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eli5 Why it's bad for country to default on it's debt?
| 25 |
It's bad for any entity to default on their debt. When you default suddenly you lose any trust that you're a reliable entity, and the terms of the future debts will be far less favorable and more difficult to obtain future debt. Generally it will be more expensive and have higher interest payments.
| 50 |
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Why couldn't a submarine sent to Titan tap into the methane seas for the energy to explore it endlessly?
| 15 |
Energy is released when you combine methane with oxygen. There is plenty of methane, but no oxygen on titan.
Hydrigon is very flammable aswell, and its ultra abundant in the gas planets, but due to lack of oxygen its not a source of fuel.
| 23 |
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ELI5: Why does our body sometimes moves or shakes when We remember a cringy situation from the past?
| 72 |
If the situation triggers a flight or flight response, the body's first impulse is movement.
A loud noise behind them will cause most people to start. This is your brain telling your body to fire up its muscles and get ready for whatever is about to happen.
Remembering a sufficiently unpleasant situation could trigger a similar flight or fight response, firing off muscles for the hardcoded classic danger response that nearly all mammals share.
| 24 |
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[WH40k] Is there a scenario where humanity isn't totally screwed?
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The Golden Throne is going to fail someday. When it does Warp travel will be impossible and the giant hellhole the Emperor is sitting on will rip open. But even if we miraculously fixed the Golden Throne, the Tyranids are coming to eat us. How can humanity un-fuck itself?
| 57 |
Yes, if the Emperor comes back, they may very well be saved. Half the imperiums' problem is they have their heads up their asses. When the Emperor comes back (which he will, there's all the evidence supporting it) there will once again be a competent ruler for mankind, and they can get back to ass kicking
| 47 |
[AtLA] If Koh stole my spirit's face, what would happen to my physical body?
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Without a face, I can't breathe, so would I die while my faceless spirit runs around in the spirit world?
| 27 |
Well, we know a couple things.
1) Koh is a spirit monster
2) You can still survive without a face in the avatar world.
We know the first one from the show, and the second from the comics.
However, we also know that Kuruk’s girlfriend was killed by Koh, so there seem to be multiple possibilities.
Koh could either steal your face and your soul, or he could steal your face and not your soul. So you come back to the normal world without a face, but are still somehow able to survive.
| 15 |
ELI5:If 1 burger takes 1300 gallons of fresh water to produce, how can I buy them for under $5.00?
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I've been seeing a billboard in LA that reads: Save 1300 gallons of water. Don’t flush your toilet for 6 months or don’t take a shower for 3 months or For lunch today, don’t eat 1 burger.
Even at 2 cents a gallon, it would cost $26.00 for the water alone - forget about shipping, packaging, workers that butcher cattle and then sell the product, overhead costs for the stores etc.
| 150 |
Farms don't use treated city water, they use well water. They dig a big hole and bury a $2000 pump at the bottom and they have all the groundwater under their property for 30 years or so. It's vastly cheaper than the cleaned and fluoridated wonder-water we feed humans, because we really don't care if our cows have bad teeth.
There's a lot of controversy about cows and water, but it's important to remember that water doesn't travel all that well. Most places in the Americas have excess water, with great underground flows carrying rainwater out to sea. Farms in non-arid parts of the world do not change the level of the water table, and pose no environmental or water hazard. A cow raised outside Seattle can drink and drink and not make a lick of difference because there's just so much water that feed rather than water becomes the limiting agent on raising them there.
If you're concerned about California's water situation and think farmers are to blame, go ahead and boycott beef grown in southern states. That's probably an ecologically sound move. But Montana doesn't have a water crisis, and saving their water by not eating their beef isn't going to help anyone.
| 114 |
ELI5: Why do science labs always so often use composition notebooks and not, for example, a spiral notebook?
| 15,894 |
One of the primary rules for science labs and GLP (good laboratory practice) is to NOT destroy data.
If there's an error, you can't use an eraser, pencils are not allowed, white-out is not allowed; a correction must be made by crossing out the error (with a single line so that what was written is still visible), and then initialing and dating the correction.
Also part of "not destroying data" is that the official lab notebook has pages that are numbered (from factory), and the QA department and other auditors (FDA for example) will definitely question, and possibly invalidate the lab work performed or even close the lab, if there are pages that are missing.
| 19,245 |
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Does a computer monitor consume energy at different levels depending on the color of the items being displayed?
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Basically, I'm wondering if a monitor displaying bright, white colors most of the time will consume more energy than one displaying mostly dark colors. Assuming all else being equal, of course.
| 17 |
To a first approximation, the answer is that it doesn't matter. Almost all modern computer monitors consist of a liquid-crystal display in front of a white backlight (either LED or fluorescent). Each pixel of the display has transparent electrodes on the front and back, and when an electric field is applied, the pixel changes from transparent to opaque. But very little current actually flows through the liquid crystal itself. Almost all of the power is consumed by the backlight, which is always on.
One major caveat: these days, some monitors have a dynamic contrast feature, which adjusts the brightness of the backlight based on the overall average brightness of the image. So with that feature turned on, a dark image would consume less power. (This isn't primarily motivated by power savings, though. The liquid crystal can't become 100% opaque, so if you try to display a dark image in front of a bright backlight, it looks kind of washed-out. Dimming the backlight improves the apparent contrast a bit.)
Higher-end OLED monitors work differently: instead of a backlight, they have a separate LED for each subpixel of the display. OLEDs have a much better contrast ratio, but they're more expensive to manufacture. On one of those monitors, displaying a pure-black image should consume virtually no power at all.
| 18 |
CMV: Military spouses and dependents should not be regarded as heroic as their military sponsor.
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I keep hearing the same rhetoric, that just because someone is an immediate family member of someone who serves, that they are also owed a debt from our country(USA, but it may be true in other parts of the world.)
Although I know it has been changing a lot over the years, military spouses and dependents do not go through the physically grueling and emotionally challenging basic training that service members do.
They do not have to wrestle with the decision to join, and basically give up a predetermined portion of their life for something they may not want to do in a year, but have to keep doing it for 3 more under contractural obligation.
They do not have to risk their lives overseas fighting for a cause they do not understand or don’t agree with.
I understand being in a military family can be stressful, but we should not regale the husbands and wives, or the sons and daughters of those who are actually fighting for their country.
| 1,092 |
While you are correct that they don't do the things you listed, military spouses and families do make sacrifices that are worth noting. Military spouses basically become single parents for years at a time. Military families are often uprooted and have to move frequently because their military-serving spouse gets transferred. If their spouse is deployed, they live with the constant fear that they will at any moment receive the notice that their husband/wife is dead.
Yeah, these aren't the same as fighting in conflict, but they are certainly worth appreciating.
| 450 |
ELI5: Why and how does the seatbelt lock at certain points and not others?
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I feel like I can't be the *only* person who has had the misfortune of attempting to bend forward slightly to retrieve something off of the floor just to be choked by a locked seatbelt. So, why does the seat belt lock then, but if you release tension and then lean forward again, it doesn't lock? What determines this pattern?
| 63 |
The speed at which you pull the belt. In its very simplest form the seatbelt is rolled up somewhere and that roll has some teeth that go outwards if it turns too fast and grab into locks/notches in the surrounding metal. If you pull normally, everything goes smooth, if you pull fast (like in a crash) it locks. Once you release the tension, the teeth snap back in and you can use it normally again.
| 65 |
ELI5: Are humans the only animal that cries? If so, why?
| 30 |
Most animals that are social have some behavior that indicates emotional or physical distress (such as your dog whining) but as far as we know the physical act of shedding tears for a purely emotional reason, and not due to irritation, appears to be a uniquely human way to express feeling a strong emotion. Chimps and other primates have vocalization and behaviors that let their group know they are experiencing distress, but they haven't been shown to shed tears for a purely emotional reason.
Human tears serve a few purposes. The behavior (and noise) lets the people around you know you're in trouble and the actual tears help ease pain by releasing a natural painkiller called leucine enkephalin. However the jury is still out on how this natural coping mechanism evolved in humans uniquely.
| 26 |
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ELI5: Why are completely unrelated issues (like abortion) able to be tacked on a bill about an unrelated issue like motor cycle safety to be voted on? Why is this legal?
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I only give that this as an example as North Carolina is currently attempting. My issue is not what is be voted on exactly, but how two completely different things can be slapped onto the same bill?
| 466 |
Its usually an attempt to either:
1.) get a controversial action (that probably wouldn't succeed on its own.) passed by the legislature and/or executive by attaching it to a high-profile bill that is likely to pass. Since in many cases, removing a provision from a bill is next to impossible, there is a good chance the whole bill will be passed anyway.
2.) Sabotage: Attach a controversial amendment to a high-profile bill in hopes that the whole bill will be rejected because of the amendment.
| 79 |
[Star Wars] Why would the rebels fly across the surface of the Death Star, instead of straight at it?
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I was just thinking, why would you approach the Death Star, and fly as close as possible to all the guns? Why not start your attack until you are diving straight down onto the exhaust port? It seems like it'd end up being much easier, and with much fewer casualties.
They way they did it would be the equivalent of a WW2 bomber flying 20ft above an entire fleet just to hit a destroyer on the far edge. Rather, they could dive-bomb in, hit the target, and pull up and out of range of enemy fire.
Also for that matter, why did the Death Star have trenches on it, lined with guns?
| 19 |
by flying directly at the DS, you allow all the weapons to be brought to bear on your ship. By flying down the trench, where the port was located anyway, the fighters are below the firing arcs of many of the guns, and only a few guns that happen to be in the trench are able to be brought to bear on the fighters.
| 35 |
why do religions have similar stories and morals?
| 26 |
There's a couple of reasons.
Some evolve from the same origins. For example, a lot of religions believe that there was a man called Moses and he was chosen by God. They followed his stories. Then a man called Jesus arrived and said he was the son of God. Some people didn't believe him, and they carried on as they were. Some people did, and Christianity was born. Then, out of those that were left, in around the year 600, a man called Mohammed arrived and said he was a prophet of God. Some people didn't believe him and carried on as they were (Jews). Some people did (Muslims and Islam). Christians and Muslims don't disagree about what happened before their chosen person arrived, they only disagree on what happened after.
Also, some new religions arrived in areas where there were already religions. And because these were more primitive times and not everybody could read and write, things weren't recorded but instead retold from memory and occasionally they got confused and their backstories combined.
In other cases, when a new religion arrived in a land where there was an old religion, it made sense to 'rewrite history' and include stories that the native population strongly believed in and them incorporate it into their own religion. So they adopted the old stories to get people believing.
| 17 |
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Is the arrangement of our small intestines fairly similar across humans, or unique to each person like a fingerprint?
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I've always imagined a tangled mess. Are things in our gut a bit more organized than I've pictured?
| 918 |
Your intestines (specifically small intestine) are attached to the back of your abdominal cavity by a tissue structure called the "mesentery". Basically this is a sheath that surrounds the guts and allows them to move pretty freely around the abdominopelvic cavity. An interesting example of this freedom of movement is when you have surgeries on certain structures, the surgeon will just move your intestines to the side and shove them back roughly into position when they're done. Then the intestines will rearrange themselves back to their initial position (which it's moderately uncomfortable to say the least!). So basically, the points of attachment for the intestines are the same for everyone, but there is some room for variation.
TL;DR- guts are attached in the same way for everyone, but have freedom of movement inside the body cavity, so there's some room for variation
| 441 |
cmv: most gender/race rhetoric now is dumb and it has bad consequences. And ppl should be tired of it.
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everyone is the same pretty much, society makes us different. fundamentally just treat everyone the exact same. why is no one saying this?
seems to be either racists/sexists or ultra-woke people treating minorities like different species
Obvs there is the obvious forms of discrimination but there is the progressive circles that lead to other forms we dare not talk about eg…
Some women definitely treat men worse than other women in subtle daily interactions like talking to other women all nicely and friendly but then ignoring men. To me i think is due to gender rhetoric brainwashing them.
Some white people definitely treat black people as if they can do nothing wrong/are all the same…like a different species.
| 15 |
> fundamentally just treat everyone the exact same. why is no one saying this?
most people say this
> seems to be either racists/sexists or ultra-woke people treating minorities like different species
these people are a minority
| 18 |
ELI5: How come plants in AeroGarden don't get root-rot?
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Hello,
In an AeroGarden, the roots to a plant are submerged in water pretty much 24/7 (unless you let your Garden run dry which is a no-no). Yet I've never had a plant get root-rot.
Yet when you over-water stuff in a plant-pot, the plants are very likely to suffer/die from root-rot. Why?
Thank you!
| 123 |
The fungi that cause root rot thrive in high moisture, low oxygen environments. This is why overwatering causes issues; you remove the air pockets that are in normally watered soil.
Hydroponics consistently aerates the water. This removes the lack of oxygen issue associated with root rot. However, if the water isn't aerated, you can absolutely end up with root rot.
| 133 |
[STAR WARS] My six year old posed an interesting question...
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So my boy says to me why doesn't Luke Skywalker just cut the death star in half with his Light Saber? Obviously not a feasible plot twist but it got me thinking would that be even possible, and if so how long would it take? Assuming no baddies to slow you down, suit to withstand the vacuum of space etc....
| 15 |
The circumference of the Death Star is over 300km. It took Qui-Gon about a minute to cut about a two meter length to a depth of one meter. At that rate, working 18 hours a day, you could cut around the entire circumference in about 5 months.
Then you'd have to cut through all the interior walls, ducts, pipes, and cables on every level all the way down through 100km. Might take a while.
| 40 |
[Star Wars] why did Luke throw is saber away after defeating his father in EP VI?
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I mean, didn't Yoda warn him about the Emperor's powers? The force lightning? The general danger that comes from Sidious? And now don't tell me because he "wanted to resist the dark side" because i think trying to defend yourself is allowed as a Jedi...
| 26 |
Well, Luke had already felt the growing conflict within his father.
The biggest reason was that he wanted to save his father, and he assumed that no circumstance where he killed the emperor would get him to that point, it would teeter Anakin back towards the Sith way of thinking, that vengeance and anger can be used to achieve positive goals. It is what trapped him in the first place.
He put all his faith in his father saving him, and prepared himself to bear whatever the Emperor threw at him to get that to happen.
| 44 |
[Star Wars] My wife and I have tried for years to have a child and now he is 4 they want to take him away. Can't I just tell them no?
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It not right. How do they know he will have a better life. We have a good home here. We live on Dantooine and they want to take him all they way to the core world.
| 58 |
You don't have to give your child to the Jedi, however raising a force sensitive child can be difficult. Weird things will happen around them. They might know things they shouldn't know, move things without touching them, be unnaturally good at certain things, etc. Raising your child will be a hassle. You won't know how to handle it, but the Jedi do. Your child will want for nothing and they will learn how to focus and use their power for the good of the Republic and the galaxy. The Jedi know what they're doing, maybe you should trust them, maybe consider adoption.
| 62 |
ELI5: If Gandalf knew Bilbo has the ring, why did he let him keep it?
| 135 |
He didn't know it was The One Ring - it was thought to be destroyed. In The Hobbit the ring was nothing special (other than the invisibility), and in the Lord of the Rings books it took Gandalf 17 years from Bilbo's farewell party to discover that it was in fact Sauron's ring.
| 178 |
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How dense are asteroid fields and would they pose a problem flying through?
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I was watching StarWars episode V and was curious if asteroid fields were seriously that dense? Also am I right in assuming most of the asteroids should be moving in the same direction?
| 116 |
No danger, at least not for an asteroid belt such as the one in our solar system. The average separation between asteroids is approximately 16 times the distance between Earth and the moon. If you were on a random asteroid,chances are you could not see another asteroid without a telescope.
| 185 |
[Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts] Why is Cloud the only person who can defeat Sephiroth?
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Sephiroth states in Kingdom Hearts II that "But apparently, Cloud is the only one who can eliminate me." He shrugs off a beating that Sora gave him with no apparent physical damage.
Is Sephiroth that skilled that the only other person of his caliber is Cloud, or is there something else involved?
And does this also apply for the source material (Final Fantasy?)
| 25 |
Cloud and Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts have a somewhat more nuanced connection than they do in Final Fantasy VII. Cloud often refers to Sephiroth as an embodiment of his own darkness, and he has a demonic wing on one shoulder to parallel Sephiroth's angel wing. So while we don't know their specific origin, we do know that they're intimately connected and that, maybe, Sephiroth's life is tied to Cloud's in such a way that even a Keyblade can't take him down.
In Final Fantasy, while Sephiroth and Cloud are connected through the Jenova cells that they share, there's nothing else special that binds them together; in fact there are dozens of people throughout the story who also have those cells inside of them, though none are able to survive and fight their influence to the degree that Cloud does (besides Zack). Anyone could take down Sephiroth, in theory, though Cloud and his friends are the only ones with the power and plan to take down Sephiroth in the end.
| 30 |
Is it possible for a person to survive and be able to live with a face like the Two-Face portrayed in "Batman: The Dark Knight?"
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This question came up while I was watching the movie with my cousin. I'm hoping r/askacience could help me out.
And if it is possible to survive like that, what are the biggest dangers that can come with an injury like that?
| 28 |
Infection would be the biggest danger. It would happen fast and probably progress to gangrene and subsequent sepsis and death quickly. That and the pain from a burn like that would be incapacitating.
So no, even with constant antibiotics, no person could survive like he did in the movie. If he were kept in a sterile hospital room with constant debridement and huge doses of antibiotics (and pain meds) then he could survive some time.
| 28 |
How does the brain isolate a sound when we focus on it?
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Say you were sitting in the car listening to music and someone is talking to you. We can choose to focus on the music the person or say the engine of the car, but how does the brain isolate the sound we want to hear rather than it just all seeming like one big noise?
| 20 |
The auditory cortex amplifies the signal your consciousness (prefrontal cortex) directs it to focus on, and dampens the rest if it can. If the undesired noise is too loud and overwhelming, you can't filter it out and thus can't concentrate or even hear the noise you want to.
| 14 |
ELI5: Why does everyone hate the sound of their own recorded voice?
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I've heard that because our voice resonates in our head, we sound different to ourselves than to others, but our recorded voice is how we really sound. Is this accurate? Can someone give me a better explanation?
| 339 |
I would like to point out that this dissonance we all feel when hearing our recorded voices is not just a physical difference, but a percieved difference. When we hear our voices recorded, our brain has a certain expectation of what we will hear. Having become so accustomed to what our voice sounds like in our heads, hearing something we don't expect makes our brains mad. To a unbiased third party, it may very well be that the recorded voice is more desirable then the sound oof that voice through body matter. We don't hate our recorded voices because they are better or worse, we hate them because they are challenging something we have known our whole life as a truth.
| 442 |
[medicine] how come you can't just cut off a wart?
| 34 |
HPV causes warts by infecting the cells of stratum basale (Basal layer) of epidermis which is the very bottom layer of skin at the epidermal dermal junction. These basal cells are stem cells that continuously divide and form new keratinocytes (Skin cells) that migrate upwards as new cells are continuously created. When you cut off a wart, you are generally only getting rid of the upper cell layer (Stratum corneum) which consists of dead cells filled with keratin. But the HPV infected basal cells are still intact and are still actively causing epithelial hyperplasia (Increase in the number of cells).
| 30 |
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[Marve] Can Mystical beings chose not to lend their power to sorcerers when they phrase their names?
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You know Sorcerer in Marvel tend to Phrase the name of Mystical being when they want to borrow those entity powers. However, can the entity chose not to let the sorcerer borrow their power?
Do those entities even aware when people are borrowing their power?
| 22 |
I think thats what a pact is for.
You make a deal with an entity to use their powers, they agree with terms and conditions, you get to invoke their name and tap into their power briefly.
Its not like they get a notification every time Strange tries to invokes someone.
They will however more often than not keep tabs on each other and keep tabs on how their power is being used.
Death might be like hey "Vy'th'oo'ik you know that dude in sector 12 dimension 77812-A has been killing a lot of kids with the juice you gave him"
| 28 |
ELI5: What exactly is an Arduino and how does it work?
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Also, why is it used in what seems to be 90% of home-made electronics projects?
| 64 |
Okay... like you're five..
An Arduino is a small device called a micro-controller that is like a very small computer that allows programs to talk to and control other devices that do things like move stuff or measure things. Examples of things it could control: Motors, Levers, Lights, Speakers. It can talk to other things too, like: sensors such as thermometers, light meters, cameras and so on. The programs that do the thinking for the Arduino are created on a personal computer, and then generally stored on memory attached to the Arduino. If you want to make a program physically move something or interact with something, chances are you want to use a micro-controller like the Arduino.
You could use an Arduino to make a small robot like a car. Or you could use it to make a spy sensor for your bedroom door. Or if you really wanted to get crazy you could make a robotic nerf gun turret to shoot your sister when she gets into your stuff.
EDIT: tchebb is correct, Arduinos have onboard memory, and don't use memory cards.
| 24 |
Are you ever too old to go back for a PhD?
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I've been in the industry for 10 years after graduating with a bachelors. I've always entertained the idea of going back to for a Masters/PhD program but never pulled the trigger. Is it harder to get into such a program after being away from school for so long? Is there such a thing as a "cutoff age"?
| 21 |
Absolutely not de jure; de facto is based on you. If you want to invest that much time that late into the game because you think it will improve the rest of your life, go for it. 35 is definitely not too old, by any stretch
| 19 |
Can all mathematical operations be chalked up as complex systems of addition operations?
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Is there a known proof for or against this assertion?
Or more broadly: What does operator theory say about the uniqueness or the necessary and sufficient condition of operators?
| 24 |
No!
As an example of a valid mathematical operation that can't be chalked up as a complex system of addition consider the operation the takes a number between 1 and 26 and returns the letter whose place in the alphabet corresponds to that number.
As another example. Consider the operation that take an positive integer and returns the first letter of the integers name. (operating on 2 returns t). Both of these are perfectly valid mathematical operations than can't be chalked up as some complex system of addition.
| 10 |
CMV: Corporations almost never act in the interest of the public and would pursue extremely unethical and illegal practices to increase profits if not prevented from doing so by government regulations.
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My view: Corporations almost never act in the interests of the public, and often inflict great damage upon society and the environment in order to maximize profits, and must be regulated in order to protect the public. For instance, Volkswagen emission-testing controversy. Their recent vehicles have been found to be fitted with a mechanism that is able to detect that the vehicle is being emission tested and switch the engine to an ultra low emission, high efficiency mode to pass the tests. When the vehicle was not being tested, the engine switched back to a higher performance but also far dirtier fuel burning configuration. This is a prime example of a company knowingly harming the environment for the purpose of increasing profit. There are countless other examples of other corporations participating in unethical and often harmful behaviors to increase profits and please the shareholders.
Update: my view has been changed. Not all corporations are monolithic embodiments of evil and it was foolish for me to generalize in the manner that I did. However, I still firmly believe that government regulations are the only thing that keep corporations from using heinous business practices for profit. If not regulated, businesses will devolve into profit producing machines that have no regard for ethics or the environment.
| 1,087 |
I want to take an indirect approach to this one by clarifying something: what do you mean when you say "the public interest?" It seems like you've defined it very narrowly to mean protecting the environment. While environmental concerns can certainly present a conflict of interest between money-making and public good, they represent only a tiny fraction of the net effect a major corporation can have on the globe.
What about economic growth? Employment? Lowering the cost of goods and services you take for granted?
Corporations are major drivers of prosperity, and *with prosperity comes the luxury of caring about, say, the environment.* You'll notice that the slumdog neighborhoods of India don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about pollution when they don't have the certainty of clean water.
TL;DR: Corporations do a lot of good things that you're not considering, and often those good things can give people the luxury of addressing some of the bad things you *are* considering.
(And a quick sidebar, because it's a pet peeve of mine: it looks like you're using the word "corporation" as a synonym for "large company," which is inaccurate. A corporation is defined by it's government-granted liability shield.)
| 229 |
ELI5: What is the difference between mixing and mastering a song?
| 26 |
The most basic explanation is mixing is making adjustments to the individual tracks/instruments so that they mesh together best (adjusting volume of tracks against each other, adjusting eqs or the panning of certain tracks.)
Mastering is adding whatever final touches/effects to the track as whole once the individual tracks have been mixed together. This could be making the track fade out, adjusting the overall eq, or adding reverb to the entire track.
| 18 |
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What stops Sauron from creating a new Ring of Power?
| 17 |
According to Gandalf in the RotK: "If it is destroyed, then he will fall, and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape. And so a great evil of this world will be removed."
| 16 |
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ELI5: Why can doctors reattach the nerves in limbs but they cannot reattach a broken spinal cord?
| 20 |
Simply because there are way too many nerves to connect in a spinal cord and it is difficult to see which nerve connects wo which. 31 nerve pairs, all compacted in the space of a few centimeters, compared to 10, all spaced out, there is no margin for error, so doctors leave nerve connections.
Take it like this. You're friend is holding 20 sticks and you can only see the middle, not the ends. Your friend then breaks all 20 sticks and, without looking at the ends, you have to connect them all together again. It's time consuming, hard and expensive.
| 11 |
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[Superman] [DCAU] How strong is DCAU Superman?
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Everyone says he’s the weakest version of him out there. I agree to an extent. But this feat I just realized may make him stronger than most people think.
He knocked Grodd who looked around 500 pounds halfway across a football field (they looked like they were towards the end of it, but to be fair, I’m gonna say they were at the very center of the football field).
Now bare in mind, athletes need to throw with all their might to throw a ball halfway across a field. But Superman did it with his finger like he flicked a booger.
Also, i don’t mean to be gross or anything but even a flick of a booger couldn’t make it halfway across a football field. I dare someone to do an experiment where you take a tiny piece of toilet paper and roll it up in a ball and see how far you can flick that. For me, it’s only a few feet.
If 500 pounds is to Superman is the weight of a piece of toilet paper. THATS impressive. But it’s WAY LESS than a piece of toilet paper! That means his flick of a finger is DOZENS times more stronger than an average human could to a tiny piece of toilet paper to a 500 pound gorilla!
I’m not that good at math, but I’m curious how strong exactly that would be? And whatever the answer is, multiply that with how much more times stronger someone’s punch is to a flick of a finger. It’s probably at least 100 times stronger. So I don’t even WANNA know how strong his punch is then!
| 24 |
In JLU's finale Supes talks about how he can finaly let loose against someone like Darkseid, who weighs in at 1815lbs (823kg), and one punch sends him flying 20 or 30 blocks.
Mind you, Darkseid is an actual god and is quite literally built different, so that's worth considering.
| 30 |
What exactly is the Weak Nuclear Force?
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What does it act on? I have tried to get an explanation for nearly a decade, but all I've been able to glean is that it's responsible for beta decay.
| 28 |
I find it misleading to call it a force. The word "interaction" is much better. To me, "Force" gives me the impression that you can draw little vectors on particles or something, which is definitely not possible with the weak force. It doesn't attract or repel things. It just interacts.
For the rest, see Elektrophorus's explanation.
| 12 |
[MCU] The Ancient One stated that the infinity stones needed to be returned to their respective timelines ASAP. But not doing so would only (potentially) doom other timelines; would it really be a concern for the main timeline?
|
From a moral standpoint, of course the Avengers don't want to potentially doom other timelines.
But if they didn't return the stones, would it really be that bad? The "main" timeline should be fine, right?
| 48 |
It wouldn't be a problem until people from the timelines that fell apart started coming, heroes looking to save their crumbling universe and villains looking for revenge.
You'd end up creating at least four doomed universes full of people who have a lot of reasons to come looking for you. In some cases, alternate versions of yourself.
| 64 |
[X-Men: Apocalypse] so did Jean Grey ever get her contractors license
|
At the end of the movie Jean Grey and Magneto rebuild Xaviers mansion with their super powers.
A mansion isn't a knex-a-set, there's complex plumbing, electrical, and ventilation systems, not to mention a billion other things that keep it from falling over in a stiff breeze. Sure everything in the 80s was built by the power of cocaine and [The Eurythmics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXASS7aYIVM) (which is why my living room has 10 power outlets while the walls are made out of tissue paper) but this is going to be a hack job even by those standards!
Magneto might know what he's doing (he probably built a deck or two back when he used to be a dad) but Jean Grey is just a science geek and theres no way that the State of New York is going to hand out contractors licenses to a 15 year old girl and a mass murdering terrorist. What's more this is supposed to be a school for hundreds or thousands of young children, there's just no way it's going to be up to code.
And that's why Xaviers School for Gifted Youngsters should be torn down - *for the children!* *~~^^mutie ^^scum ^^that ^^they ^^are~~*
EDIT
Also I don't see anyone wearing hardhats. OSHA is going to be so far up Xavier's ass they'll need a flashlight.
| 157 |
She lifted the information telepathically from a contractor or other knowledgeable person and linked up with Magneto to build the mansion. Just off screen there was probably someone looking at blue prints so Jean would have a constant frame of reference.
| 66 |
CMV: A congressional "re-boot" would breathe new life into the legislative branch of the federal U.S. government.
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It would be interesting to see this enacted, at least as a one-time experiment; call it congressional defibrillation.
I am nowhere near an expert in government or politics, so I apologize sincerely to those to whom this argument sounds painfully naive and ignorant and to you I say do your worst--I'll listen.
For one chosen term (not sure how this would be selected just yet), do not allow any incumbent to run for re-election. No incumbents whatsoever, unless anyone can think of any reasonable exceptions. Perhaps try this only for the House, since I'm not sure how you would go about doing it for the Senate with their staggered election cycles (though I'm sure a program could be devised).
Then, after one or two terms, allow old incumbents to run again. This could be more than one or two terms; the idea is to allow at least enough time for the effects of an all-freshman Congress to develop its own culture and start making things happen unique to that Congress.
The reason I currently believe this would be successful is I sense that Congress is over-burdened by the weight of tradition and even distracted by it. It's likely to me there are plenty of visionary freshmen, and even visionary candidates, with excellent ideas to help ease gridlock and make efficient progress again, but under the weight of the current institution I propose that it's nearly impossible for this to happen.
Additionally, I do not see any significant drawbacks to this, as a one-time experiment. If it fails, if it's useless, the worst I could see happening is, after the no re-election rule expires, everything returning to normal. Perhaps there could even be a provision in the law which allows for an emergency return of control to the previous Congress in the case of absolute chaos, though I sincerely doubt this would be the case.
_____
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| 484 |
There are a few reasons not to do this:
**It is flagrantly unconstitutional.**
The Constitution sets forth the exact requirements to stand for election to the House and Senate. For the House, you must:
* Be 25 years old;
* Have been a citizen for 7 years; and
* Be a resident of the state from which you're elected.
Under our constitutional tradition, adding anything to that list requires an amendment to the Constitution.
**It has worked very badly in past historical circumstances**
A move like this was a big part of why the French Revolution was unable to become a successful republic, and ended up with successive violent overthrows. The initial National Assembly passed a "self denying ordinance" which declared that no National Assembly member would be allowed to serve in the newly created Legislative Assembly. That basically kicked out all the leaders who were most prominent in French politics, and left the new assembly rudderless and without the trust of the people necessary to keep from giving in to popular, but dumb, demands. That's how they ended up at war with Austria, which was a really big mistake.
**This will make the problems you're trying to fix worse**
The last thing you want to fix gridlock are visionaries. Visionaries refuse to compromise. They have ideals. That's why the Republican caucus in the House has such trouble passing things, even with a majority, they have a hard core of 30-40 newer members who just won't compromise. And their members from more vulnerable districts can't vote for the crazy right-wing stuff (like privatizing Medicare) because it's super unpopular in their districts.
If you want to fix gridlock, bring back earmarks so you can buy votes to get compromise legislation passed.
| 175 |
[Marvel] What would have happened if Bruce Banner found the gem of Cyttorak after becoming the Hulk instead of Can Marko?
| 92 |
The Hulk would receive the powers of the Juggernaut, the Avatar of Cyttorak's power on Earth. The same thing that would happen if Tony Stark, Clark Kent, or you had found it.
The most interesting thing here is the question of whether or not the Gem would differentiate between the Hulk/Banner. The answer to which is a resounding... maybe.
| 72 |
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Do cold sinks in survival shelters actually serve a purpose?
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The gist of a cold sink as described in survival books I've read: Say you've dug yourself a snow cave and sealed the door. You should dig a trench or hole in the floor of your cave so that the cold air has somewhere to go, thereby raising the ambient temperature around your body.
Here is a diagram: http://imgur.com/xH2rX
The grey rectangle is your sleeping mat, and the trench is on the right.
Does this really make a difference? It seems to me that you are adding volume to your shelter that you would have to heat up, negating any benefits. The way I picture it is by imagining a sealed room with a bunkbed. You'll be warmer on the bunkbed versus laying on the floor. However, what if the floor was raised to bunkbed height? Wouldn't that be the same effect? (It would also mean you had less air to heat up, so perhaps it's even better?)
As a variation on this, some books recommend digging a trench so that your *entrance* is lower than your room. This makes sense to me, as the warmer air of your shelter will tend to stay inside (up), versus putting the entrance at say chest height.
**EDIT**: Thanks for the input on CO and water and other practical info about real world use cases. I don't want to kill that conversation, I'd like to hear more about it. But I'm mainly interested in the physics class simplification of this problem, so let me try to clarify:
Let's assume that by digging the trench, you are increasing the volume of air in your room (the material you dug up is placed outside). In this case, I'm still having trouble seeing how having a trench will keep you warmer. So in essence we are comparing the temperature difference of a specific spot in two rooms: one with less volume/no trench, and one with more volume/trench.
I can see how NOT removing the material will essentially "elevate" you into warmer air.
| 459 |
The trench provides a place for water to go. The insides of snow/ice shelters actually melt slightly.
It's important for the entrance to be a different elevation to prevent wind/breeze entering the shelter. Air rising is a minor aspect. The trench allows this as well.
If you actually build a fire inside as in the illustration there's a chance the exhaust port will be snowed over and you'll die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
| 191 |
Two questions about black holes (quantum entanglement and anti-matter)
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Question 1:
So if we have two entangled particles, could we send one into a black hole and receive any sort of information from it through the other? Or would the particle that falls in, because it can't be observed/measured anymore due to the fact that past the event horizon (no EMR can escape), basically make the system inert? Or is there some other principle I'm not getting?
I can't seem to figure this out, because, on the one hand, I have read that irrespective of distance, an effect on one particle immediately affects the other (but how can this be if NOTHING goes faster than the speed of light? =_=). But I also have been told that observation is critical in this regard (i.e. Schrödinger's cat). Can anyone please explain this to me?
Question 2
So this one probably sounds a little "Star Trekky," but lets just say we have a supernova remnant who's mass is just above the point at which neutron degeneracy pressure (and quark degeneracy pressure, if it really exists) is unable to keep it from collapsing further. After it falls within its Schwartzchild Radius, thus becoming a black hole, does it IMMEDIATELY collapse into a singularity, thus being infinitely dense, or does that take a bit of time? <===Important for my actual question.
Either way, lets say we are able to not only create, but stabilize a fairly large amount of antimatter. If we were to send this antimatter into the black hole, uncontained (so as to not touch any matter that constitutes some sort of containment device when it encounters the black hole's tidal/spaghettification forces [also assuming that there is no matter accreting for the antimatter to come into contact with), would the antimatter annihilate with the matter at the center of the black hole, and what would happen?
If the matter and antimatter annihilate, and enough mass is lost, would it "collapse" the black hole? If the matter is contained within a singularity (thus, being infinitely dense), does the Schwartzchild Radius become unquantifiable unless every single particle with mass is annihilated?
| 525 |
So, for your first question: as people have mentioned, quantum entanglement does not transfer information- and is probably not what you might think it is. Science writers, when covering this concept, have greatly oversold what the entanglement means. The classic example is a particle that decays into two particles. Say the parent particle had no angular momentum (zero spin, in the quantum world). By conservation of momentum we know the two child particles must have a total of zero angular momentum, so they must either both have no angular momentum (boring for this discussion) or opposite angular momentum (spin up and spin down in quantum mechanics). Quantum entanglement simply is a discussion of the fact that if we know the angular momentum of the first particle, we then know the angular momentum of the second. The cool part of quantum entanglement is that until one is measured, neither particle has "chosen" yet and until one is measured, either particle could be measured to have spin up or spin down (aka- it isn't just that we don't know which one is which until we measured, but that it hasn't happened until we measured). That's really it. It is cool, but the science writers who claim quantum entanglement will allow new types of measuring tools are doing a great disservice.
Now for the second question. First, matter does not exist inside of a black hole. A black hole is a true singularity, it is mass, but without matter. Any matter that falls into a black hole loses all of it's "matter characteristics." Now, conservation laws still remain- mass, charge, angular momentum, energy, etc are still conserved, but there is no "conservation of matter" only a conservation of mass law.
However, even if a black hole still had matter in it which could react with anti-matter, it wouldn't matter. We think of mass of being what causes gravity- but it is really a different quantity called the stress-energy tensor. For almost all "day to day" activities, the stress-energy tensor is analogous to mass, but in your case- it really isn't. The stress-energy tensor, as the name implies, is also dependent on energy. And while normally you never notice- in a large matter/anti-matter reaction, you'd have to take it into account. In fact, when matter and anti-matter react, the value of the stress-energy tensor is the same before and after the reaction. Normally, the energy spreads out, at the speed of light, so that "mass" is spread out really quickly as well, and thus you don't notice the effects. But in a black hole, that energy cannot escape, so all of that "mass" is retained.
The confusion comes from people mis-teaching the interpretation of E = mc^2 . This is a long discussion, but in summary, E=mc^2 doesn't mean "mass can be converted into energy" but that "energy adds to the apparent mass of the object." You probably first heard of E = mc^2 when talking about nuclear reactions, say a nuclear bomb. And it is said "some of the mass is converted into energy, and then boom!" But really, it is better to say "in a nuclear reaction, mass is carried away from the bomb by the energy." So, for instance, put a nuclear bomb inside a strong, mirrored box, put it on a scale, and blow it up. The scale will read the same before and after the explosion. Then, open up that box, allow the heat and light to escape- and at that point you will notice the scale go down.
| 397 |
[Star Trek] Why don't the Klingons consider their cloaking devices cowardly and dishonorable?
| 54 |
Any hunter will know that camouflage, hiding from, and stalking your prey is part of the hunt. A warrior knows that subterfuge and stealth are the hallmarks of the greatest combatants. Only the brash young fools charge headlong into every battle. Some of them survive long enough to become wise to tactics.
A Klingon grows to learn that there is a difference between dishonor and stupidity.
| 88 |
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[Hobbit: battle of five armies] why would goblins purposefully blind a Troll meant for battle, cut off his arms and legs and swap them for metal weapons, how does that make him more stable or better in battle?
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https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Troll2.jpg
https://i1.wp.com/elanillounico.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/GW-BrutoTroll6.jpg
The picture is of a figure but it's the clearest one of his design.
Goblins and orcs like to torture and maim, instead if helping the wounded they often just get them drunk and amputate their body parts like with Azog, or patch them up with metal ( like in the shadows of Mordor games but those are not canon to the movies)
His extremities are cut off, instead of legs there are these unstable mace-like prostethics and chained weapons for arms, if he falls down how would he even get up? Also he is BLIND, there are hooks in his eye sockets which are used by his rider to change directions.
How is this strategically better? Also i don't want answers like " it makes no sense" or " this is a shitty lazily made movie", that might be true, but i still want in-universe answers or at least serious speculations or theories.
| 186 |
It's a blind beast dependent on its goblin masters for survival. They've purposefully crippled it so it can't rebel against them without dying from starvation. It's new metal limbs replace it's somewhat weaker hands and feet. And if it falls over the amputations aren't severe enough to limit it's ability to raise itself back up. It's an engine of war not a friend. They made it deadlier by giving it weapons it can't drop and they're too stupid to fix actual wounds so they just bolt things onto it to fix injuries. There's also something to be said of the intimidation factor of having Frankenstein crashing into your castle over having a regular zombie.
So yes it's not more stable and is only situationally better than a standard troll. But it's safer for the goblins to manipulate a creature that's incapable of survival without them. And it's easier to shove a hunk of metal into the stump of a severed limb than to try and fix a broken arm for a goblin. Plus cruelty is the point of the procedure.
| 219 |
[Every Action Film Ever] Are these heroes all psychopaths?
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I understand that sometimes people get killed, especially when they are ‘bad guys’. But damn- what’s with all the witty lines said to what are now corpses after these fights? Seems like these heroes really love killing.
| 18 |
To quote Dr. Perry Cox:
> You see Dr. Wen in there? He’s explaining to that family that something went wrong and that the patient died. He’s gonna tell them what happened, he’s gonna say he’s sorry, and then he’s going back to work. You think anybody else in that room is going back to work today? That is why we distance ourselves, that’s why we make jokes. We don’t do it because it’s fun — we do it so we can get by…and sometimes because it’s fun. But mostly it’s the getting by thing.
Talking smack in the face of danger is often a stress reaction, an attempt to manage the strain on the mind. People who *can't* cope in some way tend not to perform well in high-stress situations. If the hero loved killing, they wouldn't crack wise to take their mind off it; they'd just reload with a smile on their face (compare John McClane from Die Hard trying to keep his shit together in Nakatomi Plaza versus Zenia Onatopp from GoldenEye doing literally *nothing* to conceal how much satisfaction she gets from gunning down computer techs and strangling people).
| 58 |
ELI5: Why in 2014 is the ocean still such a mystery. We overcame obstacles to space travel 50+ years ago but can't figure out water.
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I understand water pressure. I just wondered if there were any explanations as to why more money and effort hasn't been put into this over the years, or has it?
Edit: Thank you for your answers, and yes I am well aware that space is infinite and we have barely cracked the surface. But just imagine if the "space race" never occurred and all the time/money/resources put into getting a man into space was spent on exploration of Earth's oceans.
| 2,557 |
We actually can do some pretty cool things in water. We get oil from miles below a surface that is miles below the waves, we explore at tremendous depths, and we lay cables that stretch the length of the oceans.
It's true that there's still a lot left to do, and we certainly could do a lot more. But the reason we seem to be behind compared to space has less to do with pressure than with light (or electromagnetic waves more generally).
The reason we know so much about space is that we can see really far, and what we see contains a lot of information in the form of light spectrums, positions, speeds, etc... Also, most of the things we look at are really big, and stand out clearly from the background.
Water, on the other hand, blocks all of that. It scatters light, scatters heat, and makes info gathering a much more personal and in your face endeavour.
| 2,386 |
ELI5: How do oil rigs work?
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And are they stationary platforms or do they move around?
| 40 |
There are various kinds of oil rigs. It is important to position the drill rig, the drilling machinery over the hole it is drilling.
A common practice is to build the oil platform somewhere, tow it to the drilling location, then anchor it by lowering the platforms legs to the bottom of the sea.
Alternatively the rig can be positioned precisely using several propellers powered by engines to keep it exactly in place.
Drilling rigs are built so that they can be reused elsewhere.
The legs do not actually sink down to rock which might be miles down. They generally sink into mod deeply enough to be good anchors for the platform.
New Orleans bridges are built with their foundation sunk into mud. The amount required to keep the bridge floating is calculated. The foundations have that much floatation. The bridges can rise and fall.
| 12 |
[Harry Potter] - Are the spoken incantations universal or do all countries and languages have their own versions of the same spells, said with different words?
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I'm thinking about Ron and Hermonie's exchange with regards to the spell; "Wingardium Leviosa". During that scene (and in the book) Hermonie is trying to teach Ron how to properly say the "leviosa" part of the spell.
&#x200B;
So it got me into thinking about a Japanese student trying to speak these same words in their own school, "Mahoutokoro". It's pretty established that "l's" and "r's" are difficult sounds to make if you're not a native speaker of the English language. So are they working on saying Leviosa properly there, or have they created their own levitation spell, to be spoke in Japanese?
&#x200B;
it was a pretty reoccurring theme in HPGoF that Fluer's accent was very thick in how she spoke throughout the book (ie: " What do I care how 'e looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk! All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!") How well did the French Students perform at Hogwarts with their heavy French accents?
&#x200B;
| 34 |
AFAIK, different cultures have different focuses on types of magic. For example, Native Americans were much more specialized potionmakers than European wizards. They also practiced wandless magic.
I don't think Rowling has yet shed light on the question of whether spells can do the same thing in different languages, but I'd presume they can - namely for the reason that adept wizards can cast spells without saying them. Learning the words is important for beginner wizards because it helps them to focus on the idea of the spell and conceptualize it. To me, that makes it seem as though spells are more like ideas that wizards have put words to - ideas which a wizard in Asia or South America or so on could have conceived using a different language.
| 26 |
Why are melting Ice Caps causing the world water level to rise, when (correct me if i'm wrong) the higher percentage of the ice is in the water already and ice has a lower density than water?
|
EDIT: Thanks for all the answers, I feel ashamed for knowing so little as i'm studying marine biology,
I always thought the thermal expansion of water was negligible, I still feel that the public are clever enough to understand this instead of just talking about the flooding of the ocean the whole time
| 1,756 |
Maybe in covered surface you're right but the volume of ice on land is far greater than the volume of sea ice. Sea ice is a couple of meters thick and the land ice on Greenland and Antarctica is up to 3 kilometers thick, that's a lot.
| 1,303 |
ELI5: How do we have the equipment to picture and see cosmos and stars millions of light years away, but can’t just zoom-in to examine and view the surfaces of our interplanetary planets in the solar system?
| 12,665 |
There's a limit to how far you can "zoom in" on something to picture it. The maximum resolution is restricted by the wavelength of light used to capture the image. You can compensate by using a larger lens, but even the largest telescopes in the world aren't anywhere near being large enough to have anything close to high-resolution photographs.
This question comes up when people ask why we can't use a telescope to see the flag on the moon which is significantly closer than the planets but still very far away. Turns out just to identify that, you would need a telescope with a lens miles in diameter. If you want to look closely at planets, the lens would need to be larger than the diameter of Earth.
Now there are some neat tricks astronomers can use. Not too long ago, astronomers managed to take a picture of a black hole. The resolution to make this picture indeed would require a lens about the size of Earth, making it seem impossible at first. But what they did is synchronize a bunch of telescopes from all over the world then stitch the resulting data back together in software. Thus they were able to create a picture with sufficient resolution to identify what they were looking at. A similar technique could be used for getting some better precision for imaging other things as well, but it takes a lot of coordination and resources, and while it improves resolution, it still wouldn't compare to sending over a probe with cameras to take pictures at a closer proximity.
| 6,452 |
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[Star Wars Prequels] Why didn't the Gungans get a Gungan senator?
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My understanding is that Naboo has only one senator (Palpatine), who is human. Yet when they pan across the Senate in the movies, it's basically one race/delegation. You don't see a bunch of delegations run by human ?colonists. What makes Naboo different?
| 26 |
Senators don't represent single groups of people from single planets, they represent entire sectors. The Gungans are technically already represented by the Senator for the Chommell Sector, which Naboo is the capital of.
| 60 |
Why do some fruits grow in 'slices'?
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For example, the clementine or the orange, they come in slices that each have a sort of skin separating them from other slices. Why do these and many other fruits grow like this?
| 22 |
Fruits develop from the female part of a flower called an ovary (like the ovary in animals, but only by analogy). Each ovary contains one or more smaller structures inside it called ovules that will develop into the seeds, while the ovary itself becomes the fruit. A lot of fruits are actually made from several ovaries fused together and even when they're mature fruits you can still see the separate ovaries. This includes the citrus fruits you mentioned where each section matures from a separate ovary. You can also see separate ovaries in apples, tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, bananas, and lots of other fruits if you cut them the right way, though they're not quite as distinct as in citrus fruits.
| 20 |
[Marvel/DC] What are some interesting casual moments between heroes and villains?
|
It's a bit of an odd question, to the point where I'm not even sure that it would be added into comics and the sort because it doesn't seem like it would be good writing, but has a Hero ever just acted casually around a villain? Like, the thought occurred to me while I was re-watching an old scene in one of the batman cartoons where all the villains just hang out, play poker and swap stories about how they almost beat batman and, it always occurred to me, that the scene would be a lot funnier if Batman occasionally joined them for a round of cards.
Maybe not Batman, but it seems like there would be at least one or two heroes that come to mind who would sit and have a beer or something with one of their old villains.
| 490 |
From the prequel comics to the game Injustice, Harley and Black Canary are about to get into a fight, but then Canary stops Harley before she can do so before she pukes into a nearby bucket. As a result, Harley quickly realizes that Black Canary is pregnant and agrees to a cease-fire and accidentally blurts out that she had a kid with the Joker (who is now living with her sister as she didn't want the Joker to know he had an heir).
A Spider-Man bit also had him about to fight the Green Goblin and the latter's blurting out some random information, revealing that the "Green Goblin" persona was his second choice. He was going to call himself "Mister Coffee". They both pause for a moment... before breaking into hysterical laughter, with Spidey even coming up with the line, "It's Mister Coffee and his Latte Of Doom".
Another Spidey moment that was purely accidental on his part, but he once ended up sharing an apartment a man called Fred Myers, AKA the supervillain Boomerang. After accidentally blurting out he was the photographer to the Daily Bugle who always captured the best Spider-Man pictures, Boomerang grabbed him and dragged him out of the apartment and to the Bar With No Name, the dive that all of Spidey's villains hang out in... for Spider-Man Trivia Night. Peter scored a perfect run, the first in the bar's history.
Colossus and Juggernaut once got into a bar fight because they were both trying to get drinks in the same bar. Wolverine accidentally caused it when he brought Colossus and Nightcrawler there after Kitty Pride dumped Peter. Juggernaut won. And paid for the damages.
They also once encountered him while he was trying to open a bank account, before another villain attacked all of them at the same time. Also a running joke in the Ultimate Spider-Man series on Disney that Wolverine and Juggernaut kept getting into fights while trying to go about their civilian lives.
Miles Morales once accidentally started a fight with the Rhino because of this as well - turns out that some thugs had kidnapped the Rhino's niece while he was babysitting her and Miles thought the man was up to no good.
A non-Marvel/DC example also comes up in the game series *The World Ends With You*. The Reapers, the local thugs who are running the Reaper's Game which traps dozens of players in a reality called the Underground and threatens to erase them if they lose >!because everyone in the Underground is already dead!< will spend most of their on-screen time running the game, refereeing things, trying to erase Players... or just goofing off. Neku, the player character, ends up making friends with two of the Reaper enforcers and helping one of them with their anxiety (since Reaping is a job and her partner's refused a major promotion because he would rather hang out with her all day).
Also, a major crux of the drama and humour in the TV series *Columbo*, where the villains of the story are the main characters of their episodes - the detective solving the case is the antagonist of the episode. But he's often so affable that some of the more sympathetic characters outright admit to liking him. The episode where Johnny Cash was the star outright had him asking Columbo why he would dare confront a known murderer in the middle of nowhere without backup if he was certain he did it and Columbo declared that he knew the man would confess soon anyway (which he does indeed confirm).
Also, comes up in one of the films in *The Thin Man* series, about a retired police detective and his rich socialite wife who end up working together to solve cases for their friends or those in need. When someone tries to kill Nick and it's believed to tie to his old career in the police, they interrogate several past criminals that Nick put behind bars. They all deny it for the simple reason that Nick was so kind to them when they were behind bars that the thought of harming him never even crossed their minds.
Edit: Also, there's the storyline of the Raider, one of the villains in Paperinik - a comic book where Donald Duck turns out to be a powerful vigilante superhero also known as the Duck Avenger. The Raider, a time-travelling criminal who steals artefacts from the past to sell in the future, or to change the flow of time to benefit a criminal syndicate, once ended up encountering Donald in the latter's civilian identity while out for the day with his son...
And he was utterly gotsmacked to discover that not only was Donald constantly saving the world from evil time travellers and an alien invasion force constantly around the clock, but he was also the sole father figure to no less than *three* children. As the sole parent to a child himself, that alone earned Donald the Raider's upmost respect.
| 319 |
ELI5:Why do some small electronics such as a router have a bulky adapter plug, but a large appliance such as a vacuum cleaner have a regular plug?
| 18 |
Your small electronic devices all need low voltage DC power, they generally run off 24V or less so they need a power supply that can take the 120V or 230V AC power from the wall and convert it into the 5/12/24V DC that the device needs. This can be done with a wall wart(big plug on the wall), a power brick in the middle of the power cord, or inside the device.
If you want to make a small device then you want to move the bulky power supply to a power brick or a wall wart so it doesn't bulk up your primary device.
Your vacuum just runs straight off the AC. AC runs into the motor, AC runs to the secondary motors, everything runs directly off of power provided from the wall. Even for bigger things like a stove which may have a display, they're large enough that fitting a small power supply inside the device isn't going to require a larger device.
| 38 |
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How do T-cells know which cells they've already inspected?
|
From what I understand, T-cells are constantly traveling in the body, inspecting cells by looking for antigens. If they're self antigens, then the T-cell doesn't attack, whereas if they're non-self, they attack. My question is how does a T-cell know when it just inspected a cell? Does the T-cell leave something behind on the cell to mark it as checked or does the cell itself present something on its surface to indicate that it has just been checked? If there is no such system, then what prevents the T-cells from being stuck in a loop, and just inspecting the same cell over and over?
| 33 |
It doesn't know. And it doesn't loop because it's not like the T-cell specifically waits until the current cell under investigation has "passed inspection" before moving on. The T-cell just moves around, continuously coming into contact with other cells in the neighboring environment, and if it happens to brush shoulders with bad antigens then it triggers an attack. But if no attack is triggered, it'll just keep on happily moving about. The key is that the time it takes to trigger an attack is much less than the time it takes a T-cell to "move over" any given cell.
| 13 |
ELI5: The circle of fifths: what is it, how does it work, and why is it important?
|
Thanks guys for all the great answers, I really appreciate it. Every single one has been greatly helpful!
| 87 |
Firstly, a "fifth" is the fifth note in a major scale. Play a note on a piano, then play seven notes higher; that's a fifth.
Play that note's fifth. Then that note's fifth. Keep going and you eventually reach the note you started with (albeit at a higher octave), hence why it's called a circle.
It's important because it illustrates how related (or not related as the case may be) any key is to any given starting key. That helps a musician find a suitable key to change to, if they want to change keys. A more related key sounds smoother. Less related will create a less pleasant sounding transition.
Picture it as a circle, or better yet, a 12 sided shape of equal proportions (a dodecagon), each side representing a key a fifth away from its neighbouring side. You can now *visualise* which keys sound good and which sound bad in relation to any starting key, like a chart. The more related two keys are, the closer they will be on the dodecagon. Opposing sides represent the least relation.
Edit: tried to clarify the last paragraph
| 13 |
[Batman] What sort of precautions does Bruce Wayne have against someone trying to kill him while he's asleep?
|
I've read various things like how he only needs 3hrs sleep, something about micronaps or whatever. But even then, what if someone who knows Batman is Bruce Wayne plans to murder him in his sleep, carefully planning out when to strike. Who is to wake up Bruce if someone was standing over him with a knife or gun?
| 32 |
Well, firstly if he's sleeping in Wayne Manor there's all sorts of anti-intrusion measures and alarms built into that place to hopefully detect someone long before they could reach his bed. It is possible to get around them if you're exceptionally skilled (pretty sure Cassandra Cain's done it, and a couple of others from the batclan. Ra's Al Ghul has. Deathstroke and others of his level could).
But if they do get through his security without being detected, Bruce is as much meditating as he is sleeping, so he's not so deeply unconscious that he couldn't hear or otherwise detect someone coming up on him. The intruder would have to be very skilled and lucky to hit him without waking him. Honestly, they'd probably have a better chance if they just sent a missile at the house (although Bruce probably has some sort of emergency defense for that built into his bed too).
| 34 |
ELI5 - How does fingerprint sensors accurately tell you your heartbeat, O2 saturation etc?
| 237 |
When your heart pulses, it squeezed red blood cells thru vessels in your skin. Shine a light on your skin and you can see the red color pulsing. Time the pulsing and you get your bpm
Oxygen is carried in our blood in hemaglobin , which is why it's red. The more red it is, the more oxygen it has. The less red it is, the less oxygen it has.
Shine a calibrated color light at the skin. If it's more red, your blood has more o2. If it's less red, your blood has less o2
| 352 |
|
Via what mechanism do free electrons in metal produce thermal radiation?
|
Since they are free, electrons in metal don't have an orbital to return to. So how do they lose their excess energy? Is it via bremsstrahlung with collisions with other electrons or being stopped by metal ions at the surface? Or is there another mechanism that free electrons can use to de-excite and release light?
| 68 |
Metal atoms do have electron orbitals. However, since the potentials created by individual atoms in the metal overlap, an electronic band forms that essentially provide a continuum of allowed energy states for electrons in metals. As for mechanisms of losing excess energy, there are many possible methods including electron electron interaction and electron phonon interaction. Sorry this doesn’t completely answer your question!
| 19 |
[40k] Is hitting someone while they aren't looking brutally cunning or cunningly brutal?
| 17 |
Inquisitorial report: 25454.23
Ordo Xenos
Orkoids behavior pattern
No answer have been found to the common used phrase "Brutally cunning" and "cunning brutal". Even two orkoids from the same group seem to have disagreement on such a issue until a larger orkoid is presented. The larger orkoid makes a statement regarding the issue and the two smaller stops fighting.
Conclusion: It's worthless, the orkoids will disagree on anything just to have an excuse to fight each other, no information of value can be gained. The phrases seems to have a primitive religious meaning but even it can't be put in any notion of order.
The test subjects will be now terminated.
==========][==========
*He who allows the alien to live shares in the crime of its existence.*
| 44 |
|
ELI5: Why do bullets have curved tops rather than sharp, pointy tops?
|
It seems like a sharp top would pierce the target better, which is usually what a gun is intended to do, so why don`t they make them like that?
| 818 |
Bullets with sharp points are meant for maximum speed. The power of a bullet comes from momentum, which is a product of weight and speed. A high powered rifle round doesn't weigh much, but goes *really* fast. A blunt bullet is designed for closer range. The blunt tip will have *less* ability to cut through the target, so it will impart all of the energy in its momentum into the target. More energy = more damage. Hollow points maximize that effect by mushrooming on impact and imparting all of their energy into the target.
| 604 |
ELI5: How do water towers work? How has technology not progressed to make them obsolete?
| 72 |
It's almost the perfect system. You are only dependant on gravity to make it work. No electricity no problem. Gravity has your back. If you have an extended power outage you only have to get external power to the pump at the tower to make sure everyone has water. As bad as hurricanes, snowstorms, etc are if would be an order of magnitude worse if you did not have clean water. Basically let physics do its thing. If the Fukushima nuclear plant had used gravity instead of electricity as an emergency cooling backup then no one would probably know what Fukushima was.
| 126 |
|
[Star Wars] What is the point of the wings wings separating?
|
As well as the fins that open on the Jedi's ships in the third movie.
Does this offer anything? Or is it just for effect?
| 51 |
Are you talking about things like the X-Wing s-foils? The flattened out position is more compact and better for storage and traveling. The attack position (when they actually look like an x) is to have the ships's guns as spread as as possible, giving it a wide field of fire.
| 60 |
How do we get visceral fat? Why do some men (and women) have solid fat stomachs that are still large instead of 'jiggly'?
|
I am in a Personal training course and my teacher was having trouble with this question. What causes the two different types of fats in the body? And what problems does it cause?
| 127 |
Visceral fat is much more prone to leaking out triglycerides, and because it is in such close proximity to organs, this can result in fat buildup in the liver. Triglycerides in the liver lead directly to insulin resistance, which will continue to compound the problem. Metabolic syndrome is now thought to be largely driven by incomplete storage of triglycerides by adipocytes.
Somewhat tangentially, this is why liposuction is absolutely worthless-all they do there is remove subQ fat, which increases the burden on visceral fat to store TG. Many patients who undergo liposuction actually have poorer metabolic parameters afterwards.
| 24 |
[Star Wars] Why didn't Obi Wan recognize R2D2 in A New Hope?
|
or C3Po
| 20 |
Several possible reasons:
1. It's been nearly 20 years since he last saw them and legitimately doesn't remember them. Obi-Wan was never much of a droid guy and neither R2 or C3PO look particularly exceptional for their model. Plus he's had a lot on his mind between dodging the Empire and living in the desert.
2. He lied because he wasn't sure if he wanted to get involved. He knew Luke was impulsive and if he just spilled all the Jedi beans to start he might do something dumb like chase after Leia himself. So he played his cards close to his chest until he knew the situation.
3. "I don't remember ever owning a droid". Technically he didn't own R2 or C3PO, especially given R2's obstinate nature. He might have been teasing him.
| 53 |
[Marvel/DC] if a regenerator/healing-factor person gets plastic surgery, do they eventually return to their pre-surgery state? state? Would fat from liposuction grow back? What about implants? Do the get rejected and migrate out like bad piercings?
| 91 |
Depends on what form of regeneration they have. If it specifically brings their body back to a certain point, like time travel, then yes the surgery wouldn't take. If it's like Wolverine, then it would depend on the surgery. Liposuction would be fine, you could even actually forego some safety measures. But things like Botox wouldn't work, since it's literally poison.
| 56 |
|
ELI5: Why can't our body heal a wound perfectly without forming scars?
| 31 |
When you get a cut on the arm your body wants to close it as soon as possible so it will stop bleeding and prevent infections. but to do so it needs to fill it with platelet (repair cells) and they begin to "glue" the wound stacking on eachother following a linear pattern (Instead of a regular like the skin) and this makes the visible scar.
the scar it's a strip of skin that formed quickly and in one verse and thus it's very different from the rest of the skin
think of it like if you are spray-plastering a wall with the spray tool. at some point your ladder falls and "cuts" the freshly plastered wall in a point. you don't have the time to turn on the compressor and the spray tool before the plaster hardens so you decide to just give it a fix with your trowel, making a visible difference in the application of the plaster on that zone
EDIT: some grammar..
| 21 |
|
Eli5: Why are lakes names some times “Name Lake” and other times “Lake Name”?
|
I’m looking at a map of Washington State and I see lakes named Lake Washington, Lake Union and Lake Sammamish. And other names are Moses Lake, Deer Lake and Loon Lake. Is there a rationale for why some times the name precedes “lake” in the title and other times it follows? Or was it random on the part of who picked the name originally and tradition just stuck.
| 5,411 |
In many cases, the order of the name doesn’t meaning anything — it’s just random. *Generally* speaking, however, most lakes in the U.S. follow the pattern “Lake [Proper Noun]” or “[Adjective] Lake.”
So if you see, for example, *Lake Deer*, chances are it’s named after a person with the last name Deer. If you see *Deer Lake*, on the other hand, it probably got that name because there were/are lots of deer living around it.
On a side note, it’s usually larger lakes that have a name like *Lake Name*, and smaller lakes with names of the form *Name Lake.* This isn’t intentional — it’s just more common to formally name the largest lakes after an important person or place.
| 8,854 |
ELI5, Why do smoke detectors require batteries, when they are plugged into the wall?
| 20 |
Smoke detectors don't get power from the wall. In cases of fire or other situations where you would really want your smoke detector to work, power outages are common. The fire could spread in between your fuse box and the smoke detector and cut off power to it, so it uses a battery.
| 18 |
|
If one were to throw Deadpool or Wolverine into a star, would they die?
|
If not, what could kill them?
I'm aware that such a thing has happened to the Hulk and he survived, but his powers and regenerative abilities are obviously very different from that of Wolverine and Deadpool.
| 41 |
Yes, without question.
It's important to remember the *time* involved in the healing process for both of them; it's not instantaneous. The thermal energy out put by a star is unfathomably powerful, but it is also constant.
Tissue would be burned away faster than it could regenerate.
| 32 |
[Star Wars] Why does Darth Maul give up the double-ended lightsaber when he resurrects?
| 83 |
He technically didn't even have a saberstaff. He had two lightsabers joined at the pommel. Both a Jedi and a Sith construct their own lightsabers to be unique to them and feel "theirs".
Maul had not used a saber in a decade and probably wanted the one he felt comfortable with.
| 70 |
|
How does a ponzi scheme work? I'm 5 years old.
|
Is a pyramid scheme the same thing?
| 84 |
#1. you borrow lots of money, and promise to pay it back at huge interest rates over a long period of time.
#2. you live like a king spending money on whatever you like until the money runs out.
#3. you borrow even more money to pay off the original loans.
#4. repeat this until china stops lending you money.
| 36 |
CMV: It would be hypocritical to support tobacco phase-out if you support drug decriminalisation.
|
This post is inspired by this news article: [New Zealand's Smokefree legislation to ban people born after 2010 from ever buying tobacco](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-09/new-zealand-smokefree-2025-plan-ban-tobacco-sales/100686806). The news article mentions that one of the parties supporting the phase-out is the New Zealand Greens, [which themselves support cannabis legalisation](https://web.archive.org/web/20161220205927/https://www.greens.org.nz/page/drug-law-reform-policy).
I personally support drug decriminalisation. It has been shown to [reduce drug-related HIV and AIDS, drug-related deaths, and reduced social costs of responding to drugs - without the expected drawback of increasing drug use rates](https://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/australias-recreational-drug-policies-arent-working-so-what-are-options-reform). In addition, anti-marijuana laws here in Australia have [crippled the hemp industry](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2020-01-24/hemp-cannabis-growing-australia-industry), a crop which is known to be [economically valuable and better for the environment compared to alternatives like cotton](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka/2013/05/29/industrial-hemp-a-win-win-for-the-economy-and-the-environment/?sh=49165e11289b).
Back to the original news article, it says:
>Dr Verrall said non-Maori live eight years longer than Maori New Zealanders on average. Two and a half years of that gap is attributed to smoking.
>
>"We want to make sure young people never start smoking … if nothing changes it would be decades till Maori smoking rates fall below five per cent, and this government is not prepared to leave people behind," she said.
>
>The government will consult with a Maori health task force in the coming months before introducing legislation into parliament in June next year, with the aim of making it law by the end of 2022.
I do not want more people to smoke and die from smoking. Indeed, back in high school PDHPE class, we were taught that a cigarette company executive once said "[*We don't smoke this shit, we just sell it. We reserve the right to smoke for the young, the poor, the Black, and the stupid.*](https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/targeted-communities/tracing-racist-tactics-tobacco-industry)" - While the cigarette company executive was specifically referring to African-Americans, cigarette companies have also been targeting other disadvantaged minorities. I do not want to see the Maori get exploited by the cigarette companies into destroying their health, but I also believe that an outright tobacco ban instead of decriminalised status will only result in a situation like what we have in Australia, [where we have an extremely high incarceration rate of Indigenous Australians](https://www.sbs.com.au/news/indigenous-australians-more-likely-to-be-imprisoned-than-african-americans/a674e77a-c5be-41c6-b196-9c756c7e18eb) and laws against drug use are inconsistently followed, [to the detriment of Indigenous Australians](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/10/nsw-police-pursue-80-of-indigenous-people-caught-with-cannabis-through-courts).
To conclude, I believe in tackling substance abuse via policies which work. Outright prohibition and harsh punishments of drug use doesn't work (except [among East Asian cultures](https://ourworldindata.org/drug-use)); but decriminalisation coupled with harm reduction and education does.
| 132 |
>Outright prohibition and harsh punishments of drug use doesn't work
Cigarettes aren't a drug.
They're a delivery mechanism for the drug nicotine. A specific type of heavily marketed delivery system which causes cancer and other health problems which the drug itself does not cause.
No one is trying to ban nicotine, and it is readily available in other forms such as vape, gum, chew, etc. People are trying to ban a specifically deadly consumer product which is used to deliver nicotine, but can be replaced by other, safer methods.
Certainly banning nicotine would be difficult and lead to lots of illicit use because it is so addictive, but there's no reason to think banning cigarettes won't work because people can just vape or chew to get their fix instead.
| 122 |
A 2 strike system should be used for (violent and brutal) rape. The first offense we try and rehabilitate the rapist, the second we execute them. CMV
|
While it's still rape and very serious, this wouldn't apply to someone who had sex with a drunk girl or guy where consent may be misunderstood. This would only apply to premeditated rape or cases where violence or extreme force was used and the rapist was not under influence of drugs or alcohol.
&nbsp;
The part above isn't to discredit rape when the offender is drunk or under drugs, which should still be severely punished, but execution would be used not as a punishment but to keep dangerous people off the streets so it should only be used against rapists who are likely to re-offend.
&nbsp;
The main criteria would be a need for a lot of evidence against the rapist to minimize the chance of innocents being convicted and the 1st strike with rehabilitation is to see whether it was a one time offense or a serial rapist. It would also help protect innocents as the chance of being innocently accused for something twice is lower than being innocently accused once.
| 24 |
>but execution would be used not as a punishment but to keep dangerous people off the streets
This can be accomplished by life incarceration.
Furthermore, you justify execution on the grounds that it keeps dangerous people off the streets. Why restrict this to rape? Shouldn't we do this for murderers, or violent assaults?
>The main criteria would be a need for a lot of evidence against the rapist to minimize the chance of innocents being convicted
It seems like you are looking for a new burden of proof. We have "probable cause" for civil cases, "beyond a reasonable doubt" for criminal cases, and "no possible way this could be wrong" for this special case. If a rape conviction meets the second, but not the third level, will the person be sentenced conventionally?
| 11 |
ELI5 How can every single movie be advertised as the #1 movie in the world?
| 118 |
People can classify by genre. for example, paul blart mall cop 2 is the No. 1 comedy at the box office, but it may be barely in the top 5 or top 10 overall. despite this, the marketing team can claim this title and promote the movie and technically be right.
You can also classify by weeks. for example week # 1 Avengers is the top box office money getter, week 2 pitch perfect opens up and makes more money than avengers. in this case avengers has made more money overall and pitch perfect has made more money *in that week* than avengers, so both can claim the title of #1
Edit: a word
| 58 |
|
What is gauge symmetry? I’ve come across the term a few times in the past few weeks. I don’t quite understand it and I’d like to know more.
| 331 |
Gauge symmetry is the ability to make a gauge transformation on some physical system, and have the system remain invariant under that transformation.
Classical electrodynamics is a theory of electric (**E**) and magnetic (**B**) fields. The behavior of the fields is encoded in Maxwell's equations.
You can define a set of potentials (φ and **A**) by **B** = curl(**A**) and **E** = - grad(φ) - d**A**/dt.
Since the electric and magnetic fields only depends on *derivatives* of the potentials, you can obviously shift any potential by a constant and the **E** and **B** fields remain exactly the same. This is the simplest example of a gauge transformation. In fact, there is an infinite family of potentials which will lead to the exact same fields, for *any* set of fields you can come up with.
Classical electrodynamics (Maxwell's equations) are invariant under all of these gauge transformations, so the theory has gauge symmetry.
Gauge transformations take on a slightly different meaning in quantum field theory, but quantum electrodynamics (a QFT describing charged particles and their interactions with the electromagnetic field) is a gauge theory.
Gauge transformations can be divided up into global gauge transformations, and the more restrictive class of *local* gauge invariance.
Global gauge invariance is the symmetry leading to conservation of electric charge in QED. Enforcing local gauge invariance is the motivation for the theory to have exactly massless photons. Experimentally, the upper bound on the photon mass is extremely small, so it appears that this assumption in the theory is indeed justified.
| 83 |
|
Askscience: just a reminder of the rules, please avoid layman speculation unless you make it clear you are a layman or are speculating.
|
I was just going through this [thread](http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g3ahu/how_exactly_do_animals_think_if_at_all/) on the thought process of animals, and I realized the upvoted answers are all different from each other in fundamental ways. Therefore I suspect most of the answers are guesses from people who don't know what the scientific opinion on the topic is.
This is bad. Many of us come here to learn, and misinformation defeats this purpose and can be damaging to our trust in this subreddit. I know speculation on topics like the one I linked to can be fun, especially when they are topics that don't have conclusive answers, but I think it's a good idea to start with something like "I am not educated in this topic, but I believe..."
Anyway, the subreddit is amazing and I don't want to discourage anyone from commenting on any question, I just want to avoid confident but misinformed answers from propagating misinformation. Thanks all!
| 362 |
I might add that we as "experts" should be even more aware of clearly noting when we are speaking outside our primary expertise in this forum, as it is likely to provide false authority to a statement where none is due.
| 73 |
ELI5: What is the point of a fiscal year. Why can't a business year end December 31st like everyone else?
| 136 |
A lot of businesses will set their fiscal year (FY) ends with the calendar at 12/31. That being said, a business can decide when they want to set their for a variety of reasons, but a major one would be to set it at a slower period in their business cycle.
For example, a university might have semesters starting in September and January with an additional summer session. Setting a FY end in the summer will allow management to see their financial results for the entire school year (operating cycle). If they were to use 12/31 as their FY end, then they would be looking at their financial performance for segments of two different operating cycles.
| 103 |
|
Why is it so common for groups of animals to become unable to breed after being seperated for a few hundred thousand or million years? What kind of changes make breeding impossible across species?
| 64 |
You're looking at this from a “wrong“ perspective IMO.
The default in nature is death- most random changes in your genome would lead to your death (or more precisely- would NOT lead to any stable life in the first place). The organisms you can observe are the exception to the rule because they found a possible combination of genes that does not lead to death.
“Randomly“ combining mutated genomes from different evolutionary branches has an expected result similair to most random gene combinations-->death.
Usually so early that you'll never even be able to observe any organism evolving from it (not even a fetus).
Assuming only different amounts of chromosomes (but same genes on them)--> unable to split them evenly amonst cells-> something similair to a trisomy/monosomy-->death
(There is a reason you only ever really hear about trisomy 21...most other irregularities in chromosome numbers are not just rare because they're unlikely to happen but rare because any organism with these irregularities would die off right after conception)
Different genes? Some proteins/RNAs might not be recognized by certain other receptors or not be able to perform their specific function because they lack another interaction partner.-->(Edit:potentially...)death
So the short answer is: You will almost always (frequency) have an unstable organism by randomly mixing stuff because almost all (amount/percentage) possible combinations of genes will produce an unstable organism. Thus any “random pick“ is more likely to hit an unstable combination than a stable one because of that.
| 30 |
|
ELI5: How come batteries can die out without being used just from placing them in a device, but keep their energy stored if not?
| 23 |
Lots of devices aren't entirely off. They maintain a clock, volatile memory and such. So if you leave the batteries in there is a slow drain on them that isn't present normally.
Of course, batteries don't strictly speaking keep their energy when stored. Single use batteries can hold a long time, but rechargeable often leak away their charge in a month or so.
| 16 |
|
[Dresden Files] Was Harry weakening his threshold by using his sub-basement as a lab?
|
I know that his apartment's threshold was weak for several reasons, such as being a bachelor and the fact that he only rented it instead of owning it, but was his lab a contributing factor?
It seems like the fact that he used a big part of his home for research and for his job would take away form the home-ness that a threshold represents. Victor Sells completely ruined his threshold by doing black magic and business out of his house. On the other hand, Michael apparently does some work out of an office in his house, and he has a Fort Knox of a threshold.
| 15 |
Michael has a lot of things going for him that Harry doesn't, not the least of which are a fiercely loving family, and a fiercely armed contingent of angelic guardians. Michael is a Family Man, and his house is Their Home ... possibly built with his own two hands.
Harry doesn't have a family, but he *does* separate work and home life; his detective agency is run from an office, not his basement. And his laboratory is very much an expression of who Harry is: he's a magic geek, and if (or when) left to his own devices, he'll tinker.
In *Death Masks*, Harry thought his threshold was strong enough to test if >!Susan was still human!<, and it slowed down the >!Toad Demon!< in *Storm Front*.
That being said, there are obviously issues with his wards and thresholds. For example, *someone* had to get in to (Small Favor) >!repair Little Chicago!<.
| 13 |
ELI5: Why is deep sea exploration so difficult? We have had the technology for a long time, has it reached some kind of plateau that scientists cant figure out?
| 21 |
The difficult part is getting the funding. The engineering has been figured out for a long time, but no one has quite figured out how to finance non-military applications of it.
Historically, exploration has been dependent upon either political will or financial incentive. At the moment, both are lacking with regard to deep-sea exploration.
| 22 |
|
ELI5 why change in sunrise and set do not change equally each day
|
Looking at the weather I noticed that sunset gets later faster than the sunrise times gets earlier. Is there an easy explanation as I thought it would equal change in the times of the events each day.
| 123 |
They change equally compared to the time of solar noon (when the sun is highest in the sky), but solar noon also varies. Earth's orbital speed varies through the year, and that makes the length of a solar day vary slightly through the year. When the solar day is less than 24 hours, noon gets a bit earlier each day. When it's longer than 24 hours, noon gets a bit later each day.
| 39 |
ELI5: Why are lefty pitchers normally slower than righty pitchers in baseball?
| 49 |
There's less competition, is the short answer. You don't need to throw 101 mph to get a roster spot as a left-handed pitcher. Plus, batters don't see lefties as often, so you already have a bit of an advantage and you don't need as much velocity.
That being said, some lefties do still have high velocity. Clayton Kershaw's 4-seamer averages 94 mph and has touched 99.
| 130 |
|
CMV: The 24-Hour News Cycle is Ruining the Olympics
|
NBC, its affiliate stations, and everybody else are so eager to be first with the "breaking news" that it's nearly impossible to avoid spoilers. The winner of the women's gymnastics all-around was breathlessly announced right at the start of NBC's afternoon programming, even though the event itself wasn't going to air until the main evening broadcast. If I've spent the day avoiding sports talk and social media so I could actually be surprised, why would NBC themselves spoil it in a quick blurb hours before I could see the event? What's the advantage of this / how is it good for their ratings?
| 64 |
Your view was correct about 20-30 years ago, because 24-hour news becoming pretty mainstream, but streaming wasn't a thing yet. Trying to avoid spoilers was your only option - and it was somewhat easier to avoid before the internet. You could avoid "unsurprising" results, but "big news" - like Simone Biles withdrawing - would have likely been impossible to avoid.
But in 2020 (really 2021), you have options. If you really care about not getting spoiled, you can watch essentially any even live - or on demand. You no longer have to hide yourself in a cave all day waiting for NBC's primetime coverage. You can watch the Women's gymnastic all around while taking your morning shower, or eating breakfast. Whenever you want.
| 22 |
CMV: The president is trying to infringe on the freedom of the press. And it's working.
|
Free Speech and Press is one of the core values of the United States. It is possibly one of the most important thing to Americans. But I've noticed a trend recently when observing Donald Trump and how he treats the "mainstream media." It strikes me as similar to how some countries (can't think of their names off the top of my head) managed to infringe on the press and oppress their country.
The president has been attacking basically any media source that says anything negative about him. Not anything "false", just negative. He has been slowly delegitimizing media organization after media organization. Now apparently CNN is a socialist, Soros funded propaganda machine. His goal isn't to eliminate "fake news". His goal is to eliminate anything that shows him in a bad or negative light. He has proposed making a "Trump TV." That's an incredibly dangerous concept.
This is how those aforementioned countries took control of the media. Remove their credibility, push them out of the market, establish your own media organization, control what the public thinks.
These are the inklings of fascism and corruption. And we should all be concerned. The Washington Post's tagline since the election is "Democracy Dies In Darkness." Well right now it's dying in broad daylight.
| 47 |
OK. So your stance is a bit unhinged from a legal perspective. The freedom of press is solidified in the first amendment. The presidents freedom of speech is also enshrined right there in the first amendment. The press can use their freedom to bash him up to the point of libel or illegal incitement to specific violent action and the exact same law protects the presidents right to respond however he damn well pleases speech wise. Should we withhold constitutional protections based on the occupation of the individual? Should we control who gets to make news networks? Because that opens the floodgates of who gets to control this. Well, in America there's only one regulating body and you definitely don't want them controlling who gets to be news.
| 20 |
ELI5: Why do horses need horse shoes?
| 20 |
They don't, strictly. Wild horses and zebras and the like get along fine without them.
Domesticated horses are normally put under more stress than their wild counterparts, however. Just carrying a rider is a significant amount of extra weight; draft horses have to haul much more, and usually have to do so at faster speeds and for greater distance than wild horses normally travel. That amount of stress would wear through a bare hoof.
Really its the same reason humans wear shoes: it protects our feet and lets us walk or run more than we would be able to otherwise.
| 28 |
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[Star Wars] How did Dooku beat Kenobi so effortlessly?
|
Dooku is known to be a great duelist, and yet he wiped the floor with Kenobi. At one point their blades were locked and Dooku effortlessly pushes Kenobi's blade back with a smile. Is this his dark side enhanced strength coming into play?
| 32 |
>Dooku is known to be a great duelist, and yet he wiped the floor with Kenobi.
I think you accidentally a word here. Otherwise, you basicly awnsered your own question there. "How could this really really great guy possibly defeat this slightly weaker guy!"
Yeah, Dooku was just more skilled and more powerful than kenobi. he is rather old tho, so physically he was probably weaker, but he did like yoda and augmented his strenght with the force.
| 40 |
How is Virtue Ethics not just Consequentialist with a different value system?
|
As I understand it, consequentialism is a normative ethical framework that judges the value of an action based on its outcome.
Virtue ethics propose that the the character of the actor should be the measure of ethical value.
How is this not just consequentialism, with higher value placed on the personal, internal consequences than the consequences in the outside world?
If so, doesn't this make virtue ethics fundamentally selfish?
edit: clarification of what I mean by selfish.
Propose a scenario with two possible decisions and outcomes, A and B.
Consequentialist and Virtuist agree that the objective consequences are superior in "A" (more lives saved, for instance)
However Virtuist feels decision A violates his virtuous character. (must commit despicable act)
Virtuist must either
a) violate his moral character to act for the best consequence, in which case virtuism == consequentialism, and virtuism has no distinct philosophical identity.
or
b) choose personal virtue over the common good.
I argue that the second case is a selfish act.
| 15 |
Virtue ethics doesn't say that we should try to maximize the amount of virtue in the world. That would be a kind of consequentialism which assigns intrinsic value to virtue.
What a virtue ethicist would say is that when making choices you should act on the basis of your virtuous dispositions. Not that you should aim at virtue as if it was the good.
A virtuous person might help other develop and themselves enhance their virtues, but only because this is the kind of thing that a virtuous person would do. It's part of being wise and kind.
Do virtuous people only aim at the internal? Probably not. A virtuous person might value beauty and order and work to make the surrounding world better aesthetically and work to make their society more just.
Is virtue ethics selfish? Probably not, since common virtues on many theories are kindness and generosity, and if you act on the basis of such virtues, it is hard to see how you are being selfish.
| 13 |
Why are the Great Lakes not salty like the Oceans but the whole area is covered in Salt mines?
| 130 |
The Great Lakes are freshwater (lacustrine) because they do not sit in an endorheic basin. An endorheic basin is one in which the only way out for water is through evaporation. The Great Salt Lake sits in one, as does the Dead Sea, the Caspian Sea, and many others. All of those are saline. The oceans are also, in a fashion, an endorheic basin (albeit a *huge* one). Water flows in from land, but does not flow out...evaporation is the only way it gets back to land.
The salt comes from rocks on land as they are slowly eroded and the salts are dissolved in water. *All* natural liquid water contains at least minute quantities of salt. Over time, as water evaporates and the salts are left behind, the concentration of salt in the waters of an endorheic basin increases and what is left is a saline body of water.
The salt deposits in the Great Lakes basin come from an earlier time and a different body of water. They are found deeper than the lake beds and isolated from the waters by many layers of rock.
| 87 |
|
How do doctors tell the difference between someone with ADHD and someone who just has a poor attention span (unfocused, undisciplined, etc.) ?
| 111 |
ADHD researcher here. If you are seeing someone who actually knows what they're doing, the process is a lot more intensive. You will go through a semi-structured interview about yourself, and then others who know you well (a parent, long time friend, etc) will be given the same interview about your symptoms. If both interviews come back with a high amount of endorsed symptoms, you will go through a variety of neuropsychological tests at which people with ADHD are known to perform poorly. Actual diagnostic criteria are, for adults, 5 symptoms of either inattentive or hyperactivity-impulsivity, according to the new guidelines set forth by the DSM-V.
In essence, the doctor (probably psychiatrist) will be able to tell if you actually have ADHD or not. Unfortunately, a lot of family doctors, even clinicians who claim expertise don't go through the proper procedures in diagnosis.
| 37 |
|
ELI5: Why are some days of the week named after Norse Gods, and some days named after Roman ones?
| 29 |
There is only one day of the week that is truly of Latin origin: Saturday, named after the Roman god Saturn.
This is because the Germanic peoples took the Roman days of the week and, as best they could, found the equivalent Norse god to name it after -- this matching of Norse gods to Roman gods was called "interpretatio germanico", "the Germanic interpretation".
For example, the Latin dies Martis was named after Mars, the god of war. The Germanic people had a god called Týr (Tiw in English) who was the god of heroic glory and combat -- and so we got Tiwsdæg.
However, there is no Norse god that corresponds to Saturn, so dies Saturni became Sæturnesdæg.
Not all Germanic languages kept Saturn, though. In the Scandinavian languages it is "Lördag" (or similar), which literally means "washing day"; in southern German dialects it's "Samstag" which originally comes from "Sabbath" (even though it doesn't look like it), while in northern German dialects it's "Sonnabend" which literally means "Sunday Eve".
| 29 |
|
Why does a 5 mW laser damage the eyes more than a 13 W light bulb if the bulb has over 2,000 times the energy?
| 24 |
If you're standing one meter away from the bulb and your eye is one square centimeter, it is getting about 1/100,000th the power of the bulb (consider what fraction of the light hits your eye). If a beam is the size of your eye, and it hits you in the eye, that is 100% of the power delivered to your eye.
| 43 |
|
[Harry Potter] Flashlights should work at Hogwarts right?
|
Im not talking fancy flashlights with LED bulbs, I’m talking classic copper wire and light bulb connected to a battery.
It seems to me magic has an almost EMP like effect causing interference with radio waves and anything with more complex than a transistor.
While we could debate EMP hardened devices would work in a magically enriched environment, I would like to posit the idea if flashlights could work at Hogwarts.
Now, a flashlight in its simplest form has existed for over 120 years, with use of a battery, copper wire, a lightbulb, and a container to hold them in together.
We know that Colin Creevey’s camera would work (and in the wiki states that it didn’t need batteries), that it could fire the bulb off thanks to Hogwarts’ magical energies.
We also know that magically enchanted vehicles, such as Sirius’ motorcycle and Mr. Weasley’s Ford Angelica, both had operational headlights, which in large are scaled up flashlights that run off the battery/alternator.
So, what do you think?
Would a flashlight work at Hogwarts?
| 66 |
It's entirely arbitrary. The limits on technology don't seem to be a property of magic but rather the result of a spell placed intentionally to prevent muggles from getting into the wizarding world. Whoever cast the spell would have decided where the line is between acceptable technology and "modern" technology.
| 58 |
If a waterfall is always flowing quickly how does one freeze?
| 20 |
The same way that even though water is constantly dripping from the ceiling of a cave, stalactites can still build up - little by little. A small amount of water will freeze at the very top of the waterfall, and this will provide a point at which more ice can build up on top. Over time, the ice will reach the bottom of the waterfall, giving the impression that the waterfall froze instantaneously.
| 19 |
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[Watchmen] Why did Dr. Manhattan kill Rorschach?
|
I watched this movie three times now and I still don't fully get the scene with the two. I know Rorschach says that Manhattan has to kill him but why???
| 488 |
Because Rorschach is going to spill the beans, even though he knows it will cause nuclear war.
He can't do otherwise, he CANNOT compromise. Even if it means destroying the world. And he knows it. He doesn't want to destroy the world but he's incapable of doing otherwise, so his third option is to die.
| 901 |
ELI5: When your lips are chapped why does licking them make it worse? Why does the moisture in your saliva not help?
| 61 |
Licking your lips will only feel good for a little while since the saliva evaporating takes away even more moisture. On top of that, your saliva is full of digestive enzymes that make healing those chapped lips even harder.
| 34 |
|
ELI5: Why are people opposed to Palestinian statehood?
|
I've read the other Palestine/Israel posts, and I understand (and much as one can) why there's animosity between the two peoples... but I want to know why people would be against Palestine becoming its own country?
If the Palestinian people are happy being their own country, wouldn't that make Israel's life easier?
| 23 |
Mainly two groups of people oppose Palestinian statehood, right-wing Israelis and right-wing Americans. Both groups do it for mainly two reasons: they either believe that the region of Israel and Palestine belongs to the Jews by divine right (i.e. God gave the land to the Jewish people and only to them) or they believe that the establishment of a Palestinian state will be a threat to Israel. The reasons for Americans supporting Israel are numerous and very complex; for the meantime just know that a lot of Americans will strongly support Israel, but not all of them do.
The idea that the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people comes from religious sources and is a wide-spread belief in Israel and certain parts of the United States, though not all Jews (American or Israeli) and Christians believe it. For these people, giving Palestinians a state would be a deviation from God's will.
Those who believe an independent Palestine will threat Israel's existence do so because of the influence and political power that Hamas has in Palestine; they fear what would happen if Palestine became an independent country. Hamas is a right-wing Islamist organization that controls the Gaza Strip (a small part of Palestine that touches the Mediterranean Sea) and provides many much-needed services to the Palestinian people. However, it also is a very militant and religious organization and maintains its own small army. It is also very anti-Israeli, has publicly called for the destruction of Israel many times, and led attacks against Israeli citizens in the past. Some people think that giving Palestinians their own state will allow Hamas and other like-minded, violent, anti-Israeli organizations more power and allow them to attack Israel and Israeli citizens more frequently by using an independent Palestine as a staging ground for terrorist attacks. So they oppose a Palestinian state out a sense of self-preservation.
Edit: Grammar and clarification
| 14 |
CMV: Students should not be punished by their schools for actions committed outside of school.
|
This is a pretty straightforward issue, as far as I see it. I'm a student who attends a high school, and I think it's ridiculous to punish students for breaking rules that are not those of the school. If somebody sees a teacher that they hate outside of school, why shouldn't they insult them? Other than the fact that it is a mean and irresponsible thing to do. If they break the law, they should be tried by a court, before a jury of their peers. Not by a school official.
The main counter-argument I see is the issue of cyber-bullying. Frankly, I don't see the problem. If it's rude, alert the perpetrator's parents. If it's harassment, report it to the police. If neither of those are the case, well, suck it up. I don't like to say that, but adults don't get an all-powerful school administration to which to cry when they are being picked on.
Now, if the student is on a school trip, or wearing school merchandise, then yes, the school can enforce their rules in the interests of protecting their reputation. Otherwise, students shouldn't be punished in school for infractions committed out of school.
CMV
_____
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| 406 |
> If somebody sees a teacher that they hate outside of school, why shouldn't they insult them? Other than the fact that it is a mean and irresponsible thing to do. If they break the law, they should be tried by a court, before a jury of their peers.
This is not the way the world works. If you hate your boss and see him outside of work, and then insult him, you will most likely be fired. Similarly, given the example of cyber bullying, if you are doing things outside of work that affect your job, your company can and will take issue with that. Whether or not this is the way the world *should* work is a separate issue, but one of the most important parts of school is getting kids ready for the real world. If schools adopted your policy, then kids would not be prepared for life after high school.
| 107 |
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