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[Breaking Bad] How was Walter White so much better than everyone at making meth?
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So Walter White produced extremely pure meth (98% or higher if I remember correctly) but Jesse was the only one who could come close. Once the recipe was out there, wouldn't it just take a lot of accuracy to make it well? It seems like making precise measurements is not something that only skilled chemists can do.
| 307 |
Walter used a different (meth)od than most other people. That's what gave it it's blue color, most people didn't know this. Some tried to copy him by putting blue food dye in the meth but wasn't as pure as his. Walter was also a genius at Chemistry and most of his competition besides maybe Gus were not very smart.
| 263 |
ELI5: Why we like "cold" water over "warm" water.
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Title kind of explains it all. If i'm not particular over-heated or parched, I would still enjoy a cold glass of water over a warm one (basically all the time), however why exactly i always choose that might not make much sense...
| 90 |
We don't. In many places in the world, room temperature water is preferred. In most parts of Asia, it is not uncommon for people to ask for warm water, which comes to the table anywhere from 120F to just off the boil.
| 102 |
[Star Wars: The Mandalorian] Spoilers: What are *those* things even made out of?
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I'm talking of course about
>![the Dark Troopers]
So these things can tank close range blaster fire and Mandalorian flame throwers with no issue. However, Beskar and lightsabers seem to be capable of taking them out. So what exactly is strong enough to be unfazed by blasters and strong enough to punch through Imperial grade blast doors, but gets cut like butter by Beskar and lightsabers.
| 29 |
Legends the armor was made of phrik a nearly indestructible metal. In canon we can assume it's made of something else with similar properties as phrik was closer in legends to what beskar is in canon.
| 23 |
ELI5: How do transsexuals change their genitalia? Does the new genitalia look and function normally?
| 89 |
As with most things, males seem to have it easier. With MTF, most of the erectile tissue is removed from the penis and the skin is sutured back together, then pushed into the body to form a vagina. A bit of the skin and nerve endings from the tip are relocated to form a clitoris, and the surgeon takes some bits of the scrotum and folds them up some to form labia. The balls, as you may imagine, are removed. If the surgeon is good, without quite a close inspection and excellent lighting, it is difficult to tell the difference between OEM and and aftermarket lady parts, and apparently, some even self-lubricate after a while.
I don't know as much about FTM, just that the replacement part does not function the same way the OEM one does.
| 54 |
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CMV:I think the concept of transgender children is disturbing, and people should wait until they are older to transition
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When I was a girl I wanted to be a boy because I loved playing with hot wheels, Legos, tinker toys and transformers. I loved sci fi and action movies and hated anything girlie. However when I reached puberty and read feminist literature I realized I was indeed a girl and loved these things but was still female. I honestly think gender dysphoria can be a social thing and don't think children should be transitioning just because they challenge gender roles. Let kids be kids instead of pushing them into boxes.
Edit: I have changed my views in many ways...I acknowledge that gender dysphoria is a real thing. however it still disturbs me that many trans children say they are trans just because they play with legos, or transformers, or dolls, or it seems like their parents are very sexist. I just hope most gender therapists are responsible.
| 159 |
Kids are typically not allowed to transition just because they like playing with the opposite gender's toys, it is exceedingly more complex than that. There is a lot of studying still to be done around the area of gender dysphoria. Children do not physically 'transition' at a young age either - they are typically just choosing to live as their preferred gender and in some cases are allowed to take medication to prevent the onset of puberty, meaning that when they get older transitioning is easier.
Children who begin this process are usually suffering very clear signs of dysphoria more complex than "I don't like girly things" - some feel suicidal, feel that they have been given the wrong physical body, that something got messed up in their head, etc.
Trans* people are not people who simply decide they *want* to be the other gender - they are people who feel as though they are already part of that gender but their body does not match.
| 119 |
ELI5: People used to drink more alcohol because it was purportedly safer to drink than water due to fermentation processes. How was that drinking habit sans water sustainable without them getting dehydrated from drinking so much alcohol?
| 19 |
You have to drink alcohol in concentrations of higher than 30% (60 proof) for it to cause you to lose more water than you absorb from the drink. So drinking beers and wine which ranged from 2% to 10% were not enough to dehydrate you. And most of the beers that they drank during the day were called small beer which were around the 2% mark.
| 38 |
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ELI5: Why do we need to use polygons in video games? What causes us to need flat polygons rather than simply having rounded shapes?
| 2,051 |
EDIT: For the actual 5 year olds, feel free to ignore anything written between the (parenthesis) - this is extra stuff for people to Google-search for if interested.
---
I program 3D graphics engines.
To calculate a triangle, you just need 3 points and then you fill the space between them. This simple nature allows for some optimisation; we know that only the pixels between these 3 points will be modified when rastered. We can use this knowledge to simplify how the triangle is shaded, so simple texture mapping is just a case of interpolating texture co-ordinates between these points (keeping depth in mind for perspective correctness). There's more optimisations to be had here that will take a lot of explaining (our GPUs have evolved to be very good at dealing with space between 3 points).
To calculate a rounded surface, you need an equation for the 3D curve, as well as the limits of the surface. Interpolating texture co-ordinates here would involve re-using that equation over and over again, quite the expensive operation. That equation may also "push" the pixels of the surface out into unexpected directions, so optimisations related to the flatness of a simple triangle are going to be much more difficult (they'd need the 3D curve equation to be used again - clipping would definitely be more complex).
As a result, early graphics hardware evolved to be very efficient with triangles and all the research and development has been spent there, resulting in real-time graphics to be as amazing as it is right now in its current state. To go back and make a new way of rendering would involve a new class of graphics acceleration hardware that doesn't have all the years of development of the triangle-based hardware we have, that's not a good trade-off.
The graphics hardware we have now is also great at sending additional information along with the XYZ positions of a triangle vertex, so we can send texture UV, XYZ normal, reflectivity, roughness, and more as additional numbers tied to triangle vertices and these get interpolated between the triangle points too, very handy.
As GPUs get more and more generalised as compute-oriented machines, rather than triangle-rastering-oriented machines, we may see new types of rendering (real-time ray-tracing is possible now, as is voxel based rendering) but these almost always will be slower than using current hardware to render a triangle, so we see these techniques getting used in parallel to triangle-based rendering to achieve effects that aren't as efficient with a triangle-based world (voxels are fast for real-time global illumination, ray-marching [limited ray-tracing] is faster for limited reflections in scenes limited by the amount of triangles displayed).
Perhaps one day we'll gain a "curve" shader where we can use a curve equation to do a perfectly smooth surface between the points of a triangle (I expect the nature of current raster hardware will allow for some cheats here, interpolating between fragments come to mind), but for the time being that's slower than just having lots of triangles to better estimate the curve with current hardware.
| 1,360 |
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Eli5 What do flying insects do when it rains?
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When thier wings get wet they are immobile so what do they do?
| 4,928 |
Knowing when it's going to rain is an important survival sense for a creature that's the size of a raindrop, so most smaller flying insects generally head for shelter when conditions become right for heavy rain.
A lot of them seek cover in the underside of leaves or the side of plants that are away from the wind. Some like bumblebees just park themselves and wait it out if they can't get to their hive in time.
And because bigger insects like dragonflies that eat the smaller flying ones don't have any prey to hunt, they seek shelter as well.
| 4,666 |
Does the Sun have Lagrangian points with the center of the Milky Way?
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Most astronomers are aware of the Lagrange points between the Earth-Sun, Jupiter-Sun etc, but does the Sun share the same thing with the galactic center, just on a bigger scale?
| 16 |
In short, no.
The Lagrange points are specifically libration points of a three-body problem, typically the Sun-Earth-L_point and Earth-Moon-L_point systems. You can also construct them for essentially any masses you want but they need to be the significant attractors in the range.
The Sun-Galaxy_center-L_point system cannot be defined without removing all the other large masses in that system. It doesn't work any better than talking about a Sun-Moon-L_p system. You just couldn't ignore the Earth in that scale.
| 20 |
[harry potter] does the ministry of magic collect taxes?
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so i was thinking about gringotts and how they don't keep your money in an account in the traditional muggle sense, they just give you a safe deposit box to keep cash in. which means every time anyone wants to withdraw or deposit money, they have to ride the cart and all that.
this also means they are not collecting interest on this money, as gringotts doesn't appear to be able to use the funds which is why banks pay interest. it also means you can't write a check because the employees have no means of moving funds from one vault to another.
so everyone is just paid in cash all the time? how can this possibly be regulated in any manner to be taxable?
so that begs the question, how does the ministry pay for anything, including staff salaries, if they're not collecting taxes? furthermore, how does hogwarts make any money to pay its employees if they don't charge tuition?
the entire wizarding world economy seem tenuous at best. it's not only all cash but all coin. you have to physically carry around precious metals worth whatever you want to buy and deal with a tedious goblin cart anytime you want to go to the bank.
| 23 |
Presumably they do in some form. The Ministry seems to be one of the major employers in the wizarding world, and we know that the employees get paid for their work. It may not be obvious taxation, but there are likely examples of taxation occurring (likely tax on luxury magical creations).
Or maybe everyone agrees to pay a certain amount, and Ministry employed arithmancers decide who is taxed what on a fairness aspect through magical numbers/divination; the governance of the wizarding UK does not have to be similar to the muggle UK.
Taxation will be different to muggle taxation because magic is so powerful, and wizards can essentially magic all their essentials (the Weasleys are poor by wizarding standards, but they have a large plot of farmable land, a large house and plenty of food. They just can't afford a lot of luxury items/services).
| 17 |
ELI5: Why does the mathematical Order of Operations exist?
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We multiply and divide before we add and subtract. Why? Please don't guess. Back it up. Everybody answer I've read is a guess.
| 34 |
The people who are saying "it's arbitrary" are wrong. Recall that multiplication is repeated addition, and exponentiation is repeated multiplication. Order of operations ensures that the answer you get when you solve "3x2+3" is the same as the answer you get when you solve the *mathematically identical* problem "2+2+2+3."
If order of ops were any different, then our definitions of addition, multiplication, etc would also necessarily be completely different.
Let's look at an example. Keep it simple: only multiplication and addition. Make it concrete: let's look at 3x2+3 again. Multiplying first gives us 9. Adding first gives us 15.
Why multiply first?
We could have easily written out the problem as 2+2+2+3.
Multiplying first gives us 9. The written-out version gives us 9. So *multiplying first gives us the right answer.*
If we added first, *we wouldn't get the right answer.*
Same thing is true for higher-level operations like exponentiation and whatnot.
| 43 |
CMV: There is no such thing as Gay Pedophiles or Straight Pedophiles, there are simply Pedophiles.
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**Note**: I am only using Pedophilia in the strictest, scientific definition of the term, which is physical attraction to pre-pubescent children. This post is not in reference to Ebe/Hebephiles (those attracted to teens who have gone through puberty) because in their case secondary sex characteristics actually *do* factor into their attraction.
I’ve noticed homophobes have a tendency to zero in on a victim’s genitals and if the offending pedo in question happens to be a man while their victim has a penis and is AMAB this now suddenly makes the pedophile “gay” and is seen as a mark against the LGBT community.
But it’s a misconception to believe that (exclusively attracted) pedophiles are wired like most human beings who center their attraction based around sex. What’s unique about pedophiles is that they’re essentially attracted to gender-neutral sexless beings who lack any sort of the defining secondary sex characteristics that separates males from female. They are attracted to this distinct *lack* of sex markers so they can hardly be called either gay or straight no matter the assigned sex at birth of their victims.
Pre-pubescent children are mostly sexless, the only thing truly marking them as a certain sex are their genitals and chromosomes, but other than that they don’t truly grow into/develop until they hit puberty and are exposed to hormones. Hormones are the most important sex-defining characteristics, not genitals or chromosomes. Without hormones you would never truly be able to differentiate between a little “boy” or a little “girl” unless you pulled down their underwear. Their facial features, voice, height and upper body are completely identical.
If you want to be really pendatic, exclusive pedophiles are technically pansexual since gender/sex doesn’t seem to factor into their attractions at all, but even that’s the wrong word to use since it seems that what attracts pedos is the distinct *lack* of sex/gender, compared to the majority human population who are attracted *because* of one’s sex/gender.
| 143 |
If your argument is correct that pedophiles strictly prey on children because they are "sexless" how do you account for pedophiles with a gender preference? If children are "sexless," wouldn't the data reflect a randomness of victims, especially from repeat offenders? Instead, most pedophiles prey exclusively on one gender or the other. How does that clear preference not reflect the pedophile's sexual orientation?
>I’ve noticed homophobes have a tendency to zero in on a victim’s genitals and if the offending pedo in question happens to be a man while their victim has a penis and is AMAB this now suddenly makes the pedophile “gay” and is seen as a mark against the LGBT community.
Seems like you are advancing this argument because you dislike how the current data reflects a disproportionately high frequency of male on male predation, and you would rather just muddy the waters and say everyone preys on everyone indiscriminately. However, this is simply not true.
| 111 |
ELI5: How can open source software be considered "more secure" if everyone has access to the source? wouldn't that make it inherently LESS secure?
| 24 |
You can find security holes without access to the source code, but you can't *fix* security holes without access to the source code.
And more generally, a security hole is a mistake or an oversight, and generally the more people you have reading something, the more likely it is that someone is going to spot the problem. With just a few people reading the code, like you have in a company, it's easier for mistakes to slip through, but a large open source project might have hundreds and hundreds of people reading the code, so one of them is bound to spot the problem.
Edit: Note that the recent OpenSSL news is a good example of this. We didn't find out about it because hackers got in and destroyed everything, we found out because security researchers were looking at the freely available source code and spotted the problem.
| 43 |
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Why doesn't glue harden while in the bottle?
| 35 |
Type of glue here is essential for the explanation; but I'll take a few examples.
1. Superglue; cyanoacrylic, actually initiates bond with water molecules. So being in an air-tight container extends the life significantly. So without the water molecules to bond to the glue won't react and create the bond. (This is why the stuff sticks to fingers so fast.
2. Wood glue, elmers glue, and the like use PVA. -- it works by forming a chain (polymerization) when it dries. The solution is usually water, so while in the container the un-evaporated water keeps the chain reaction from happening.
3. Rubber Cement -- works like the PVA, its dissolved in a solvent such as acetone. This solvent evaporates and creates the polymerization bond. So once again, a sealed container keeps it from evaporating.
| 32 |
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[WH40k] So, I am an 18 year old lad living on a moderately well to do world. What kind of knowledge would I have about the empire and FTL propulsion?
| 43 |
You know that your world is part of a galactic Empire, that Holy Terra is its center and guiding light, but that your world (like all worlds) has its unique and irreplaceable role to play in the Emperor's plan.
You know that your world is routinely visited by the servants of the Administratum, whose mighty ships traverse the depthless void of space to collect the tithe your planet owes to the Imperium in return for its protection. You know, too, that space is vast and full of horrors, but that the full might of the noble Imperial Guard, whose swift ships fearlessly fly from star to star, stands ready to support your Planetary Defense Force should it encounter a threat beyond its capabilities. If you are high in the ranks of your planet's social structure, you may even know of the Astronomicon, how it holds the Empire together, and of the dread Black Ships which carry psykers to Holy Terra to fuel its beacon.
Will you know about the Warp and what it wants to do to you? Or about how dangerous FTL travel is? Not unless you work your way into a position where you need to know. Knowledge of Chaos by the unauthorized is punishable by death - and for very good reasons. But even on the most backwater of the Imperium's planets, people know of the Emperor and of Holy Terra, and that His servants travel from star to star in His name. Space travel is no secret.
| 55 |
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[General fantasy] Do you think the top part of a mermaid also tastes like fish or that it would actually be red meat? Would there be a solid line where the meat changes in their body or would it kind of blend? Could you make a surf and turf platter with one carcass?
| 148 |
Fish (and reptiles for that matter) developed to move through lateral undulations, and therefore their tails are arranged to move side to side.
Mammals on the other hand, developed a vertical gait, and mammals that adapted to a marine environment developed tails that follow this movement, i.e. moving up and down. This has happened separately several times in evolutionary history.
Mermaids have developed a tail that utilizes vertical undulations rather than a lateral one.
Therefore Merfolk are mammals. Their entire flesh would be the same, mammals flesh. As they are a subspecies of humanity (perhaps Homo Maritimus is a good taxonomic designation) they would probably taste similar to us, and some have said that human flesh tastes like pork.
| 100 |
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ELI5: Why is it that all nighters and sleeping late hits harder the older you are?
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Am I the only one who feels this? I feel like staying up late and pulling all nighters was much easier before!
| 48 |
Simply put, after a certain age your body is in a constant state of decay. So, doing things that are harmful like staying up late takes longer to recover from because of diminished constitution.
Tl;dr getting older sucks and you're not invincible
| 59 |
ELI5: Why do certain plastics become sticky as they get older?
| 80 |
Are you specifically referring to the plastic interior pieces on some cars? Mostly European cars?
If so, i can explain.
The sticky plastic pieces are actually coated with a "soft touch" coating. You can Google that exact phrase and it'll come right up. Basically, you take a regular plastic piece (typically ABS plastic in automotive interiors) that feels, well.... like plastic, and spray this coating over it. Once it dries it feels awesome to the touch. Soft, slick but dry. Honestly it feels great when it's new.
The problem is it degrades over time and turns into a sticky, nasty mess. The heat and constant temperature changes in a car's interior, plus all the grabbing and touching with dirty, oily hands really speeds up the process. This is why the driver's door handle on a BMW tends to be the fastest part that turns to nasty goo.
If you've never seen or touched a sticky car interior, i highly recommend you do. It'll blow your mind that companies are still using that coating after what happens to it
| 46 |
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ELI5: Why does the temperature of a food drastically change how it tastes?
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For example, warm beer tastes very different than ice cold beer. Cookies fresh out of the over taste different from the same batch of cookies that sat at room temperature for an hour.
| 29 |
Our tongue's taste buds have tiny microscopic channels (called trpm6) which send a signal to our brain when it comes in contact with 'taste molecules' which are then translated to a specific taste sensation. The reaction of the channels are much more intense when the food has a higher temperature so it sends a stronger electrical signal to the brain. Naturally, the opposite is in effect for colder consumables as the channels respond much slower. In conclusion, hotter food is more tasty than colder alternatives.
(note that TRPM5 is only used to signal sweet and bitter tastes)
| 19 |
ELI5:Why do some songs give me the chills/goose bumps? Whats happening to the body?
| 46 |
Body releases dopamine cuz the brain enjoys music. You start to get the chills because the brain is a good predictor of what may come next, and you predict what comes next because you've probably heard it before. It was epic then, and it's epic now, and here come them chills because Danny Carry is such a monster on these drums!!
| 31 |
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ELI5: How does wifi work?
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It's just like this weird force.
| 16 |
Wi-Fi is a wireless networking technology that uses radio waves to provide wireless network connections using the IEEE 802.11x standard protocol. The communication is two way between a computer's wireless adapter and a router and uses the Radio Frequency (RF). When RF current is supplied to an antenna, it creates an electromagnetic field that propagates through space.
The wireless adapter converts data from the computer into radio signals and transmits it using an antenna. The wireless router receives the signal and decodes it. The router then sends the information to the internet using an Ethernet connection. When the router receives information from the internet, it translates it into a radio signal and sends it to the computer's wireless adapter.
| 15 |
ELI5: What exactly are headaches, and what causes them?
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What are headaches actually in your head? And what causes them to happen?
| 854 |
There are many causes, too many to mention.
They can be caused by dehydration, muscle tension in the neck and head, migraines, pinched nerves, toxins, withdrawals, blood vessel contracting, blood vessels expanding................
| 607 |
[DC] The Anti-Life-Equation works by proving to you mathematically that Life is inherently meaningless and that free will is an illusion. - Wouldn't Nihilistic Characters be all immune?
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I mean I can see why those revelations could send certain people into an existential crisis.
But it's basically the core premise of Nihilism. So someone who is a nihilist at heart would probably be like: "Yeah thank you for proving me right! If you excuse me for a moment I need to post this on r/debatereligion to see some heads explode!"
Has something like this ever happened in universe?
Now that I think about it. Maybe most religious people should be immune as well.
Only very few people would actually get an existential crisis by being exposed to contradicting evidence to their world view.
Most people would have a strong enough conformation bias to just ignore the evidence before them.
Has that ever happened in canon?
| 294 |
Imagine you're a Christian. Just your standard Christian, goes to church on Sunday, goes to confession, etc. Now imagine an actual fiery winged, wheels within wheels Angel Of The Lord came down and regrows your amputated limbs in a burst of holy fire. You're going to *freak the fuck out,* and will probably change every aspect of your life on seeing this. It's not that it contradicts your worldview- it's very much a thing you always believed could happen- it's exactly the opposite. Sudden, overwhelming, physical evidence of something previously abstract and nebulous can be just as shattering as learning it wasn't there at all.
Same here. There's a difference between abstractly believing nihilism and being shown absolute, unquestionable proof that everything in your life is worthless and you have no control over anything. Most nihilists still *act* as if they control their actions and the things they care about matter- like our sunday going Christian, it's an abstract metaphysical belief. When that metaphysical belief sudden becomes overwhelmingly physical, things get mindshattering fast.
(for the religious person seeing the antilife equation? Imagine how the *nihilist* would react to the healing angel descending upon them)
| 258 |
[Marvel Universe] Why shouldn't Ultron (and other constructs) be able to pick up Mjölnir?
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I know there are a ton of Mjölnir questions on this sub, but I'm adding one more.
It has been established that an elevator can lift Mjölnir. Therefore, is it really a leap to suggest that any robot could do so, given that it's simply another mechanical device? Could Ultron lift it? Iron Man's armor without Tony inside? Bender from Futurama? What about non-sentient robots?
| 39 |
If a robot is sentient (Ultron, Vision) they count as a person and have to be worthy.
Non sentient yeah they could pick it up, but they wouldn't get the powers of Thor because they aren't whosever they're whatsoever.
| 95 |
ELI5: Why tons of students I know that are fairly wealthy and well off are receiving high amounts from FASFA for college while I, from a middle-class family that is barely getting by and is heavily relying on FAFSA, only received a small sum that barely assists us at all?
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My father works as a pastor in a church and only makes half the salary he should be. He also owns a small business but we make almost 0 profit from it because business is so bad. My mom works 2 part time jobs with minimum wage from each. We are also putting my older brother, 22 years old, through school. We are just barely cutting it to get by. Bills and taxes are often paid late, unless my mother dips into my bank account to "borrow" cash to make a payment. How do wealthy families with more ability to pay for college attain high sums from FAFSA while we are sitting here struggling for enough to get through the week?
Edit: I'd also like to add that I do understand the fact that we are white and that owning a business has something to do with it.
Edit: Thank you for your detailed responses and explanations. It is pretty easy to understand now that I realize I was technically incorrect in my statement that wealthier kids receive more than I do. Apologies for that. My personal conditions separate me from others and result in a lower aid package because I appear to have a lot of benefits, when they actually are not.
| 634 |
Similar to that, it also seems like savers are punished. Take two hypothetical families, both with 3 kids, the same mortgage and both earning say $75,000: the Savers and the Spenders.
The Savers take no vacations, drive old cars, and manage to scrimp and save $5,000 to put towards their children's education each year.
The Spenders, on the other hand, take multiple vacations, lease new cars, and put nothing towards their kids' educations.
Flash forward 15 years, the Savers have roughly $75,000, the Spenders, $0.
Guess who will get more financial aid? According to FAFSA employees I've spoken with, the Spenders. Because on paper, they have less to contribute.
How is that fair?
| 346 |
ELi5: how do people build oil rigs in the oceans? How do we put the giant pillars into the ocean floor?
| 22 |
We don't actually anchor them to the floor. Those deep water platforms actually float there with anchor lines to keep them stable. The drill and pump mechanism is sent down some somewhat flexible tubing.
There was an article in The Economist about towing one to a scrap yard in Turkey.
| 16 |
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[Star Wars: TLJ] So if Leia was so opposed to Poe's bombing run plan, why couldn't she have called the bombers back herself since she was in overall command?
| 40 |
Part of command is empowering the officers under you. You can't get them in the habit of expecting that you'll come in whenever you make a mistake.
Nor can you get the people under *their* command to question their officer's competence because that will destroy the chain of command, which will completely ruin an army
| 39 |
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What is money?
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Can someone explain what money is? Why do we seek it? Is money just a lie that we keep telling ourselves? Also, why is money so effective in what it does? Has there always been money?
| 15 |
Money is a medium of exchange which we seek because we believe we can always exchange it for something that we want.
Depending on who you ask, money has been around as credit since the dawn of civilization. In classic economic theory (Adam Smith) money evolved from bartering. This has been widely debunked. One of the more popular critics is David Graeber who wrote "Debt the first 5000 years". His basic premise is that money is credit and has always been credit.
In the modern world, we have global consensus on the idea of money which makes it far more valuable and efficient than it has ever been.
| 24 |
CMV: Aliens have never visited earth.
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Let me start by saying I was really into the whole UFO topic for several years. After extensively following pretty much every new UFO sighting or alien conspiracy I could find I gradually went from being a firm believer to feeling like it's very likely that all alien/ UFO accounts can be explained by hoaxes or unreliable eyewitness testimony.
So many of the most credible seeming sightings end up being debunked as hoaxes. Similarly, so many credible sources of eye-witness testimony, such as the various military personnel in the disclosure project, end up revealing themselves to be pursuing money and or simply lying about their expertise such as Bob Lazar(claimed to work at Area 51).
I would love for it to be true that aliens have been visiting earth and its all a big coverup but I can't think of a single credible example that hasn't been thoroughly discredited. CMV.
| 88 |
The view "Aliens have never visited Earth" is quite a strong stance to take, considering Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, we have had very little time to record or collect evidence. Saying we currently have no evidence or that the current stories do not indicate we have been visited does not discount the age of the Earth or the very short time humans have been present for it.
Note, this is not an attempt to prove we have been visited, just that an absolute statement such as "never" should not be made when we have really very little evidence either way.
| 93 |
[Star Trek] what are the primary sources of energy for the Federarion?
| 22 |
Mostly fusion for planetary and station needs. Starships have a combination of fusion reactors and m/am reactors.
Starships need massive power output to travel at warp and one way to do that is a matter/antimatter reaction. However, to get antimatter you need to make it. The TNG:TM has this to say on antimatter generation:
>As used aboard the USS Enterprise, antimatter is first generated at major Starfleet fueling facilities by combined solar-fusion charge reversal devices, which process proton and neutron beams into antideuterons, and are joined by a positron beam accelerator to produce antihydrogen (specifically antideuterium). Even with the added solar dynamo input, there is a net energy loss of 24% using this process, but this loss is deemed acceptable by Starfleet to conduct distant interstellar operations.
As is stated above the creation of antimatter an energy loss. Antimatter is also extreamly dangerous. An antimatter containment failure on a planet of even a few kg would be devastating. Where fusion is much safer. Coupled with abundant space to build power plants and easy/cheap fuel sources, there is no need for m/am reactors on planets.
| 22 |
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Pauli exclusion principle: how fast does 'this state is occupied' information travel?
|
Assuming it travels with c, does this mean that PEP can be violated for short amount of time?
| 20 |
As the other poster stated, it's a man-made rule to explain what we observe. But the math tells us that this information is embedded in a field. So there is no "this state is occupied" information. You just have a wave behaving as it naturally will.
Unfortunately, in this case, the wave is a bit too hard to think about intuitively to give a satisfying explanation as to why it won't. You merely learn to accept it as a physicist that it won't.
Fermions are described by what we call "spinor" fields. A spinor is vaguely described as the square root of geometry the same way the imaginary number `i` is the square root of a number. We find mathematically that spinor's don't commute with each other the way a normal number will. IE 3 x 4 = 4 x 3 but ab != ba if a & b are spinors. Rather ab = - ba.
A spinor-valued field fundamentally has this property. So what we find is that a normal classical field is perfectly willing to double itself (f*f = f^(2)) but a spinor field can't since a*a = -a*a and the only number that equals negative itself is 0. So we simply find that this field won't let itself double.
So a quick example. An ocean wave can be simply compared to a spin-less boson's field. An ocean wave is obviously willing to cross another wave and the amplitudes of the two waves just combine. But a spinor field won't!
| 10 |
ELI5: Limited number of transfers from Savings accounts
|
I went to go transfer some cash from my savings to my checkings account, and again noticed something to the degree of "Federal law says you can only make six transfers out of your savings account per month"
ELI5 Please?
| 37 |
It's due to §204.2(d)(2) of the Reserve Requirements for Depository Institutions. For 5 year olds, that means "rules for banks set by the federal government", specifically, the section that defines what a savings account is, legally.
Basically, the limit on transfers is part of what designates a "savings" from a "checking" account that has unlimited transfers. Certain protections and features are included in a savings account (namely, accumulating interest or waiver of service fees), and without passing this requirement to legally be a savings account, it wouldn't qualify.
| 12 |
CMV: The statement "IQ only measures your ability to take IQ tests; it's not a measurement of your actual intellect" is politically correct nonsense. IQ is absolutely the best predictor of virtually every known indicator of success.
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I hear this all the time and it's one of the most profoundly wrong statements that is accepted by such a vast majority of the population. We have this innate revulsion to the idea that some people could just naturally have a greater capacity to learn new skills faster than other people. It's "not fair" and therefore not true.
Meanwhile in the real world, IQ has a profound correlation with income:
https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/02/11/the-incredible-correlation-between-iq-income/
as well as a strong negative correlation with imprisonment:
http://criminal-justice.iresearchnet.com/crime/intelligence-and-crime/3/
The correlation with education level shouldn't be surprising. What's interesting is that an individual can raise their own IQ through additional adult education:
https://brainsize.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/iq-years-of-education/
IQ is simply the best system we have for measuring the general capacity of an individual for achievement. It is absolutely fair to incorporate it into job interviews, school admissions processes, and a host of other assessments. Anyone fighting this does so with pure emotion and not a single fact backing up their claims. Prove me wrong.
_____
> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*
| 17 |
All of those conclusions are based on statistics which suggest correlations between various *averages* of IQ and social measures such as income and criminality etc - but what those averages don't show you is that there is *nothing* you can know about an individual with a higher than average IQ - there are people with very high IQ's who can barely function in society and who need help and supervision to cope with everyday life because they have so little of the other types of intelligence, such as social intelligence and practical intelligence.
Literally, the only thing that IQ measures is the ability to complete IQ tests.
| 45 |
ELI5: How do some spiders manage to get stuck in the webs of other spiders despite being able to (seemingly) flawlessly move through their own webs?
| 19 |
Not all strands in a spider web are sticky, and a spider moves on his own web by walking on the non-sticky strands. If the spider stepped incorrectly, they'd get stuck in their own web.
If that same spider tried to walk on a different web, they'd probably step on the wrong strand and get stuck.
| 28 |
|
CMV: The concept of microaggressions is harmful to both the "aggressor" and the target.
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First, I want to say that I love this community. It is incredible, and I have learned so much since subscribing.
.
Now, Here are the points that I intend to make:
* aggression assumes intent.
* many people who commit "microaggressions" have no intention of doing anything harmful.
* viewing unintentionally harmful acts as aggressive encourages a person to react aggressively rather than constructively.
Edit:
>Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward stigmatized or culturally marginalized groups.
definition by wikipedia
/Edit
.
if I was walking down the street and someone punched me in the face, I would probably hit them back. However if the same person tripped and accidentally punched me in the face, I would probably stop and help them. That situation changes if I am taught to assume that every time someone harms me it is an act of aggression. I would likely react the same way in both situations. That could create all kinds of problems for me down the road.
.
There are many versions of microaggressions that I have heard that could easily have no negative intent behind them. One example is:
>Are you bringing your husband to the party?
That statement could very easily be offensive. There are alot of assumptions implicit in it. It assumes the sexual orientation of the person, it assumes their marital status, it assumes that they should be married. However, the fact that someone is offended does not demonstrate the intent necessary to define it as aggression.
.
If someone assumes that an honest mistake is aggressive, then they are likely to respond aggressively in turn. This affects their mindset. They are likely to see the world as far more dangerous as it really is. In addition, they are likely to alienate people that could have been their friends. It is also possible that a kinder response could have helped the "aggressor" change their problematic behavior. Once the cycle of aggression starts it becomes much more difficult to put down our defenses and talk openly.
.
It would ultimately be much more helpful to first seek to understand. Then, if there is truly no aggressive intent, try to come from a place of compassion. That is much more likely to produce genuine change.
Edit:
I appreciate all of the responses. I would like to note one way that my view has been changed:
I do not have a problem with the actual concept behind microaggressions. It is important that these interactions be addressed. We should encourage them to be addressed in a kind and compassionate way. The term microaggression encourages people to address them in a defensive way. In addition this has been helpful in giving me hope to see that more people view this as something to be approached with compassion than I previously thought. I will be going through awarding deltas to anyone who helped in shifting my views.
| 60 |
Are microggressions even defined as being aggressive though?
Merriam-Webster:
: a comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group (such as a racial minority)
no mention of motive or aggression.
Wikipedia:
Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward stigmatized or culturally marginalized groups.
Explicitely "intentional or unintentional"
Psychology Today (don't ask, that's just the third thing that came up):
A microaggression is a subtle, often unintentional, form of prejudice. Rather than an overt declaration of racism or sexism, a microaggression often takes the shape of an offhanded comment, an inadvertently painful joke, or a pointed insult.
Again, explicitly "often unintentional".
I'd say maybe the word is poorly chosen, bit the CONCEPT, which is what you were talking about, seems perfectly in line with your opinions on the matter.
| 25 |
Eli5: what is negative g force and why does it make you feel so weird?
| 54 |
It's when you are being forced upward. For example, at the crest of a hill of a high-speed roller coaster where your momentum is going up from climbing the hill but the coaster's track curves downward faster than the parabolic trajectory you would otherwise travel. We're used to being held down by gravity, so when a situation occurs that makes up feel like we're being shot upward, it feels unusual to us. Particularly as we feel our organs being lifted inside our bodies.
| 85 |
|
Just got asked to write my first Letter of Rec
|
I am a graduate student who teaches undergrads in my department. This is my first semester teaching as the primary instructor and I have just my first request to write a LOR for a scholarship.
The student in question was a good student and I have no problem writing one for him... except I have never done it and don't know what to include. Almost all of the LOR I have had written for myself I have never seen, as they were submitted directly to the school or scholarship committee.
Any advice is appreciated.
| 33 |
I have been told that many organizations don't accept letters of recommendation from grad students, or at least don't give them nearly as much weight as letters from faculty. You should check with the organization that awards the scholarship first to see if they have a problem with it.
| 32 |
[Middle Earth] Authorial Voice in the books "There and Back Again" and "The Lord of the Rings"
|
Bilbo Baggins wrote "There and Back Again" aka "The Hobbit" alone. "The Lord of the Rings" was written primarily by Frodo, with the last chapter written by Sam.
"The Hobbit" is written with a fair amount of jocularity to take the edge off the often desperate circumstances faced by Bilbo and the Dwarves. In "The Lord of the Rings", the tone is more even handed, occasionally edging into Epic.
What do these writing styles tell us about the authors of these books or the audiences for which they were being written? Also, since Sam was the final author/editor of "The Lord of the Rings", and the last chapter - which Frodo could not have written - is so similar to the other Chapters, was Sam emulating Frodo's style so well that it seemed like the same Author, or did he rework much of Frodo's original writing to match his own?
EDIT:
*As* u/ExhibitAa *notes, Tolkien worked from the Red Book of the Westmarch for his source material. But, even so, Tolkien presumably did his best to match the style of the original material, otherwise the tales would have the same narrative style. If this is the case, then what can the Narrative voice, filtered through the Professor's translation, tell us about the original writers?*
| 36 |
Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam did not write *The Hobbit* and *The Lord of the Rings* as we read them. Those works were written by Tolkien, compiled from notes and memoirs from the hobbits, most notably the Red Book of Westmarch.
| 35 |
[DC Animated Universe] Steven Mandragora was clearly a superhuman, being able to survive the Canary Cry and even several tonnes of steel falling on top of him. Why was he only escorted by 3 FBI agents and 2 street level Leaguers?
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Why didn't the FBI bring 10 or 20 of their best, or ask J'onn for someone like Vixen, Booster Gold, or Stargirl to escort him?
| 18 |
The security was about who would be after him not to hold him there, he was cooperating with what ever agency held him. The main aspect of security was that people didn't know where he was, keeping people out and whatever deal he made keeping him in. And i think the league was only there because huntress was after him, sending some one more powerful would be overkill.
| 10 |
CMV: “Arguing/debating doesn’t work,” isn’t a sufficiently supported claim.
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I hear this said quite a bit, but the information in totality does not bear this out. People point out things like the backfire effect, ignoring that these studies involved percentages, which means that giving facts did work on some people. They also ignore that the backfire effect has been studied numerous times with different results.
Another thing I find interesting is when I speak to people who think like this, I often come to find out that they (like me) used to believe very different things that what they do currently, and through some sort of discussion with a person that took a different position than them, they started to think differently.
Hell, I think this subreddit is a whole testimony to the fact that debating and argument work and people do change their minds quite a lot. You just can’t expect that it’s always going to work in the way and time that you want.
Finally, a strange part of this is that people who say arguments/debates and/or conversations with the people whom you disagree are pointless or don’t work, these people are never simply sharing facts. It usually comes with a heavy tone of agitation, aggravation, and an air of superiority.
Given all of the information and attitudes, I think it’s a likelier explanation that when someone says arguing and debate don’t work, what they are really saying is “arguing with people who disagree with me on certain topics frustrates me,” but notice this is much different. This isn’t so much about the effectiveness of debate and arguing as much as it could be about you just not being a very good debater or you not being able to control your emotions when people disagree with you. So if this is the deal, then just say “I don’t like arguing or debating.” It’s incorrect to project that onto the whole of communicating with people with whom we disagree.
Leave those of us who see purpose and value in debating alone. Certainly don’t say things that may lead to an argument and debate about how ineffective argument and debate are. If you struggle with debates and arguments, consider studying how to effectively engage in them or do some work on your emotional control. Don’t pigeonhole society based on an unsupported claim because of your emotions. Not all of us have those issues, and we like to see society change as individuals interact to try to mutually come to understand what is true on very important matters.
Basically consider, if you haven’t already, that this is more a you issue than an issue with debate and argumentation or those who engage in them.
This in CMV instead of off my chest because, well, I have a certain view of people like this, and I want to see if anyone can change it.
| 47 |
Your entire position appears to assume that both parties involved in an "argument/debate" argue and/or debate in good faith. This is oftentimes not the case, as even evidenced in this sub by the sheer amount of posts that are removed for violating rules b and e. Normally, when people say "arguing/debating doesn't work", what they mean is that arguing and/or debating with a party who does *not* hold a rational view and refuses to engage in a *rational* discussion does not work.
| 45 |
ELI5: what exactly is the science behind a 'second wind'?
| 30 |
in the first portion of the exercise bout the "second wind" refers to your bodies switching from a majority of Anaerobic energy systems to primarily aerobic energy systems. when you first start running your body doesn't really know how long this shindig will last so it pulls out all the stops on providing oxygen and ATP to your working muscles (anaerobic) but after about 15 (energy plateau) mins or so it gets the idea that this isn't going to be a sprint and begins to switch from the more powerful anaerobic systems to utilizing the aerobic energy systems that are more efficient.
| 19 |
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ELI5: Why is UK's official internet domains ended with co.uk instead of .uk?
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It is the same with Australia and probably others.
Almost all other countries has an ending with only 2 letters
| 34 |
The bit before the .uk can mean a variety of things.
.co.uk implies a UK company
.org.uk a UK organisation (such as a non-profit)
.gov.uk a government website
.ac.uk an academic institution
And so on.
| 19 |
Do you think the School of Life video series on philosophy oversimplifies and idealizes philosophers and their works?
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I've generally enjoyed the philosophy videos -- I think I've seen them all now. Most of the ideas and philosophers were already familiar, to me, at least a little. In many cases, I ended up thinking, "Philosopher X is much more inspiring, reasonable and easy to understand than I had previously given him credit for." But, I wondered if the author of the video had over-polished the philosopher and philosophy.
When I saw the video about Thoreau (in the political theory series), I became much more skeptical about the whole series. I recently read a biography of Thoreau. The School of Life video about Thoreau seems extremely naive, at best. The short version of my concern -- Thoreau didn't reason out anything. He merely did what he liked to do. He acted on impulse when he declined not to pay his poll tax. The idea that government should be small and that citizens should decline to fund it if they didn't like its actions was well-known by then. He wasn't reclusive -- he dined with Emerson's family, or his own family, almost every evening. He planted beans and caught some fish from the pond, but he was not self-sufficient by any means. He produced very little of his own food. His writings superficially sounded philosophical but they were more poetical and polemical, and were written for the purpose of impressing Emerson, possibly impressing some girls, and selling books. He actually wanted and needed to make money, though he wasn't fond of conventional employment.
I don't expect the authors of The School of Life to say all of this in a short video, but I wonder how much I've been misled by some of the other videos. Your comments?
| 40 |
I don't think I've ever seen a *good* philosophy video from School of Life. Their descriptions of philosophers aren't just facile and inaccurate, sometimes they're downright *offensive*. In the Foucault video de Botton implies that the reason Foucault 'hates the bourgeois' is because they remind him of his father! And they seem to miss out on like, the thing Foucault repeats over and over, that you can't just 'get out' of power relations by being aware of them. So de Botton ends up saying things like "Foucault was trying to create a Marxist anarchist utopia" when it's clear that Foucault was aggressively resistant to making sweeping claims about what the "right" political aim should be.
| 41 |
ELI5: If I need to be rescued (from forest, sea, war, etc), who pays for it?
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Here are a couple scenarios. If I crash my private plane in the mountains or if my sailboat capsizes and the coast guard has to come get me, or if I get captured by ISIS and the SEALs have to come kick down the door, do they send me a bill? What does something like this cost?
| 57 |
If you are on public lands (parks, nature preserves…) the taxpayers pay for it, and as long as you were not doing something illegal, you'll not have to pay a dime. If you *were* doing something illegal you can be fined for reckless behaviors.
| 49 |
Libertarianism is institutionalized narcissism. CMV.
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Libertarianism says it is unjust to tax the rich in order to provide health care for the uninsured poor. I disagree.
The place where libertarianism goes from being practical to absurdly dreamy, is when it goes from the principle of self-possession to concluding that self possession means one should not pay taxes or have any kind of responsibility to their fellow citizens. It takes on the countenance of the naïve idealist in its persistence in seeing participation in society as an individual matter. A libertarian would have it such that a wealthy person could become wealthy through the benefits of society, and then continue to reap the benefits of society, while acting as if they are functioning in a vacuum, where they created everything all by themselves and therefore have no responsibilities to the society. The essence of the libertarian philosophy is delusion, for one has to benefit from something while at the same time pretending that they are not benefiting from that thing. It is narcissism at its most cognitively dissonant.
So, is it just to tax the rich in order to provide health care for the uninsured poor? Yes! The taxation of the wealthy as a form of redistribution of wealth is moral. What’s even more important than redistribution of wealth however, are stop-gap measures to mitigate the progress of unequal distribution of wealth to begin with. Once a society is at a point where it must redistribute its wealth, it has already failed, because it has already become a rigged system where the privileged can (and they always do when they can) exploit the less privileged.
| 273 |
> The place where libertarianism goes from being practical to absurdly dreamy, is when it goes from the principle of self-possession to concluding that self possession means one should not pay taxes or have any kind of responsibility to their fellow citizens.
In theory, libertarianism *increases* the responsibility of citizens to help each other. The premise is NOT "every man for himself, got mine, fuck you." The premise is that government power and force inevitably lead to corruption and we all need to step up to the plate to cooperate with each other in a voluntary manner.
> A libertarian would have it such that a wealthy person could become wealthy through the benefits of society, and then continue to reap the benefits of society, while acting as if they are functioning in a vacuum, where they created everything all by themselves and therefore have no responsibilities to the society.
No. A libertarian society draw most of its "benefits of society" from cooperation of the citizenry versus government imposition. Only the most radical libertarians would pretend to be an island independent from his or her community, and personal responsibility is a cornerstone of libertarian thought. Moreover, most libertarians still support smaller government at a local level and only the most radical libertarians would have a problem with, for example, paying taxes for traffic lights.
Also, to take your view literally-- narcissism can hardly be institutionalized via libertarianism because libertarianism is hardly an institution but a philosophy.
| 251 |
[Harry Potter films] What did Barty Jr expect from being in that trial?
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Did he not expect Karkaroff to name every single Death Eater he knows?
| 20 |
He either didn't know that Karkaroff knew who he was or he thought that Karkaroff wouldn't give away anyone important.
Barty Jr was a fanatic who believed in the Dark Lord. He's up there would Bellatrix Lestrange in blind loyalty to Voldemort. He would never betray either his Lord or his comrades. It's likely that he didn't realize that other Death Eaters weren't as devoted as he is and misjudged them from that lense
| 38 |
[DC] can superman destroy green lanterns constructs?
| 17 |
GL’s constructs are based on will power, and different Lanterns have different levels of will power.
So, whilst it’s possible for the constructs to survive against Superman, Supes can generally smash through Hal Jordan’s after a couple swings.
In the New 52, one of the early Justice League arcs has the two facing off and Superman winning. The fight was also adapted into the animated movie Justice League War.
| 25 |
|
ELI5: What type of differences would there be if an obese person was stabbed in the belly compared to a fit person being stabbed in the same place?
|
Would the obese person technically receive a less life threatening injury because of the fat?
| 29 |
Blood vessels that carry nutrients to the skin and wastes away from the skin (capillaries) are on the surface, thus on the outside of the fat. Therefore the surface damage and bleeding between the two people would be similar.
However, the internal organs and muscles of the obese person are under their fat deposits. Therefore, the knife would most likely not reach much of their vital organs or muscles, thus causing less internal damage and bleeding. This would also reduce the number of nerves stimulated by the wound (as there are no nerves in fat deposits), meaning the obese person would feel less (but still significant) pain.
The damage sustained by the obese person is much more easily and quickly healed, as it primarily requires skin healing. Whereas the fit person would require muscles and organs to heal, which can often be too slow and fatal.
In short, the obese person would be less severely harmed, as the fat (which serves no vital purpose) would act as a protective layer. Therefore preventing significant internal damage.
Note: On a side note, the healing capacity of the obese person is often impaired by their obesity, such as the reduced efficiency in their circulatory system to deliver clotting factors. Which could definitely play a role in their ability to heal their wounds and chance of survival.
| 36 |
[Paddington] Why is nobody surprised that Paddington Bear can talk?
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When the Bear arrives in a London train station he immediately tries to engage people in conversation in hopes that someone will take him home and care for him.
Yet people seem to just either ignore him or kind of rudely brush him off. Why does nobody seems shocked in the slightest that there is a andean bear standing on two-legs, wearing a bucket hat and speaking British english?
| 16 |
Well it’s rather rude to comment on someone’s appearance, and nobody wants to make it THEIR problem to escort this short… furry man somewhere.
So, the politest thing to do without putting yourself out is to ignore the problem and hope someone more generous comes along to deal with it. As any true Brit would.
| 59 |
[Any Metro] How are folks living underground for decades not dying from lack of vitamin D and other essential nutrients beyond Vodka and cigarettes?
| 26 |
UV lamps kept around shelter locations and high nutrient foods. They're not super healthy but they're getting by. They're eating lots of root vegetables and some of them are able to reach the surface for supplies. Things like UV lamps and seeds as well as canned goods would be of utmost priority for maintenance and collection. The people are still malnourished but not to an extent that rabbit starvation is imminent.
| 35 |
|
Why don't people just pull out of the market when the yield curve inverts?
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The 3-month-10 year yield curve inverted for what a week or so before going above water again? I've seen the argument's that this time is different but regardless it's not a positive sign. Why don't people exit the market when this happens for a sustained period and keep their assets as cash or, if you are an eccentric libertarian, gold? They could always reenter the market after the bottom falls out.
For instance if you have these two rules- you will withdraw from investment positions after a full quarter of yield curve inversion, and you will reenter after three quarters of sustained positive growth based on the S&P 500 perhaps- then you would be out of the market \~Nov 1999-Jan 2004 and \~Aug 2007-Dec 2009 I reason this would net you more returns in the long run and would mean that if you needed access to those funds during a recession, you would not be taking a loss.
| 19 |
The market averages an increase of 20% between the inversion of the yield curve and the start of the recession AND no one can predict when the recession is truly over and the recovery starts.
To time the market correctly, you need to both pick the right time to exit AND the right time to go back in. Even if you exit today, there's no guarantee that even with the drop it will come out to lower than today - and it's entirely possible you'll miss the bottom and end up having to buy again at higher than today's prices.
| 22 |
How do we properly treat Planck units?
|
Papers often cite (or do so without explicity mentioning) that they have moved into ħ=1 units.
They seem to be actually using [Planck units](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units).
I am familiar with [relativistic units](http://physicspages.com/2011/03/30/relativistic-units-c1/) where we have set only c=1. I can understand how physics can be done consistently in this system. Velocity is dimensionless, which leads to things like mass and energy having the same unit (mass), and so on. But having worked in this system, I have seen how it is consistent and there are no problems.
However, I'm having trouble with the Planck units because we *simultaneously* set 5 constants, which each have unique units in SI, all to 1 (and therefore collapse all of them to the same unit: dimensionless). This seems like a highly non-injective transformation that seems like it would cause contradictions in the resulting unit system.
Can anyone help illuminate how this is not the case?
* Can Planck units be used completely rigorously and consistently or is there a degree of "hand-waviness" here?
* Examples of dimensional physical quantities in Planck units? Or is everything (momenta, energy, different fields, etc.) dimensionless in this system? How could this be?
| 23 |
In case this helps you: the space of all possible units is a (mathematical) vector space, in which the role of vector addition is played by multiplication of the units. Different unit systems correspond to different bases on that vector space. For example, in SI units, the meter, second, and kilogram, kelvin, and ampere (among others) are basis vectors: (1,0,0,0,0), (0,1,0,0,0), (0,0,1,0,0), and so on. Since a Joule is a kg m^(2)/s^(2), the vector corresponding to the energy unit in this system is (2,-2,1,0,0). Speed is (1,-1,0,0,0), and so on.
Setting a constant equal to 1 corresponds to projecting on to a subspace. For example, if you use natural units where _c_ = 1, that corresponds to projecting the unit space on to the subspace orthogonal to (1,-1,0,0,0). In this projection, the unit of energy (2,-2,1,0,0) maps to the same element as the unit of mass (0,0,1,0,0). Since you understand that the natural unit system works, this should show you that performing a non-injective transformation on the unit space does not impede our ability to do physics.
Working in Planck units just corresponds to projecting this entire five-dimensional space on to a point. But again, the fact that it's a non-injective transformation doesn't cause contradictions.
---
Another way to think about Planck units is that the units are implicit. Actually you can do this with any unit system. In SI, for example, if you're reporting a value for energy, you can just give the number of joules without explicitly marking it with J. (It's generally considered bad practice because people don't expect it, but you _can_ technically do it.) If you're working in Planck units instead, you just give the number of Planck energies without explicitly marking it with whatever the symbol for Planck energy would be. Actually in this case it's so conventional to do this that there isn't a symbol for Planck energy. (Well, there is E_P, but it's often omitted.) In this view, the constants are not really set to 1, but the units are chosen such that the numerical values of the constants when calculated in the units are equal to 1.
| 23 |
[AvP/Aliens/Predator]So, who created the Xenomorph after all? (SPOILERS)
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I was giving this matter some thougth and I couldn't come across the fact that across multiple films and other media, we've been given or hinted at *multiple* origin stories for the Xenomorphs existence.
I'm assuming both Predator and Alien/Prometheus franchises exist in the same universe, hence why I assume AvP is cannon.
I'm not considering the latest "The Predator" movie cause that was garbage. Honestly. I think most agree with with me. Other movies were bad, but not *that bad*.
So, AvP tells us the Yautja have existed as an extremely advanced species long before humans were a thing. They even helped us evolve in return for volunteers to be seeded with the Xenomorph. This implies the Xenomorph in it's more recognizable facehugger/egg form also existed long before humanity, since the Yautja have been using them for sport for a while now.
Prometheus introduces us to the Engineers, and it is hinted Engineers not only seeded life on Earth, given the "their DNA is identical to ours" line in the movie, but it's hinted they did so in other worlds. It's heavily hinted that the Black Goo is the mutagenic agent that starts the Xenomorph life cycle, however it's also the thing that destroyed the Engineer in the beginning and caused him to seed life on Earth.
Prometheus also implies the Engineers worshiped a Xenomorph looking creature given the altar scene.
We also get a Deacon from an Engineer at the end and it looks awesome. I have no idea what a Deacon is, what it's purpose in bringing the Xenomorph into life.
Other media shows that the Engineers and Yautja are enemies, so from this I gather the Engineers did not *seed all life in the universe*, rather were just advanced enough to do so.
From Predators, we can see the Yautja also seem to be advanced enough to the point they can terraform planets to be used as hunting reserves. The crashed Engineer ship on that same planet not only reinforces the notion all franchises share the same universe, but also implies the Engineers and Yautja are on similar degrees of technological advance, given the Yautja could shoot down the much larger Engineer ship.
From this I assume the Yautja may also be able seed life on planets. They seem to cooperate with other species (and even aid their development, as indicated by AvP) if they can get something out of tjen.
Note: I only assume it's an Engineer ship on Predators because I've seen it refered as so by most of the fandom and even youtube movie analysts.
While all the black goo, Engineer religion stuff, and Yautja rituals further serve to prove that Xenomorph-like creatures existed in the universe long before the crew of the Nostromo was attacked by one.
HOWEVER, Alien Covenant casts an entire wrench into nearly everything that I gathered from all the other movies by having DAVID be the creator for the Xenomorph as we know it.
Why? Because in expanded media (I now point to all Alien lore youtubers) it's stated that David made the Xenomorph Eggs using Elizabeth Shaw's DNA and the Alien pathogen. They even have the lil'xenomorph have a lil' "hug me daddy" moment when David sees him come to.
So how come the Xenomorph could exist long before Mankind came to be, as implied and shown in all movies prior to Covenant... but at the same time... *be the creation of David's engineering* in Covenant?
We know Xenomorph's don't naturally occur via Black Goo infection. Those result in Deacons. Again, I don't know their relation to Xenomorphs, but David seemed fond of them, even tho he did not create them.
How could the Xenomorph even exist in it's iconic form previous to mankind existance, if David *used human DNA* to fabricate the Xenomorph?
Above all, how could the Yautja be lugging around Xenomorph eggs while all this is happening?
Thus, questions:
Did the Engineers create the Xenomorph and the Yautja just farmed them for sport, and David just happened to discover how to make one?
Did the Yautja invent/create the Xenomorph, which in turn was worshiped by the Engineers, much like David worships the Deacons/Xenos, and again, David just happened to find out the Xenomorph recipe.
What the hell is a Deacon and where do they fit in all of this?
Or is it more plausible that the Xenomorph simply always existed as a creature somewhere, and was both farmed by the Yautja and worshiped by the Engineers (hence why both species are enemies) who in turn created the black goo from it's DNA, causing the Deacon thing as a side effect.
Or could it be even more plausible that there simply are a fuckton of plotholes Ridley Scott is choosing to ignore?
EDIT: Could it simply be that Prometheus and Covenants are intended to retcon everything?
| 16 |
Xenomorphs are a biological weapon created by the Engineers, which can make aliens that destroy an ecosystem. They can take many forms depending on what they infect. They grow pretty easily, so David making them was easy. Just stick them in a source of biological matter and they grow.
The Yautja hunt them, they didn't make them. They seem to have a common ish form, as shown by the Deacon, so if they prehumanity hunted ones that looked normal, they were probably born from humanoids.
The Deacon is a xenomorph born from an engineer.
It's not that complicated and weird.
| 15 |
After you die, how long does it take the various cells in your body to die? What happens to your gut bacteria?
| 295 |
Not very long - cells require oxygen to function, so moments after your brain and heart stop, your cells may begin dying in a upwards, collective motion that can span days, weeks, or even months. Usually, starts with the liver and the brain, since they are enzyme rich.
When cells die, they leak digestive enzymes that participate in putrefaction, and causes collapses of capillaries for red blood cells.
As for the gut bacteria, they also help in the process of decay by digesting your organs - until they can freely leave the body either by spilling out of your decaying body, or being carried by maggots, botflies, or other organisms.
Edit: Removed "signaling other cell death." Depending on the kind of cell death, surrounding white blood cells become receptive to dead cells. Cells in apoptosis (cell suicide) for example typically will distance themselves.
With most somatic cells dropping like flies with the lack of oxygen, cells’ contents can leak out and damage neighbouring cells.
| 314 |
|
How do meteorologists calculate wind chill or “feels like” temperatures?
| 5,164 |
There is actually a wind chill formula that is typically used (it's different depending on where in the world you are, there is no standard).
In the United States we have one
T= 35.74 + .6215(Ta) - 35.75 v^.16 + .4275 (Ta) v^.16
Where T is the final, (Ta) is the air temp (f), and v is the wind speed in mph.
Australia has a far more complex one, involving humidity as well as wind velocity and ambient temperature.
The American model only works under certain temperatures and in low humidity, the Australian one has a wider range.
| 1,293 |
|
ELI5: Why do our bodies find certain positions comfortable at night.
| 30 |
We get the urge to shift our sleeping position almost entirely to prevent blood from pooling. It is an innate thing.
People are bedridden and don't shift around, like those in a coma, can get bruising or even terrible ulcers if not cared for properly. These are bedsores. In the worst case scenario you can lose a limb to them.
| 11 |
|
[Star Wars] Why didn't the Rebels fly directly to the weak exhaust point on the first Death Star rather than travelling to another location and then flying across the trench?
| 18 |
The Death Star is a sphere, with many surface-to-air blaster embankments. The closer you are to the sphere's surface, the fewer of those can fire upon you.
Contrary to what many think, the Empire was well aware of the potential weakness that the exhaust port presented. But it was a necessary port, so their solution was to cluster many more blaster embankments in that area. So approaching that area would have meant flying through thousands of kilometers of full blaster spread if done directly - but coming in on a lighter-defended area and then taking the trench meant the Empire had to be more reliant on fighters for defense, which was the Rebels' only chance.
| 43 |
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Why do commercial airliners fly at the altitude they do (≈35,000')? Could they potentially save $ lowering their average altitude slightly?
| 40 |
They fly at that altitude precisely *to* save money!
In very (very!) simple terms, denser air creates more drag on a plane, but it also provides more lift. The most efficient use of fuel is to go higher, as the drag is substantially reduced. However, there's a limit to how a plane can fly based on the reduction in lift as you go up.
To fly higher, you need either a lighter plane, one with bigger wings, or one that goes faster. An example of the first two is the U2 spy plane. An example of the second is the SR-71 blackbird.
Passenger planes can't be all that light, and faster = more fuel = more expensive to run. They can fly a bit higher, but 35,000' is a general sweet spot for efficiency for the 747 class. The 787, for example, has a 43,000' service ceiling, and will regularly fly at 38,000' or more. Smaller passenger planes often have ceilings capped at 30,000', and will regularly fly lower if they aren't flying as far. Once again, there's a balance between the high altitude drag reduction and the fuel needed to get up there. For long flights, it's very much worth flying as high as the plane can go.
| 95 |
|
How are the prestigious universities in China, Japan, and South Korea competing with one another?
|
I was wondering if anyone here had any details on the competition between the three countries. I posted about a month ago asking if anyone had information about the quality of ivy leagues in Asia for engineering compared to the ivy leagues in the US for engineering (CalTech and MIT as examples) and got some really thorough friendly replies, so I thought this would be a good place to stop by.
I'm still continuing my research on Asian universities to help a friend; the University of Tokyo, Tsinghua, Peking, Seoul National University, and KAIST pop up at the top quite often in ranks for engineering and different types of sciences, but I wondered if one university is putting in a lot more effort and climbing the ladder relatively faster than its neighbors.
I've heard China has been putting out quite a bit of money on its [educational sector](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/business/chinas-ambitious-goal-for-boom-in-college-graduates.html) and KAIST has been doing a lot of complex things in engineering that's [put them ahead](http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2016/03/22/2016032201488.html) of SNU in engineering with most ranking sites just a couple years ago. I don't know much about the University of Tokyo, but if I recall correctly they're a lot better compared to the rest when dealing with biological sciences, and just today [China is apparently close to surpassing the US as the leader in science](http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/china-about-usurp-america-world-leader-science/all/).
| 21 |
Just putting it out there, but neither MIT or CalTech are Ivy League schools.
They're highly regarded research institutions, but that's not what it means to be "Ivy League". The Ivy League is (was) an athletic conference, and is a specific set of 8 schools in the northeast.
| 15 |
[Skyrim] Bandit economy?
|
So, with all the war and general chaos going on, it's prime time to become a Bandit, Skyrim is filled with the bastards, some of them operating on what should be main roads. So they ambush travellers and merchants that travel the place, I get that much, but what do they do with the stuff they steal?
I mean, do they sell the valuable stuff on? Or do they just live out in the wilderness and enjoy being free men and women? Who deals with bandits if they do need to trade? Is there a secret bandit economy, like an underground black market kind of thing? Do the Thieves Guild have a place in that arrangement?
Just really want to understand how all the bandit clans work exactly, that's what interests me.
| 18 |
Most bandits have a fence available. Some unscrupulousn merchant that'll trade coin for slightly bloody goods. Or they simply travel to town for supplies infrequently and unless they left witnesses or trade noticeable items they're just another hunter/ sell sword in from the road to the townspeople.
| 21 |
ELI5: If I had more brain cells, would I be smarter?
|
Or is it something else in the brain that makes people smart?
I assume there is no way to "grow" more brain cells either, is there?
| 55 |
Potentially smarter, yes. While the brain is very scarcely understood, it's fair enough to say that with better infrastructure, you'd be potentially more capable as a learner.
But if your personality (and other environmental factors) doesn't push you to learn new things, you obviously won't know much more than you do now. Well, why does how much you know matter? The question is how smart you will be, isn't it? The thing is: "smartness" is typically associated with how quickly you learn new information, and learning ability grows as you amass more knowledge of the same kind.
If by "smart", you just meant the base potentiality, then the amassed body of knowledge probably doesn't matter.
---
I don't think you can actually develop more grey matter significantly by any available means, but you can enhance the links between concepts in the theoretical neural network for quicker access to information in general.
ELI5 version of the previous sentence: Practice makes ~~perfect~~ better, even for thinking.
Future generations have the scifi-esque stem-cell manipulation, but there's little hope for us.
| 11 |
I found a video online of my advisor presenting our joint work without crediting me.
|
EDIT: The title is very wrong. It's not that he didn't credit me, but that he *also* credited a third person who he has never told me was on the project. I don't even know this person.
I'm a fourth year PhD student, working on this one research project for about two years. We're wrapping it up now. The project is 30-40% my original ideas, the rest is my supervisor's, but the write-up is 100% my own writing. I will do all the editing and corrections too.
Last night I was doing some more research, when I came across a video of a conference talk from September 2017. The title of the talk is exactly our current result. The video is my advisor giving a plenary speech. After 20 minutes of build-up, he says "so I'd like to present our main result", and ... It's our result! The one I'm wrapping up now! Why would he present that result as a hard fact, when we hadn't finished developing it at the time? The talk was only a few weeks after I was assigned the project, so it could've been that he was very confident in the result without having the details that I contributed, so he presented it as fact anyway. OK, that's reasonable.
But that's the tip of the iceberg. He presented the work as "joint work with Dr. X" who ... isn't me. It's someone I've never heard of. I googled him and he's a professor in some foreign country.
I'm not mistaken: the result he presented is the exact result I'm writing up now. How could it be? Not three weeks after my advisor assigned me this project, he presented it at a conference and credited himself and Dr. X without including me? At the time I hadn't done enough work on it, so he was correct not to credit me, but I had *no idea* about this third coauthor until now.
I'm devastated. Why didn't he tell me? Don't we have to include Dr. X's name on the paper, *especially* because my advisor officially presented this work with him as a coauthor? I was about to present our result at a conference without crediting Dr. X --- that would have been plagiarism and I wouldn't even had known it. Did he kick Dr. X off the project and hook me in instead? Why?
I know that no one can answer these questions except my advisor, but I just wanted to get this off my chest. Am I overreacting? Does anyone else have similar experiences with scooping, or just your advisor withholding information, or anything like that?
Thanks for reading
| 56 |
Your advisor was collaborating with someone else, he may have been presenting preliminary results and then had a Ph.D. student (you) confirm and expand the research. This is very normal in academia.
| 79 |
ELI5: Why can't we treat deseases like depression with happiness hormones like dopamin?
| 30 |
Because too much dopamine causes psychosis (as seen in people who overdose on levodopa, a dopamine drug used to treat parkinsons). And giving people regular doses of dopamine have no beneficial effect on mood--as you must send the dopamine directly into the pleasure centers of the brain for it to work--and pills can't do that.
| 39 |
|
ELI5: Why do bees die when they lose their stinger?
| 28 |
The stinger of the most common bee species has a barb in the end, and the connection to the abdomen of the bee is physically weak enough that the bee is able to tear its exoskeleton/skin by crawling/pulling away. The resulting wound damages the bee's internal organs and allows loss of vital fluids.
The advantage to this is two fold - the stinger retains enough body organs to continue injecting poison into the stung thing (thus teaching the lesson "mess with bee hives and you will regret it!") and the bee is (briefly) able to fly away, thus spreading the pheromones associated with dying through the local area. This scent brings more angry bees (and more lessons) to the immediate area.
Wasps have a barbless stinger, as do queen bees, reflecting their relative worth to their groups. (The queen is the mother of all bees in the hive, and wasps do not have a non-fertile gender as do bees, so the loss of a single wasp means the loss of that genetic line.)
| 44 |
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CMV: Republican Congress passed the S.J.Res. 34 (ISP browser history bill) solely to give Donald Trump something to veto in order to improve his standings.
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There's no question that Donald Trump is struggling. He's having historically low numbers and is drowning in scandal.
My prediction is that, since his bar is set *so low*, he will veto the bill and become a "hero" in everyone's eyes. He is proven to be extremely manipulative, and this seems like the type of desperate move to make him seem like a man for the people.
"Look folks, I went against congress and vetoed a bill that would have been good for them and bad for you. I am the people's president!"
To sign the bill would cause him to lose a lot of his own supporters, to veto the bill may gain him a lot back. Meanwhile, congress held up their end of the bargain to the Telecom companies. They can still say "I tried" without any real consequences.
It seems as though the move to veto it is too obvious, and he will do it, projecting him into "National Hero" status... or so would be the plan.
Please convince me this isn't a rude to make himself look better.
_____
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| 54 |
He just failed in his bid to get votes from Congress on the healthcare bill he was supporting. There is no evidence that there is any sort of United support for him from Congress, especially not enough support to collude on some sort of conspiracy to push forward a bill just to make him look good.
Moreover, a lot of Congress is taking criticism for voting for the bill. Yet another reason that Congress wouldn't intentionally push it forward so Trump can look good vetoing it.
| 35 |
ELI5: How do horse racing odds work and why can some work out to 3-5, where you can only lose money?
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I was watching the Preakness and saw that the horse Nyquist, who had won the Kentucky Derby had odds of 3-5. This seemed to mean that betting $5 would net a payout of $3. If so, why would anyone bet on that horse, even if the previous victory means they are more likely to win?
| 20 |
you almost have it correct, but you are forgetting an important part of the equation. You always return the original bet.
So, with 3-5 odds, if you bet $5 to win, and the horse wins, you get back your original $5. Plus you get the $3 profit on the 3 for 5 part of the odds.
So on a $5 bet that wins, you get back $8 at 3-5 odds.
Of course, such small payouts are unusual because it means a horse is expected to be much the best, but as we saw today, any horse can lose... today the track was deep and the early speed pushing Nyquist was too fast and took it's toll... he tried his guts out but tired late.
| 18 |
Why does the US have a rule that no President can do more than two terms?
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As an Aussie, I've always wondered.. If they are still liked after two terms and the public want them to continue doing a good job, why not let them?
| 75 |
In most parts of the world, when there is a power transfer from one leader to another (or from one party to another), it's a risky time. There are often coups or power-grabs or even civil wars. In the U.S., the transition of power has always been peaceful (with the partial exception of Lincoln), and we really would like to keep it that way.
People in positions of power often find ways to hold onto that power (like forging relationships, crafting laws that favor them in subtle ways, or even just relying on the inertia of voters). This is why senators are and governors frequently keep their jobs until they retire or seek an even higher office. But as the public face of the country, the president's role is unique. Without a tradition or rule that limits presidents, it would probably be normal for presidents to remain in power for decades, often ending mid-term with the president's death or incapacity. This would make power transfers less common, more jarring, and more risky. By having a specific law (and before that, an honored tradition) of a 2-term limitation, everyone knows that a president can only do good or harm for eight years. It lowers the stakes, and lowers the turmoil, which is good for the stability of a democracy.
| 134 |
Could there ever be a situation where a poisonous/toxic creature could be harmed/killed by its own poisons/toxins?
| 22 |
The first green plants appeared in a world were oxygen was toxic to all life. The geological record shows that green plants would periodically wipe themselves out if they were too successful and oxygenated the Sea water. One day a sufficiently mutated plant appeared that could survive it's own toxic oxygen, causing the first great extinction event on Earth.
| 37 |
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ELI5: Why do your balls get hard when they're cold?
| 91 |
It's not that they get hard more that the smooth muscle in the scrotum contracts bringing the testicle towards the body for warmth. Your testicle are always trying to keep withing a temp range.
CCT Medic
| 94 |
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[DC Comics] How would the Lasso of Truth affect someone with Alzheimer's?
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Since Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth forces a victim to truthfully answer a question (at least from what I recall), I'm wondering how would it affect someone with Alzheimer's which is known for giving people mild to severe memory loss thus they might not remember the truthful answer to a question.
| 21 |
It's the lasso of truth not the lasso of Omniscience and Truth, you couldn't tie someone up and ask them what're tomorrow's lotto numbers are because they don't know it.
Most fictions do not define truth as platonic truth but rather what the person in question believes to be true.
| 39 |
eli5: Why is air popped corn chewy and oil popped corn crunchy?
| 156 |
It's similar to the difference between frying and baking
Oil will transmite heat better so you will have a small layer that gets warmer faster and more, and this helps with dehydrating a bit that area, the dehydrated layer is what is tougher and harder, and that small hard layer is what makes you feel the crunch
| 95 |
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CMV:Leaving the toilet seat up in mixed gender toilets is neither more nor less considerate than leaving it down.
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There are frequently comments and jokes in pop culture, usually from women, complaining about men leaving the toilet seat up.
It is sometimes said that this is because "leave downers" don't want to touch an unhygienic thing. However, in order to put the seat down, you are simply shifting the contamination to someone else.
Picking the seat up necessarily requires more prolonged contact than putting it down.
One argument for putting the seat down is that the person using it next is less likely to need it up, since most women and many men will need it that way.
However, leaving the seat down encourages lazy men to not pick it up at all and rely on aim, which is notoriously poor.
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| 80 |
If you want to minimise conflict among all parties, the solution is simple: have everyone always put both the seat _and the lid_ down after use.
This ensures that everyone must lift something in order to use the toilet, and that everyone does so with a single motion (lids and seats can be lifted together).
Further, this significantly improves hygiene, as flushing a toilet ejects a fine mist of the contents in to the air above.
With respect to "touching something dirty", when you're finished, you wash your hands... right?
| 96 |
[Star Wars] How come R2-D2 is so good at what he does compared to the other astromechs? Even compared to later models, he's still massively overpowered.
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Also, is R2 sentient? He seems to be able to make jokes, poke fun at people (especially 3PO), make decisions, defy orders, and most importantly, he is able to have friends.
Is he that good *because* he is sentient?
| 174 |
Astromech droids are routinely reset, to have to perform as they're supposed to, not develop other traits, and do their job properly.
Anakin Skywalker was fond of R2-D2, so he never did that, so a form of sentience emerged, and you can clearly see why they wanted to prevent this, he frequently disobeys commands given to him. But he was also able to learn new things, add new experiences, and form a conciousness much better at problem-solving.
R2-D2 is probably a good-case scenario for an astromech going off programming.
| 225 |
[Futurama] So why is the sky in Universe B psychedelic?
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Did God flip a coin to decide what to color the sky?
Did some industrialist flip a coin to decide whether or not he would become an environmentalist?
| 42 |
There’s a scene in the episode where they zoom in on the whole Earth. Only the skies above New New York are like that, so maybe someone there flipped a coin to decide whether to decorate the sky or not.
| 31 |
[Star Trek] does Star trek have a multiverse or is every series connected to one another?
|
Right now I'm in the beginning of the season 5 next generation and it's the first Star trek i ever watched
| 20 |
The main shows -- TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, DIS and PIC -- all take place in the prime universe. During TOS, DS9, ENT and DIS we see a mirror universe but it appears to be the same one in all four shows as well.
The JJ Abrams films take place in a different timeline.
| 40 |
ELI5: Why does the sound of poured water gets higher and higher as you keep pouring?
| 119 |
Because the sound you're hearing is sound coming out of a round chamber. When the glass fills with water, the size of the chamber changes, so the pitch changes. Large chamber, low pitch. Small chamber, high pitch. It's why digieridoos are deep and rumbly while ocarinas are high pitched and whiny.
| 188 |
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CMV: I believe that we live in a Patriarchal society, but it still exists today primarily because of women not men.
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Over the past generation (especially post social media rise in 2007 or so), the concept of society being “a patriarchy” (a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.) has been more and more accepted amongst not just feminist circles, but society in general. I do believe this definition is applicable. However, a common mistake I think society does not reflect on is why this society exists, and what really caused it.
First, I think it is necessary in this argument to divide (western) society into two eras. Life post industrialization (starting around post WW2 and definitely by the 70s and 80s), and life during and before industrialization (WW2 as far back as the ancient days). I know this seems ridiculous to use WW2 as a cut off point due the massive size of time for one era vs the current era, but it is important to understand how much different first world economies are post WW2 vs almost every time in world history prior. This is due to the concept of manual labor guiding the economy vs a more knowledge and social economy. In the first era, a patriarchy was obvious, as men were the ones who could do physical labor such as farming, coal mining, construction, factory work, etc at a much more efficient level. When combined with the lack of inventions to speed up everyday chores (housework, cars for most of human history in the first era, etc), and the fact that a pregnant woman couldn’t participate in a physical labor economy, women needed to still do physical work, but it was safer and less physically demanding work at home.
Fast forward to the current economy of today, and things are different. In fact, I’d be willing to argue that the current first world economy is more in favor of women, but that is a CMV for a different time. The point is the economy is based on something that men and women can compete at much easier, allowing women to be more active in the workforce. Combine this with inventions and medicine to improve the speed of everyday home chores, women are much further along the path of liberation from a gender role.
Yet feminists still say we live in a patriarchy. Most say that this is the strongest the patriarchy has ever been. We hear about how hard it is for women to reach the top, to juggle a career and a family, and how women are generally oppressed, and that men must relinquish some of their power to make things fair (most obvious example is Sandberg’s ‘Lean in’ program). I think all of these things ignore the primary facts that cause the patriarchy to exist: what women want.
Power in society is defined primarily as your age (at least up until a certain point, but definitely throughout your teens, 20s, 30s, and even 40s – what encompasses the primary dating and marriage age range in society), and wealth (nobody seems to listen to Biggie on what mo money causes). Women especially live under this definition of power, as women primarily want to date men older than them (http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/02/where-in-the-us-are-there-more-single-men-than-women/385369/) and men who make more money than them (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375720/What-women-really-want--money-Research-finds-women-look-paid-job-partner.html), this is despite the fact that women are more powerful than ever financially.
Heterosexual men and women (and homosexual/bisexual for that matter, but we are talking about men and women dynamics) do what they can to maximize their chance to get a mate. For men, this means achieving wealth is a higher priority to them than it is to women. Thus, they go after it. This causes them to be more attractive to women, causing women to be the one who is the “support” in the relationship. It does not matter if she makes a very high salary of $90,000 – well more than most families income. If he makes $150,000, shes the supporter. If one has to put their career on hold for any reason (kids, moving, etc), it will be her.
The number one way to remove us from a patriarchal society is not something men need to do. It comes from women. Women need to be willing to lead the relationship. This means date men younger than them, make less money than them. They need to be faithful and not lose interest in a man who is “less powerful” than them or what they believe they deserve. They need to put themselves out there on the initial dating steps as men do (asking men out primarily). This would then remove the need men have to chase money (which usually comes with age), as it would not be the largest factor for them to maximize their chances to get a mate. This would cause the biggest “dent” into eliminating a patriarchal society.
| 25 |
This concept of that its the woman's fault or that women are in control of these traditional relationships ignores the fact that very few power structures changes ever come from the bottom rungs of the social order even fewer from the persecuted class itself.
Nonetheless we have seen relationship structures changing for mid to high income women who are more likely today then ever before to marry poorer men, but the crux of the matter is that women are still limited by society, culture, religion, and existing economic orders from attaining the education and position to be mid to high income on their own. As these social and economic limitations relax and more women can join the elite, more elite women will continue to remake realationship structures and have more of an effect on society.
Your argument ignores that there needs to be a lot more work first getting more women into politics and into management and into other high paying sectors before widespread social changes can occur on the other equalizing levels.
| 25 |
Is it possible to "silence" a gun like they do in TV/movies?
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I know a suppressed gun does not sound like most media make it sound. Would it actually be possible to suppress a gunshot to this extent? If so, what would be required?
| 17 |
Currently no. In fact, "silencer" is the less preferred term to "suppressor" because the device only lowers the report by at most 40ish decibels. The use of sub-sonic ammo helps to dampen the sound, but at the cost of bullet speed and accuracy. The most effective suppressors that achieve the most noise reduction to levels comparable to movies (but still much louder) are only good for a few shots. Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive article on the construction and mechanics of suppressors.
| 15 |
ELI5: Because science and medicine has been wrong for so much of history, how do we know science today is correct?
| 15 |
We don't know, but at the same time, 'science has been wrong' tends to be a lot of cherry picking, that is, looking for the times it has been wrong, or generalizing off a few opinions and not a broad consensus.
Typing this on a computer that uses quantum mechanics to make small chips that work, likely communicating over fiber optics that carry data over the internet, and reading off a monitor who's pixel colors were designed based on human eye biology, and seeing everything looking nice, science has a good enough track record for me to consider it fairly reliable.
As a bonus, the best way to become a successful scientist is to demonstrate that other scientists are wrong in a clear and convincing way, so there is a lot more testing of stuff that becomes established as 'science' than most people see in most fields.
| 47 |
|
ELI5: what caused the Great Depression and how did it end?
| 17 |
It all started with a big stock market collapse. Speculation had been rampant for years, and labor laws brought more and more money into the investor class. Consumer debt rose, and real spending decreased. Manufacturing jobs around the world started to vanish as people who had been buying on credit suddenly couldn't afford to buy, and with no one buying, no one could make or sell anything.
Congress sealed the world's fate shortly afterwards, announcing that with manufacturing jobs in decline, they would pass legislation to bring jobs back to America through a tariff. It did nothing to solve the causes of the depression - lack of consumer purchasing power, shrinking wages, and crippling debt. Instead, it created shortages in goods and parts and drove the country into the darkest years of the depression.
The Great Depression lasted until Roosevelt passed a series of laws called the New Deal. He took on massive government debt for public works and infrastructure projects, injecting cash back into the economy. He established a minimum wage to ensure that workers would always be able to afford to buy the things that they produced so that there wouldn't be a consumption crisis again. And, coincidentally, a war was fought in which many Americans died and major competitors were leveled.
The result was a well-paid American work force with access to industrial equipment unavailable anywhere else in the world. The policies of the New Deal spread, and economic recovery took place around the world.
There are some haunting familiarities to that tale, but be forewarned there are also some key differences to ours. For example, it's no longer possible to enforce a minimum wage without some level of protectionism - the people who make our goods cannot afford to buy them. Government debt is much higher than it was in the 20s, and it may destabilize those debts to take more. It's unclear as a result what we can do today about the great recession, even if hauntingly plausible that things are about to get a whole lot worse.
| 17 |
|
ELI5: How/why do windows and doors not cave in under the pressure/weight of the water from a flood?
|
[Like here](http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/woman-cleans-the-inside-window-of-her-wine-bar-as-the-floodwaters-picture-id502688966)
| 80 |
Because often by the time the flood waters reach high enough to put sufficient pressure on the door or window, water has leaked into the house from other gaps, like the walls, subfloor, etc that the water pressure on both sides is equal.
In that picture, that window might be thicker/stronger, and able to better resist the pressure.
| 17 |
ELI5: What do the aperature numbers on the camera mean exactly?
|
I understand how the settings work. f/2,8 creates a big aperature and f/14 creates a small one.
What I don't understand is that the value's are exactly.
Given that a smaller number gives a larger result, I assume that it is a fraction. But what is it a fraction of?
| 23 |
f/16 means one sixteenth, not sixteen. And f/4 is a quarter, not 4.
It uses the focal length of your lens to give you the width of your aperture opening.
So with a 200mm focal length, an f/4 aperture has a diameter of 50mm (i.e. a quarter of 200mm)
| 23 |
ELi5: Is there a simple explanation as to why the numbers that govern our universe (pi, atomic weight, speed of light, gravitational constant etc) are not simple round numbers? Is this a function of our number system or something more complex?
| 32 |
Pi is a constant that is determined purely by geometry. If you measure distances using the usual "shortest straight line" method in the plane, your circles will involve pi.
Numbers like the speed of light and gravitational constant depend on your choice of unit (they are not *dimensionless* constants). You can make them integers by choosing particular units, in the same way that you can make the 16.9 miles to a friend's house an integer by simply saying it's "1 friendistance".
Atomic weight is, for most elements, an average of the weights of several different isotopes. An average, at random proportions, is very unlikely to be an integer in the first place.
| 17 |
|
How do astronomers account for the mass from dark matter when calculating the mass of a star/planet?
|
From what I understand a common way of estimating a star/planet's mass is to observe is gravitational effects on other objects around it. How do astronomers distinguish this effect between the object being observed, and the gravitational effects from dark matter?
| 22 |
The mass of dark matter on such a small scale is negligible. The density of dark matter in our part of the galaxy is 10^-2 solar masses per cubic parsec (10^-12 kg per cubic km), so all of the dark matter in the entire volume of the solar system within the orbit of Neptune only has the mass of a small asteroid. On the scale of a single planet it's even less important--there is roughly a kilogram of dark matter in the entire Earth.
It's only when you look at a much larger volume of space, for example an entire galaxy, that there's enough dark matter to matter.
| 25 |
Why does the ISS point the same direction relative to the Earth at all times in its orbit? Wouldn't it be more energy efficient to NOT adjust its rotation/tilt/pitch/axis with reaction wheels?
| 74 |
It doesn't consume any energy to rotate at a constant speed i.e. it only need to start rotating once, it doesn't need to keep the rotation up. For all things in space they will keep moving in the same way until some force is applied. If the space station rotates by one revolution per orbit it will have the same side against earth at all time.
If we look at our moon it have the same side against the earth at all time without any reaction wheels changing its angular velocity.
Unfortunately some force will still need to be applied after the a while because the space close to earth (or anywhere in space for that matter) is not a perfect vacuum, but creating the angular momentum is quite marginal compared to the force needed to keep it in orbit.
Edit.
As corrected the orbital time is very much less than a earth-day so it has to be about one revolution per 90 minutes instead i. e. one revolution per orbit.
| 39 |
|
ELI5: when using cellular data (3G,4G), are we essentialy using a modem with a huge range?
| 19 |
A cell phone is just an advanced radio, and these radio signals have to be modulated before transmission and demodulated upon receipt.
Any communication being done through a cell phone will require both modulation and demodulation.
Their useful range is relatively low compared to lower radio frequencies.
| 10 |
|
How do lakes, ponds, and rivers, and even puddles retain water without it seeping away into the ground, as if I dug a hole and poured water into it?
|
I know how people make their own artificial lakes, but they need to put a tarp down to keep the water from draining away. How do rivers and such not have water seep away through the ground?
| 49 |
All of these have water sources that refresh their losses. The ground under those things is already wet so it drains much slower.
When it starts to rain the ground usually eats up all of the rainfall at start, but after a while places can start flooding.
| 26 |
ELI5: How does epigenetics work? How much can
your actions change the genes you pass on, and in
what way?
|
What's it all about? How much can your actions change the genes you pass on, and in what way? Can I use this to influence physical and/or mental capability of my offspring?
EDIT. For clarity.
| 51 |
Your genes are made of DNA. We think of DNA as a pretty static molecule, that never changes or varies once we've inherited it. As it would turn out, there are lots of chemical processes that can happen to the DNA (such as chemicals sticking to it and whatnot). These can happen at any moment in our lives and might have to do with our lifestyle. For example, having a high blood-sugar all your life might sway theses "DNA tweaks" a certain way. These changes are different for each cell, and can also happen in the copies of DNA that get passed on as we're discovering that it seems that sometimes these "DNA tweaks" can get passed on too! This means that we might be passing on effects of a certain lifestyle genetically to our kids. With their DNA pre-tweaked a certain way. It's hard to know how big the effect will be and in what way because we're still trying to understand the exact nature of these tweaks and there's also the nature vs nurture debate where we wonder if they'll have that much of an effect anyways.
| 16 |
ELI5: How do "Mood Rings" work, and where did they come from?
| 27 |
When the first discovered liquid crystals (the stuff that we now use for LCD displays) back in the 1970s, we weren't really able to do much with them. The first application was to use them as thermometers.
A mood ring is just a ring that measures your body surface temperature. There's no real meaning behind it but, back in the 70s, people were into all sorts of New Age bullshit and they became a major commercial success.
| 44 |
|
[X-men] Why did wolverine lose to a hand to hand combat against mystic?
| 22 |
Mystique\*
Wolverine isn't trained (or at least his training and experienced are muddled through all of the stuff happening with his brain). He primarily operates off of instinct and rage which can be exploited. Mystique clearly has training (or at least has the ability to fight like it) and her moves are controlled and calculated.
| 22 |
|
ELI5:How some large cities have developed their own accent? (Boston, New York, Chicago)
| 369 |
You speak like the people around you. Those cities are a mix of several languages. Because they are so big and you never have to leave them, they are isolated enough that a typical american accent does not flow in enough to dilute it.
| 115 |
|
[Star Wars]Why didn't Darth Vader just clone replacement body parts/limbs?
| 22 |
Cybernetic replacements have many advantages over organic ones. They don't degenerate with age, they're heat and pressure resistant, they're fully customizable, they have low risk of being rejected by the body, and it's very possible to make them into enhanced versions of what the limb used to be. That being said, Vader didn't have much choice in the matter. Although he was awake for the process, it was not by choice. Sidious made sure he was kept awake so that the pain would enrage him. Vader was delirious throughout most of it. By the time he was fully aware again, the procedure had already been finished and Vader had his prosthetics. By doing this, Sidious was able to make sure the prosthetics given to him were heavy and unwieldy, which made it difficult for Vader to ever attempt to overthrow Sidious.
| 45 |
|
[Star Trek] Which Starfleet captain has the highest enemy bodycount?
|
Of Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Sisqo, and Archer
Or anybody else that has taken the helm temporarily or permanently like Riker or Sulu.
| 123 |
Confirmed kills would be Sisko. Being in the Dominion War, they took out entire fleets of ships and bombarded planets.
Unconfirmed kills would go to Janeway. She may have killed every Borg (we don't know at this point).
| 143 |
[Captain Planet] What if the Power of Heart was Replaced with the Power of Liver
|
The ability to make people intoxicated would have quite a bit of overlap with the empathy that Ma-Ti has, but it seems like captain planet would have been much cooler to hang out with.
| 53 |
The Power of Liver would be greatest asset the Planeteers could have. Think of the liver's main function: detoxification. With the power of liver, the Planeteers could break down pollutants that would take centuries or millennia to biodegrade on their own. Instead of getting weakened by pollution like a total lightweight, Captain Planet could metabolize it, bouncing back from a face full of toxic runoff with nothing but beer farts and a slight hangover. In the end, the Earth would be granted the liver's greatest power of all: the ability to heal and regenerate.
| 117 |
Would it be possible to detect objects that are just outside the Observable Universe by the gravitational influence they would have on objects that are near the edge of the Observable Universe?
| 57 |
Not in the way you are probably asking. Gravity and light travel at the same speed - if something can have a gravitational influence on something we see then we can also see it directly.
Caveat: The earliest light we see was emitted about 380,000 years after the big bang. All the light before was scattered around and didn’t survive. This is different for gravitational waves. It could be possible to see the effect of gravitational waves emitted earlier and therefore at slightly larger distances.
| 33 |
|
ELI5: What are we smelling when it smells 'hot' or 'cold'?
|
For example, if a hair straightener is left on, you can smell it, but it smells 'hot', not like anything specific. Or sometimes if you go outside, it smells cold.
| 35 |
You're not smelling the heat, your smelling the heat's effects on the environment. That hair straightener singed some hairs and lofted some lovely burnt flesh scent into the air, you smell it and immediately know that there is a hot element around somewhere because your brain has made that association many times before.
| 28 |
[Star Wars: A New Hope] "There goes another one." "Hold your fire, there's no life forms. It must have short-circuited." Wait, what? Another one? How many escape capsules were jettisoned from the Rebel corvette Tantive IV? What happened to the other ones?
| 20 |
Once it was clear that the battle was lost and the Empire was going to take the *Tantive IV*, any rebel soldiers or officer near an escape capsule made an attempt to flee.
Despite Vader *specifically* ordering that capsules not be fired upon, in case the rebels attempted to flee with the plans to the Death Star in one, an over zealous officer instructed the gunners to shoot down these capsules in a blood lusted thirst for more destruction.
It was only when an unmanned capsule was detected that the officer finally lost interest and decided not to bother destroying this last one, although it did not save him from a damn good force choking when Vader found that he'd shot down a bunch already.
| 22 |
|
[Star Wars] What’s the general quality of life like in Hutt Space?
|
Looking at the canonical [images of Hutt Space](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hutt_Space), it seems like it covers up a nice chunk of the known SW galaxy.
From what I understand of Hutt from EU Legends to Canon; they’re like the mafia and each have sectors that is under their control.
But what does that mean? One Hutt, keeping control of one planet (like Tatooine) seems like a massive undertaking, let alone entire systems or sectors.
Does everyone on that planet, pay up to the Hutt for protection? Do all Hutts personally hire Smugglers to run cargo?
How are they able to maintain so much control over as much as they do?
| 42 |
The Hutt cartel mostly work similarly to mafia in practice. There are five families of Hutts in the cartel, each with their own territory, military and loyal citizenry. There may be squabbles between the families here and there, but at the end of the day the Hutts all answer to the Grand Hutt Council on Nal Hutta, made up of the heads of the families.
It's this union of families that represents the Hutt clan on a Galactic scale. The Grand Hutt Council has a seat in the Galactic Senate, and their individual militias will viciously defend Hutt space as a united front (which maintained their independence all through Galactic history).
How do they maintain control? Well, youthful Hutts with something to prove are apex predators. They're indestructible tubes of muscle and greed that in ancient times conquered a region of space and never let it go. Since then they organized a dominant role in the seedy underbelly of the Galaxy, building up immeasurable wealth that can be used to bribe, extort, enslave and raise mercenary armies to their hearts content. They're too rich and too well connected to do anything about, in a general sense (unless one of them gets too complacent and gets caught up in a personal feud with a smuggler and his Jedi friend, that is).
| 33 |
ELI5: How come a circle is 360 degrees instead of an easier to calculate 100?
| 24 |
Because 100 doesn't make it easier, it makes it harder.
360 has factors of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 72, 90, 120, 180, and 360.
100 has factors of 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, and 100
That makes 360 much easier to divide into fractions that end up being whole numbers.
| 69 |
|
ELI5: Why can't we have one currency for the whole world?
|
i get that it might be difficult at first and the change may take a while but would it be possible?
| 24 |
Who decides how much of that currency is printed?
Some countries have rampant, terrible inflation. If they share the same currency as their neighbors, both they and their neighbors have to keep up with the inflation. If they have a *separate* currency from their neighbors; their inflation effects only themselves (and people that rely on them strongly).
| 19 |
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