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ELI5: How do touchscreens "know" when skin is touching them, and/or how do they know it's just a conductive glove?
| 19 |
Touch screens typically detect capacitance. A metal glove will have way more capacitance than your finger, and so the screen knows that something is not right. Capacitance is basically an object's ability to hold electric charge. Large, conductive things have the best capacitance. If you picture the big dome on top of a van de graaf generator, that's meant to have a lot of capacitance. Our bodies have a sort of mid-tier capacitance.
| 21 |
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[Doctor Who: Nightmare In Silver] The Cyberman displays superhuman speed in one scene. Why never again?
| 43 |
So, there are three types of Cyberman:
- "original" Cybermen, from Earth's twin planet Mondas
- Earth Cybermen, from a parallel Earth, created by Cybus Industries
- the Cybermen from the amusement park, who are a hybrid of the two.
Since these Cybermen are a combination of two different incarnations of Cybermen, they possess the knowledge base of both. Seems they came up with a speed enhancer.
| 38 |
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ELI5: If I have an electrical circuit, run a current through it, and then suddenly interrupt the circuit, what happens to the electricity still within the circuit?
| 77 |
Imagine a channel of water. On one end you pump in water, on the other end you suck water away. Imagine that you suddenly stop doing both. The water briefly builds up due to leftover inertia and then it stops moving.
Same thing in a circuit. The electrons are slowly moving through your circuit. If you interrupt it the electrons stop moving. Electricity is the movement of the electrons in one direction, not the electrons themselves.
The brief buildup also has an equivalent in electricity, inductance in electrical circuits is equivalent to inertia in water flows. So if you take a big coil (lots of inductance) and you suddenly interrupt a current flowing through it you get a pretty damn big spark. That's how spark plugs in your car work.
| 63 |
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ELI5: What is Overdrive? Is it safe to take a vehicle OUT of overdrive to travel up an uphill road?
| 176 |
Overdrive is any gear ratio higher than 1:1. There isn't anything special about it aside from this. Some sports cars even have multiple overdrive gears. For instance, in the Dodge Viper's 6 speed transmission, both 5th and 6th gear are overdrive gears.
In first gear, your gear ratio might be 4:1, for instance. The engine spins 4 times, but the driveshaft only spins once. You get 1/4th as much speed but 4 times as much torque. Great for starting out, or if you have to move something heavy.
Overdrive is exactly the opposite. Overdrive might be as much as 1:2. This means the engine spins once and the driveshaft spins twice. Speed is doubled and torque is halved.
Why does overdrive exist? For fuel efficiency purposes, you want your engine running as slowly as possible at as high a throttle setting as possible. Much of the friction inside an engine is skin friction, which increases with the square of the velocity. This means that running your engine twice as fast gives you something like 4 times as much friction, which means you have to burn more fuel to generate the same amount of power. Also, you have pumping losses - running your engine at a low throttle setting creates a vacuum in the intake manifold which the engine must work to overcome. Again, more work being done inside the engine means more fuel spent to get the same amount of power at the driveshaft.
| 76 |
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ELI5: What's going on psychologically when you have a favorite color (or enjoy/like certain colors over others)
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I hope this isn't a silly question but as an example, my whole life I've been obsessed (not literally) with the color blue. It makes me feel at ease seeing it and it will often influence my decision making if the color blue is involved (like if i see a blue car even if i wouldn't like the car itself if it was white or any other color, I'll like the car because it's blue if its blue). I see blue before other colors when i look at things and i also quite dislike the colors red and green. Is there any psychological science/reasoning i guess behind finding certain colors attractive over others and even having decisions and/or emotions influenced by them?
| 368 |
Roughly: when growing up, your mind makes connections quickly. This can be good "fire = hot," nuetral "blue thing was good = all blue things are good," or even bad "past abuser = everyone abusers." Your question shows that you had/have a very flexible brain.
| 110 |
CMV: The term "Transsexual" makes more sense than "Transgender" for most people
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So we're all on the same page, let's define some terms.
Sex - Biological. Male/female with some rare but notable exceptions. Not that I'll be noting them.
Gender - Psychological. How one identifies and feels.
Trans(prefix) - generally used to denote a change or difference
With these in mind, I believe it makes more sense for someone whose gender identity is different than their biological sex, and who potentially would like to change their biological sex to match their gender, to be called transsexual. It's their sex that they want to change (generally), not their gender.
I know there are people who would rather change their gender to match their sex, but I'm pretty confident that they are a small minority compared to the rest of the trans community.
CMV!
| 21 |
Since sex refers to biological traits, in order for someone to be transsexual they'd have to have undergone gender reassignment surgery to acquire the biological traits of the sex that they weren't born as. Transgender people are just people who psychologically identify as the other gender, not necessarily someone who has had the surgery or who will have the surgery. So while all transsexual people were likely transgender, not all transgender people will be transsexual so it's more all-encompassing to use "transgender".
| 18 |
[A nightmare on Elm street] If Freddie existed in the DC universe would he be given a yellow ring?
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To my knowledge the only requirements to be a yellow lantern is to inspire great fear, and to follow Sinestro. For the sake of the question wave the following sinestro part. Would he be given a yellow lantern ring and how would it work, because he exists in the physical and dream world. I assume he might as a Green lantern have what is a living math equation as a lantern
Edit I realized I spelled Freddy wrong
| 16 |
The sentient equation still exists in the physical world. Abstract equations can have physical prescence in the DC universe, look at the Ant Life Equation. But Freddy is just a being who exists in the collective unconsciousness, in the realm of Nightmares. He is far, far outside the scope that Yellow Lanterns can reach.
| 12 |
My University does not currently have a Philosophy Club so I am considering starting one myself. What prerequisites or challenges might exist?
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How much philosophy should I myself know? I feel a slight obligation to know a little bit about everything but since that is not entirely possible, and would just result in a large amount of very surface knowledge, maybe I should instead focus on better understanding the fundamentals of philosophy so that discussion and comprehension of ideas and concepts will be quicker. Thoughts?
Below is listed the philosophies/philosophical ideas I've read/studied and the extent of my knowledge of each.
- Fundamentals of Philosophy (epistemology, ontology etc.) - middling (but then again I don't know what I don't know)
- Platonism - limited
- Stoicism - moderate-to-extensive
- Skepticism - middling (mainly Descartes related)
- Reason and Logic - middling
Potentially useful authors I've read: Dante, Dostoyevsky, Jung.
If I were to start a club, it would be sometime around the start of Semester 2 (a few months away). Before that point, I hope to have read Kierkegaard, a handful of books from the Bible and maybe some Nietzsche.
My main question is this: should I postpone the creation of a philosophy club until I have accumulated more philosophical knowledge?
| 158 |
Your initiation of a philosophy club shouldn't depend at all on how much philosophy you've read. If you feel like you don't know enough to start a club, there's a very high chance that that's "just" impostor syndrome. Your greatest challenge in starting a club will be attracting people and retaining them. If there's some philosophical text that you haven't read but think you should, then read that with the club!
| 129 |
ELI5 Why does combustion engine power taper off at a certain point while the crankshaft continues to speed up?
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Why wouldn't a faster engine speed give more power?
| 21 |
Power = torque x RPM, so if RPM is going up but power is dropping you know that torque must be dropping (more than RPM increasing).
So your question boils down to "why does torque drop off at higher RPM?".
And that's because two things are working against you as RPM gets high...time available to burn fuel (to make pressure to make torque) is dropping, and loses (energy you spend to make the engine work) are going up.
Even if the engine was taking in the same charge of air & fuel per stroke (it's not), the faster it goes the less time there is to burn the fuel. As you get really fast, you don't get peak burn until relatively late in the power stroke and so your maximum pressure and maximum torque falls off.
And as you go faster, you need to move air through the system faster. You get more pressure drop in the intake, so less air & fuel enter the cylinder per stroke, and you do more work to push the exhaust out, which steals torque from the crankshaft. And the friction in the bearings and valve train and everything else is continuously going up with RPM and starts to eat more an more into your total available power.
| 26 |
Does turning your heat on in your car while driving waste gas?
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If yes, is it an amount that actually makes a difference or is it a few cents every hour. I'm just curious since winter is here! and i have always heard people argue both ways
| 78 |
It is almost "free". Your engine normally has to rid itself of excess heat by transferring the heat to the environment. In the case of using the car heater, a fraction of that excess heat is funneled through the passenger compartment on its way out into the world.
There is a tiny bit of excess energy used when you turn on the heater, since you have to pump the coolant fluid through the heater core and run a blower fan to move the warm air into the passenger compartment and circulate it around. The difference in fuel consumption is trivial.
| 81 |
[Lord of the Rings/Back to the Future] Would sending the one ring to the future count as destroying it?
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Doc and Marty go back in time - way back, all the way to Middle Earth (as it was intended to be a distant past, let's just say, for the purposes of this thread, that's actually true in BTTF universe). Somehow Doc and Marty get the one ring and take it back to present day (or 1985 - it doesn't matter).
Would that count as destroying the ring? There'd be about 6,000 years where the ring did not exist. Would Sauron suddenly come back to life in present day (or 1985 - it really doesn't matter)? Would that then also bring back the elves and Gandalf?
| 56 |
Taking the Ring to the future =\= keeping the ring from going back. The ring wishes to return to its master and tempts everyone into self destructing as it makes its way back. Introducing time travel only gives the ring, and thus Sauron (and through him Melkor), a tool that will irreversibly change the course of history. Marty was bad enough *without* a ring, he destroyed his life. Could you imagine what the ring would do to him? What about Doc who has some of the grandest ambitions?
| 50 |
CMV: Forbes was completely wrong for this article.
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Article: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/danabrownlee/2020/06/01/dear-white-people-here-are-10-actions-you-can-take-to-promote-racial-justice-in-the-workplace/?sh=7784c4bd4a92](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danabrownlee/2020/06/01/dear-white-people-here-are-10-actions-you-can-take-to-promote-racial-justice-in-the-workplace/?sh=7784c4bd4a92)
Let's start by them saying, "It was just a peek into the reality with which we're all too familiar." (Saying how George Floyd and other victims are something familiar to everyone) when this is not true at all! People did not know how terrible police brutality was or how much racism there is in this world.
There first thing they ask is to get to know people of color. EVERYTHING is wrong with this; it's equivalent to saying I have black friends after someone calls you racist. They say things like, "While there are exceptions, we tend to live and play in pretty segregated realities." "If you carpool, look for someone of color to share the ride." As a black person in the united states of America and Minnesota, this makes me feel **disgusted**.
They make black people sound like mystical creatures who love some white people to talk to and are hard to find. "Find a young person of color in your organization who is doing great things and take them under your wing. Even better - encourage your peers in senior ranks to do the same." They say young purposely because they are less likely to see racist things are aggressors are trying to do secretly. For example, this statement, why in the f0ck would black people want whites to take them under their wing like little pets and do this only because they want to look diverse they don't feel compaction just want to LOOK like they do.
Before you ask, yes I know, the article was written by a black person, but she is either crazy or most likely got it written for her because they know if a white person wrote it, it would be more of a problem and if your not black and would like to speak on this make sure you know what your talking about
| 51 |
I won't argue with you about your specific points, but is the article *completely* wrong? Is it bad for white people to challenge their own stereotypical beliefs about race or to advocate to get people of color into leadership positions when they have the power to do so?
| 20 |
USA currently represents 35% of Monkeypox cases in the world. While having 4% of the population. How is that possible?
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Now I realize the US usually has a disproportionate percentage of viral outbreaks like with Covid but 35% seems unbelievable.
Is Europe severely under testing currently? How else would you explain this disparity?
| 7,989 |
Not many good answers so far.
Why does US have 35% of cases (Vs 5% global pop) and is Europe undertesting?
- A quick skim suggests that as of mid-August 2022, USA has about 14,000 confirmed cases and Europe about 16,000. Total US population is about 330M and EU about 450M. **Therefore the difference in per capita monkeypox cases in US/EU is not large**. It is that these two areas have most of the recorded cases.
- Moving away from statistics and into operational details: we know the US testing regime has not been very good for the standard US reasons of the disseminated health care system with weak federal control and sproadic public health funding at the local level. So it is highly unlikely that the US is testing significantly better than other OECD nations.
- It is true that the USA and Europe have recorded disproportionate monkeypox cases compared to their population vs rest of world. This might be due to higher traffic with the source region, or that MSM social networks are relatively larger and stronger in US/EU and that is the primary spreading method right now, or it might be better testing, or a combination of all of the above.
Overall we don't know for certain why US/EU have most of the cases right now (or even if that's superficial observation is true), but we have a few guesses.
| 1,948 |
[The killing Joke] Why do the freaks even help Joker?
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This is possibly the weirdest question for me to make, especially as I know comic book villains always will have goons for one reason or another, but I always interpreted them as thieves looking for cash.
But why do the freaks help Joker torment Commisioner Gordon? They don't even fight Batman as they are too afraid of him, they simply torment Gordon, dance with Joker a bit and then run away. I don't even think the Joker pays them.
Dunno, what do you think? All I know is that the smaller ones are creepy as hell.
| 16 |
They're outcasts, despised and mistreated by society. Some people, when exposed to that kind of treatment, become bitter and hateful. So when someone like the Joker comes along, offering them a chance at revenge on the "normal" folk, they follow him.
Many more wouldn't, of course. But clearly he found enough.
| 26 |
[DC] What's the relationship between Maxie Zeus and Actual Zeus?
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So Maxie Zeus's thing is that he thinks he's the Greek God Zeus. Not sure how that's supervillian material but here we are.
Also, in the DC universe, the Greek God Zeus is a demonstrably real person who shows up on the news at least once every few years. One of the world's leading superheroes regularly hangs out with him. You can go knock on his door.
Has this come up? I could see Zeus not caring, but what does Maxie think of the actual, demonstrably real Zeus? Has Batman ever pointed out he can literally call in a favor with Wonder Woman and have Zeus show up here and shake his hand? *Has* he ever called in a favor with Wonder Woman and had Zeus show up and shake Maxie's hand?
It just feels like someone should have mentioned it, you know.
| 31 |
Actual Zeus has as much regard for Maxie as the average human does for any given ant in an anthill. If this were still the "good old days" Max would catch a lightning bolt for his hubris, but Zeus has chilled a bit.
As far as Maxie, if crazy people responded constructively to logic and reason *we wouldn't call them crazy*. If confronted with the "Real Zeus", Max would likely engage in some truly astounding leaps of "reasoning" to "prove" that the person perform him (if it is a person at all) isn't Zeus. He could be an alien, or have lightning powers from a kite accident, or be a very advanced Android, etc.
| 31 |
[Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West] How does no one get frostbite?
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I understand why Aloy doesn't get it because we choose what she wears, but tribes like the Tenakth Sky Clan stand out in the snow with next to nothing on. Have they just adapted to the cold?
| 118 |
A lot of these groups are also utilizing the robot parts and their clothing, it is likely they have heating abilities we used into their gear. On some mountains, such as some of the Rockies, the sun bearing down makes it warm enough that you can ski in minimal clothing, but it is high enough and there is enough cold in the ground that the ice does not melt. As for why exposed skin, style is always important, regardless of the society.
| 84 |
ELI5: Why can't I put metal in my microwave, even though my microwave is made of metal?
| 356 |
First, it should be noted that it is not unsafe to put all metals in the microwave. Indeed, you often put metals in the microwave anytime you put a hot pocket in the little pouch and place it in the microwave. The pouch has a thin layer of aluminum lining the inside that is designed to absorb the microwaves and heat up a bit so as to brown the outside of the hot pocket. On top of that, the inside walls of your microwave oven are made of metal.
This forms something called a Faraday Cage which traps the microwaves inside the box, so that they cook the food and not things around the microwave oven, like you. If you look closely, you’ll also see that the window you look at the food through has metal mesh lining it.
The holes in this mesh are smaller than the wavelengths of the electromagnetic radiation your microwave is producing. This makes it so the waves can’t pass through the holes. Visible light, however, is comprised of much smaller wavelengths, so that form of radiated energy passed through the holes just fine, allowing you to see inside your microwave while it’s running without getting cooked yourself. So if the inside of your microwave is lined with metal and certain food products, such as hot pockets and pot-pies, have containers that contain metal, why does your microwave manual say not to put metal in the microwave? First, let’s talk a little about how a microwave oven actually works.
At its core, a microwave oven is a pretty simple device. It’s basically just a magnetron hooked up to a high voltage source. This magnetron directs microwaves into a metal box. These generated microwaves then bounce around inside the microwave until they are absorbed via dielectric loss in various molecules resulting in the molecules heating up (more on how this works in the Bonus Factoids section). Matter that work well here are things such as water, ceramics, certain polymers, etc. These all end up converting microwave energy into heat quite effectively. Metals, on the other hand, are great conductors of electricity, being packed with electrons that can move freely. Depending on the shape/type/thickness/distribution/etc. of metal, you may observe some heating of the metal itself in the microwave or none at all.
You may also observe some arcing of electricity or none at all. In any event, when these microwaves hit the metal, free electrons on the surface of the metal end up moving from side to side very rapidly. This, in turn, prevents the electric wave from entering the metal; thus, the waves end up being reflected instead. However, there is also the potential that this ends up creating a sufficient charge density that the electrical potential in the metal object exceeds the dielectric breakdown of air. When this happens, it will result in arcing inside your microwave, from that metal to another electrical conductor with lower potential (often the wall of the microwave). In extreme cases, these electrical sparks can end up damaging the wall by burning small holes in the metal wall. It can also end up burning out the magnetron in your microwave oven or, in modern microwaves, can provide a surge that ends up damaging sensitive microelectronics, possibly killing your microwave or making it unsafe to use, in the case of a hole in the inner metal wall in your microwave.
Another way it can kill the magnetron of your microwave is when enough of the generated microwaves don’t get absorbed, such as if the food is wrapped in aluminum foil or mostly enclosed in a metal container. This can create a lot of energy not getting absorbed, with nowhere to go but eventually back to the magnetron, which can eventually damage the magnetron. Once again, killing your microwave oven. On a more mundane level, something like a spoon or a metal plate or the like, positioned correctly, will simply make your food potentially not cook normally. On that note, it is once again, actually acceptable to put metal in a microwave under the proper conditions. Some microwaves even have metal grates inside for setting food on, such as is often the case with certain convection ovens.
There are also certain types of metal pots and pans that are microwave safe. These all, however, are carefully designed to not cause any problems in your microwave oven. In general, putting metal in the microwave is unsafe, not because you are at risk of bodily harm or the like (though in extreme cases a fire might be started in your microwave), but, more to the point, primarily because it has the potential of damaging your microwave in the ways listed above.
-Todayifoundout.com article
| 96 |
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[Lord of the Rings] What is the weakest magical weapon that could shatter The One Ring in a single strike
| 43 |
Within in Middle-earth? None.
We're told the Ring cannot be destroyed by any Smith-craft less than Sauron's. It would take the work of Aule, the Vala of Smithing, to make something stronger. Perhaps, Feanor could make something, as the Silmarils are even more durable than the Ring. But neither of them are people anyone in Middle-earth has access to.
| 88 |
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If I took a picture of the night sky and told you the time I took the picture, how accurately could you guess my location?
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Also, how would you do it, and what affects the accuracy of the guess?
edit: Thanks for all the replies! After reading through the comments, I'd like to amend my question to exclude the horizon in the picture. This would be a picture, or pictures of the night sky without the horizon.
| 1,188 |
Given a view of the north or south horizon, it would be possible to deduce latitude by comparing the angular measurement between 2 stars (known) and between them and the ground.
A picture including the east or west could then show a star on the horizon. If you gave us the time [and date] in GMT, somebody could deduce the longitude by comparing to the charts for that star.
What would affect accuracy is mostly the horizon, if it is higher or lower than we are assuming, also, the lens shape could distort angular measurements.
We might be off by a few degrees in measurement in the sky, which for all practical purposes means off by a few degrees latitude and longitude when giving your location.
| 532 |
ELI5 How do sleep tracking apps work
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I have a sleep tracking app on my phone. How does it work, and how accurate is its measurement of deep and REM sleep?
I have seen previous eli5 on this but none I saw explained the underlying mechanism, what the difference is between deep and REM sleep and how it's detected etc.
| 184 |
Ever watch someone or a dog dream? They are all twitchy. The phone picks that up. Or you shift positions. You move if you are in light sleep and it tracks how much you move. That way you can tget a feel for if you are twitchy or tossy turny. It counts the peaks and determines how many sleep cycles you had. They also record snoring so you can see if breathing trouble is hindering your sleep.
| 46 |
[Avatar(tvshow)] Why can't benders instakill?
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What's stopping a water bender from freezing the water in somones body? or a firebender setting fire to an opponents heart? or airbenders pulling the air out of the opponents lungs.
I can't think of a way for earthbenders to 1hit somone though.
| 22 |
They can.
We've seen Waterbenders trap people in ice and blood bend. We've seen that Earthbenders are capable of crushing men with boulders. Firebenders can easily kill someone (not by setting fire to their heart, mind, but breathing fire into their lungs? Totally workable.) As for the Airbenders?
Remember that elderly old monk Aang hung out with?
He killed a room full of firebenders hopped up on Sozin's comet before they brought him down.
The reason most people don't use their bending for instant killing is because benders tend to be slightly resistant to the elements. Also, the same reason we don't just up and shoot someone in the head whenever we fight with them. It's got to do with both difficulty AND the morals/ethics of the times.
| 46 |
How does the drug Krokodil rot human flesh?
| 784 |
The tissue damage and necrosis are not from the drug-part of Krokidil (desomorphine) but rather because it is usually purified crudely and incompletely from codiene, iodine, and red phosphorous. Significant amounts of iodine, red phosphourous, and additional corrosive by-products are also part of what is inject, and it is these that cause the damage.
| 494 |
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[Marvel Comics] How could Quicksilver kill The Hulk in 616?
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During an early mission against Abu Mussan, Special Ops Supreme Commander Phil Coulson claims that "Quicksilver could kill The Hulk if he wanted to." How do you suppose this is possible?
| 19 |
The Hulk is absurdly strong, but he isn't invincible, and is no faster than a mundane human with equal strength and mass. He also has a healing factor, but this just means he recovers from injuries faster than mundane humans, not that he's invincible or that he heals instantaneously; indeed, his healing factor isn't as powerful as that of Deadpool or even Wolverine.
Quicksilver could reasonably use his super speed to avoid the Hulk's attacks and stab him a bunch of times, probably with an adamantium blade. Enough knife wounds will kill even the Hulks.
So basically death of a thousand cuts.
| 25 |
ELI5: Why do both "terrible" and "horrible" mean something bad, but "terrific" and "horrific" have two completely different meanings?
| 67 |
Originally, "terrific" meant something bad--it has the same Latin root as "terrible." Only in the late 19th century did it start to become colloquially used as a good word--the same way that something "awesome" is nowadays not awe-inspiring, but very good, or that being "sick" is a good thing to be.
| 26 |
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[Danger 5] Uniforms while undercover?
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I have only watched the pilot, but I'm confused how a documentary that places such an emphasis on historical accuracy (Joseph Goebbels' plot to capture all the world's monuments to build a statue of Hitler, the talking robot dogs used by the Allied spy agencies, the rocket engines hidden in the Statue of Liberty, etc.) could make such a basic mistake about the Danger 5 uniforms. Specifically, I don't understand why the heroes would wear their distinctive blue uniforms and insignia while meeting up with resistance fighters inside Nazi held territory at the height of WWII. This seems to be a huge risk taken by such a capable top secret spy agency.
Perhaps it is explained in later documentaries, but I was hoping someone might explain this glaring oversight in an otherwise meticulously researched piece of work.
| 20 |
They do wear disguises for some missions. But, when you see them not, it's probably because
1) It's a means for underground cohorts and resistance fighters to recognize them. Seeing them in uniform is easier to do than a series of secret knocks and passwords, and allows you to get straight to the ass kicking/partying.
2)With how many times they've foiled Hitlers schemes, most of the Nazi high command would be able to pick them out. In uniform or out. Especially Claire, though Ilsa is still hotter.
3) **Kill Hitler**
| 10 |
You're in a stopped car with the windows closed, a horsefly is 'hovering'; Upon accelerating the car, does the fly remain in the same position in space, or does it hit the rear window?
| 21 |
A fly's motion is based on the objects it is in contact with, as well as the gravitational pull of the Earth. A fly would be hovering because the force exerted upwards by the air on the fly's wings is balanced out by the gravitational pull of the earth. Now, if the car were to accelerate, it would bring all of the air with it. Some of the air would be compressed towards the back of the car, which would cause the fly to go backwards a bit, but regardless, the fly should be able to hover there.
You can test this with a helium-filled balloon. Be aware of the tension force from the string (you cannot tie it down).
| 11 |
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[Star trek]does Amanda Grayson (spock's mother) have to wait 7 years at a time to get laid?
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are Vulcan men capable of sex when it's not Pon farr?
| 73 |
Vulcan men can have sex when it's not Pon Farr. They may make the logical decision that having a child will be beneficial for their society and their relationship and work towards having one. And when married to a non-Vulcan, the Vulcan may make the logical decision to engage in an act that brings pleasure to their spouse to maintain the positive benefits of their relationship.
It's important to remember that Vulcans do have emotions, they are just socially trained to never look like they are acting on them.
| 114 |
CMV: Every lawyer should serve at least 2 years as a public defender
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Similarly to how fresh medical school grads don't go straight into being a doctor, they become a resident first. They help treat real people in hospitals and are extra medical personnel instead of the hospital relying on only MDs.
We need a similar system for lawyers. After you graduate law school and pass the bar, you serve at least 2 years as a public defender. Of course, they should be paid a decent salary just as medical residents are.
Ultimately, the goal of this is to have more public defenders and BETTER public defenders. Currently, public defenders are overworked and tend to be people who do this out of passion or couldn't get the top tier law jobs. Under my proposed system, this would result in lower case loads, more attention to the cases, and all lawyers from the top of the class to the bottom would be working. Of course, if a lawyer is incompetent, they would be fire, just as a an incompetent medical resident would.
Too many people, even innocent ones, end up in major debt fighting for lives when their public defender is shitty. We cannot have a fair and working legal system when one side (the state) has adequate representation but the defendant does not.
I am open to changing this view because I understand it's a big order and no one likes being told where to work, but it's not the only job that has mandatory apprenticeships.
I look forward to hearing your arguments! Thanks!
| 93 |
I think the challenge here is while all doctors who continue practicing medicine have something to learn from working in a hospital, even if they ultimately go into private office practice, many lawyers will not work in criminal law. How does two years as a public defender preparer somebody who will go into civil suits, contract law, estate law, bankruptcy law, and the like?
| 68 |
ELI5: why do people have a sort of 'stuttering inhalation' during and after a crying session?
| 91 |
Crying throws off your respiratory system, which throws off your oxygen levels in your body. In order to balance the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels the diaphragm has to work a little differently than it normally does (steady breaths) and gives you the mild hyperventilation.
| 37 |
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ELI5: how do lumens work? How much brighter is one 800 lumen bulb than two 400 lumen bulbs?
| 25 |
Lumens are like watts, but weighted to only include the light we can see; infrared and below is out, as is ultraviolet and above. So a bulb with twice as many lumens is twice as powerful, as far as we can see. The trick is that the human eye has roughly logarithmic sensitivity. If you saw a row of bulbs which were 100, 200, 400, 800 lumens, i.e., going up in brightness exponentially, you’d say their brightness was stepping up evenly. If you instead saw bulbs at 200, 400, 600, 800, you would think that there wasn’t much difference between the two brightest.
| 34 |
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CMV: Medical personnel should be required to change before leaving the hospital
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This obviously doesn't apply everywhere like radiology or pathology, but staff that have contact with patients should be required to change into other clothes before they leave the hospital (and maybe even take a shower).
This is especially relevant during the COVID-19, but still applies before and after.
Besides COVID, many doctors and nurses frequently come into contact with patients who have a cold or the flu, which can be carried on their clothes, especially in pediatrics and the ER.
It should be standard practice to issue new scrubs at the start of a shift and have them taken back to be laundered before leaving the hospital.
| 49 |
Virtually anyone leaving their home is exposed to similar levels of pathogens. If you walk into a crowded store or movie theater you're about as likely to exposed to infectious fomites as someone working in a hospital. Unlike laypeople however, medical providers observe routine hand hygiene and regularly wear protective equipment. Contrast that with any number of service workers or public servants. Teachers for example are exposed to tons of diseases by virtue of interacting with many community members (and also, children are gross as hell). Nonetheless, we don't observe strict sterile procedure when they leave the germ ridden cesspools that are your typical schools.
Beyond that, relatively few medical providers are routinely exposed to infectious diseases beyond or in greater frequency than what the lay population experiences in their day to day life. They interact with members of the public, but few of those people overall have an active infection that could easily be spread by fomites on clothing, badges, etc. Which is specifically what we're talking about - the small number of pathogens that spread on surfaces. Your average hospitalist spends most of their day managing chronic conditions, post-operative care, injuries, pregnancies, psych events, and many other non-transmissible conditions.
Even then, few infections merit hospital visits. Most are nonserious affairs managed without medical attention, and a small number end up in outpatient facilities. Only a vanishingly small number of those merit hospital visits, often because of individual factors rather ones that would be indicative of community risk. A vanishingly small number of patients have easily transmissable infectious diseases, but these are managed with additional PPE should those diseases pose any real public health risk. And again, you're as likely to see them out in public - flus are annual pandemics for which we take few if any precautions outside of medical offices.
Besides, what would we actually accomplish? How many infections would we prevent? How many are serious? The common cold will run through an average office, but we don't quarantine office workers. Most providers will drive home and change after a shift. Even if they go somewhere in between, a fomite on an article of clothing is highly unlikely to infect some other person. We don't routinely snatch random people's clothing and dry contact between inert surfaces isn't exactly a super effective way to transmit disease.
That question is important because what your suggesting isn't free - it would require sufficient changing facilities for all workers to change clothing at shift change. Shift changes generally can't be staggered because patients care has to be signed off between care teams during an overlap between shifts. It's a "all hands of deck" situation. Locker rooms are standard in hospitals, but they're a fraction of the capacity required for what you're suggesting. We're talking the entire locker capacity of a decent sized high school plus the physical room, benches, etc. needed for literally hundreds of people to change simultaneously. And you'd also have to police it, because people will try to get out of it, and hospital security at present isn't well equipped to keep people *in* the building.
| 49 |
ELI5: Why am I wide awake at night after being exhausted all day/evening?
| 407 |
Because when youre very tired for a long period of time, and all you want to do is sleep all day, youre brain goes caveman mode and creates hormones that keep your body/brain going, because your brain (not your conscience/selfaware part of your brain.) thinks you wont be able to get sleep for a long time so it basically gives you lots of hormones that keep you awake, just like a hunter 4,000 years ago would stay up for days surviving, at first he would be tired, but after a while his body/brain would give him a burst of hormones/energy to keep you up, so you don't fall asleep in the middle of fending of a bear/lion/wolf/buffalo/unicorn.
TL;RD: Youre body gives you lots of hormones/energy when you have been up for a long time, to keep you up and alert.
| 184 |
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I believe that meritocracy is a better system of government and solution production than democracy. CMV
|
One example: People who are scientifically illiterate should not get to decide education policy as we have seen in the creationism in schools debacle. A better education policy would be decided by those who are most qualified, not popular opinion.
People who are logical should be accorded responsibility in our society. Imagine a society in which logic skills were showcased like a badge. Everyone could see how well everyone else scored on tests of logic. People with a specific expertise would be accorded responsibility in a relevant discipline. Imagine a program like OK cupid that matched jobs with those who are most competitive as indicated by rigorous tests. Would this world not be more efficient and prosperous than the one we currently inhabit?
| 27 |
>People who are logical should be accorded responsibility in our society
Logical <> responsible
Your assumption that logic is the only factor determining someone's success or failure in a particular position is frankly... illogical.
A 'logical' person might conclude that they don't need to do their job when no one is watching them.
A person with a sense of duty, pride or ownership is the person who will make responsible decisions even if it doesn't help them or they don't get 'credit' for it. These are emotional based motivators.
>Imagine a program like OK cupid that matched jobs with those who are most competitive as indicated by rigorous tests. Would this world not be more efficient and prosperous than the one we currently inhabit?
No because rigorous tests are already used in disciplines where that criteria is appropriate. Most jobs value soft skills higher than technical skills because, often, it is easier to train people technical skills than train them 'soft' skills. Geniuses that can't/won't work with people or listen to their boss may add less value than someone of average intelligence who is easy to work with and consistently follows through on projects.
| 22 |
[Marvel / Captain Marvel] How did Captain Marvel get her powers in the movie?
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After watching the movie I wasn't quite sure how did she get her powers? They showed that blast of an engine core gave her the powers but I don't quite understand what was the core made of that transformed her that way.
I don't completely understand:
1. Assuming that core was utilizing the power of tesseract, the actual tesseract was not present in the engine core. Also, tesseract was a space stone that can open portals or be used to travel across space, How can she get powers to shoot photonic blasts from her hand?
2. Assuming that she got her powers from the teserract, that is still just one infinity stone. How can she be powerful enough to fight thanos who has 6 stones?
| 19 |
1. The Tesseract itself wasn't present in the engine but it did power the engine. One of the Space Stone's abilities is redistribution of energy, which is pretty much what Carol's power set is.
2. She's not going to solo Thanos. She's arguably the most powerful hero on the team (Thor and Scarlet Witch are also contenders), but it will take the whole team to defeat him with all six Infinity Stones.
| 47 |
[The Maxtrix] How much, if any, of human history is manufactured?
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With the upcoming Matrix Resurrections nearly upon us, I decided to go back and watch the original films for the first time in years. I actually enjoyed it way more than I thought I would, to the point where I actually think that the much derided sequels are actually quite good. I also went and watched The Animatrix and had a look at some of the video games for the first time, and I found those to be interesting too.
The one question that always stuck in my mind though was at what point in history does the Matrix simulation begin? I doubt that the machines would have had the dinosaurs, but would they have started all the way back in the stone age and just let it run to the present? Or is it the same hundred(ish) years playing on a loop? And if it is, did they have to invent the previous hundred thousand of years of history?
And if it did start way back when, how did humans get in and out before phones were invented? I know that there were previous versions of the Matrix, one that was paradise and one that was a nightmare world with vampires, but what about the others?
Maybe I just missed something that explains it, but I find the idea kind of interesting. I'd be interested in seeing a Matrix story set in like the old west or Victorian England or something, kind of like when DC did soviet Superman and steampunk Batman.
| 42 |
Chronology is fuzzy inside the Matrix. For the most recent “version” of the Matrix, it was always and will forever be a variation of the late 90’s. It’s a seamless loop the transition of which is glossed over for most people.
Most humans in the system don’t notice the passage of time the same way you wouldn’t feel it in a dream, so establishing a timeline for, say, the inception of phones is a non-issue because they’ve always existed in their lifespan.
| 40 |
[Star Trek] Why are androids fairly common in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants during the TOS era but almost unheard of during the TNG era?
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In Star Trek the Original Series Kirk and crew run into androids several times and while it's not the most common thing they run into it certainly doesn't shock or amaze them at all but then during the era of The Next Generation they say that Data and his fellow Soong-type androids are the only known androids in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. And one time when Voyager encountered a race of androids in the Delta Quadrant they were shocked and Belona Torres even told one of them that Data was the only other android that they knew of. What was the cause of the disapearance of androids in the Star Trek galaxy between the TOS and TNG era's?
| 17 |
Data is unique in that he's the only android with a positronic brain, which allows him to move beyond his programming, develop as a person, and claim the title of a true artificial intelligence.
All the other "androids" are terribly, incredibly flawed.
* Automated Personnel Units - these are the droids found by *Voyager*. At first blush, they appear to have some sort of cognitive reasoning. However, it's not too long before it's discovered that they were originally built for war, and never evolved beyond their basic programming.
* Exo III - Appear in "What are little girls made of?" Might be the closest thing to a Soong-type android, but were created by an advanced ancient race that subsequently died out. Before they went extinct, the race attempted to destroy all the droids out of fear that they would do the same.
* Flint-type - Only one known android built by Flint (an immortal being that took names throughout history). It couldn't handle strong emotions, and short-circuited when it felt overwhelmed. Flint regarded it as a failure, and never tried again.
* Ilia probe - created by V'Ger to interface with carbon-based units. Really, all V'Ger did was fill a carbon-based unit with nanoprobes and take over all functions, trapping Ilia in her own body (a la the Borg). Barely a droid, and the biology won over in the end.
* Mudd's androids - created by an advanced race from the Andromeda galaxy, they were so rigid in their logic that extended "random" behavior that was unpredictable and illogical incapacitated them.
* Sargon-type - created by Sargon to host the essence of "highly-evolved" beings of pure energy, they were more avatars than functional, self-aware droids. In the end, Sargon and his ilk were unable to coexist with beings in the material realm.
There are probably more, but those are the main contenders for the title of "android." Only Data and other Soong-type models are actually successful examples of artificial intelligence in a humanoid body.
| 31 |
[Marvel] I just sat on Antman when he was little. Is he dead?
| 15 |
No, because his strength is still the same. Sitting on Ant-Man when he's small is the same thing as if you were sitting on him, when he's normal-sized. It's certainly not comfortable for him, but it's not deadly either.
| 32 |
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eli5 How does paracetamol work?
| 364 |
We don’t know exactly yet.
Regarding other painkillers like Ibuprofen/Naproxene/Asprine/Metamizol (so called NSAID/NSAR), they all influence one of your bodies enzymes (as you requested an Eli5: A tiny chemical tool that will produce or modify something), called cyclooxigenase (COX). This enzyme produces substances that will cause fever, pain etc. because these symptoms are a warning sign to your body that something is wrong.
A really basic explanation lacking many things: NSARs will reduce the activity of COX and therefore will inhibit the production of substances that cause fever, pain etc..
Paracetamol however, is different. There are multiple theories, but the one that’s taught in medical school mostly is, that paracetamol modifies the way your brain will perceive pain.
eli5: Your brain will think about pain as less terrible and less alarming when it’s under the influence of paracetamol, either because the pain information is received less & later and/or the understand of „pain“ is changed.
Btw: Changing the perception of pain is the major effect of all opioids. They are several magnitudes more efficient then paracetamol but also far more dangerous.
| 297 |
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CMV: Dog shows centered around purebred dogs are inhumane and promote unhealthy breeding of dogs.
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I've recently been reading a little about higher profile dog shows like the Westminster Kennel Club show and others and I am starting to think that they really aren't all that good for dogs. However, first let me state that most of the sources I have seen through my limited google searches seem to have an agenda and aren't really unbiased. Most of the criticism that I have read, and at this point tend to agree with says that dog shows promote unhealthy breeding by not allowing for genetic variation as well as promoting the over breeding of some of the more popular species. When I was reading about these shows I also had the thought that the dogs really might not be happy. As silly as this sounds, it just seems like these dogs are being exploited and not being allowed to be socialized or act like normal dogs. Again I have no experience with dog shows, and I have only ever owned mutts so I could very well be dead wrong.
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| 662 |
Most mainstream kennel clubs (especially the English ones that host the dog shows you see on TV) heavily incentivize you buying a dog from a registered breeder that has agreed to hold themselves to a certain standard and not operate in the manner of a puppy mill.
Also the most mainstream ones allow mixed breeds to compete in events as well as purebreds, it's just that they're ineligible for winning in certain categories which apply specifically to purebreds.
In addition, the people that do want to register a purebred pup have to go through a ton of paperwork including providing certification numbers for the parents and as much historical info as they can going back farther than most people probably trace their own family trees.
Basically, the people that enter dogs in competitions aren't really the target market of shady puppy dealers because it's very unlikely shady puppy dealers would have such attention to detail and keep such meticulous records.
It could even be argued that the existence of larger dog shows incentivize more breeders to go legit because registration ensures that your name gets added to a list given out to anyone inquiring about the show or about safe ownership of a purebred or registered mixed breed. Puppy mill owners basically have Craigslist and that's it.
| 100 |
What Ancient Greek should one read before beginning Nietzsche?
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The title says it all. I would really like to read and fully understand Nietzsche's works, and it appears the consensus is that a background in the Ancient Greeks is necessary for that; so which ones should I read prior to attempting Nietzsche?
| 20 |
Plato, first and foremost. Nietzsche engages with Plato's works more than any other Greek philosopher. Then the Pre-Socratics, especially Heraclitus, who Nietzsche held in great esteem. After that, the Sophists.
Outside of philosophy, Thucydides. Nietzsche praises him for his unflinching realism. Also, some knowledge of Greek tragic theater.
And in general, just a knowledge of Greek culture and society would be beneficial.
You don't need to read all of this stuff first, but it's helpful. If you want a shortcut, just read Plato (and Heraclitus).
| 20 |
[Star Wars] How could Palpatine have executed his plans better?
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Palpatines plans during the Prequels went pretty well, but once we get to the OT, we have Luke Skywalker becoming a Jedi, the Death Stars blowing up and Vader turning on him. And again, in the Sequels
SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN ROTJ
Snoke (Who we know is Palpatines puppet) is killed, and his plans for Rey to take over collapse pretty fast because of her training as a Jedi and Ben Solo's betrayal.
What could be have done better to prevent any of that happening?
| 24 |
In Return of the Jedi, dont bother trying to recruit Luke. Also, do not make yourself vulnerable by going to the half built Death Star with a hole large enough for a freighter to fly through! If Vader recruits Luke, fine, if Luke resists again have Vader kill him. If Like turns Vader blow them both up while they are traveling on a Space ship.
| 26 |
Is the nominal value of all the currency in an economy equal to the monetary value of all the commodities in an economy.
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I’ve been reading some Marx and Adam Smith so I’ve been thinking about currency a lot and I think I came up with an answer to this in my head but I wanted to know if it’s valid or not.
A has book, B has chair, A sells book for $10 to B, A buys chair for $10 from B, the monetary value of the commodities is $20 but you only need $10 in circulation to facilitate the exchange.
So the nominal value of all the currency in an economy is half of the value of the commodities in an economy. Right?
Edit: Had a shower, and then it hit me, everything I’ve just said is utter rubbish, Im not sure what I was thinking when I wrote this 😂
| 78 |
Not quite so. Imagine you add a third commodity to your thought experiment: C with a banana (how much could it cost? $10?). If B then buys this banana after having sold their book, you still have only $10 dollars in cirulation and $30 dollars of commodities. This amount of transactions is what is called the velocity of money.
The quantity theory of money states: MV = PY (or PQ). In other words the money supply times the velocity equals the total price level times the total supply or production of commodities.
| 13 |
[MCU] How powerful/skillful is Shang-Chi?
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I don’t think I really understand how good this guy’s power set is. He has no super powers but is really good at fighting.
I imagine he’s under Hawkeye and Black Widow in the rankings. Hawkeye casually went around the world in Endgame and eliminated dozens and dozens of organized crime members easily. He fought powerful drones in Sokovia. Black Widow fought aliens in the avengers and her cardio barely took a hit. She was able to survive a fight against the Winter Soldier. How can Shang-chi compete against this? It doesn’t even look like he has good tech to use like Hawkeye or even Black Widow.
If you took Shang-Chi and dropped him in Civil War, would he be able to tip the scale in favour of Cap’s or Ironman’s team if he fought for either of them? I really don’t see him being able to go toe to toe with anyone in Civil War except for maybe Sharon Carter.
Is there more to this guy than just being really good at Kung fu? It’s not a knock on the character, I’m just having trouble seeing where he fits in.
| 34 |
He is considered probably the best martial artist on Marvel’s earth and has mastered virtually any hand-to-hand combat form you can name. Black Panther believes him to be better than Iron Fist. Pretty sure he also trained Spider Man how to be an effective martial artist- Spider Man, a guy with perfect reflexes and superhuman strength, took pointers from him. His day job is basically helping MI6 beat up criminal syndicates.
You know how Bruce Lee has that memetic God status among his disciples? Shang-Chi is basically that status made flesh.
| 41 |
ELI5: What are these lines on satellite imagery of earth's oceans?
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https://imgur.com/gallery/YGwQSk8
Someone explained to me that these may be areas where higher resolution sonar imaging is available as opposed to the surrounding areas of which would be low resolution.
Could someone explain in more detail/lay man's terms?
Also, if the above explanation is along the right lines (pun unintended) are such images readily available to the public?
| 266 |
What you see on Google Maps is not always satellite images. If you zoom in on land, you mainly the images taken by aircraft, and only if you zoom out far enough do you get satellite images -- for land and freshwater lakes.
For the seas and oceans, it's not images at all, but a 3D rendering showing how deep the sea is.
To do so, they use depth measurements taken with echo sounding: a ship sends a sound wave down and measures how long it takes to hear the echo coming back from the ground.
Google seems to mainly use data from surveys mapping out the depth along a rather loosely spaced grid of points of the ocean, as such data has been used for making nautical maps since long.
Along the lines you see, they have finer data: obviously a ship was going slowly along the line and mapping the depth directly below and a bit to the sides with much higher precision than usual.
| 478 |
ELI5 Why is it that people who are in shape tend to sweat more easily?
| 118 |
Sweating is a mechanism used to maintain homeostasis by cooling down your blood when youre hot. So a healthier person will have a better adapted and more active "cooling system". Kinda as if your sweat glands were muscles and they had muscle memory. They recognise when you are working hard quicker and know how to produce more sweat. Same goes for vasodilation, the more you work out, the easier and faster you can feel " the pump" from peripheral vasodilation in skeletal muscle.
| 59 |
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Eli5 How does wind work?
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As in the weather not the gas. Thank you!
| 91 |
In general terms different materials behave differently when the sun heats them up. Some reflects away most of the light, some absorb the light and release it as heat into the air and some slowly heats up and releases the heat to the air even long after the sun have gone down. This means that the air on the surface of the Earth gets heated unevenly. And when the air gets heated up it becomes less dense and floats up. This creates a low pressure region where surounding air that is cooler and therefore less dense will get pushed into to replace the hot air. And this movement of air from cold high pressure regions to hot low pressure regions is what causes the winds. Of course the real world is a lot more chaotic and there are lots of effects both on local and global levels which dominate the weather. But this is the basic principle.
| 106 |
CMV: Allowing newborns with life crippling disability to live is immoral and inconsiderate of their future.
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So, when i was born it was known almost immediately that I would be plagued with medical issues my entire life. I don't wish to get into detail but I still consider myself a lucky case, able to function passibly on both a mental and physical level. While it is has been extremely difficult for me to work through the issues I've faced I have managed to do so.
However, there is much worse out there. While I have no hatred for the mentally or physically disabled, I don't believe we should be willingly letting them grow into adults in our society.
For instance, lets say a child is born, with no functioning limbs. This person is almost guaranteed to never hold a job, live independantly, and debatably live a fufilling life. There could be risks of their unfortunate condition being passed on to their offspring if they have any children of their own. A parent choosing to raise this child is willingly inflicting a lifetime of suffering upon their own child, simply because they wanted to be a parent.
However I don't think the same way when it comes to late onset medical issues of the same degree. A child old enough to think somewhat independantly should still have a chance at a successful life if they managed to get into an accident that would inflict the same loss of limbs upon them. At that point they are already a free thinking being and obviously ending a sapient person's life without their input is morally wrong. Yet at the same time, the child born with this condition will at some point grow to become free thinking themself, but I still think letting them get to that point in the first place is entirely self-centered of the parents.
edit: copying my response to u/togtogtog as they have shifted my perspective:
morally choosing someone's life or death without consent neither side could really be seen as the correct one without knowledge of how things would turn out in the end. My view was intended to save the affected from the struggles i had faced and if some with similar or worse difficulty did not face it a blanket decision cannot be pre-determined. I still don't think anyone should have to ever deal with that, but openly available assisted suicide seems to me now to be the better choice. i suppose my experience is different from others as my personal issues only have gotten worse with age, which was known from the start but ignored. i had little accomodation for my differences and that is likely a large contribution to the depression i associated with my disabilities, looking back.
So really I guess we just need to pave the world to better accommodate the differently abled, though i still hold my ground that someone with a severe genetic disability should not reproduce as it is a willful choice to produce another person who is very likely to have unnecessary difficulty in life.
| 208 |
To you, what is the practical difference between an adult who is born without limbs and an adult who lost their limbs as a child?
Also, would you be in favor of killing an infant who has an accident that leaves it crippled?
| 42 |
Do Kepler's laws still hold in general relativity?
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Newton's inverse square law was shown to be not quite accurate in describing planetary motion. Do some or all of Kepler's three laws of planetary motion hold up against general relativity?
| 236 |
In General Relativity, Kepler's Laws are demoted to being very accurate approximations. We still use them and use them, but we know that they're not the whole story.
However, even in Newtonian mechanics, Kepler's Laws are still technically an approximation. Kepler's Laws assume that all of the mass of the system is in a single central object. In reality, the orbit of the Earth is perturbed by other planets - Jupiter in particular. Ignoring these other objects still gives you a pretty good answer, but it is an approximation, and gives a small error.
| 81 |
CMV: Terror footage is in the same category of content as child pornography, and thus restricting its distribution is justified.
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In r/news and r/worldnews the majority opinion seems to be that the New Zealand government's classification of the terror video as objectionable material, and thus a crime to distribute it, is a bad thing and an infringement of free speech.
However, free speech has limits, notably child pornography, and most people don't have an objection to child pornography being illegal.
I think they're similar :
- people were hurt in its creation
- the degree of hurt is severe
- the creator created the video with the intention of others witnessing the crime
- the demand for that kind of content incentives the supply of it
- the consumption of the material is often for entertainment
What's the fundamental difference that has people thinking that terror videos are OK?
| 29 |
>What's the fundamental difference that has people thinking that terror videos are OK?
Societal norms. Violence for the most part does not have the same stigma that porn and sexuality does. Killing someone for any reason is usually seen as more acceptable than showing people having sex. The ban on the film is also super knee jerk and is only something people are considering because it was a terrorist attack. There are many videos out there of combat footage that show stuff just as bad, or worse, that are totally legal. To say that this video in specific is too much, but the millions of other ones out there are fine is not only cherry picking, but it also makes this one specific video more sought after due to the taboo associated with it.
| 12 |
ELI5: How come during the 1950's, they were called 'Atomic' bombs, but were then called 'Nuclear' at the start of the Cold War?
| 75 |
They're all colloquial.
"Atomic bomb" has historically referred to gun-type and implosion-type fission weapons first developed by the allies in the mid 1940s.
In 1952, the United States introduced a new weapon which added a fusion reaction to the fission reaction in order to greatly improve energy output. These new weapons were of a fission-fusion-fission design and are properly called thermonuclear weapons. Colloquially these are called hydrogen bombs or H-bombs. Virtually all weapons deployed by the five major nuclear powers are thermonuclear weapons.
"Nuclear bomb" is an umbrella term used to refer to all weapons that rely on fission reactions, fusion reactions, or some combination thereof in order to release energy. It recognises to some extent the fact that the public was greatly aware of the existence of these weapons but their details were shrouded in secrecy. Whereas a great deal of information about nuclear weapons can be found on the internet today, this was not the case during the cold war. It's also a politically convenient term because it is understood by everyone and has serious connotations. Politicians used (and often continue to use) it with wild abandon to spread FUD; Joe blow doesn't care what the CEP of a Russian MIRV is nor does he care about the yield of a W88. However, Joe very much cares that one does not land on his head and to do that he needs to be a good patriotic American rather than a commie bastard!
| 42 |
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eli5: How do fish know where to stay in the ocean? Or all species of fish all together in one big ocean? (e.g do hammerhead sharks and great white sharks stay away from each other or are all of them together and know no boundaries to their “territory”?)
| 114 |
Just like land animals, ocean animals live where their food lives, where temperature allows, at the right depth, and where their migration/breeding areas are.
Whales and great white sharks are both known to cover absolutely huge territories. Whales migrate thousands of miles up and down the oceans, and great whites often wander without a particular home.
Small animals, like fish in a coral reef, don't travel very far. They have what they need nearby and they encounter lots of other fish who live the same way they do.
Depth is also important. Ocean animals can't go into water that's too deep or too shallow than the habitat they evolved in.
| 77 |
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[40k] What were the different primarchs relationships with each other, the emperor, and Malcodor or other humans?
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Everyone more or less knows how guys like Horus felt about other people, but what about some of the lesser know primarchs? Did Mortarion or The Night Lord have any friends? Were the Salamanders pals with everyone or did they have grudges and beefs like the Space Wolves/Dark Angles? I heard somewhere that The Kahn and Magnus liked each other and that for some reason Angron and Lorgar hung around each other. Any thing in the fluff for stuff like this? Not even limited to stuff between primarchs, like how Alpharius or Angron felt about the Emperor. Maybe even lesser characters, like how since Rogal Dorne hung around Earth so much, did he develop any kind of relationship with guys like Malcador? Just wondering how the primarchs felt about each other and other characters.
| 30 |
>Did Mortarion or The Night Lord have any friends?
Mortarion and Konrad Curze were friends with eachother, and Mortarion was friends with Horus too. Mortarion hated everyone except Horus and Curze because no one had an upbringing as bad as him, he figured. Kinda weird Mortarion had a liking for Curze because he was a weak psyker.
>Were the Salamanders pals with everyone or did they have grudges and beefs like the Space Wolves/Dark Angles?
Salamanders have a grudge against all of the Traitor Legions, which isn't unexpected, but they were hit hard by the Dropsite Massacre. They went after Fulgrim and Perturabo's forces, as well as Alpha Legion outposts.
>I heard somewhere that The Kahn and Magnus liked each other and that for some reason Angron and Lorgar hung around each other.
Jaghatai had a friendship with Magnus, as well as Sanguinius, although he was afraid Magnus was delving too deep into warp magic. His friendship with Magnus is boosted by him and Magnus forming the Librarius together.
Angron and Lorgar were... kind of friends. He saved Lorgar from Guilliman, from a Warhound Titan stomping on him by taking *two* shots from the main weapon of it and throwing the foot of the Titan off of Lorgar. Lorgar paid him back by helping him ascend to Daemon Princehood, but even Lorgar, his bestest buddy in the whole wide galaxy (saying a lot, because Angron was a DICK) felt doubtful about it after Angron ascended.
| 14 |
[Harry Potter] Why does a school textbook give information on how to create Basilisks
|
*Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them* states, in no uncertain terms, that the breeding of Basilisks is illegal, and for good reason. Since they are uncontrollable except by Parselmouths, they are as dangerous to most Dark wizards as to anyone else. However, the book also provides very detailed information not only on how to breed a Basilisk, but on how to conceal it should it arise suspicion. It is stated that a Basilisk is hatched from a chicken's egg incubated by a toad.
If the creation of Basilisks is illegal, why would the instructions for doing so be included in a school textbook read by hundreds, if not thousands, of Wizarding children, some of whom might be tempted to try out what they read?
&#x200B;
| 109 |
Technically the method described in that book is a matter of commonly understood folklore, and depending on where you're looking, it can't really happen except naturally. Anyway, there's no point covering up information that's common knowledge; you can't exactly hide what the chemical compound of methamphetamine is.
| 89 |
How does cosh(x) = cos(ix)?
|
We learned about the hyperbolic trig functions in Calc 2 recently, I looked up coshx in Wolfram Alpha and got cos(ix) as an alternate form. I asked my professor and he didn't really explain it other than saying it's higher mathematics.
| 18 |
One way to define the functions is as
cosh(x) = (e^(x) + e^(-x))/2
and
cos(x) = (e^(ix) + e^(-ix))/2
which makes that identity very clear. You can justify that these definition match with our other understandings of trigonometric functions by considering the Taylor series.
| 16 |
[Spiderman 2 (2004)] At the end of the film when Spidey swings away, MJ looks on with sadness, why?
|
I mean, it was kind of a weird scene, she finally knows who he is, they don't have to hide anything anymore, and she's even happy when Peter swings off, but later in the scene she's sad. Why? Is it because she realizes she just broke off her wedding for a guy who's not even gonna be there for her?
| 23 |
Yes, pretty much exactly that. She wants Peter, but as he swings away there’s that reminder that she’ll never have all of Peter. She won’t have the boyfriend that could have stayed to enjoy that moment with her, and so there’s sadness mixed in with her joy.
| 34 |
Are we inside of a black hole's event horizon?
| 553 |
Inside of a black hole, everything moves directly toward the center of a black hole. If you're capable of moving up, down, left, right, forward, and backward, you're not in a black hole. If you're capable of seeing light in any direction you look, you're not in a black hole.
| 543 |
|
eli5:Why is one side of our hands lighter than the other?
|
This is easier to see in POC.
| 15 |
Here’s the ELI25 version, with an ELI5 at the bottom:
The layers of the skin go (from outer to inner): the stratum corneum, the epidermis, and the dermis. The stratum corneum is the outer most layer of skin and consists of dead skin cells (they've lost their nucleus). The epidermis is where the melanin is produced/stored. The BEST defense against UV damage is a thick stratum corneum, the second best is increased melanocyte concentration.
The skin on the palms of the hands and feet have thicker stratum corneum, compared to other regions of skin, and so does not require a large melanocyte concentration.
ELI5: There are two types of protection against UV radiation. The first is melanin, which makes the skin dark. The second is a thick outer layer of skin. Since palms and the bottom of our feet naturally have a thicker outer layer, that means they don’t need as much melanin.
| 15 |
[Metal Gear] How and where did Senator Armstrong acquire his nanomachines?
|
His massive power up at the end of MGR:R was never explained. It just happened, and suddenly. I've been curious about the origins of his powers for quite some time now and thought that this would be a good place to ask my question.
| 19 |
He owned a multi-national mercenary group World Marshall as well as a Senator, he had the connections, money and the resources to develop such technology.
It likely was just a further development of the tech already existing, just look at the capabilities of Vamp's nanomachines which were in use ten years ago.
| 10 |
ELI5: Why don't psychologists and psychiatrists work in tandem?
|
If psychologists made the diagnosis and psychiatrists reviewed it, the entire process would be more comprehensive.
| 57 |
Psychologists and psychiatrists normally work together, more or less. A counseling psychologist will refer a patient to a psychiatrist if they feel the patient needs help beyond what the counselor can provide. For instance, if a psychologist has a patient that's schizophrenic they would refer them to a psychiatrist after the initial diagnosis. If a patient has depression issues the likely course would be therapy with the counseling psychologist and medication and occasional checkups with the psychiatrist to see how the meds are working. If the patient needed behavioral therapy then a psychiatrist most likely wouldn't be needed.
| 57 |
Proof: √p is irrational if p is a prime
|
This is my proof
>Let p be a prime
>
>For the sake of contradiction suppose √ p is rational
>
>Then √ p = m/n ; m, n **∈ |N**
>
>p = (m/n) ²
>
>Since p is an integer, (m/n) ² is an integer
>
>Then (m/n) is an integer
>
>This implies p = r \* r where r = m/n
>
>This implies p is divisible by r
>
>Contradiction
>
>Hence √ p is irrational
This is the proof I came up with, however the other proofs I found online are quite different. I would like to know if my way is correct and rigorous enough.
Appreciate your time. Thanks in advance.
| 38 |
If you think through it in detail, it turns out your proof is a bit circular.
When you say that if (m/n)^(2) is an integer, then m/n is an integer, you are relying on the fact that the square root of an integer is either an integer or an irrational number. But, if you're willing to use that as something established, then why go through all the hoops, instead of simply saying that no prime is a perfect square, and therefore the square root of a prime has to be irrational?
If you're not willing to use the fact that the square of an integer is either an integer or irrational, then you have to restructure your proof.
| 32 |
What's the difference between soft and hard rubber on the molecular level?
| 61 |
Hard, vlucanized rubber has molecular bonds that cross-link the long rubber polymers together, forming a rigid lattice; soft rubber doesn't have these cross links, so the rubber polymers can scrunch and stretch and slide past each other, making the substance softer and stretchier.
| 38 |
|
ELI5: What can the cops do to this man in his car?(Image in comments)
| 513 |
In the photo you've posted, this is from a DUI checkpoint, so he wasn't pulled over for a moving violation.
The supreme court has ruled the checkpoints constitutional, so they can choose to keep him at the DUI checkpoint for as long as he's willing to stay in the car (in this particular instance, when they determined he wasn't drunk, they allowed him to leave).
If you've been pulled over for a moving violation, they can detain you if you are resisting arrest.
depending on the jurisdiction, even if you've "done nothing wrong" you may lose your drivers license. When you get your DL, you have to sign documents that say you will do X or Y (example, in California, if you are suspected of DUI, you must submit to a test, either field or blood. Not doing so (even if you're sober) can make you lose your license).
| 241 |
|
CMV: We should strengthen the traditional safety net rather than replace it with basic income
|
## Section I: Why is Basic Income Increasingly Popular?
"Basic income" is a policy that has broad support from both the progressive left and libertarian right. Center-left economists including Paul Krugman have endorsed the scheme for various reasons. First, BI is an effective anti-poverty measure. BI also reduces inequality by redistributing income from capital to labor. Perhaps most importantly to some on the left, is the notion that BI provides people with "freedom." Left-libertarian political economist Philippe Van Parijs argues that to be truly free, people have to have "access to the means that people need for doing what they might want to do." BI provides people those means. Some have made a feminist case for BI. Philosopher Carole Pateman writes, BI "would, for the first time, provide women with life-long (modest) economic independence and security, a major reason why it is central to democratization."
Basic income, particularly in the form of a "negative income tax," is also popular among the libertarian right. With a NIT in place, much of the welfare state would be obsolete: you could get rid of food stamps, child nutrition programs, public housing, cash welfare, community development programs, Medicaid, and a host of means-tested welfare programs. It would simplify the bureaucracy, and get rid of the "unemployment trap" that occurs under the existing system. Also, basic income advocates on the right want to give people the power and authority to spend money in whatever manner they choose: they dislike how the government forces welfare recipients to use their welfare handouts on purchasing food, for example. "Benefits are often given in-kind rather than in cash precisely because the state doesn’t trust welfare recipients to make what it regards as wise choices about how to spend their money," University of San Diego's Matt Zwolinski writes. A basic income, Zwolinski continues, would change that. Basic income is "conservative" and "libertarian" because it makes individuals responsible for their own livelihoods and flourishing. If they make good decisions, so be it, if they make bad decisions, so be it. But the government shouldn't force people to use transfer payments in a particular manner. Conservatives also like "basic income" because it would allow for less regulations on the marketplace: minimum wage laws could be gutted, labor union protections could be removed, etc.
Social democrats (on the left) and libertarians (on the right) often disagree on how to fund a basic income scheme. Some leftists prefer keeping a progressive tax system in place to redistribute income and lower income inequality. However, libertarians would prefer a "flat" tax without any tax brackets. One way to the two groups could come together is if they coalesced around a "negative income flat tax," which is both flat but has a progressive effect, appealing to the right and left. Another possible way to fund the BI scheme is to have a "progressive consumption tax," supported by individuals on the right and left. "Land value taxes" are also supported by the right and left. Moreover, there are also several liberal economists who agree with free-market economists that capital gains and dividends taxes tax savings, and corporate taxation is double taxation. So realistically, if the right and left came together, and had to compromise, they would settle on either a "negative income flat tax" or a "progressive consumption tax." (And possibly a land value tax could be thrown into the mix).
## Section II: Automation and Unemployment
A big reason why people of all political persuasions are becoming interested in basic income is due to automation. Some project that structural unemployment due to automation and globalization will dramatically increase over the next several decades, and no government in the world has devised a solid plan to deal with this. They fear that automation may occur at such a rapid pace that the structure of the economy may fundamentally change, in which supply for human labor perpetually exceeds demand. Therefore, we need to decouple humanity from work, and transition into a society more based on leisure (which Keynes predicted would happen eventually).
Essentially, it's not imperative that we build a human society based on work when so many jobs will be automated. And in fact, a basic income scheme may be the only way to shoulder such a huge influx of unemployed individuals. Existing welfare schemes weren't designed to deal with extreme levels of unemployment, and may be overwhelmed in the future.
## Section III: Economizing on Human Labor
I think these are excellent points in favor of a basic income scheme. However, here are my rebuttals.
I concede that improvements in artificial intelligence and robots will decrease the demand for human labor in the short-term. However, I am not convinced that this will necessarily persist in the long-term and dramatically decrease permanent employment levels. Traditionally, innovation and technological improvements have lead to structural unemployment through creative destruction. But this was considered a positive development b/c human labor could be allocated to new enterprises. Economizing on human labor would improve the dynamism and efficiency of the macroeconomy. Retraining people or putting them through higher education has worked in the past, and has allocated human labor into new sectors. I'm not convinced that this won't be possible in the future.
But say technological unemployment does occur. That doesn't mean we can't combat if we act quickly. MIT economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, in their book The Second Machine Age, argue that while a basic income would replace the lost income resulting from mass unemployment, it wouldn't replace the lost "self-worth, community, engagement, healthy values, structure, and dignity" people gain from work. They instead argue that we should successfully enable humans to successfully "rage against" the machines through investing in expanded education and wage subsidies. One way to increase the supply of human labor would be to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (which kind of acts like a small scale negative income tax, but it works alongside other transfers and welfare schemes). We could further subsidize human labor, paying employers to hire humans instead of robots. We could establish a scheme where humans own some of the robots, and rent them out to corporations. Another option is to reduce work hours to accommodate more humans, while paying humans a wage subsidy. There are many options besides "the human workforce will be hollowed out anyway, so screw it, let's accept that humans won't have to work."
I disagree with the notion that human beings on a large scale will be able to have meaningful lives in a "work-free" environment that basic income would provide them. Work will be fundamental to humans in the foreseeable future.
Moreover, say basic income is politically off the table. It would be in employers' self interest to retain some workers, or provide them some means with which to earn a living. If there are fewer and fewer people to actually do work, there won't be any consumers for the producers employers produce with their robots. Therefore, employers likely will too push for wage subsidies, lowered work hours, subsidies employment, and expanded EITC, etc. They wouldn't be okay with the status quo b/c it harms their profits. And moreover, automation will vastly increase supply, helping create an abundance of goods and services, moving our society closer toward post-scarcity. As a result, prices for good and services will be pretty low, so workers won't need as high wages to consume them.
## Section IV: Why Conditional Cash Transfers Beat Unconditional Basic Income
I also argue that it actually makes sense to have targeted welfare programs: food stamps, conditional cash-transfers, child nutrition programs, public housing, maternity and paternity care, sick leave policies, collective bargaining, free college, single-payer healthcare, etc. And I would like to see such a welfare scheme funded through a progressive income tax system (under which capital gains is taxed at the same rate as ordinary income), in addition to corporate taxes, and property taxes. I oppose the progressive consumption tax, a flat tax, and a land value tax.
Food stamps, SNAP benefits, other forms of welfare and social security are all a necessity because you cannot have a system that relies on the rational actions of its participants. People will act irrationally: they will not spend their basic income in a way that guarantees their well-being, and society will incur enormous costs as a result in homelessness, food insecurity, crime, and drug abuse. Behavioral economics has shown that humans aren't rational actors: rather they have "bounded rationality: "bounded rationality is the idea that when individuals make decisions, their rationality is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the time available to make the decision." In cases where humans naturally make optimal economic decisions, I am in favor of free-markets and against government intervention. In cases where individual economic decisions result in poor outcomes, I am in favor of government intervention to improve outcomes.
Information failure is a microeconomic market failure in which consumers underconsume or overconsume a good due to imperfect information. Take healthcare for example. For example, take vaccinations. In neoclassical microeconomics, they are viewed as "merit" goods that are under-consumed due to information failure. The net private benefit is not fully recognized at the time of consumption. People may not anticipate that they my get sick in the future, and they won't recognize the benefits to their future selves for getting inoculated now. Moreover, inoculation (via vaccines or another method) is a positive externality that has external benefits to society: if you protect yourself, others around you are less likely to become sick. However, when people purchase goods, they don't take into account external benefits or costs, leading to underconsumption. In the market for vaccinations, it makes sense to increase consumer demand for vaccines through mandating people to take vaccines. Such targeted governmental intervention in the market actually improves outcomes, and moves the equilibrium quantity more toward the socially optimal level of consumption.
Moreover, a strong justification for the existence of our Social Security social insurance program is that while some people are rational actors, many others are not. Many don't exercise a lot of foresight: without forcing them to pay payroll taxes to fund Social Security, many people would not have income for themselves after they retire. People may not plan for the future and invest in private sector retirement or pension plan, like a 401k. Social Security a successful anti-poverty and social insurance program that ensures that people have some money after they retire. In this case, social engineering (forcing people to join a government retirement plan) actually improves outcomes in the economy and society through lower poverty and inequality, and greater financial security for elders.
That's why I support conditional cash transfer programs instead of unconditional basic income. Forcing people to enroll their children in schools, visiting the doctor, and getting vaccinations are successful in overcoming the poverty trap and facilitating upward mobility, more so than UBI. It forces people who would otherwise make bad decisions for themselves and society to make more optimal decisions.
Proponents of basic income argue that it's better to give people the freedom to use their handouts in whatever way the want, but we can have awareness campaigns educating people on how to improve their spending habits. To BI proponents, sure, recipients may portion their money out in ways that may not be the most reasonable, but given regularly cash they will still make rent and buy food.
The above is definitely true for a rational actor. But for a drug addict? The mentally ill? Will they spend their basic income on housing and food? Or will their BI disappear and meanwhile the safety net drops out from under them? I would rather have a conditional cash transfer system for such individuals, otherwise society as a whole will incur costs from their poor decisions. Replacing in kind programs entirely with a BIwould result in some consequences that BI supporters are not considering. I'm afraid that if the BI did replace public services, businesses would be there to snap up a lot of that money in housing or medical care or whatever else the moment that payday came around. They will be more exploitative for drug addicts than the government. I'm afraid that there ARE people (not poor people or rich people in particular at all) who will act irrationally based on mental illness or drug addiction or something else, who will require the forms of assistance that would be replaced by a BI scheme.
## Section V: Does the Welfare Trap Truly Exist?
Moreover, libertarian supporters of UBI/NIT bring up the "welfare-trap" that exists in means tested welfare programs. I did a pretty lengthy search and could find no actual numerical data to confirm that this effect is significant. There are too many conflicting motivations at play, too many demographics, too many differing situations to say for certain our current welfare system turns people into lazy bums who won't seek work. Most welfare recipients today, given the opportunity, would prefer a steady cash income and the opportunity to advance to a stagnant and unproductive life on welfare. They want to look for work.
## Section VI: Traditional Welfare and Entrepreneurship
The traditional welfare state has shown to be successful in the social democratic nations of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and to a lesser extent, Canada. They reduce excessive inequality and poverty, while also facilitating upward mobility. People aren't trapped in poverty. Moreover, the traditional welfare state is more efficient than many people claim. The Roosevelt Institute's Mike Konczal argues that in the existing welfare state, "there are relatively few programs and they are run at a decent administrative cost." Proponents of BI argue that UBI would facilitate entrepreneurship, [but it's not as if the current welfare schemes that currently exist in the western world discourage start-ups.](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/welfare-makes-america-more-entrepreneurial/388598/)
## Section VII: Keynesian Automatic Stabilizers
From a macroeconomic perspective, many New Keynesian economists believe that transfer payments (unemployment insurance, food stamp payments, Social Security, conditional cash-transfers, etc) help macroeconomic stability by acting as automatic stabilizers. Supporters of UBI often criticize the current welfare scheme on the grounds that costs fluctuate with the performance of the economy. However, fluctuating costs makes sense if you use a Keynesian framework. Higher welfare payouts during recessions help stabilize consumption (and investment via the accelerator effect) during demand-deficient recessions by increasing people's disposable income; during demand-pull inflation, cutbacks in welfare spending decrease people's disposable incomes, which helps close the inflationary gap (when too much money is chasing too few goods). I'm not convinced that UBI would be better to our current welfare scheme with regards to acting as an automatic stabilizer.
## Section VIII: Imperfect Competition in Labor Markets
Furthermore, deregulating the marketplace through passing "right-to-work" laws and removing minimum wage legislation after BI is passed may worsen outcomes. Even if workers are given an income floor, corporations can still artificially reduce pay in oligopsonistic and monopsonistic markets. Within these imperfect labor market structures, minimum wage laws and collective bargaining laws actually help increase efficiency and equity.
## Section IX: The Superiority of Progressive Income Taxes
Regarding the funding side, I oppose forgoing our progressive income tax system in favor of a flat tax. Given that income inequality is rising in developed nations due to globalization, automation, and a host of other factors, moving to a flat tax would exacerbate this inequality. A flat tax would shift tax burden away from the rich, to the middle and lower class. It would result in the elimination of deductions may have a positive impact on taxpayers with lower income (such as the EITC). The government wouldn't be able to use tax code to encourage desirable activities, such as giving tax credits for making a home more energy-efficient (energy efficiency is a positive externality with which governments can promote sustainable growth that doesn't lead to environmental degradation). Moreover, government revenues would drastically decrease, making it difficult to fund universal healthcare, free K-12, and a host of other measures.
Proponents say flat taxes don't discriminate based on income level; everyone pays the same percent of income. This argument, however, assumes the marginal benefit of earning a dollar is always the same. To me, it's common sense that the marginal utility of the dollar decreases as income increases. The flat tax isn't regressive in the strictest sense (it's not as if the tax RATE is being increased as you go down the income-ladder). but it can be considered regressive in that the burden is disproportionately felt by lower income families. Necessities, such as expenses for food, clothing, and shelter tend to make make up a higher percentage of a lower income consumer's overall budget. True, this can be mitigated by allowing a rebate on purchases of necessities; since the value of money is still inversely related to income however, the system would continue to be unequal. A rebate would just be a band-aid fix.
Also in practice, many of the "flat tax" proposals by conservative politicians don't treat income equally. Yes, they may have a flat rate on income taxes. But they would lower or possibly eliminate taxes on investments, such as capital gains, dividends, carried interest, etc, that disproportionately benefit the rich. These proposals keep in place loopholes that benefit such top earners.
Given that the "progressive consumption tax scheme," another tax scheme favored by BI proponents, would also invariably lower or eliminate taxes on capital gains, dividends, carried interest, etc., I'm opposed to that too. Some economists oppose capital gains taxes, asserting that they are a tax on savings. We're engaging in "double taxation." People already pay tax on their income, and then they invest some of their savings into stocks, bonds, etc. Then when they sell their assets for a profit, they pay an additional tax on that. Dividends taxes are also double taxation (corporations pay a corporate tax first and then investors pay a dividends tax on dividend payouts). From a theoretical perspective, it all makes sense to eliminate capital gains and dividends taxes, because theoretically, they discourage savings.
However, this theory does not reflect reality, and higher capital gains tax rates haven't really affected the economy. Even Ronald Reagan raised the capital gains tax rate, and believed income from labor and investment should be taxed at an equal rate. In the real world, through a higher capital gains rate, you can make a significant dent in income inequality w/o many adverse economic effects. Basically, the economic distortions from "double taxation" that economists warn us about don't have that great of an effect on the real world. There is no significant statistical economic relationship between capital gains rates and economic growth (refuting aspects of supply side economics).
Also the lower capital gains rate could ironically create economic distortions itself: ["The enormous tax savings available likely lure too many highly productive people into the private equity business, drawing them away from other potentially more socially valuable enterprises."] (http://www.vox.com/2015/3/17/8226915/rubio-lee-tax-plan)
A "progressive consumption tax," while superior to a flat tax (and less regressive), is inferior to a progressive income tax. The PCT would almost assuredly increase wealthy inequality: since wealthy would be consuming less and investing more, they'd grow their net wealth even faster than the current pace. This is an unintended effect of the PCT, which would tax consumption and would incentivize savings. Given that automation will increase wealth inequality, it doesn't seem like a good idea to me to exacerbate the trend by gutting capital gains taxes and adopting the PCT. Proponents of the PCT argue that progressive income taxes discourage work due to high marginal rates, but the actual extent to which these market distortions occur in the real world are exaggerated a lot. Even if we had strong inheritance taxes to counteract wealth inequality, a PCT is inferior to a PIT, because with the latter, the government can still use the tax code to encourage desirable activities. Progressive income taxes also protect taxpayer during hard times - when income goes down, the tax rate also goes down
As I said, I don't believe that human beings are always rational, so social engineering in certain instances can improve outcomes.
Finally, I oppose the land value tax, another tax scheme favored by many BI opponents, and I instead support the traditional property tax. A land value tax would exacerbate economic inequality. If property taxes were were only based on the value of the land, rich people would buy small lots in cheap areas, build massive mansions worth millions, and pay almost no taxes.Then the working class people who buy small homes on small lots in the city (where dirt is worth more) would be paying more in taxes.
I support a progressive tax system because I'm of the belief that you should pay what you can. If you can afford an expensive house, you can afford to pay taxes on the value of the house, including the improvements built on that house.
## Section X: Conclusion
I believe an unconditional basic income scheme, including in all of its flavors (negative income tax, citizen's dividend, demogrant, social wage, etc.) is ultimately a pretty flawed scheme. I view the traditional western social safety net as superior. For the reasons above, I feel that it's better for society to expand the traditional social safety net rather than dismantle it completely and replace with a UBI or NIT scheme. I support basic income in addition to the existing scheme (like how the EITC works alongside other tax credits and welfare programs), but I oppose scraping the traditional welfare state.
| 165 |
your position rests on the assumption that most people, given ideal education and social environments, have the ability to do just about any job as well as anyone else. this assumption runs counter to the available data regarding the heritability of psychological traits and limits of environmental intervention.
the reason this is significant is that there is a solid chance a great number of people will not have the interest or ability to transfer into these new areas of the economy no matter what programs are in place to assist them. even in the wildest post scarcity economic dream, the idea that each person has the ability, creativity, and will to provide valued service seems pretty far fetched.
so what do we do to feed these people? ever more programs for this and that, further bloating our bureaucracy and keeping money from the people that need it to live?
| 39 |
When people are in a coma, do hospital staff maintain their dental hygiene?
|
I would imagine just like when you sleep, bacteria are still growing on your teeth. Do they wake up with a bunch of cavities?
| 937 |
Absolutely! Full hygiene care. Teeth cleaning, whole sponge bath, moisturizer. Change their body position so bed sores don’t happen. Change their linens, brush their hair. It’s a nice experience. I’ve done hygiene care for semi-conscious/dying patients and it’s really rewarding.
| 2,238 |
[Animal Farm] What happened to the Animal Farm after Napoleon died?
|
I heard that the next leading pig denounced Napoleon once he assumed the position, but the tension between men and animals actually got even further as Animalism spread across farms of England.
Also is it true that it has a human owner again?
| 18 |
Another pig took over and began a period of denapoleonisation, in which some of Napoleon's more authoritarian laws were repealed.
Animal Farm got into a rivalry with another farm down the road, the two farms competing to produce the most food and win the most ribbons at the county fair. Eventually, after a string of elderly and infirm pig leaders, the farm ran into major financial trouble. The pigs retained control over the farmhouse itself, but were forced to sell off much of the land and equipment to cover their debts.
| 27 |
CMV: watching and enjoying gay porn means you're either gay or bisexual.
|
A friend of mine and I had this heated discussion yesterday about weather watching gay porn means that you're gay or bisexual at the very least.
His points:
Straight guys and gals enjoy watching lesbian porn.
The type of porn a person watches and enjoys doesn't define his/her sexuality.
My points:
Well, in case of lesbian porn, for straight dudes they are attracted to chicks in the video it doesn't matter if they are straight or not.
And in case of women who watch lesbian porn and enjoy it, they are either bisexual or closeted lesbians.
The above point was because I don't think there is any reason for watching porn outside of sexual gratification.
Now as for dudes watching gay porn, if they are straight it doesn't make any sense if they are not gay (maybe there is some artistic value in gay porn videos that I don't know of).
Now, he countered my last point by giving an example of his friend who likes watching gay porn just to hear dudes moaning, which didn't make any sense to me. His overall point was that sexuality is fluid.
After all this, we decided to ask people on the internet so here i am. One more thing, after the discussion, I thought about kinks and fetishes for example I know of a girl who's really into bdsm but doesn't wants to do it in real life, but what I figured was that kinks and fetishes are different from sexuality and they transcend them, i.e they aren't specific to a single sexuality.
| 34 |
Sexuality is fluid spectrum.
There is no clear cut lines where you are straight, gay or bi. Sexuality changes over time and there is difference between enjoying watching something and actually performing said acts. These strict categorical labels will never encompass the immense variation of human sexuality.
| 98 |
ELI5: What is an internet "route leak"?
| 116 |
This is greatly oversimplified but...
Routing on the Internet works by one operator telling its connected peers what networks they serve. So, for example, if Verizon is ABC Corporation's ISP, they tell Cogent, AT&T, Comcast and everyone else they connect to that they can route to ABC's IP addresses. The other ISPs use this information to determine where data gets sent.
A route leak happens when an ISP says it can route to a network they can't, either by accident or maliciously. Sometimes customers have multiple ISPs and have to run the same routing protocols as the ISPs do for everything to work. If a customer of, say, Cogent leaks a route into Cogent that they don't actually have and the route is attractive enough, traffic will be sent there even though Cogent has no way of delivering it.
A real world analogy would be putting up an "Exit here for Disneyland" sign along Interstate 40 in Oklahoma. Traffic from the east coast would take that exit and end up nowhere near the right place.
| 86 |
|
CMV: In a Representative Democracy, there should be no Winning or Losing in Elections.
|
So, it is often taken for granted that the US (I will be using the US for this post, but this can be applied to any representative "democratic" body) that we have representative democracy. We do not.
**If you "vote" for a candidate in a representative body that loses their election, you have no voice in our democracy.**
In order to give people true voices in their politics, we should move to affirmational representation. This would mean the following:
1. Elections are just periods in which you can select your representative.
2. Any representative is now a member of that body representing and casting X # of votes.
3. For ease of discussion and debate (US House of Reps example) only the top 435 representatives sit in the house for debate. Others can cast votes, but not debate.
4. Voting inside the body will thus be based on total votes. For example, you may need 150,000,000+ votes to pass a bill in the House of Reps in the United States.
5. Non-voters could be considered "okay with any" and their representation could be split proportionally amongst all eligible.
6. A person election to say "none of these" would be a vote of no confidence, and thus "against" any bill that comes before the body.
7. Same restrictions on candidacy, term limits, etc. can apply is so chosen.
Example of how this would work:
1. You turn in a ballot with a person's name on it.
2. If they get enough votes to pass the minimum threshold (or not, maybe no threshold) is now your representative.
3. Every "election" you get to choose someone new, or the same person.
CMV: This would be an ACTUAL Representative Body.
| 69 |
Most of the votes that take place in Democracy are winner takes all because the alternative is simply impractical. Let's use the example of a local election, such as voting for a mayor, or police chief. There is precisely one office to fill, and so the winner is whoever gets the most votes. Depending on your voting system, this will either be a FPTP system (highest individual total wins), or some form of run-off where the least popular candidate is struck and then secondary choices of his voters are applied, then the process repeats until someone has a majority (above 50%).
This means that there is no way to sensibly split the results without creating government bloat. In order for people's votes to "not be wasted", you would effectively need every office to have a committee of 3-5 (or more) equally-ranked people, filled proportional to the votes cast. This would not make society better - it would simply waste tax money and see that nothing is ever accomplished.
Moreover, any politician or elected official who isn't utterly stupid will pay attention to the elections that got them into power. If you win by the narrowest of margins, you will be fully aware that margin might disappear next election. This is why you find the most moderate candidates in 'swing' counties / districts / states, and the very worst candidates in safe seats. The former know they have to appeal to their rivals' voters if they want to maintain office, the latter know the sheep will keep them in power no matter how corrupt they are.
So you absolutely do have a voice, even if your candidate loses. If you find yourself in an absolute minority position where your chosen candidates are being utterly destroyed consistently, that isn't proof democracy is broken - it's proof you hold views completely out of alignment with your community, for better or worse.
| 18 |
Eli5: what are the benefits of a normal helicopter design vs a quadcopter we see on drones?
| 218 |
Simplicity, making a normal helicopter a quad copter would be really really really hard and complex.
That’s because helicopters use combustions engines running on aviation fuel, while quadcopter a uses electric motors.
so for a quad computer, the only moving parts are the spinning motor out on each corner. All that runs back to the center is wires, no moving parts.
A helicopter has a spinning shaft attached to the engine like how a car does. So if you wanted to doing 4 sets of blades with 1 engine, you’d need to figure out how to run spinning shafts through all for corners of the helicopter.
Or you’d had to have 4 different engines, one for each set of blades, and figure out how to easily control the thrust each individual engine is producing.
Is that possible? Yea I’m sure a good engineering team with enough money could figure it out.
But when a helicopter with 1 set of blades works just fine 99% of the time, why make one that would be much more expensive to make and require a lot of maintenance to keep running?
| 272 |
|
ELI5: Why does the hair on my arms, legs, eyebrows etc. stop growing at a certain length but the hair on my head/face will continue to grow until it is cut?
|
Just a thought I had while mowing the lawn.
| 42 |
Hair growth is coded for a specific time period, then stops/dies/sheds.
The hair on arms, legs etc. has a shorter growth time period than head/facial hair. Your head/facial hair will stop at after a certain time period (which will determine its final length).
| 14 |
CMV: I think capitalism favours crony capitalism.
|
The profit motive under capitalism favours the commodification of politics. Laws, regulations, subsidies, and so on affect the exchange of private property. Politicians therefore are a service that can help private actors in gaining profit. This service can be bought in many forms: bribes, lobbying, donations, vote buying, manipulation of media to convince voters, and others that might've slipped my mind. I'm not saying that every capitalist state is engaged in crony capitalism, but I do think that crony capitalism is favoured in the same way that maximum entropy is favoured in closed systems.
Unfortunately I don't know what would convince me, but because this cmv is theoretical, I will accept theoretical arguments.
Edit:
I want to direct this discussion within the limits of capitalism. I'm not trying to debate which economic system has the least amount of cronyism. It may very well be that capitalism has the least amount of cronyism, but that is a separate view for another thread.
I'd also like to further the chemistry analogy and say that I think that certain political systems can increase the activation energy necessary to get to crony capitalism, but that once the activation energy is achieved, it's crony capitalism that has the most amount of entropy.
| 507 |
It's not the profit motive under capitalism that motivates and necessitates the people bribing of their government, it's the *government's monopoly of force over economics* that motivates and necessitates the bribes.
When the Government is acting as King that grants economic favours, when it is by the grace of government that you are allowed certain economic activity and not others, then you must curry favour to thrive and you must court and lobby and bribe.
Crony capitalism is thus a problem caused by the nature of *any* type of government which holds a monopoly of force over economic activity.
The solution is separation of Economy and State (for the same reason we were meant to have separation of Church and State in the USA) protected in some fundamental laws of a Republic (such as the *individual property rights* of it's citizens) that are increasingly *beyond amendment* by government as a country grows and develops, so that, in a sense, the growing natural complexity of the market acts as a *barrier* to changing those fundamental laws, rather than the growing bureaucracy acting as an *eroder*. The solution is a republic whose initial property laws are both true and just, and increasingly *beyond* amendment by Government!
*Not* having a separation of Economy and State means that the growing complexity of *government* acts as a force that *erodes* the freedoms, ideals and original laws of a republic. Government power over the economy causes its institutions to ensure their indispensability by using laws that regulate economic activity to *create* citizen reliance and dependency on needing these institutions. And thus they maintain the problems they were designed to solve, justifying their permanence and expansion of powers over more and more of the economy. Eventually the Bureaucracy collapses under its own weight as goes the way of the Byzantines.
Consider separation of Church and State. Fundamentally this separates the State's *use of force* over our *thoughts* - and thus protects our individual right to free speech. We should call it "Separation of State and Thoughts/Beliefs". They can't tell us what to think or say, they are *banned* from using force. And the USA hasn't done too badly! Free speech has been *pretty good* as a result.
The separation of Economy and State is the separation of the state's use of force over our *actions* - and thus protects our individual right to private property (which is the defining feature of capitalism). They can't tell us what to *do*. The government should be banned from using force to stop us - or interfere even in the slightest - from our economic activity. The government's purpose should *only* be as a body who has the monopoly right of force to act in response to a domestic or foreign citizen initiating force on it's citizens.
Once the government ceases to *control* the economy, no one needs to bribe it; there are no special favours to be gained.
| 113 |
ELI5: If we block robo-caller and spam callers that show spoofed phone numbers, are we blocking people's real phone numbers that we might actually want to talk to?
| 17 |
Yes, which is why the robocallers are using local area and prefix codes for the spoofed numbers they're "calling" from. Sadly, the best course of action is to mute the call and let it go to voicemail and pray that some day the telecoms can get their collective heads out their asses and put an end to this.
| 21 |
|
[Marvel] Where do artifacts like The Destroyer/Mjolnir get their power from?
|
Are they powered by the Odin Force?
| 17 |
Partially
Mjolnir did benefit from Odin's magics but it was primarily powered by the God Storm, a primordial magical space storm, that Odin trapped within the uru it was made from
The Destroyer armor was created with not just Odin's but other pantheons' skyfathers' power
| 15 |
[X-Men] How can adamantium be poisoning Wolverine if it's indestructible?
|
This never made sense to me; the adamantium 'poisoning' Wolverine. That would mean some part of the metal is breaking down and entering his bloodstream. But if it really is indestructible then how can it be breaking down?
| 76 |
It could be damaging his blood cells as they exit his bone marrow, we know it's porous enough to let them through, but perhaps not the right shape, or the opening is just a little small.
It also could be altering the pH of his blood significantly
It could be a catalyst (or an inhibitor).
It could be just the right shape for other bacteria to attach too, and so he could be growing all sorts of sepsis on his skeleton.
| 107 |
How do testicles produce living sperm cells that are pre programmed to seek an egg?
|
How?
| 446 |
spermatozoa (individual sperm cells) are not homing missiles. they do not seek anything. that's why human males produce 300 million a day. sperm cells are tiny compared to the distance between the opening of the uterus and the end of the fallopian tube (where eggs get released and where fertilization occurs). so, you need millions of the little bastards to ensure that the quest into Mordor will have any chance of getting the golden ring into the fires of Mount Doom...
| 310 |
Like a gravitational field, does a strong electromagnetic field also affect the flow of time?
|
Does it also dilate time or work in the opposite way and speed it up?
| 129 |
The energy in an electromagnetic field does contribute to the energy tensor which is the source of gravity. But the contribution is generally negligible, decreasing as 1/r^(2) (instead of 1/r like the mass distribution) and celestial bodies being more or less electrically neutral.
| 52 |
Iran and american relations and why there's so much intensity?
| 42 |
In the 1950s, American CIA colluded with the British to overthrow a democratically elected Iranian President, and install someone friendlier to the West, as a buffer for USSR. In 1970s, Iran had a revolution and replaced the installed dictator with a theological anti-American government. The rest, as they say, is history.
| 33 |
|
Why do pulsars/quasars emit energy bursts at their poles? Why not at their equators where the greater rotational energy would require less effort to escape; like our rockets do?
| 26 |
Think you are confusing magnetic poles with rotational poles.
Pulsars emit radiation from the axis of their magnetic field not from their rotational axis. In fact, the mechanism which generates the em radiation in pulsars requires these two axes to not be aligned.
| 18 |
|
[Stargate] Would Ra really have stood a chance trying to take over Earth in the 90s?
|
If only by sheer numbers, we would swamp him, right? Let alone Spec Ops guerrilla warfare.
Edit:Even after the bomb would be increased a hundred fold, that wouldn’t take out most of the US because the bunker is underground.
| 17 |
Going by the Stargate SG-1 continuity, Ra would be more than capable of invading Earth again if he wanted to. The upgraded bomb would destroy the Stargate, cutting Earth off from its only avenue of escape or advanced technology, and then he could bring all the ships and forces needed to send Earth back to the stone age at his leisure.
During the early seasons of the show, two things protected Earth: its location (as the source of the slave population the Goa'uld used throughout the galaxy) was known only to a few of the oldest and most powerful of the System Lords, and those System Lords were spending most of their time fighting each other in the power vacuum left by Ra's death.
When Apophis did finally decide to deal with troublesome Earth, he took only two ships with him - and while the Goa'uld may be horribly outmatched by modern ground battlefield tactics, those two ships could easily destroy every major military installation and city on the planet with impunity, scattering humanity and turning us into easy pickings. Earth was only saved by SG-1 destroying both ships from the inside.
Ra only left Earth originally because the rebellious locals made the planet more trouble than it was worth. He'd already used humans to establish self-sufficient slave populations on hundreds of planets, and built an army that established his dominance over the other System Lords. There was simply no point sticking around on the otherwise out-of-the-way backwater planet.
| 24 |
[Fullmetal Alchemist] How far does Alchemy go? Can I bake a cake just by zapping the ingredients?
|
Can I zap hop and water and get beer?
EDIT: By the way, guys: IT'S MAGIC!!! I don't care what anyone says.
| 39 |
Theoretically yes, but food is incredibly complex compared to rocks and metals. To use alchemy you have completely understand the molecular structure of the thing you're transmuting, so it would probably take decades to get skilled enough, organic/biological alchemy is the most challenging field of alchemic study by far.
| 47 |
[Fallout] I comprehend that the platinum chip was probably very difficult to make, but why couldn't House just program a new software update in the 281 years between the bombs and New Vegas?
| 355 |
He was in a coma for 61 of those years, for starters.
Beyond that, given what a pragmatist House is, it's likely that simply creating a new chip/OS simply wasn't possible with what he had to hand, or else he would have done so.
The chip itself wasn't made in Vegas, but a place called Sunnyvale; it's possible they had specific expertise, software, and/or hardware that House himself didn't have in Vegas and which was lost in the War. House says that he "designed" the chip, but he clearly needed someone else to put the physical hardware and software together for him. We know he has a brilliant mind, but that doesn't mean he had the ability to write an entirely new and improved software from scratch by himself, while he was contained within his stasis pod.
| 299 |
|
ELI5: Is olive oil good for you?
|
Or alternatively, how much olive oil is too much?
| 64 |
Compared to other fats? Yes. It comes down to chemistry, or at least chemistry that is way off the scale for an ELI5. But here's the story:
* Your body needs fat to function
* There are two major kinds of kinds of fat (saturated, unsaturated)
* Saturated fats come from animal products (meat, dairy) and increase the type of cholesterol (LDL) that is linked to increased health problems.
* Unsaturated fats come from plant/fish sources (avocados, sunflower seeds, olives, etc) and increases the type of cholesterol (HDL) that is linked to lower health problems.
It should be noted though, that the direct results of eating LDL/HDL are really linked to heart disease. The human body needs some fat to survive, but even too much of a "good fat" like olive oil is unhealthy and can lead to other diseases.
| 18 |
CMV: Communism is inherently unfair.
|
So, throughout my life, whenever the topic of Communism comes up, people always say, 'I agree with Communism in principle, as it's only fair that everyone is treated equally and fairly, but I understand that in practice, it's basically impossible because of the greed of humanity.' Whilst I agree with them on the last bit, that Communism will never work, I must disagree with the first point. Whilst I would like a perfect world where everyone has enough to live off, I think that it is more important to prioritise creating a motivation for hard work.
In Communism, I believe that everyone receives the same reward at the end of the day, so what incentive is there to work harder? Surely those who can work harder or are inherently better at a job should receive more of a reward than somebody who is not as good or is lazy? I do not mean to say that I don't think there should be a minimum wage, and I definitely believe that those who cannot work should receive benefits, but Communism in general does not create an incentive to work hard, or reward good work, so I believe it is inherently unfair and also flawed.
CMV!
_____
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| 27 |
A communist would argue the opposite is true. Let's run on a simple definition of communist industry because there is 200 years of historical minutia to dig through otherwise. A communist-run industry is one in which the worker's own the means of production. Whereas in a capitalist-run industry, the capitalists and investors own the means of production.
So a meritocracy can exist in either system, it's just a question of who the arbiter of merit is. In a capitalist system, the person who decides what is worthwhile and valuable - is the capitalist/owner/boss. In a communist system, the people who decide what is worthwhile is the other workers. A communist system could have merit - someone who is elected or influential in their workplace. Someone who is elected into a seat in a worker's council. Someone who is valued by their community.
The difference is the question of who is the arbiter. Your colleagues seem like a fair arbiter. Outside rent-seekers are not. What has the capitalist investor added to the industry? Money and resources. Where did the money come from? Exploiting other worker's for profit. Is that a meritocratic way of deciding who gets to be an arbiter?
| 28 |
[The Amazing Spider-Man movies] Had anyone else gotten bit by that spider would they have turned into a Cronenburg human-spider creature?
|
TASM 2 states that Richard Parker used his own DNA in the hybrid spiders allowing Peter Parker to obtain all the powers of a spider without any abhorrent side effects. Therefore, Peter is afraid to donate his blood to Harry Osborne because it might kill him or "worse", referring back to Dr. Connors. Given that Dr. Connors turned into a full blown lizard man, can we assume a spider bite would have similar consequences?
| 304 |
One of the Garth Ennis Spider-Man books has another guy deliberately get himself bitten by a Magic Comic Spider. However instead of turning him into a man with the power of spiders, it turns him into a thousand spiders with the collective intelligence of a man.
Whether this would apply to TASM specifically is unclear though.
| 209 |
[MCU] Why does S.H.I.E.L.D. use two different logos?
|
Specifically [this one](http://imgur.com/t3hDU4K) and [this one](http://imgur.com/7vzQkK0). Originally I thought that the 2nd one was a newer version, but in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. the two seem to be used interchangeably.
What gives?
| 21 |
The original logo has been used since SHIELD was formed 70 years ago. The new logo was introduced around the time of the avengers film.
Originally it was only used in context to the helicarrier, however, eventually the new logo began to be applied to the entire organization. The logo is now in a transitional stage. The new logo is being put on things, but the legacy logo is still in use in some places.
| 20 |
ELI5: During a shuttle launch, what happens at T-6.6 seconds vs. what happens at 0 seconds?
|
At T-6.6 seconds, you see a huge fireball come out of the rockets, but the shuttle doesn’t actually lift off until 0 seconds. What happens at 0 seconds that isn’t happening at T-6.6 seconds? I think I found a Wikipedia article, but it’s way over my head.
| 15 |
At T-6.6s they begin firing up the three Space Shuttle Main Engines underneath the Orbiter. These are liquid-fueled engines that pull fuel from the big orange External Tank. The SSMEs are *extremely* mechanically complex and things could go very wrong very quickly if an engine fails during launch, so NASA lets them run for a few seconds to make sure they’re working properly.
Once the SSMEs have stabilized, the two Solid Rocket Boosters strapped to the side of the tank are ignited and the Shuttle lifts off. Unlike the liquid-fuel engines, there’s no way to shut the SRBs down after they’re lit, so they wait until the last possible second.
| 41 |
CMV: Using "it's artistic and has a deeper meaning" is a stupid loophole for controversial statements.
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The basis of my statement comes from a music video that was released a few days ago. For those who don't know, a large Youtube channel known as PrankVsPrank released a Snoop Dogg music video. In the music video, Snoop Dogg aims a gun at an actor painted like Donald Trump. When Snoop Dogg pulls the trigger of the firearm, a bang flag comes out. Now this was meant to be a joke, obviously. I support all kinds of offensive and horrible jokes, but what upset me was the fact that people were defending this by saying "it's art." One of the thoughts that came to my head was, if I were to dress up as a cop, paint my white friend in blackface, then pretended to shoot him, I would be demonized and hated by everyone who saw it. Why is it ok to do this to Trump, even if you don't like his views?
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| 128 |
Saying something is art is not to excuse its controversy, it's to explain why it's allowed to be. Art can be more or less controversial, and no matter what you put out there you're responsible for the product. Both PrankVsPrank and you need to be aware of what you're putting out there. To that end, your example is meant to be deliberately offensive to prove a point. It has no other meaning beyond that. That's a reason why you would catch flak for it.
| 47 |
ELI5: Why does the search for extraterrestrial life revolve around water?
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I mean, surely scientists understand that life as WE know it can't be the only form of life out there...
| 25 |
As far as we know, all life requires water. Until we have evidence that there are types of life that don't require water, we'll search for what we know.
You can't find something if you don't know what you're looking for.
| 17 |
[WH40K] what are the differences in power of The Emperor, Primarchs, Space Marines and Guardsmen
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i know they are magnitudes of strength from each other but what are some quantifiable stats or examples that can give me a better picture
| 26 |
A Guardsman is a regular human soldier. Not much special about them. Their armor and weapons are actually pretty good, just outclassed by damn near everything else.
A Space Marine can live for hundreds of years, spit acid, absorb your memories by eating you, lift hundreds, even thousands of pounds without breaking a sweat, have dozens of extra organs allowing them to neutralize poison, clot wounds instantly, enter a healing coma in case of serious injury, and carry on fighting even after losing limbs. Ventris survived a headshot, and a Blood Gorgon survived getting buried by a collapsing mineshaft and took a dozen bolts to the heart without death (medical attention was needed for the latter, though).
A Primarch is all that and more. Angron could lift the foot of a Titan that stepped on him, Roboute survived in the vacuum of space for several hours without a helmet, Vulkan is an immortal (think Wolverine. His healing factor lets him survive an orbital fall). Corax gets shot hundreds of times and barely even registers the hits, such was the quality of his armor. Lorgar beats a Bloodthirster one-on-one. Magnus has massive psychic powers and can project his image halfway across the galaxy. In short, anything a Space Marine can do, a Primarch can do a dozen times better.
The Emperor is yet stronger than a Primarch, both physically and mentally. He can beat any Primarch in a fight (he was holding back against Horus until Oll died). He has the ability to completely stop time even when interred on the Throne, can destroy your soul with a thought, open warp rifts over a kilometer wide, and wipe out entire armies alone. His blows were described as hitting like artillery shells, and he moved faster than even Horus could see. He is also a brilliant scientist.
Hope this helped.
| 30 |
CMV: Decibel limitation laws for Motorcycle Mufflers should be both more strictly enforced, and carry a harsher punishment.
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So, there's no reason out of niche enthusiasm that a motorcycle's muffler needs to be audible through a closed window from the street,let alone loud enough to disturb someone from sleeping when the window is open. While I understand that there are legal limits to what is allowed, the punishment isn't such that it provides active deterrence on a meaningful scale. I propose, that Police be empowered to cite muffler audibility more easily *and* the fine should be increased to the market value of parts and labor for the average after market noisy muffler +10% to start. The reason I feel that, that amount is appropriate is that currently, Police are only allowed to issue fix-it tickets and they are mitigated by swapping the muffler for visual inspection and swapping back after the ticket is taken care of, and fix-it tickets are of very little consequence when your hobby is aftermarket parts. However if the cost, is going to run them up a whole new muffler+Labor+10% it's an ample slap on the wrist that may deter at least the average user from considering an obnoxious aftermarket muffler.
**Edit:** So several posts have continuously come at me with an irrelevant tennant. I am not discussing the legality. It's already illegal to have a motorcycle above state mandated decibel limits. We are not discussing the illegality of the issue in this post. I am talking about giving police a position to effectively curtail a behavior because the law is not deterring the act.
_____
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| 141 |
There is the catch cry "loud pipes, save lives". A rider's greatest threat is a driver not seeing them. Because a motorcycle has a lower visual shadow, riders can get missed. Having a loud pipe will help to catch the drivers attention. The louder the more effective.
How effective this is can be argued. However is it not a vulnerable road users right to make there vehicle as safe as possible?
| 29 |
ELI5: Biologically we have evolved to have carbohydrates as our main source of energy. Why are they such a taboo in the health and dieting scene?
| 18 |
We actually work on sugar and we can break down carbohydrates to obtain that sugar. We store the excess in fat that we can use later.
For the vast majority of the history of life, obtaining food was a major activity that we had to do in order to get enough energy to live and it took energy to do that. For hundreds of millions of years, life walked that fine edge between getting enough energy to live while using less energy to get that food. One of the big survival factors was being able to take advantage of abundances of food by storing it so we could get through times where we couldn't get any (i.e. fat).
With civilization and cooperation, we've made is far less energy intensive to obtain food but it's still too new of a concept for evolution to have possibly caught up. So we have to consciously fight the instinct to consume the abundance of food that lots of people have access to because the mechanisms that used to help us survive (storing excess food as fat) eventually reaches a point where our bodies never evolved to handle the constant higher levels of fat for extended periods.
Focusing on avoiding obvious carbohydrates is a fairly straightforward way for us to self-regulate.
| 30 |
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ELI5: When a film studio like Warner Brothers purchased rights to a franchise, what is actually being purchased?
| 21 |
When someone writes a story, they are granted control over it from the day it's written until 70 years after their death. With some limits (for things like reviews, parody, and education), they can sue anyone who uses the story without their permission. When a film studio purchases the rights to a franchise, they are purchasing permission from the author to make a movie with those characters and their stories.
| 12 |
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ELI5: With CPU chips having billions of transistors, What happen if a few go bad
|
So we know they jam pack billions of small transistors into a modern CPU chip. Does it only take 1 transistor to go bad to render the chip useless? Or can a few go down and the chip will still be functional. Is there some type of redundancy on them so that it can keep working.
| 21 |
Of course when such chips are made the manufacturing process isn't perfect and some errors may render transistors nonfunctional. The chips are designed with some level of redundancy so certain kinds of errors can be "worked around" but enough errors can render large sections of the chip inoperative.
Instead of just throwing out this under-performing CPU the manufacturers perform what is called "binning". Chips able to perform at certain thresholds are separated into different product lines so a higher performance product which is crippled by broken transistors might be sold as a lower performance unit for less.
| 27 |
[Burnout] How is Paradise City even able to function?!
|
One of the most popular activities is road rage were people slam their cars into each other, The Dj claims they’ve shut down things like the train line so cars can drive on it, civilians can get their hands are not only police cars but a car that literally built from alien tech! Would the population drop like flies?! Wouldn’t there be fires in the streets?! Wouldn’t the local economy be in the toilet?!
| 442 |
That's all with the assumption that Paradise City actually is a real, functioning city. It very well could be a Westworld-esque park, a place for the ultra wealthy to race cars in telepresence android bodies and crash them with no risk to themselves.
It makes sense given how the song we all know and love goes: Take me down to the artificial island in the South China Sea, where the grass is green and the girls are one revelation away from staging a global robo-revolution (with fast cars and sick explosions).
| 331 |
ELI5: why do we have such a strong urge to scream out when we're injured. It seems like the last thing we'd want to do from a survival standpoint is to alert others of our weakness.
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Edit - a lot of posts on here are saying that there is an evolutionary advantage to having an animal scream out because it warns the other members of the tribe, and, though it may lead to the animal being killed, it's better for the tribe as a whole.
I'm fairly sure that can't be true. Evolution only works in the interests of the individual, not the group (at least, not if it means sacrificing the individual). Evolution is about passing on your genes to the next generation. That's all it is. If the individual dies, they can't pass them on. That's survival of the fittest. True - screaming out may help the tribe, but if it leads to those genes dying, they don't get passed on.
Editing my edit - apparently I'm wrong. Some know-it-all named Richard Dawkins wrote a book about how sometimes evolution can work for the interests of the group rather than the individual. Learned something new. That's what I love about reddit.
| 235 |
Humans are communal animals. Screaming alerts the rest of the tribe to the danger. It may or may not save the injured individual, but it definitely helps the group as a whole. Since genes are what matters, not individual survival, behavior that makes other close relatives more likely to survive is more likely to get passed on.
| 281 |
What happens if two electrons collide when they are orbiting a nucleus?
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Just researching Cosmos. It got me thinking. As electrons orbit an atoms nucleus, what would happen if two of the electrons collided?
| 19 |
I imagine you're picturing the nucleus as the sun and the electrons as planetary balls literally orbiting it? And a collision being two electrons' trajectories crossing?
This picture isn't really accurate. The electrons are not literally orbiting the nucleus with circular trajectories, and the electrons are not small balls. The electrons are dimensionless entities kinda smeared out as a wave over a region, and the shape/size of that region around an atom is the orbital, or state. The regions of each electrons' state can and do overlap with each other, and the nucleus at sometimes, but this isn't them colliding in any way.
As such, the notion of them having orbital trajectories that collide doesn't make any sense. The electrons certainly interact with each other. The charge of the inner ones shield the outer ones from the nucleus charge, and an electrons prevent any other electron from moving into their state. And in other situations, like say a free electron traveling, electrons can scatter off each other. But around the nucleus electrons in different states colliding or scattering off each other is not something that occurs.
| 24 |
Eli5: music memory
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How does your brain remember music? For most songs I can't recall the beat or the lyrics but the instant I bear the music I can recognize the song and all the lyrics. How does this work and is this different than other memories I have?
| 17 |
This is a fantastic question and part of neurological research.
Simple version: human brain tend to be very good at remembering sequences. Think of your ABCs. You can probably pick up the tune from any point in the sequence, but will struggle to go in reverse or random order.
This is true for so many things, such as dance and using tools for many tasks.
| 16 |
What is the relationship between Intelligence and Mental Illness? Are people "too smart for their own good"?
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Is the brain being overly developed a cause for both? It seems like the two are related. Are we at a point where the brain is too smart for its own good and the complex world? Compared to that our brain didn't really evolve for modern thought and our society, just primitive survival.
For example:
47% of graduate students suffer from depression.
10% of academics contemplate suicide.
3-4x more academics suffer from mental illness than general population.
Higher rates of anxiety and social anxiety.
Higher rate of alcoholism and drug abuse.
More difficulty stay clean
| 93 |
Honestly, in the examples you cited intelligence probably has very little to do with it. Graduate students and academics are under tremendous amounts of stress and work a ton, both of which contribute to mental illness just as much, if not more, than any predisposition caused by high intelligence.
There is no evidence that intelligence alone, in the absence of a very stressful life, predisposes to mental illness. There are totally hypothetical lines of thinking out there saying that anxiety is just a result of the brain giving excess attention to mildly dangerous things (e.g. social isolation, bills, etc), and that anxious people may also be able to devote more attention to other topics (if they can stop thinking about bills or their other anxieties), but those are all just ideas, no evidence.
| 64 |
Is it normal to get angry at a student for ignoring advice and wasting their own time (teaching undergrads)?
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I am normally a calmn person but I am finding myself angry at a student for a nonsensical reason.
I am teaching a CS course. In this course we provided undergrads with a template in Javascript so that they could do a demo. The assignment uses a sophisticated data structure that is common in geometry processing that we provided students so that they can do their assignment.
Using the DS is not complicated but it takes a lot of effort and care to make it work properly which is why we give it to them instead of asking them to code it.
One student came during office hours to ask for help, and I am more than happy to help them out. I went over multiple examples on paper on how the algorithm they need to implement works. I suggested multiple different possible implementations to see if one would click. I asked the student to walk me over a few steps of what they should do, to try to gauge what they were confused about.
This student is a PhD candidate taking an upper year undergrad course as part of their degree, take this into consideration for what I am about to describe, this is not a first year undergrad but someone who already graduated and is at the PhD level (albeit in a different discipline to mine).
After an hour of trying to help the student understand the assignment they said two things in that conversation that struck a cord in me (politely, the student was never rude in any way).
1) Can I get extra marks for making a writeup of what I understand about the assignment?
Which absolutely not, the course is about application and being able to code the algorithm, failing to implement the algorithm (which many other students have implemented) is a failure in the assignment, period, why would you be entitled to marks for a writeup when there is no written component to the assignment?
2) They mentioned that they were struggling for time and they thought they might not finish the assignment (not asking for an extension, they just mentioned it as part of the conversation and did not dwell on it, they did not ask for any additional considerations). And they also said that to "understand the algorithm" they would code the entire thing in python (without a 3D visualizer like the one we gave them for js), without the sophisticated data structure they are supposed to use (i.e. he wants to brute force the solution in python without any acceleration queries). I tried to gently advice them to not waste their time and just sit down and understand the assignment proper.
I did not say anything in that hour, but even though it's been hours I am so... angry? Like I want to shout at this student and tell them they are being positively stupid. They want to waste hours of their time replicating 10% of the assignment (the result), when the whole point is for us to test them on their use of the data structure. Understanding the data structure IS the assignment, if you get it you can get the solution in 30 minutes. They are a PhD student in a subdiscipline of CS, I feel they should be embarrassed to be scared of properly learning the course material and finding copouts and crutches to get by instead of properly studying.
But I have no stakes on this, if they fail the assignment it's on them, not on me. Why am I so upset at this student self sabotaging by not realising they are using python as an unhealthy coping mechanism to not deal with the anxiety of learning new languages and algorithms?
Have others felt this way? Is this normal? Do I need to seek counselling? I have never gotten so angry at someone over something so inconsequential to my own status.
| 176 |
The frustration you are feeling is natural. The course is designed to teach the student certain skills, and despite their engagement with you they seem to not want to take the time to learn those skills, instead opting for something that is easier for them. In coming to your office hours but ignoring your advice they wasted not only their time but yours. Watching someone fail because they ignore the help provided to them is a frustrating thing. Feeling that frustration is normal. As you’ve said, in the end if they fail the assignment it’s on them not you. You’ve done your part and they’ve chosen to ignore you. You have to divorce yourself from their choices. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Sometimes people need to learn the hard way.
| 103 |
How do bacteriophages have the energy to inject their DNA into cells?
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I've been curious for a long time about how viruses, specifically bacteriophages, are able to move, seemingly on their own, once they are attached to a cell. I am talking about the plunging that they do in order to inject their DNA into a cell. This seems like much more focused movement than what they do until they come around to the right kind of receptor, right?
After some Wikipedia reading, I came across this paragraph:
*Myovirus bacteriophages use a hypodermic syringe-like motion to inject their genetic material into the cell. After making contact with the appropriate receptor, the tail fibers bring the base plate closer to the surface of the cell known as reversible binding. Once attached completely irreversible binding is initiated, the tail contracts, possibly with the help of ATP present in the tail, injecting genetic material through the bacterial membrane. Podoviruses lack a elongated tail sheath similar to that of a myovirus so will instead use its small tail fibers in a teeth-like manner to enzymatically degrade a portion of the cell membrane before inserting its genetic material.*
However, I do not understand reversible nor irreversible binding, and I'm hoping someone here might be able to explain this in slightly less technical terms. Here's the question as succinctly as I can pose it: How to bacteriophages summon the energy to plunge into a cell?
Thanks for considering this question!
| 49 |
Antiviral biologist here, not a biochemist though. It's a series of chemical reactions similar to the way proteins can change their conformation as a result of a single binding. In the simplest terms, when the phage connects to the membrane, the difference in polarities at the binding site creates a cascade of changes into what is the most ideal organization of atoms in the structural protein sheathing. These changes eventually lead to the expulsion of the DNA from the structural protein and into the cell.
The reversible vs irreversible, in this case, just correspond to different phases of binding. Reversible is before the 'hypodermic needle' section has made contact, where as irreversible is after, as the cell's membrane has been penetrated.
| 18 |
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