object have to travel towards you for there to be a perceived pitch of 880Hz? | 24 | Yes, the pitch is 220 Hz for an emitted frequency of 440Hz moving away at the speed of sound. Moving towards the speed would have to be 171.5m/s for it to be perceived at 880Hz.
The frequency perceived by observer is determined by f=(1/(c+-v))fo where f is the perceived frequency, fo is the emitted frequency, c is the speed of sound (~343m/s in air) and v is the speed of source (+away -towards).
Note that the equation is no longer valid when moving towards faster than speed of sound. This is because you won't hear anything until the source arrives and goes past you.
| 12 |
CMV: I see no point in peeling my string cheese into little strands before eating it. | When I want to eat string cheese, I just open it from the wrapper and bite into it. I don't understand why I need to rip off little strands of cheese to eat. My reasoning:
* I eat my cheese because I'm hungry or I'm looking for a protein fix. I don't need to dawdle and waste more time peeling little bits of cheese to eat. I'm a busy graduate student with things to do.
* Eating it right out of the wrapper means that I touch it less and it's more sanitary. In fact, if I open the wrapper properly, I can just peel back the wrapper like a banana peel and my fingers don't touch the cheese at all.
* Playing with my food does not interest me...at all. I understand how little 6 year old me would love spending time and peeling the cheese and playing with it by letting it dangle to the outside of my mouth, but I don't find that fun anymore. In fact, I'd much rather just eat my cheese quickly and go back to playing borderlands 2. In fact, if someone saw 30 year old me playing with my string cheese by letting it dangle out of my mouth, I'm sure I'd be admonished for it.
* If I had packed cheddar cheese sticks rather than mozzarella string cheese, there would be no expectation for me to shred it with my fingers. In fact, it's perfectly normal to bite into a cheddar cheese stick and eat it in chunks. In my mind, there's no reason why I couldn't do the same with a mozzarella string cheese stick.
* I understand that there's a process to making string cheese so that all the cheese proteins align so they can peel apart easily. However, they don't sell "normal" low moisture mozarella cheese in convenient single serving packages - it only comes in "string cheese" form.
I'm looking forward to reading responses about the pros of peeling your string cheese before eating it.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 42 | Peeling string cheese gives you a long rough strand with a high surface area to volume ratio. This high surface area means more intense flavor. If you eat chunks of the string cheese, you'll have a much smaller surface area to volume ratio, and less flavor. | 36 |
[Harry Potter] Besides Dumbledore and the main trio, who knew that Aberforth was the bartender of The Hog’s Head? | 16 | Everyone who was polite enough to ask his name. It wasn't a secret. And given the amount of help he provided to Neville and the others bunking in the Room of Requirement, it likely became common knowledge at the school too. | 20 |
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ELI5: Why are breasts often considered sexually attractive and private? | Just a drunk thought... | 27 | Breasts are a sexual characteristic of human females. Other mammals only have breasts when breast feeding, otherwise they are small and look the same as the male breast of the species.
Scientists are still trying to work out the specifics, but the attraction is thought to lay in something about youth (old people=less fertile=worse looking breasts), nutrition (need fat reserves to make nice ones) or simple weird sexual selection (think peacock's tail, not very useful but the ladies like them).
Unlike what many people say, breasts are sexualized across cultures, but the topless ethnic women we see have a different culture on what is considered "nude," not what is considered sexual. | 18 |
What are the characteristics of good academic research collaborators? | 15 | * Communication. Nothing works if the parties involved don't talk to each other. It can't be a one-way street - if you find yourself always following up on emails that haven't been answered - it is a less than ideal collaboration.
* Sharing the workload. Ideally you want collaborators that help you move around your position in the author list. You can be the driving force on some papers, and end up first on the list, but you also need "team player" papers, and then a chance to be a mentor and show up at the end of the list.
* Honesty. Get yourself out of any collaboration where you don't trust all of those involved. Everyone makes honest mistakes, but deception can be hard to recover from.
* Complementary skills. If you are good at writing papers, try to work with people who can produce data, but who may be poor writers. Find a team member who can program, or make amazing graphics. Even the person who lives to correct grammar is important. | 15 |
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[Rick and Morty] How did dust and mildew settle on Jerry and Beth when Rick froze time? | How would anything grow if time was stopped? | 142 | Clearly not everything was stopped. If time was stopped down to a molecular level then Rick, Morty, and Summer would be immobile since they're surrounded on all sides by paused atmospheric particles. Instead all air is able to part when they walk by, and is also breathable. That's where your dust particles come from.
Presumably, in order to avoid dead air, the device exempts plant life (at least in the immediate area of its users) as well as air in order to cycle out carbon dioxide. As part of the immobile ecosystem, fungus gets to go along for the ride. | 158 |
What is a buffer overflow, and how is it used to exploit programs? | 31 | Imagine a choose-your-own-adventure book (i.e. "If you choose to go left, turn to page 10. If you go right, turn to page 20). You have sneakily inserted a page 30 which tells the reader to give you all your money.
At the start of the book there is a blank page where the reader can make notes. That's your buffer. If you write in a bunch of text on that page, and the reader is too dumb to notice it's happened, you could make your text overflow onto page one, and overwrite the text already there.
So now, page one says "If you choose to go left, turn to page 30. If you choose to go right, turn to page 30".
So the reader turns to page 30, and follows the instruction to give you all their money. You have overflowed the buffer to make the reader go to a page of your choosing rather than the legitimate pages.
The book is your program, the blank page is the buffer, and page 30 is the malicious code. The text you dumped onto the blank page is your exploit code. | 54 |
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ELI5: How does AI (Bots) work in video games? | 42 | AI in games has to have a couple things first; you have to have a designed goal for the AI to do first, and allow it access to stuff to achieve that goal.
In a video game this might turn out to be something like a standard fighting game; where the AI is designed to win the match, and is given access to button combination inputs to achieve that. If they want to get a bit into it with difficulty settings, they could change which moves/combos the AI can execute, or how quickly it reacts.
In something else like a strategy game, they tend to give the AI certain goals to hit before launching an attack/defending an attack. IE: Have 10 builders/harvesters, 20 attackers, and 2 defensive structures; then issue commands to move attackers across the map toward a target destination.
How that all is built is basically programming the AI, although depending on what you want the AI to do, it might range from just mashing buttons to figuring out pathfinding for a giant army. And in plenty of cases, the person programming the AI might let the AI cheat a bit.
Now in cases where people argue they want difficulty to mean something more than enemies become bullet sponges, while the player hits like a wet noodle. They want the difficulty increase to mean enemies are smarter too - but that comes at a cost in programming & CPU cycles. Is it really worthit to add in more in-depth AI that checks whether one room is good to hang out in because it has a lot of cover (and having all the programmatic checks and balances to go with that), or use those precious spare moments on the CPU to push out a few more frames per second? | 23 |
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CMV: Every problem in the US can be solved with more education funding. | Poverty
Sensible Gun control
Bigotry
Racism
Obesity
Drug and opioid crisis
Even climate change!
Studies have shown that the more educated people are, the more money they make, the less likely they are to mistreat other people, and the more hygienic they are. Educated people have better critical thinking skills that allow them to vote for a better candidate, not just the one they’re told to vote for.
The education we are providing isn’t good enough for the standards that we should be setting for our kids, and it’s all a result of a lack of funding. More money pays for better teachers, who teach people to be more innovative and create things that will help us in the future, as well as people who can teach the next generation. Funding also allows for better materials to help people understand things better and more quickly so that people can learn more in less time.
I challenge you to come up with a problem that the US has that can’t be fixed by having a better educated populous.
| 258 | Education, and in particular its funding has never been and will never be the "silver bullet" to all our problems. Thinking it will be drastically misunderstands the problems found within both the culture and educational system.
First off simply pumping more funding into the education system will do nothing. What needs to be done with that is broad scale educational and taxational reforms to how we deal with the whole system.
> Obesity, opioid crisis, climate change
So first things first these three problems are interesting in part because they hit people across all socioeconomic boundaries. Its not just the uneducated that are fat, or having problems with opiods. And climate change needs substantial change across the power grid as well as tons of funding. Better education won't inherently make that better.
>Studies have shown that the more educated people are, the more money they make, the less likely they are to mistreat other people, and the more hygienic they are.
So this is kinda a correlation leads to causation problem. You are listing all these things acting like they are because of the education, rather than the education causing them to get to a position where these things are required. There isn't a direct link but a coralry link.
On top of that the reason they make more money deals in supply and demand. Since you would be raising the supply of educated individuals the demand would go down thus the pay would go down. Just saying its not as simple as education -> money (I wish it were as a struggling grad student).
>The education we are providing isn’t good enough for the standards that we should be setting for our kids, and it’s all a result of a lack of funding.
As has been pointed out we actually have spend more money per student than many countries. Its not the funding that inherently is a problem.
| 43 |
[MCU] Is vibranium common in space? | 22 | In the comics, vibranium exists in space, although its source is unknown. "Common" is probably relative, but it's a stable transuranic element evidenced in certain asteroid mineral deposits - that suggests some very weird circumstances for its creation, probably involving supernovas under unusual conditions. Yet it *is* stable, and in the comics abundant enough that at least a few alien technologies exist involving it (the Inhuman echotech, for example), and on Earth it's been successfully synthesized (albeit in an unstable isotope). So while not *common*, there are probably regions where it is relatively *abundant*. Given the size of the Great Mound, we can assume that when vibranium is produced naturally it is done in relatively large quantities, and there might be similar-sized chunks of vibranium ore adrift through space, remnants of certain supernova explosions. | 24 |
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ELI5: If sweat cools down our body... Do we sweat under hot shower? | 92 | Yes, sweating is an automatic reaction triggered by feeling heat. So you do sweat under hot shower. The shower washes the sweat right away, but since you aren’t actually getting cooler, you just sweat more. You can eventually dehydrate this way under the shower or even while in a hot bath, despite being surrounded by water. | 182 |
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ELI5: People today are able to produce paintings that are indistinguishable from photographs. Why couldn’t artists in past eras achieve this level of realism? | 17 | Quality of materials, (paints, brushes, canvas) time, painting detailed pictures requires a lot of time and you have to be able to afford to spend that much time on a single painting, lack of photographs as reference, until Vermeer, who may have used a kind of pinhole camera to create their pictures still images of the subject were not available. | 25 |
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ELI5: Why does travelling, even when it is essentially sitting still, tire you more than sitting still in a stationary place? | 1,994 | When sitting stationary your body exerts effort just to keep you upright in your seat.
When sitting while traveling, your body exerts effort to counter every motion of the vehicle you happen to be in. Vehicle slows down, your core muscles react to keep you pressed back into your seat, and you don’t recognize this as anything more than still sitting down. Same for every turn, your core reacts to counter the centripetal motion to one side or the other.
So sitting while traveling gives you an unconscious core workout that you never recognize. | 1,658 |
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[Kingdom Hearts] So why could Roxas feel? | I thought nobodies were supposed to not be able to feel, but it was *really* obvious he (along with Axel, I assume because of long term exposure to Roxas) were able to feel emotions.
I know Sora was unusully stronger in the heart than the normal victims, and Roxas wasn't created conventionally, but neither was Xemnas, and he had the emotional range of a Cactus. | 37 | In 358/2 days, Roxas could feel because Sora was never really gone, and he was leeching off of Sora's feelings and memories - his heart. This is part of why Roxas *had* to go for Sora to come back.
In 3D we learn that Nobodies only lack a heart for a short time after creation. Their interactions with others produces a heart, Xemnas had just been corrupting Organization XIII's budding hearts so that everyone would be a huge shitlord.
So a combination of leeching off of Sora's heart, and developing his own through interactions with Axel and Kairi-sue. | 27 |
[Dragonball/Z] Why is everyone making a big deal out of flying and ki waves in the World Tourny saga?(with videl and goku back from the dead)During his fight with Tien and King Piccalo there was both flying and ki waves involved Roshi Could use Ki waves and did in world tournies before those as well | 26 | Because the world tourny has gone mainstream in the years between DB and DBZ. The crowd was small (it wasn't a stadium, no bleachers just standing room only) and made up of people really serious about martial arts and even they were pretty surprised back in the day.
Once Hercule saved the world he was the drive force behind the tourny becoming so popular and mainstream. This man literally saved all of mankind (according to history) and his specialty? fighting. So when he fights people watch and people compete.
By the Buu saga the whole thing has grown huge, with the kids separate, a huge stadium, televised ect. These people are a completely different group of people than those who enjoyed the Tournament back in the years with Goku Tien and Piccolo. The people watching martial arts now think what Hercule says is true, that no one can shoot ki or fly because those are all "tricks"
Only the announcer who has been working at the Tournament all these years remembers our main cast. And even in his own words he mentions how the competition has really suffered with them missing. Normal humans have been fighting all these years, humans who could kick all our asses quite well but simply don't hold a candle to all the super humans.
TLDR: People are impressed with Ki now because they never saw Ki back in the day, they didn't care about martial arts before it was cool. | 33 |
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Are states obligated to protect only their own citizens? | Hello, I have a debate tournament coming up(about democracy promotion in the Middle East if that's relevant) and I've been looking for literature on this topic.
After a quick search on the SEP, IEP, google scholar, and this sub, I didn't come up with anything.
If you can just point me to some works related to the question for further reading I can go from there. | 15 | The name of the idea that states have a duty to protect more than just their citizens is known as the "responsibility to protect." A good place to start is Gareth Evans's book *The Responsibility to Protect* and *Responsibility to Protect*, edited by Cooper and Kohler. | 10 |
[Dead Space] Why do the Necromorphs attack Isaac? | I just finished the first Dead Space and I have to say that I do not understand a lot of things, for example how Nicole could interact with consoles if she was just a hallucination. Also how Isaac was so stupid to think it was the real one. And, If she could control the consoles etc, why didn't she bring the Marker back to the planet herself?
But most important: The Necromorphs are all controlled by the Hive Mind. And as I understand it, Nicole was the Marker and Nicole tried to bring the Marker back to the Hive Mind, where it belonged. To make the Marker and the Hive Mind whole again. But why would the Hive Mind then attack Isaac? He did everything the Marker and the Hive Mind wanted? And why did the Hive Mind seemingly attack Nicole?
If the Hive Mind doesn't want the Marker to come back why the whole Making-whole-again thing?
I just cannot wrap my head around that. Could someone please explain this to me? | 34 | As for the consoles, its possible it was just another crew member that Issac was hallucinating as Nicole. Or it was time to an automatic cycle once someone used the trolley.
The ultimate goal of the Markers is to achieve convergence. That is, to surround themselves with so many Necromorphs (modified human DNA) that it triggers a special event, where the mass of flesh is converted into a giant spehere (called Bretheren Moons) and the Marker is absorbed, creating a being that can travel the stars and continue its mission to to absorb all life in the galaxy. While the Ishimura had a lot of biomass on it, it wasn't enough to achieve convergence. To achieve that, it needed to go back to the Colony, which is had already managed to transform (hence the giant monster at the end).
As for why the Necromorphs attack Issac, its not really sure. Perhaps to expedite his mission by keeping him jumpy and on his toes, so he won't question the Marker's orders? Maybe the Markers don't have individual control over individual Necromorphs until they reach Bretheren Moon status. Attack "Nicole" is obviously just a ploy to throw off suspicion, as it needed Issac to trust her so it could manipulate him. | 16 |
[Star Wars] Why did Palpatine intentionally attract the rebels when the death star wasn't finished? | I understand he had a shield generator on the planet and didn't think he'd lose. But why not wait until the death star is 100% done? It looked about 75%, so it clearly wasn't taking the full 20 years like the first one.
Even if he was fairly certain of his victory on the planet surface, he could've waited a few more months and then basically nothing would stop him. | 75 | The thing is, he wasn't "fairly certain" of his victory. He was absolutely and totally convinced that the rebels would be crushed. Palpatine was incredibly powerful and his power made him arrogant. He *wanted* the rebels to attack before the Death Star was finished. He believed that if the rebels thought they had a chance, they would go all out. Which, of course, they did. Palpatine set everything up "perfectly," but he miscalculated every element of the actual engagement.
Remember, Palpatine was very clever, but he didn't single-handedly engineer the fall of the Jedi and the Republic. As a fascist lunatic he saw all the successes as his own, and all the failures as someone else's. By the time the Battle of Endor came along, Palpatine thought he was unbeatable. Then his apprentice pitched him into the reactor. | 149 |
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