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AskReddit/c0appaa | 8x5sg | Does working out affect growth/stunt growth? | The issue with working out when you're younger is that you can cause your growth plates to prematurely seal over, which means your growth would be stunted. The growth plates are the ends of your bones where new growth occurs so that your bones can become longer as you get taller etc. Usually the recommendation is for teenagers to stick to lower weights, and not try to do any heavy lifting. Schedule a visit with your doctor to get a check-up and ask him/her about working out and weight-lifting. They'd be happy to help you out and answer your questions, and they will know better than anyone what to recommend. | 4 |
AskReddit/eda5hci | acr6sc | Why cant close door meetings in the Government be broadcast live? | There are many reasons to have closed-door meetings: security, a 3rd party is involved, someone’s privacy is involved (this one is mainly for judicial stuff but it can be applicable in other places), and other sensitive information. The government tends to try and keep as much stuff open to the public as possible (e.g.: CSPAN), until they can’t anymore. | 2 |
askscience/c1tmga7 | h9fv4 | Can drinking distilled water exclusively be harmful? | It's true that if you put cells in pure water that they'll explode. The salts on the inside of the cell's membrane draws water inward until the volume is too great for the membrane to contain it. This is why you have to carefully balance saline solutions used in IVs, for instance. It's also why in cell wet labs you've often got huge vats of PBS, a pH balanced, cell-isontonic solution. Water poisoning happens for similar reasons. Your body as a whole is better at regulation than a single cell, but as the water-solute balance shifts toward wetter conditions, cells in your brain swell and the increase in cranial pressure becomes dangerous. I don't think drinking normal amounts of distilled water would cause damage though. Your body is ridiculously good at filtering water. Read anything on kidney function and you'll see just how incredibly efficient and clever the nephrons are. | 10 |
explainlikeimfive/debty5k | 5wpa9x | Why were trains invented so much earlier than cars? | Trains have some advantages that make them more cost effective and essentially a lower technology level to run. 1) no steering system. This simplifies manufacure and design of the suspension. 2) they're larger. This means that heavy, large engines and gearboxes can be used. While these might be individually more expensive than those used in cars, they are more efficient and can be simpler to manufacture than smaller parts. 3) They usually used steam engines, which are dramatically more efficient and simple than internal combustion engines, but less responsive. Because of these qualities, steam engines are far better for pushing somethig a log way at a constant speed (like trains), but are kind of crappy for the stop-and-go driving that cars do a lot of. | 3 |
AskReddit/czc1ufs | 42oqmz | What was the last movie you saw that really blew you away? | A little late to the party, but I just watched The Butterfly Effect for the first time a few weeks ago, with the directors cut ending, and it blew my mind. I've watched it numerous times since, and I typically never rewatch movies. | 4 |
explainlikeimfive/d7y630l | 541um5 | Why does the US use "dry walls" to build its houses? | Because wet walls are a mess. But seriously folks, the standard technique of drywall (or sheetrock) over a wood frame makes for a sturdy, relatively inexpensive building that can be put up a lot faster than by laying brick. Decent bricklayers are expensive and slow, guys who can nail up sheetrock are cheap and fast. And in earthquake country, your nice brick walls are a tomb-O-death waiting to happen. Here in California, you pretty much CAN'T build a house of unreinforced masonry, it would be illegal. Properly reinforcing masonry against earthquakes is even more expensive. | 648 |
askscience/dpblxvh | 7aln93 | Does the brain compress sound? | Loose definition of compression. But what you are experiencing is more so a mechanical change in the sound waves and the way the acoustic mechanisms in your ear are reacting to them. I wouldnt say this is analogous to sound being compressed digitally if this is what you meant. | 2 |
AskReddit/c43m0r5 | r7vvu | What is the most expensive thing you've ever held in your hands? | Probably an infant. If you think about all the money that your average upper class family invests in a child, as well as that child's future earning potential, you're holding a pretty expensive thing. | 18 |
AskReddit/c8ihfch | 18vt24 | What is the happiest story from your life? | This is a simple story, but, one day a few years ago I was working for Domino's Pizza as a sign spinner. I had been working there for a about a year and some odd months, gaining a reputation in the neighborhood making people smile with my dance moves and crazy sign spinning tricks. Well one day, a girl who I had seen passing by on a few occasions (She smile the prettiest smile and wave as she drove past) approached me while I was working to give me her number. She told me "I don't really do this, but I think you're adorable, here's my number." I was pretty much shocked, I never thought anyone would just come up to me at my job and give me their number, let alone such an angelic young woman as this one was. So later that night I called her, she was in the middle of something, but we arranged to spend some time together during the next couple days. I was pretty nervous about hanging out with her, mostly because she had this unique prettiness about her, but partly because I hadn't really been spending a lot of time with girls at that point in my life. She came over, we watched Hook on demand, sitting scrunched as far apart as physically possible on the loveseat. I was definitely attracted to her, drawn to her presence, but I didn't wanna come off as the dude that made advances on a girl whom he barely just met. So, the movie ended, we get up to say goodbye, and when she wraps her arms around me an almost overwhelming feeling of happiness and joy washed over me. I've never felt so connected to someone else like I felt when we gave each other that first hug. She left, and I pretty much levitated for the rest of the evening. We dated for a couple years, had some highs and some lows. There were some pretty bad times, and some amazing times that I will remember for the rest of my life. I've never been so grateful for any one "relationship experience" than the one we shared, and I'm sure I will love this woman forever. <333 | 3 |
AskReddit/e5p2xe3 | 9ei0hi | What’s a lesser known method of making money online? | I'm a guy but I buy girls panties when they go on sale at Walmart and sell them online as used panties I have a few album of girl I've saved from 4chan that aren't popular I use their pictures and claim to be them to sell the panties. Get a pack of 6 panties for around $10 I sell them for $20 a pair. To make them look used I wash them a few times. | 5 |
AskReddit/dlradqe | 6uatb4 | What crime makes you really angry? | Rape. A lot of crimes make me upset, but there's few crimes that involve actively looking into someone's eyes and causing them prolonged agony. Other crimes like murder, theft can be crimes of thoughtless passion and/or feel relatively unpersonal but it takes some extreme cruelty to destroy another human being the way a rapist does. | 5 |
AskReddit/c2qg3dp | l7pqe | How do they determine how long a year is in George R.R. Martins world of "A song of Ice and Fire"? | I googled it, and apparently there is no firm answer on how long a year is, but it's assumed that they measure the time astronomically, which makes sense since they can navigate that way also. Apparently the long drawn out seasons issue will be explained in the last book and will be a magical issue. | 2 |
AskReddit/dun3cxb | 7zcwyl | How do you feel when it rains? | I feel so in touch with everything. It’s so relaxing. It’s nice to lay in bed wrapped in your favorite blanket watching the rain and hearing it hit the roof it’s just soothing. I get so excited when it rains. I need to move to Seattle. | 2 |
AskReddit/c0a92pf | 8s2pk | What's your 'guilty pleasure' TV show? | American Idol. Yeah I said it. EDIT: I really don't understand these 'guilty pleasure' threads. Am I being downvoted because no one likes American Idol, or because everyone likes it and I should not feel guilty for watching it? | 7 |
AskReddit/dd6n2wx | 5rejgn | What is the hottest potato chip you have eaten? | Last Christmas, my sister, her boyfriend and I where playing Doritos Routlette. I got this one chip that was punch-in-the-mouth hot. Milk made it worse and the burn lasted for about 5 minutes after eating the chip. The bag wasn't to be trusted after that. | 2 |
askscience/c1saun1 | h3ki4 | Is there a solid substance anywhere on earth that cannot be melted? | So there are a couple of points to this. Melting is turning from solid to liquid, and there are a number of substances that skip a liquid phase, for example dry ice. You are talking more about substances that cannot changed from their solid state. As far as i know diamond is going to have the highest melting point. quick google search found this statement, "Melting Point: Diamond has the highest melting point (3820 degrees Kelvin)" So my answer would be no, there is no substance know to man that can withstand any gigantic amount of heat. You could do some pretty tricky stuff with cooling systems and reflective surfaces, but if it is hot enough it wont last. edit spelling | 16 |
AskReddit/dkospvp | 6pew9s | When did you realize that you were still in love with your SO after thinking it was over, or what made you fall back in love after wanting to end it? | Love this question because it applies to me at the very moment. We dated for a year and a half, the love of my life, we'd go to concerts of the bands we loved, had mutual friends and were so similar in all aspects. She's a year older and moved off to college, only a half an hour away but she didn't have a car there. My senior year was the busiest time of my life and I spent so much time on certain activities that I felt I couldn't spend time with her, it was selfish. The worst part of it was that there was a girl in one of my activities that I saw nearly every day and she and talked all the time. Everyone in the activity pressured me to break up with my girlfriend and date the new girl, so I drove to her college and did it. I was stubborn and didn't listen and wanted to end it so I didn't feel the pain while it happened. The new girl and I were also very similar, but every single day I thought of my last girlfriend and the way I broke up either. It still makes me feel guilty to this day. On the two-year-anniversary of my first concert with my old girlfriend, I texted her, making the first contact in months. I told her I was sorry and that she has every right to never talk to me again, but that if she wants to talk I'm willing to explain. At this point I didn't want to be back together, just explain how sorry I truly was. I went to sleep before she responded. I dreamt about her that night, just us being friendly at our favorite restaurant together and when I awoke I realized there wasn't a chance of that happening anymore. I looked at my phone and she responded that she did want to talk. The new girl and I had been having a tough time for the past month and she unexpectedly broke up with me the day before I was meeting with my past girlfriend. We met up, I was terrified, but from the second our eyes met it was like no time had passed. I told her everything. I was expecting to talk for maybe 30 minutes and leave, but we walked and talked for four hours. Today, five days after meeting back up with her, we're becoming friends again. Let's hope for the best. P.S. I'm going to the same college that she is this fall. | 2 |
AskReddit/eokm0vo | bsad8q | How was your day? | I had a slightly better day at work then most people, but the last 2 days were crazy excellent. Finished a long workout at the gym So far stuck to my diet And am currently in a argument standoff with my husband. So 7/10 | 3 |
AskReddit/erry57b | c3mtzm | Why do pixels use red, green, and blue instead of red, yellow, and blue? | I literally just looked it up because I was also curious but to my understanding the primary colors of art are not the same as the primary colors of a screen because the screen generates light while anything you paint/color will only reflect light. So the primary colors of generated light are red green and blue with red and green making yellow surprisingly. Again I just read a quick article, I’m not an expert, but I do think this is right. | 2 |
AskReddit/cylexhy | 3ze95p | What is the most "MacGyver" contraption that you've ever made while you've had limited resources to work with? | My nickname at work is MacGyver, and I have earned it. I practically MacGyvered an entire US$10milion factory. I have rebuilt so many things creatively it's very difficult to pick a favorite. My entire house is filled with little gadgets I made. Most famously perhaps was balancing a 40 ton load between a 10ton forklift and a 30 ton crane, synchronizing the two very carefully in what was practically a ballet on knifepoint to get the load off the truck safely. | 2 |
AskReddit/e71y67s | 9kuqj7 | What is the worst group project experience you’ve ever had? | High school, senior year in AP Literature. We had to make a skit/video of a scene from the book we were reading. She just didn’t respond to meet up with us for any part of the project. So we film it anyway and ask the teacher to consider removing her from our group since she did zero work. Later that day we get extremely angry/wordy texts about how she needs a grade because she can’t go to her swim meet if she’s not passing all her classes, as if it’s somehow our fault. | 2 |
askscience/cga5mqj | 215ylp | Why do electronic instruments fail under high pressure, such as descending into jupiter? | The pressure can change the structure of materials. Think about diamond and graphite. Since the circuit is not just one homogeneous material it will experience differential compression. The pressure at the bottom of the atmosphere of Jupiter is close to 4-5 million atmospheres. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/d129vwf | 4aolk0 | What do antidepressants do for people who are not depressed? | In some circumstances of chronic pain, some antidepressants can be used for neuropathic pain relief. I currently take nortriptyline for fibromyalgia, and it mitigates the large majority of the muscle pains without any noticeable side effects. | 6 |
AskReddit/c2p09bg | l1g6w | What should I go to school for? | I just started a new job as outside sales using my EE degree. Money is great, job is awesome. Just pick something that will actually help you get a job. Too many people, go to school for something, "they will enjoy," and come out of school with a worthless piece of paper and tons of debt. | 2 |
askscience/dallzyb | 5fmaas | How do camouflaging animals know what colour/texture to mimic? | Short answer: they don't. All they know is that they didn't get eaten. Genetic mutations that affect an animal's colour or texture are relatively common. Having fur or feathers a different colour, or a different length, or patterns of stripes or dots; all of these can happen with a single genetic change. Any population of camouflaging animals will vary between individual animals in the effectiveness of their camouflage. The animals that by chance happen to have the most effective camouflage, are the ones that don't get seen by predators and eaten. These animals survive, reproduce, and pass on their genes for effective camouflage. Repeat. | 6 |
AskReddit/cg2emis | 20ed6e | Does alcohol make people say mean/stupid things or is it lubricant to see how people honestly feel? | alcohol doesn't make you do anything. All it does is slows your thinking to the point you can't evaluate the consequences of your actions in depth enough to properly filter out what is a good or bad idea. e.g., if you are the sort prone to reckless driving alcohol won't "make" you drive drunk it just means you won't spend a lot of time thinking about it since you're already prone to being careless when driving anyways. To phrase that better, if you're concerned with being a safe driver that thought will still cross your mind when you're drunk and that's what inhibits most people from driving drunk. Similarly, if you have relatively normal social convention [like you don't randomly think about molesting people at a bar] you wouldn't when drunk either. | 3 |
AskReddit/de02lqw | 5v8mkp | What was your worst experience being introduced to a new group of people? | After moving to my second house, one with a yard completely enclosed by a 6 foot fence and a doggy door to said yard for my purebred, champion sired Great Dane. I met my new neighbor. He introduced himself with "hi, the last people's dog ran all over the place, I hope yours won't be a nuisance too". Literally that, no leading up to it, no small talk. Turned out he was an alcoholic. Never bothered me after that though. | 3 |
AskReddit/ei24ql3 | ayo2lh | What song just completely and utterly destroys you and why? | Me by the 1975. It doesn’t completely destroy me every time, but there was a period that I’d just cry listening to it on repeat. It just really hits home, I guess. Also the nirvana cover of lake of fire because we always played it as a homage to my late uncle | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/del4y6b | 5xvb7f | Why is discovering the Higgs-Boson particle so significant? | The Higgs boson was the last major prediction of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, but for many years it's discovery eluded physicists. The Higgs mechanism tells us how elementary particles get their mass. You can imagine the Higgs field being like treacle. Particles which couple to the Higgs field will slow down from the speed of light in the field. If they do so, they have mass, like the electron. If not, they are massless, like the photon. There Higgs boson is an excitation of this field, like a vibrating spring in a mattress, and finding one confirms that the field exists and the mechanism is correct. But the Higgs boson was predicted to have a very high mass (although the exact value could not be predicted), and therefore would be very short lived because it could quickly decay to lighter particles. This means you don't see many of them hanging around, so you need to put a lot of energy into one place to make one. This is one of the reasons why scientists built the LHC, as it allows us to accelerate particles to extremely high energy, smash them together, and see what the energy of that collision makes by analysing the products. They managed to do this in 2012. So, finding the Higgs boson confirms the last major piece of the Standard Model. But it also has more potential than that. While the Standard Model does a great job of explaining everything it tries to, it leaves a lot out, namely gravity. If we can find any irregularities in the properties of the Higgs from what the Standard Model predicts, we might be able to find a lead to the new physics we desperately need to connect quantum field theory with gravity. More analysis of the Higgs will be done in the coming months and years to see if we can find any such leads. | 52 |
explainlikeimfive/eat4u65 | a1vvaf | Why do real-life products, like cars, need to be licenced for video games, but not for movies or books? | This might not be helpful and I could be wrong but I think it could have to do with the visuals. I mean, let’s say someone has never heard or seen a Ford Mustang before. If they watch a movie or a game that has it in it then they can be like oh that’s what it looks like, oh that’s how strong it is and so on. But in a book the name Ford Mustang can be anything to the reader. Their imagination can fill in the space. Probably wrong but I think it’s just for the visuals that makes it wrong. | 2 |
AskReddit/chkku9m | 25tfem | What strange eating habits have you witnessed? | For some odd genetic reason, my exhusband and daughter both put barbecue sauce on tuna mac salad. We divorced when she was young, so she never witnessed him do it. I made it once when he came to visit and both of them asked for barbecue sauce and neither one knew the other did it. Weird stuff. | 2 |
AskReddit/c2ke3xk | khzv8 | How long does it take for you to get a new server installed at your job? | Physical server? Six weeks, which includes specing out, ordering, delivery times, change control, build, etc. Virtual server? A couple of days so long as there isn't something out of the ordinary about it. Now, ask to put a physical box it in the DMZ? Probably adding a month to the process at least. | 2 |
AskReddit/cfqausn | 1z41q9 | If you found $5 mil or so in a bag on the side of the road today, how would you spend/launder it? | Convert it to money orders in smaller increments of $50k or $100k, buy bitcoin, cash it out, pay my taxes on it. Done. If anyone asked where the 5 mil come from I'd just say I bought a bunch of bitcoins ages ago and was an early adopter who road the price up. | 8 |
AskReddit/dem7zr2 | 5y0at2 | What's the story of your worst ever commute to or from work? | I work A-Shift primarily. I covered a B-Shift one Friday and was making my way home just after midnight. I have a 35 minute commute on a 2 lane highway. Traffic was rough as I had left work with everyone else, maybe 3000 people. There were also a lot of semis and the highway was moving slow. I opted to take the slightly longer rural route to avoid the hustle and bustle. There is one traffic light intersection along this route. I got stopped by the red and messed with my radio for a few seconds. Looking up, the light was green. I started to go through and got t-boned by an 18 wheeler doing 55. Thanks to my little Impreza being an awesome car, I walked away with only bruises and a broken finger. It took hours to get my wife on the phone to tell her I was in an accident. | 2 |
askscience/c6syy5r | 127r62 | Is the universe an open or closed system? | To the best of my knowledge it's thought to be an open system. Energy conservation only holds for systems whose physics can be represented the same at any point forward or backward in time. The problem is with the expansion of the universe, that breaks the "time translation symmetry" of the universe, so energy is not a conserved quantity. You can think of this like the fact that more space is created over time, and dark energy is created to fill that new space as well. | 4 |
explainlikeimfive/cwkxp3y | 3r4v64 | Why do bees make honey? | It's called "food security". During the summer, they have a reasonable expectation that food will always be freely available. However, especially in the winter, that's not guaranteed. What if there's a weird cold snap, or a plague of locusts that wipes out the flowering plants? So the bees store extra food just in case they can't find any, again especially during the winter. Humans do that, too, in the form of fat cells that can be broken down for energy later. Insects don't have fat cells, so bees store their "food reserves" as honey. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/ce7d2h6 | 1tfe83 | How does gasoline allow cars and other things to run? | Gasoline is a fuel. A car's engine mixes gasoline with air and sets it on fire, creating a small explosion that pushes the piston which turns the drive shaft which moves car. | 8 |
AskReddit/ccjig24 | 1nkxx4 | What is the saddest thing you've ever witnessed, that just thinking about it brings you to tears? | I went to a funeral for a baby who was stillborn. Her dad walked out of the church cradling her little coffin to place it in the hearse for transport to the cemetery. The image of him holding that precious little box in his arms is the saddest thing I've ever seen. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/cnfj2ek | 2rg3zx | Why would flushing the toilet change the water temp in the shower? | In some poorly designed places, the cold water supply feeds the toilet first and then the shower. So, flushing the toilet reduces the cold water supply which is being mixed with hot water to provide warm water in the shower. flush = less cold => more hot in the shower mix | 5 |
AskReddit/emuh27e | bm7ten | What is your most embarrassing drunk story of something you or a friend did? | Got black out drunk when I was 19 and my friends mom had to check on me every 10 mins throughout the night to make sure I was still alive. I woke up at the base of their toilet and apparently they thought I almost died. This was also the first time actually drinking and to this day 6 years later I still can take shots. | 3 |
AskReddit/evzsfxy | cm405f | What was the worst date you've ever had? | First date at a restaurant I liked. She shows up 20 minutes late (without a simple text to say she's running late or even apologizing). Her order ends up being a bit wrong and she flips and starts screaming at the waitress, making her cry. Manager comes over and bans both of us. She blames me for not choosing a restaurant with better staff. FML. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/def2omf | 5x48v0 | How can antivirus companies can analyse new and powerful viruses without getting themselves infected ? | They keep the viruses contained, for instance in rooms with negative air pressure (so that any airflow runs in instead of out) and containers that the virus cannot penetrate. Then, they study them wearing gloves, or environmentally sealed garments, or with indirect tools like monitors, instead of nakedly handling them. | 394 |
AskReddit/dd5cv0d | 5r95lr | What's a service that you happily pay money for, rather than getting it for free? | Spotify. $10 a month, and last year I used it for over ~20-30hrs a week while coding at work. The playlist sharing allows me to hunt down people with similar tastes and nab their playlists, effectively giving me an easy way of finding more music I would like with simple searches, returning massive results compiled by people who listen to that music for the same reason I do, instead of what the service picks for me. All ad-free, all without pirating hassles. | 6 |
AskReddit/cdm0w1z | 1rd4dk | How has traveling outside of your home country changed your life? | Aside from what other people have been saying about beautiful people, beautiful culture, and new perspectives on home, traveling has also blown my mind in a geographical sense by seeing amazing landscapes in places across the world with my own eyes. These are experiences I will hold dear for the rest of my life. Also psychologically, I think it has made me a more well balanced person due to culture shock. Some of my friends who have barely even left the state seem way more self-centered as rude as it is to say. Traveling has made me more understanding of people, more conscious of the world. This is also something I will hold dear for the rest of my life. | 2 |
AskReddit/cw1js46 | 3oy8xy | Why were you named your name? | My family moved to North America in 1632 from German Frisia. They settled in what is now south Brooklyn, NYC, which was part of the New Netherlands at the time. I was named after one of the two original brothers who came off the boat. The last name came later. I got to visit the house they built this summer, which has been preserved by the state of New York as a national heritage site. It is the oldest house in the state of New York to still be standing. While on the tour, the guide kept saying my name in reference to my ancestor. Quite smug, I was. | 2 |
AskReddit/eoqp926 | bsv6it | What does a BAD day at your job consist of? | I build bicycles for a toy store and a bad day is either when they have too many bikes built already and you have nothing to do, but they yell at you for doing nothing. Or when there needs to be a lot of bikes built and apparently building 20+bikes in a 6hour shift isnt enough. | 2 |
AskReddit/dqyfzb6 | 7ifi69 | Why are you single? | Being transgender and autistic makes 99% of people not want to date me to begin with, add that to the fact that I don't do much other than play video games and feel lonely and you have me, single as always. | 3 |
askscience/drolat5 | 7lsbtx | Will a positively charged object attract a neutral object? | Any dielectric material will be polarized by the electric field of the charged object, and will be attracted by it. It doesn't matter if the charged object is positive or negative. The degree of polarization depends on the material that the neutral object is made of, and the attraction may be very weak. | 11 |
explainlikeimfive/epw5flb | bw9hfl | Why does exposure to air make food go stale? | Moisture evaporates out of the food when it's exposed to air for to long. Moisture is what makes the food squishy and easily chewable. If you put the food in the microwave and put a damper paper towel near it, this helps a lot | 7 |
AskReddit/c7lk26n | 15dia8 | What, if any, are your irrational shower-related fears? | When I was young, I watched Deep Blue Sea, a movie about sharks. I was terrified and had a fear of a shark smashing through the wall where the shower head was against, grabbing my head and eating me. The hall way was behind the showerhead. Logic non-existant. I told myself this but still managed to scare myself. | 2 |
AskReddit/ccu53fn | 1op2on | If every candy bar was a person, what would their personality be like? | 100 Grand bar would be the snotty old rich guy who never drives himself anywhere. Hershey bar would be the nice old man who regularly sits at the park to feed birds and keep an eye on the children, and gives out good candy on Halloween. Sour Patch Kids would be the psychopath ADHD kid who no one understands. | 5 |
AskReddit/d06jcab | 46mno1 | What is the most cringe-worthy thing you've seen someone do in public? | I've been homeless alot in my life, and on one such occasion a gentleman offered me the use of the shower at a truck stop. So he could smoke some meth. He offered me some i declined and went about my showering. Later on i was sitting in the waiting area watching TCM (old black and white movies). I turn my head and the dude wacking off to the tv. Wtf. anyhow thats all i got | 13 |
explainlikeimfive/c2meca2 | kqc3u | Why aren't there any great cities in Africa created by black Africans? | Nubia. Ghana. Great Zimbabwe. Mali. Yoruba. Songhai. These were prosperous civilizations that suffered from the same collapses as any, and going forward, were eventually overcome by superior technology, then slavery (not only the trans Atlantic slave trade), and eventually some major inhabited sections of the country were subjugated during the African Partition. These were civilizations with language, culture, infrastructure, developed economies, that became fragmented. The continent of Africa is huge, and its people of diverse cultural backgrounds; this, coupled with its abundance of natural resources, has meant that it has been engulfed by warring factions of both African and non-African descent for centuries. It's also why you can still find nomadic cultures and subsistence farmers; areas untamed by man flourished, whereas a lot of Africa's major cities were formed to facilitate international trade interests, and not necessarily those of their native peoples. | 8 |
AskReddit/cw834hq | 3pompf | What is the worst a fast food restaurant has even messed up your order? | My husband is extremely allergic to mushrooms - an epi pen would do absolutely nothing for him, that's how bad the allergy is. Anyways, we ordered food and specifically said "absolutely no mushrooms". Obviously that didn't happen. Good thing he noticed them before he ate his food. | 2 |
AskReddit/cic56lp | 28lt2g | Is it better to have multiple alarms or one? | Your sleep stage is much more important than the number of alarms. You should invest in an alarm that measures movement and wakes you up in a light sleep phase, and that way you'll feel much less tired. If an alarm wakes you during deep, REM asleep, it's usually much worse to wake up to. | 2 |
askscience/djj43u4 | 6k23jv | Why does Bitcoin mining require high-end graphics cards to make more Bitcoin? | NB: GPU mining isn't required, nor even recommended anymore. The power, heat, and wear-and-tear on the expensive equipment drastically outpaces the gains, especially in the face of specialized bitcoin-mining ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) which are orders of magnitude more efficient. To answer the underlying question - the highly parallel structure of GPUs make/made them promising for use in processing many blocks of data at once. | 8 |
AskReddit/czhtubb | 43fjtj | What are the negative effects of smoking marijuana? | "The truth is, marijuana probably isn't going to make you kill people. Most likely isn't going to fund terrorists, but pot makes you feel fine with being bored and it's when you're bored that you should be learning a new skill or some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you're not good at anything." | 9 |
AskReddit/es1ewfm | c5dk70 | What would be happen to an employee that has lost their company millions in revenue? | I used to work at a growing tech company whose primary product was a website. I've never personally cost the company millions but I've seen at least one instance of someone pushing bad code that probably cost almost a million. The company had a policy of not firing people in instances like that. They did do pretty intense post-mortems, not so much to assign blame, but to determine how to make sure the issue never happened again. I think their policy is the correct one. You don't want all your employees paralyzed by the idea that they might break something. And that person who messed up just learned a million-dollar lesson. | 3 |
AskReddit/dvwz4h3 | 85f7d6 | What bad life choices did you make as a young adult that you've recovered from, and how? | Leaving college my last year to move to another state for a guy that would end up spending all my money, ruin my credit, leave me to take care of his child, and nearly got me arrested as a bystander due to his inability to function without some substance. Thank goodness I wised up quickly and successfully got my life together after the fact. Finished school, got a great job, became aware of other peoples bad habits. He's in prison now. | 2 |
AskReddit/db5vo6q | 5i6sou | What is the dumbest thing you've heard an American say? | I was at dinner with some friends and we were talking about something. One of my friends says something along the lines of "It's imaginary, like dragons and kangaroos." After like 30 seconds, another one of my friends goes "But wait, dragons are real." completely serious. We've never let her live it down. | 28 |
AskReddit/diqcqtg | 6ghpqe | What is the nicest thing you've seen your parent/parents do? | I'm from Australia and I lived in England for two years. During that time I got a girlfriend who really wanted to come to Australia to see what it's like. She got a years working visa and we spent the time in Melbourne. During that year nothing major happened relationship wise so since I am a duel national it meant I would have to go live in uk again for a while. It bummed me out but I guess worse thing could happen. I would be happier in England with her than in Australia by myself. Anyway a few weeks before we had to leave we got rid of the place we were staying and moved in with my parents. The day we got there my mum said they had booked us a week on Great Keple island. A resort right on the southern most tip of the Great Barrier Reef. It was the best week ever! We were both in our early 20's and could never have afforded such a nice holiday. It was such a nice thing to do for us and we still talk about almost 20 years later. | 2 |
AskReddit/dtpq9sg | 7v5k85 | Why do Reddit mods take their “job” so seriously? | Because if they don't then they get fired. And being a reddit mod entitles you to bragging rights to your irl friends. Also if you care even a little bit about the quality of the content of a forum you visit frequently, you probably don't want it to become cancer. 4chan is a good example of what an unmoderated forum looks like. | 3 |
AskReddit/ctz58zn | 3gldeg | What's a story that you've always wanted to tell but never had a good excuse? | Not a short story but I've had and idea for a novel since 2009, only started recently writing it. I guess I was just lazy and busy, but I bought a book called "On Writing" by Stephen King and it's helped me understand the craft a lot more. Now I'm 4 chapters in! No title yet. I don't expect anything to come of it, but I didn't want to go through life with the regret of not at least trying. | 2 |
AskReddit/c7kpe1o | 15aduz | Who do you think is the one most overrated person in all of history? | Obama.Nobel Peace Prize and Man of the Year? I don't hate him, but c'mon now. edit: I should have clarified my thoughts, I understand the criteria for person of the year and that it's common place for the potus, but to see there weren't 10 others who could have received it before him, especially in 2012 is a bit.well, overrated. edit2: Also, this is like my 5th post ever on Reddit and 900+ upvotes!? the irony of it being in this thread edit3: And I understand I'm not really thinking outside of the box considering we have thousands of years to choose from, but it was kind of the first that hit me. | 1,285 |
AskReddit/dmzwuvd | 702slx | How do you stop being clingy and give someone space? | Sometimes I feel I can be too clingy and not realize how much I'm really around my SO. While in this relationship we both are content with the amount of time spent together, it can be helpful to involve yourself in something removed from the 'someone' who needs space. Some things I've done are starting a workout regimen, volunteering at a local animal shelter, part time after work job that's something fun and I love doing. Hopefully this helps. To sum it up, the best way is really to involve yourself in something with time commitments that requires time away, particularly something that brings you joy! | 2 |
AskReddit/ch2ssuv | 241pzk | What was the worst series finale/final episode of a TV show? | Anime called Air Gear. The show ran out of money, the last episode just ends with a hard cut and then just silent white credits scrolling on a black background. | 2 |
AskReddit/egycqim | at37k4 | What’s the story behind that one scar you have? | It’s a long black scar on my back. Cause by abuse, the guy cut me up and then put hot charcoal in the open wound. That’s why it’s still black. | 277 |
AskReddit/ecy2qda | ab7nfd | What was the eye-opening / myth busting fact that you learned in 2018? | I learned that recycling does not happen automatically. If you throw stuff in the recycle bin , that would not make it magically disappear. Recycling is billion dollar industry. Things only get recycled if there is someone who will buy the recycle. As of late 2018, china has stopped buying most of it. So it’s not recycle anymore, it’s just trash. So instead of focusing on recycling focus on the other two R’s , that is reduce and reuse. | 6 |
AskReddit/eleeque | bfkcee | Why do humans sleep? | Your body does not need sleep, only your brain. Dolphins and whales never sleep, in the sense of having a motionless unconscious body. However, half their brain sleeps at a time. Of course, in humans, given that we do sleep with a motionless resting body, our bodies have taken advantage of the opportunity to do certain things. | 2 |
AskReddit/e3id2hb | 94545x | What is something creepy or unexplained that happened to you when you woke up from a dream? | One time I dreamed a cult was chasing me. They were trying to take me into a forest to sacrifice me. I tripped on a log almost fell down. One of the people caught up with me and cut me on one of my toes to slow me down but I still kept running. When I woke up I had a cut from were one of the them cut me. | 2 |
AskReddit/drvbyg1 | 7csk5u | What weird dreams have you experienced, Reddit? | I have a couple. This is the dream I love telling people about the most. I was in a small village, not to far away from where I live in real life. It was me and my brother in a car with this man that I have never met in real life. So, we were driving down this road, in his old, run down, blue sedan, and all of a sudden, a giraffe comes out of nowhere (this is in a small Canadian village keep in mind) and flips the car. I push out the shattered screen in the back of the car. It later cuts to me at my grandmas house, the old man that we were in the car with is never discussed, and my mom just says “at least you didn’t die”. These are more than one, but I keep it in the same paragraph, because it involves the same person. In fifth grade, I had this teacher, and for whatever reason in real life we were in her car. I saw a pack of cigarettes. She said before “she’s never touched a cigarette in her life” so I just assumed it belonged to a friend of hers or a roommate. All of a sudden, like two weeks later, I start having dreams about that one pack of cigarettes. It was basically her disobeying her word and smoking. This is probably the weirdest of the cigarette dreams. In our class room, we needed a match to start a fire. She pulls out a pack of A&W brand matches. For those who don’t know what A&W is, its a Canadian restaurant. Months after the cigarette dreams go away, one night, I had a weird dream also surrounding her. We were in this big mall, but it was only me, a couple of my friends and her. She always ends up going missing, and when we find her, she always says that we ran off. Interesting dreams. In reality, the lady was probably one of the nicest teachers I have ever had. | 2 |
AskReddit/dyq7npz | 8iajed | When is it acceptable, if ever, to disobey the law? | Depends on who is judging what "acceptable" means. In the eyes of the law, it is NEVER acceptable to disobey the law. But if your moral compass is strong and it contradicts the law, then disobeying can be acceptable to yourself or others who think like you. | 2 |
AskReddit/d7mj8im | 52qyd1 | What's something you used to laugh at but now do it yourself ? | I used to laugh at people who would wear sweatpants and have bed hair in public. I am now one of those people and I totally get it. I have kids, a home, pets, and a 50-hour a week job. Looking cute all the time to go to Target is not high on my priority list. | 9 |
askscience/c4f665n | sm3gf | If magnetism is caused by a moving electric field that creates a N-S pair, how can a single "monopole" particle theoretically exist? | Let me blow your mind*: An electric field is caused by a changing magnetic field the same way a magnetic field is caused by a changing electric field. If we didn't know about electrons and protons (and somehow still existed), we would be asking the same question. How can an electric monopole exist if we only know of electric dipoles from moving magnetic fields? Well, obviously they do. So scientists are wondering if there isn't a similar analog in the form of a magnetic monopole particle we haven't found yet. I've been told that some physics theories state that there might have only ever been one created in the whole universe, so if that's true we may never know about it. When the old detectors that were replaced by the LHC at CERN were disassembled, they actually went through and checked every single piece of equipment to see if maybe a "heavy" magnetic monopole didn't get "lodged" in there or something. * Let me blow your mind #2: Light particles consist of orthogonal changing electric and magnetic fields. The only reason that there is an electric field is because there is a changing magnetic field. And that changing magnetic field in turn creates the changing electric field. It's self-sustaining that way. | 6 |
explainlikeimfive/cini9eu | 29qlet | Why do spinning wheels sometimes appear to be spinning backwards? | Because our eyes(or the camera lens) cannot process the speed as fast as it is going so essentially it's taking little pictures of it and running it together like a movie. The little "pictures" happen a little before a full revolution so it appears to be spinning backwards | 4 |
AskReddit/d9hp6b6 | 5amype | What real life moment of yours has felt just like a moment from a movie or TV show? | I met my SO on the internet. She commented on my blog (this was 12 years ago when we all wrote blogs) and we struck up a conversation. We moved from commenting to email to messenger. And then we arranged to meet in real life. I lived in England, she in Mexico. She flew to London, I took a train. I walked out of Victoria station and down towards the hotel she was staying in. She was already standing outside, looking for me. We saw each other with about 50m between us. Whenever I think of that moment, and the next five minutes, I swear I can remember the orchestra kicking in and the soundtrack taking over. | 2 |
AskReddit/cpdfx3b | 2yvvt9 | What is the story of your first kiss? | Open mouth with tongue. I was five. This is really weird I know.but this is the story. I was at a family friends party, and there were other kids so we all ended up playing hide and seek, I ended up hiding under a bed with a girl around my age. And all I remember is that we ended up open mouth kissing. I remember the kiss vividly, it wasn't good, we didn't know what we were doing. But we did it. Her name was Stephanie. Never saw her again after that night. | 3 |
AskReddit/cb29xfh | 1i9d4p | What is a TV show you enjoyed that no one else seems to remember? | Pinwheel. It came on Nickelodeon in the 80s. Also, another show I watched when I was a kid. I don't remember the name, but the opening scene involved a mannequin coming to life. I know it's not the movie "Mannequin". | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/db9vaia | 5ip5t4 | Is 10 actually a nice, round number, or do we just feel that way because we operate in base 10? | We just feel that way because we operate in base 10. "Nice and round" is not really a mathematical definition. If you look at divisibility of common numbers, 12 is nicer than 10. | 23 |
AskReddit/ca5h4v2 | 1f04s3 | How do people make fun of your name? | My middle name is Sheldon, so when people hear/find it out, I get all sorts of Big Bang Theory comments. At least he's kind of made that name cool, in a nerdy sort of way. | 2 |
AskReddit/c081exs | 8257s | Have the East Indians disappeared from your community, too? | I'm puzzled by the absence of East Indians in my city lately. There were places I'd shop where there were always several families in the store. I liked seeing them, the women in their beautiful clothing. I'm guessing that their families were there because of someone working on a H1 visa, who got laid off. It's one of those things you wouldn't notice until you notice it. I haven't seen any for weeks, months. I can't really say when they disappeared. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/cmur0xi | 2pa6q3 | Why do we call Orange Juice "OJ" but don't call Apple Juice "AJ"? | I think it is to do with the "-ge" of the Orange melding into the "J-" of the Juice which gives it almost a clumsy feel when spoken out loud. OJ is two distinct sounds which are copmlimented nicely by the shape of the mouth. Apple Juice has no such clashing syllables. | 13 |
AskReddit/euax4ze | cfkpto | What are some NOT fun facts? | Years ago I saw an episode of Monsters Inside Me where this guy was doing something outside and a fly flew into his eye. It only made contact for about a millisecond, but it was enough for it to lay eggs. After they hatched they started eating his eye from the inside and he was starting to go blind until a doctor figured out what was wrong. Since then I get super paranoid whenever a fly goes anywhere near my face because of the not so fun fact that something like this can possibly happen to me. | 4,479 |
AskReddit/e0j0met | 8qgavz | What is something that someone has done to completely kill the mood and made you not able to continue? | I was in high school. Took my girlfriend out to a scenic cliff overlooking the lake in our town. What started as an innocent conversation transitioned to making out, until a bright light and a cop looking in the window interrupted us. No clothes or anything came off, and I doubt things would have gone any further than just the kissing, but afterwards neither of us was really in the mood to keep going. | 10 |
askscience/cghif60 | 21x1la | Why does it seem like so many more children today have severe food allergies (eg: peanut, gluten, shellfish) than than there were 20 years ago? | One of the big questions every time this comes up is whether these allergies are more common or just more commonly diagnosed. This makes sense with, for example, gluten intolerance. 20 years ago we would just say someone has chronic stomach issues and not know why. What I'm more interested in is severe peanut allergies. It was a non-issue 20 years ago and now many schools have to be entirely peanut-free or risk killing students. Surely we would have noticed kids dying in lunchrooms before now. | 16 |
AskReddit/df8urtn | 60s07e | What are some "innovations" that actually made things worse? | Not a direct answer but if you look at the Amish, one reason they are stuck in the past is that they carefully evaluate new technology. They don't run out to buy the newest gadget (obviously), instead they carefully evaluate it and see if it will truly enrich their lives. For instance, i saw on a documentary where they used a diesel motor for something in farming. Its not that they shun fancy things just to shun them, they shun them until they are assured it won't degrade their lives. or something like that i don't know look it up. | 4 |
AskReddit/e1plxjs | 8vpz83 | If 'the best time to buy flights is mid-week', what are some other little known scheduling tips for getting the best deal within your industry? | I work in wholesale for tires and wheels. The best time to buy is at the end of the month. There is normally a last minute push to hit quota, so we will drop prices a little bit or give the bulk discount without having to buy bulk amounts. Not everyone is like this, but a few of the big ones are. | 326 |
AskReddit/dxtn2n3 | 8ealbo | What’s something that everybody you know loves, but you find it so stupid that you don’t talk about it for fear of offending someone you care about? | Not everyone I know, but everyone at work loves My Kitchen Rules and discuss it at length. I don't really watch tv and when I do it's not crappy reality cooking shows. Yet every week they ask me if I saw the latest episode. | 2 |
AskReddit/c4q649a | tvv6q | Do Apple consumers realise there wouldn't be an Internet if companies had been as litigation and patent happy as Apple is? | Obviously you don't remember companies like Oracle, Sun, Motorola, and such in the mid 90's through the early 2000's. If you want to cast blame, try the US Patent Office and Congress. The P.O. patents some of the most basic and or dumbest stuff using laws that have not nearly kept up with reality. | 2 |
AskReddit/d3oyr07 | 4lomom | What's a food that you'd thought would be disgusting but turned out delicious? | Haggis. I still think it's a gross concept and gag at the thought of it. But I tried it once and it was actually tasty and flavorful. So. I'll give it that but I'm never eating it again. Haggis is a savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck; minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, traditionally encased in the animal's stomach. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/de7pdmj | 5w6l20 | Why is torture not an effective tool for information extraction? | Torture creates an adversarial relationship between the interrogator and the subject. This naturally discourages the subject to share information until the torture gets too strong to tolerate, at which point the subject will say anything they think the interrogator wants to hear to end the torture. A much more effective method is to create rapport with the subject, which switches the interview from adversarial to collaborative. This can be done by making deals or helping the subject twist facts in a way that makes them look better, so that they think they want to share information. This is the basis of the Reid Technique. | 2 |
AskReddit/c1rg1k0 | gzjt3 | If a fetus's ability to feel pain is theoretical cause to ban abortion after 20 weeks, why would some manner of 'pain killer' before the operation not eliminate this issue? | I suggest that you're misunderstanding the point. If the fetus is shown to feel pain, then the implication is that the fetus is an individual, sentient life, separate in consciousness from the mother. | 9 |
AskReddit/c4t84ua | u8hyb | Why are you happy today? | I'm happy today because I know I am going to resign soon. I have been working in a job I don't enjoy for four years. I wanted to leave after 2 but I have been toughing it out. I aim to work for myself once I leave and I have saved enough money to not go back to work for at least 4 years. Strangely knowing that I'm ready to leave has lowered the stress hugely. So much so that I'm sticking around for a bit just for the cash. It being summer though I doubt I'll stay much longer. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/c7y2g0r | 16p84s | How are the sounds in electronic music "made"? | Electronic sounds can be made from scratch ("synthesized") or can be samples taken from a real-life instrument/sound. Sampling is a pretty obvious concept (I think) so I'll talk a bit about synthesis. To understand synthesis, you need to understand a little bit about sounds. Ordinary musical sounds are actually quite complex. We think of a trumpet as playing one note at a time. But it really plays one "fundamental tone" (the lowest) with many "overtones" due to the way that it resonates. This gives a trumpet much of its distinctive sound.its "timbre". The overtones are multiples of the fundamental frequency, but different instruments make different overtones. You can electronically recreate a trumpet note by combining a fundamental sound with the right set of overtones. You then just add them together and you get a trumpet-like sound. Or mix together a fundamental and a different set of overtones and you get a flute. But there's more to a trumpet sound to that. It also has a distinctive way that the sound starts (due to the player's tongue) and trails off. If you can change how rapidly the trumpet note (fundamental plus overtones) go from zero to full amplitude and then back again, you can fake that, too. Synthesizers can take all this to the next level, and make things occur that never do in real instruments like a trumpet. They don't just generate smooth sine waves like most instruments do, they can also generate funny waves like square or sawtooth waves. These are effectively like a fundamental with a whole bunch of overtones that no natural instrument can replicate. Then they modulate the attack and decay, but also use oscillators to modulate the main part of the tone, to make effects like tremelo (warbling). Filters can reshape the sound by removing all or parts of some overtones. In a modern digital synthesizer, all of this is done in software until the end of the process. The sounds are represented by numbers, and those numbers are manipulated in the way I described above. The numbers are fed into a Digital to Analog converter (rapidly, one after the other) to make an output waveform that is recorded or sent to an amplifier. | 2 |
AskReddit/eh694ox | au8737 | What’s the highest temperature you can touch without burning yourself? | The minimum temperature that can cause a burn in a finite amount of time is 44 °C (111 °F). From 44° to 51 °C (111° to 124 °F), the rate of burn increases by a factor of approximately four with each Celsius degree risen or twice per Fahrenheit degree risen, from six hours down to six seconds. | 2 |
AskReddit/dakxhr1 | 5fkmb4 | What is a good way to end a light conversation without having an awkward silence occur? | I was always taught that it was polite to carry a conversation until either you or the other person has to leave the conversation. Big party, chatting with someone: "Oh, well I have to go give my regards to the host. It was nice chatting with you." Walk away. Bus stop, chatting with complete strangers: "Well, here's my bus. Have a nice afternoon." So on and so forth. The awkward silence occurs when no one has anything else to say and the conversation has died but you are still trapped in the space of the conversation. | 6 |
askscience/dqs5ont | 7hk94n | Why does Gravity need a force carrier? | It simply wouldn't make sense for all of the other forces of nature to be describable in terms of a quantum field theory, but gravity not. The rest of the universe appears to be fundamentally quantum, so there should exist a way to describe gravity quantum-mechanically. Here's a though experiment: You have a particle which is in a quantum superposition of two different locations in space. If you only have a classical description of gravity, how do you express the gravitational field produced by this particle? | 12 |
AskReddit/cn1ez5k | 2pzjqg | What is the dumbest most expensive thing you have bought? | I bought a high mileage Jeep just to see if I could use my reimbursements from work to fix it up. I changed two driveshafts, the whole firing chain, tires and the alternator before giving up. After pouring all that money into the Jeep, my Cadillac just wasted away in the driveway and I found myself desperate to get rid of both of them. Thank God that experiment is over. | 3 |
AskReddit/e6l5cw5 | 9inzgy | What romantic comedy could you turn into a horror movie? | What romantic comedy could you NOT turn into a horror movie? Insert a psychopath or paranormal encounter and anything can be a horror flick. Better Off Dead: the newsboy goes to extreme lengths to get back his two dollars Sixteen Candles: Samantha pulls a Carrie after finding out what happened to her underwear Revenge of the Nerds: Lewis becomes unhinged and goes on a murder spree When Harry Met Sally: Harry discovers that Sally is a serial killer, after they’re married Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Sarah is actually dead, and her ghost is hunting (not haunting) Peter Bridget Jones’ Diary: Bridget discovers she’s actually a succubus (though still inept) and can’t stop herself from enthralling then eating the men she sleeps with There’s Something About Mary: Mary’s a vampire, and not one of the glittery nice ones | 2 |
AskReddit/c130j53 | duf91 | What's your biggest missed opportunity? | I went to a Flaming Lips concert and as I was walking in my friend and I got asked by this creepy guy if we were together and if we wanted to dance. Now, being my first Flaming Lips concert, I had no idea that this meant on stage. Unfortunately, we turned down the opportunity only to realize as soon as the dancers got on stage what we missed. Hey wait, that friend was you! | 2 |
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