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train · 325k rows

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What's the difference between someone who has a learning disability and someone who's just stupid/slow/dumb?	I would think of it in terms of a computer. Stupid or dumb would just be someone with a slow processor. Everything works fine, it just doesn't work that fast. A learning disability would be a hardware defect. Maybe there is a problem in ram causing a corruption of data... the computer is working perfectly fast enough, it just encounters errors which make it difficult to complete a certain task.
Why did adding laugh tracks to comedy shows become the norm?	Originally, the shows were filmed before a live audience, or just aired live with an audience, so people got used to the laughter and producers thought that they wouldn't like the silence. A fair number of modern shows still have the audience, actually. I'm not sure how many actually add a laugh track.
Where does a thought go when it's forgotten?	This is actually not too difficult to explain. When you have a thought, the signals are passed via neurotransmitter molecules that travel across the small spaces between the nerve cells. A simple thought can involve hundreds of thousands of neurons. When one of these thoughts are “forgotten”, the neurons... the neurons and the synapses... uh, they uh... shit, I forgot where I was going with this.
What makes something Machiavellian and what are some examples?	Machiavelli wrote the Prince, which is a guidebook for political advancement through social climbing, manipulation and what we would now think of as branding or PR, and then instructions on how to consolidate and maintain power once you acquire it. In short, it's a how-to book for scheming your way to individual success at the expense of others. Vladimir Putin might be the current figure who is most visibily Machiavellian. The annexation of Crimea was pulled off using espionage, deceit, trickery and political maneuvering, and is a pretty good example. Putin's switching back and forth with Medvedev between the offices of the President and Prime Minister to avoid term limits while still maintaining power is another good example.
Why don't people run out of air in a submarine?	Modern subs have machines called Electrolysers. Basically, these machines take seawater, and split up the hydrogen and oxygen molecules and the oxygen is then stored in tanks for use. Subs also have scrubbers that remove CO2 and recirculate the oxygen from when we exhale.
why my helium balloon stops floating after a few days	Helium is an extremely small molecule, it will squeeze out through even the best the seals and through the tiny gaps in the balloon material itself. Eventually enough has escaped that the balloon is no longer buoyant.
Why does the body wake up starving when it consumes a lot of food before bed, but wakes up fine if it doesn't?	Hunger isn't always regulated by whether you have enough total energy. Other factors such as whether your body thinks its using up a lot of energy affect hunger as well. When you eat late at night, especially something sugary or filled with simple carbs, you get a boost of glucose in your blood before bed. Your body releases insulin in response so that your cells can utilize the glucose. As your cells take in the glucose, your blood sugar drops, which causes you to get hungry. As a result, you wake up hungry. If you don't eat late at night, then you don't get the insulin boost before bed and your blood sugar won't drop as much. Therefore, you aren't as hungry.
Why is Sex pleasurable and yet Childbirth is incredibly painful? [Likely to be NSFW]	Sex drive is something all animals share. It's a basic, instinctual thing. Being able to even understand that there's a link between sex and childbirth is a uniquely human thing. Millions of years of evolution aren't going to change just because childbirth becomes unpleasant. ...and the main reason childbirth is hard for humans is because we've evolved these ridiculously oversized heads to hold our oversized brains.
National socialism vs Democratic socialism	National socialism is Nazism. Nazi is a sort of acronym for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National socialist German workers party. It is all about building a strong centralized state with a unified (aka non-democratic) nation behind it, motivated by racial chauvinism and not really characterized at all by socialist economic policy. Democratic socialism is about promoting socialist economic policy within a democratic society. They have essentially nothing in common other than having the term socialist in their names.
Why can't they reuse the water at Fukushima?	They are. The problem is water is constantly leaking IN to the facility. So they need to store it or clean it up and discharge it.
What does 1 degree Celsius really mean?	One degree Celsius is one hundredth of the span of temperature between the freezing and boiling points of water at sea level.
How Redbull racing, an energy drink continues to complely dominate Formula 1. While massive car manufacturers, Mercedes, Ferrari etc can't catch up?	Vettel's car was built by Renault, Red Bull GmbH provides a good portion of the funding but they're working with a major car manufacturer.
Why did the US and Soviets continue to expand their stockpiles during the cold war, even after each side had the retaliatory power to obliterate the others' industrial centers many times over?	The primary reason was so that they would still have enough to obliterate the other one even if the other one launched a surprise attack and destroyed most of them. Massively simplified, if the US thinks the Soviets might be able to destroy 90% of the US's warheads, the US needs to have 10x as many warheads to begin with.
a company like apple reports profits in the BILLIONS. Where does that go and why are people disapointed?	Let's say you earned $100,000 last year, and you reported you were able to put just $500 of that into savings. $500 might be a lot to the guy pouring your coffee at Starbucks, but you kind of suck at saving money, and your SO who wants to save up for a house is probably going to be pissed at you. Apple did the same thing, just to a bigger scale.
Why is it that parents go to great lengths to see that their children receive the best education available, yet do not take the time and effort to educate them as well?	Depends on the parent. In my house it's the school's job to teach my kids specific information; it's my job to teach them how that relates to life. So when they learned about the Civil War, we went to Gettysburg. When they read Hatchet we went camping and built campfires with flint. When they learned about weather, we went to the Mt. Washington Observatory. They went to Space Camp, and pottery class, and took stand up paddleboard lessons, and went to a wolf preserve,and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and built rockets, and took a canoe trip down the delaware. Sitting at a desk can only teach you so much. You have to experience the world to really learn anything. That's my job.
how are the intensity and speed of wind related to the time of day? Aka why are winds calmer in the morning and pick up throughout the day?	The sun generates heat and moisture in the atmosphere. Heat changes air pressure and energy. Changes in air pressure can generate wind. One of the reasons it’s often coolest just after sunrise as the air above you gets sun and warmth first, starts to rise, and the cool air come in under it to replace it (convection).
How is sound recorded in the grooves of a vinyl record?	Sound is vibrations in air ( or any other medium ) Vibrations are picked up by a diaphragm which causes needle to move up and down in the same way to produce the sound frequency wave. Two channels are cut out each side at 45 degrees to each other to produce a stereo recording.
Why does Starbucks allow people to sit there for a whole day even if they buy little to nothing there?	Others mentioned that the store needs to look full, but the other part is that it makes perfect sense to invite people who will eventually want coffee into your store, instead of only allowing in those who want coffee right now. Doesn’t cost much extra cleaning to let people hang around, and now you have a ton of potential, if not nearly guaranteed, costumers - who bring their friends to hang out too. It becomes a place you can just go and have a quick social gathering.
Why don't babies get morning breath?	1) they don't have teeth yet/don't eat solid foods yet 2) their mouths stay moist most of the time (a big cause of bad breath is dry mouth) thanks to their natural nose-breathing/drooling 3) every night a magical fairy comes in & fills their mouth w/ Gypsophila, sort of like how your parents leave an air freshener in their car
Why do politicians not just choose the best scientifically proven policies based on statistics, instead of bickering about what their ideology tells them, rather than make the choices which will bring most prosperity, safety, opportunities, and happiness to its people according to science?	Well, for one, academics don't always agree. But more importantly: because they're running to be elected by people who neither know statistics nor care about it and who would like to hear that a simple, intuitive solution will solve giant complex problems.
How is Foxconn able to to operate as it does?	China doesn't enforce regulations. Lead in paint? Who cares. tl;dr Because China.
Why is it that whats politically correct sometimes isn't the same as the opinion of the majority?	Because "politically correct" is a term used to describe compliance with a certain set of values -- either liberal/progressive, or highly tolerant/sensitive, or something like that depending on the speaker. This set of values is not necessarily held by the majority of people. In fact some firmly oppose these.
Why is there a little symbol for a link to CandyBox 2 on the bottom left of /r/adviceanimals?	The short of it is because there is a line of HTML in the page source: < h5 > < a href="_URL_2_; The < h5 > tag is being formatted by the css file [muRL57ENy-52RGha.css](_URL_1_): position:fixed;bottom:20px;left:20px;z-index:1000;margin:0;padding:0;text-indent:-99999px;display:block;background:url(_URL_0_);width:16px;height:16px which is causing it to show you [this](_URL_0_) file as the link. I'm guessing that each subreddit has mods who are allowed to change CSS rules and modify the header and footer, and that one of them chose to place this ad for personal benefit. With over 3 million subscribers and 14,000 people on the sub at any given time, they might make some money.
How does the Obama administration justify removing the tax credit from the college 529 savings plan?	> I realize many middle to low income families don't know about this and therefore don't take advantage of it That was pretty much the basis of the argument. 529's are overwhelmingly used by wealthy families, so they labeled it as a tax break for the rich.
How do machines that accept cash payment determine that a five dollar bill is a five dollar bill, etc?	Optical scanning. An optical scanner looks at the denomination Portrait, and other parts of the bill to reduce fraud. Optical scanning is a follow-on from magnetic scanning developed and commercialized by Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) for bank check clearing automation. Look at the font at the bottom of a bank check (or cheque). It was originally developed to be printed with a high iron content and read by magnetic arrays (early 1950s). As computer processing and digital imaging progressed, better optical recognition was developed. Some currency scanners also read the metal strips put into US currency starting in the 1990's.
Counter steering on a motorcycle	Here's how I think about it.. Because the bike is moving quickly and heavier than you, you can't exactly muscle the bike into a lean like a bicycle.... so you initially kick the bottom out from under you in the opposite direction to generate the lean you need for the turn. after the lean is generated the bars revert to the expected direction.. tl/dr: you don't fall into a turn, the bike moves out from under you
What is the TeV mass scale and what does it have to do with particles beyond the standard model?	When particle physicists talk about the mass of particles it's more convenient to use units of energy rather than units of mass. This is because in order to make the particles in an accelerator, they need to slam things together with a certain energy and then that energy is converted into the mass of the particle via E=mc^2. An electron volt (eV) is the energy possessed by an electron as it accelerates through an electric potential difference of 1 V. This is a convenient unit when using electricity and magnets to push on charged particles. In SI units 1eV is the equivalent of 1.6 E-19 Joules. A TeV is 1.6 E-7 Joules of energy, which when converted into SI units of mass is 1.8E-24 kg which is about 1000X heavier than a proton.
If electric fields produce magnetic fields, and our brain/nervous system operates electrically, how do we not have electromagnetic interference disrupting our entire body's operation?	1. The brain/nervous system operates mostly chemically, with electricity being used as a bridge between chemical reaction sites. So it's much less susceptible to this interference than a purely electrical device. 2. The amount of interference absorbed is low -- notice that your computer and phone, which are electrical, are not being disrupted either.
How does sunlight fade colors?	Sunlight is a form (or a combination of forms) of radiation. This radiation can excite atoms and break bonds in the molecules which cause colors, effectively fading colors.
Why do people oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?	> Now, I haven't read the actual agreement (I'm a busy person), and I assume most people haven't either. Nobody has. Because the talks are held in secrecy - which most people think might indicate some funny business going on. Hell, even members of the European Parliament don't have access to recent papers - an Austrian politician talked about this recently... the most recent paper he was allowed to read (in a secured room, no cameras/phones allowed, forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement) was about 3 months old at the time. So even if this was an agreement where the public would only benefit, measures like that raise questions... and the stuff that does leak through sounds pretty good for big companies, but rather bad for small firms, average citizens and sometimes even countries as a whole.
Why do websites exist that take you from one sketchy set of links and data to another and another and another? Who is this benefitting?	Your attention has commercial value. Every clickbait webpage you visit has some ads on it, and the publisher scores a fraction of a cent income from your visit paid by the advertiser, on the assumption that you notice these ads and there's a fractional chance you might buy the goods or services in question. To increase that income, the publisher might put 100s of ads on a page, but it turns out the advertisers don't believe that a reader would diligently read pages of just ads, so the next best strategy is to try and persuade you to go from page to page, each with a few ads on it... As Andrew Lewis said _'If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold'_ - your eyeballs are the product, the publisher of the "You won't believe what happened next..!" click bait pages is the seller, and the advertising agency is the customer.
how does currency/money work? If we donate 100 million to a country, it's not like we send a crate of money over	Money is just a representation of value. Bartering, trading stuff directly is inconvenient. So we invented money as a "value holder", for example instead of trading my goat for your 100 apples. But I don't want 100 apples at once as they will spoil before I can eat them all. I instead get 100 apple tokens as a promise that I can get the apples later. And the more people that agrees that the tokens are valuable the more useful the currency is. So if we understand that money is just a promise of value, it makes it easier to understand how a bank doesn't actually need to hold your physical money in a vault. You trust the bank to keep track on how much money you have, so your bank account is just a number in a computer.
How do the different baseball pitches work?	Baseball pitch movement is often based on something called the "Magnus Effect." Essentially, when a ball is thrown with a certain spin, one side of the ball is spinning in the same direction as the ball's movement and the other side is moving in the opposite direction. As a result, opposite sides of the ball are affected by different forces and the ball curves in a specific direction. Another factor to consider is that baseballs have laces. If a pitch is thrown such that the laces are predominately out on one side of the ball, more resistance will be on that side of the ball, and the ball will curve accordingly. All pitches generally work under these basic principles. The exact amount of movement is based upon which grip the pitcher uses and how it is positioned and moving as it moves toward the catcher.
Why is French the preferred language for body care products.	I don't have anything to back this up but for the North American audience stuff in French sounds more sophisticated and refined as shown by the use of French to refer to more refined versions of stuff like eateries are called restaurants, underwear is called lingerie, perfume, cologne, rotisserie and so forth
Why is it that double decker buses have only been used in North American for the past decade while they've been used in Europe for more than a century?	lots of low bridges and efficiency are the main reason. A bendy bus can load and unload at twice the speed. Also less handicap accessible. The ones being use in the US are in very few cities or just for fun. I know the one that started up in Las Vegas, is more for fun than anything else.
What's the controversy with the Dalai Lama? (Specifically within China and Tibet)	Tibet is a territory that's being ruled by China. according to Tibetan religion and law, the Dalai Lama is the spiritual as well as legal ruler of the land. That doesn't jive with China federal government, who want dominating rule over the area. Instead of the Dalai Lama appeasing the Chinese gov and being made a puppet, he moved out of the country where the gov can't exercise their influence on him. He has continually made speeches and led movements for freedom as well as independence for Tibet. some people in China oppose the Dalai Lama and call for him to "get with the game". others support the Dalai Lama at the risk of the gov "disappearing" them. in China, you do not have the right to an speedy and fair trial. you can be arrested and whisked away and sent to prison for accusations of sedition and held until further notice at the gov's whim.
Why don't actors use actual liquids when pretending to drink in films?	After 20 takes you'll probably be vomiting from drinking too much water, coffee, etc.
How does it feel to have an Orgasm?	you know the jack-in-the-box from when you were a kid? and as you turn the handle slowly the music pings through note after note. Each one slowly leading into the next.......the anticipation of knowing that the next note could be the one where it pops? That feeling of suspense, chills, eager anticip--------ation? That is as close as i can get to describing it in a sensory similar experience way.
How come uninstalling is faster than installing softwares/video games?	The answer is pretty simple: When you install, you have to write all of the files in their entirety and decompress them from how they're stored in the installer, then make records of all the files and potentially entries in common places to tell the operating system how to reference specific files. When you uninstall, you delete the files from disk, which doesn't actually remove any data from the drive, simply the file system pointer to that file - a VERY quick process. The most complicated uninstalls require reversing specific common entries that can take a little while, but many modern companies simply ignore that and leave orphaned entries in system registries or libraries.
How do you develop the ability to perform a backflip? How do you practice?	Trial and error is the way, but they usually practice this with a 2nd person catching them if they go head-down to the ground or they give them an extra push to make the whole flip. Another option which is sometimes used at sports clubs is a chassis. It looks like climbing gear and swing combined. The ropes are elastic so they help with the lift, and its attached to the chassis in a way that it can just freely rotate on a x axis without becomming entangled. Or you could go full yolo.
How do you "clean up" a harbor?	First you stop pumping fresh shit into it. Second you remove all the built up shit off the bottom and sides. Then you wait for the tides to exchange the water. Redo the side cleaning process as necessary until the harbor water is now as clean as the overall ocean.
What is exactly is a "gut feeling"?	It's pretty much intuition. Many people feel this in their gut. You aren't sure why, but you "feel" like you know the answer. I usually feel a tingle behind my right eye, but sometimes feel a sensation in my abdomen. I'm speculating that this feeling has to do with release of adrenaline into the blood system. Adrenaline is produced in the kidneys, which may explain the feeling. Intuition paired with a want for action, perhaps can explain this feeling.
Why is the term "socialist" a dirty word in American politics?	In most Americans' eyes, socialism is irreversibly tied to communism, which is synonymous with the Soviet Union, the US' geopolitical rival for most of the latter half of the 20th century. The USSR was communist, and also socialist, so both have always had a bad connotation. Most people don't understand that you can be socialist and not communist. Just like democracy doesn't have to mean capitalism.
why popular american fast food and snack brands are found nearly all over the world but we never see any popular foreign fast food and snack brands here?	You may not be aware that some snack brands are foreign because you grew up with them. For instance, Nestle' is a Swiss company that licenses the Kit Kat bar, invented in England, to the Hershey company. Probably the largest foreign fast food place in the U.S. is Tim Horton's which is a Canadian doughnut restaurant with 800 stores in the U.S.
How does the US have the most powerful military in the world if less than 1% of the population joins the military?	1% of the US population is still a hell of a lot of people.
Why is it so difficult to be fired from a job working for the state (in US)?	There are 2 main reasons for the protections awarded to State Workers and public servants : 1) To protect them from political interference. Since they can't be fired, they do not have to obey unlawful orders. Political power can't put too much pressure on them because ultimately, they will outlast the political power. 2) To give an incentive against corruption. You got a lifelong-guaranteed job. You will not accept small amounts of money if getting caught means that you will loose that job if you're discovered. (That part did backfire a bit... It mostly lead to an increase of the money to corrupt public servants...)
why is antibiotics prescribed for flu?	Antibiotics are not (supposed to be) prescribed for influenza. It's possible that this is a case of a bacterial infection that a patient mistakenly called "the flu", when it wasn't actually the flu. It's also possible that the doctor prescribed antibiotics because the patient demanded it, and they didn't want to lose a patient.
why aren't police officers in the UK allowed to carry guns?	In the US, regular beat officers are allowed to carry handguns, but not sniper rifles and submachine guns; those are reserved for SWAT teams. In the UK, regular beat officers are allowed to carry batons and pepper spray, but not guns; those are reserved for special gun-carrying teams. In both countries, it's possible for a situation to come up which regular beat officers aren't equipped to deal with. This is seen as a fair tradeoff, as most people would greatly prefer a society where police do not regularly carry automatic weapons. The only difference is where the cutoff is; sine the UK has fewer guns, its people are more comfortable not giving regular officers any guns.
If I eat a lot before going to sleep, why do I wake up hungry?	I am on board with you mate. I experience the same thing. You would think that since you ate more recently (and supposedly your metabolism slows down when you are sleeping) that you should be less hungry than if you went to bed on an empty stomach. * I would add as a followup question: Why am I NOT hungry when I wake up if I go to bed hungry?
How does a Tornado Intercept Vehicle avoid being sucked up into the air?	Some of them have pneumatically-operated spikes that they drive into the pavement when contact with a tornado is imminent.
Radio waves and how they send information.	> Are there two separate waves? Sort of. That 96.5 MHz wave is what is called a carrier wave. It is combined with the wave that carries the audio wave, and they your receiver subtracts out the carrier frequency, leaving only the audio. This process is called modulation. There are two common forms of modulation, amplitude modulation and frequency modulation, commonly known as AM and FM. With AM, the audio wave is represented as a [change in the strength](_URL_1_) of the signal. With FM, it is a [change in the frequency](_URL_0_) of the signal.
Why does an automobile depreciate in value the minute you drive off the lot?	Let's say a brand new Ford Focus costs $16,000. Would you be willing to pay $16,000 for a Focus that someone bought, drove around for a little bit, and then returned for some reason. The average consumer is always going to choose the new car over the slightly used car, so dealerships are going to have to offer the slightly used one at a solid discount to get rid of it. Because of this, no one is going to pay full price for a slightly used car, so as soon as your car is slightly used, its value drops.
How your voice sounds different to yourself when you talk versus when you hear your voice in a recording.	So, when you talk, you hear the sound waves traveling through your skull and into your ears. Other people, or recordings, just hear the sound waves that travel through the air. As such, you hear your voice differently because you're hearing it filtered through your skull.
Why is radiation so damaging as it is?	You are a very complex controlled chemical reaction. Ionization causes different reactions and products than are supposed to be inside you.
Why do advertisers hold so much power? A lot of sites like Reddit are trying to be "advertiser friendly", to make money, but do advertisements really pay that much? Are ads really so useful to to the company that they will splash that much money?	For many entertainment platforms, advertisers are the only source of income, or the extreme majority of their income. If the advertisers are unhappy, than there is no money, than there is no show/website/ect.
How is it possible for a person who was born deaf to understand spoken language the moment their cochlear implants are turned on?	The video you linked is somewhat misleading. The woman is "deaf", not deaf. By which I mean that she was severely hearing impaired to the point that she is classified as deaf, but could hear (poorly) with hearing aids. In other words, she was never completely unable to hear. Thus she could understand English because she had heard English before, albeit less clearly than with the implant.
What is happening when our nipples get hard?	Body parts which can be become erect - nipples, penis, etc can do so because they contain erectile tissue, which is like a sponge. There are arteries which carry blood from the heart to the body, and veins which carry blood from the body to the heart. When at rest, the arteries carry the same amount of blood to the tissue as the veins take away. However, when stimulated the arteries dilate and carry in more blood than can be carried away, so the tissue fills with blood and becomes "hard" from the pressure. The nipples never become as hard as a penis, so with time the blood vessels simply return to normal. With a penis, the orgasm causes release of hormones that return the blood vessels to normal and "soften" it immediately.
Why is it that macro photos tend to only have a small portion of the entire photo in focus?	Not limited to macro photography, but it is due the aperture of the objective, which basically means the "hole" the sensor sees through. The larger the hole is, the smaller the focused range is. The smaller the hole, the larger the focused range is.
The grammar in "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"	It's a valid, but archaic form of the [present perfect](_URL_0_) tense, which is used to refer to a past event that has present consequences. The archaic tone is fitting for a translation of the [Bhagavad Gita](_URL_1_), an ancient text. It's similar to how many people prefer the King James Bible over more accurate modern translations — we want our revered texts to sound different from everyday speech.
We're having elections here in Catalonia and we can tracks the results in real time using mobile apps. Why does it take a few minutes to count from 0 to 2% of all the votes, but it take the same time to count from just 98,10 to 98,24% of all votes?	A bit of a guess because I don't know exactly how that count is organised, but at first you'll have all the counting locations counting results and reporting in as they go. Towards the end, many will have counted all their votes and you're left with the last few who had most votes cast. With only a few locations left counting, fewer votes are counted each minute.
Why is zero multiplied by infinity not defined as zero?	Infinity isn't a number (you can't point to it on a number line), and since both things that you're multiplying have to be actual numbers, you can't multiply anything by infinity. In general, infinity is not a valid term to use in any "normal" math. What you can do is take the limit of "0 * x" as x approaches infinity, and the solution to that limit is zero.
How do pulleys make things lighter?	Pulleys do not make things lighter Energy is expended in lifting a mass by a distance By using a system of pullies you reduce the movement distance that is travelled with each pull of the rope or chain or whatever The same mass is moved a smaller distance in each pull so less energy is expanded To move the object the same distance takes a number of pulls on the rope or chain The total energy expended is actually higher as the pulley system has an additional amount of friction that must be overcome
Why was Miami considered so cool in the 80's, and what happened to cause it to lose that status?	There was an insane amount of money flooding Miami due to cocaine. Many drug busts later and it is what it is today. Check out the movie Cocaine Cowboys.
why are men required to register for the draft if it's mandatory and the government already has all of our information?	Modern draft laws have their origins in World War I, back when the government didn't have everyone's information. It was entirely possible to be born on some farm, go to a rural school that didn't keep records, and grow up to be an 18 year old man the gov't had no idea existed.
How do they deliver liquid water to (and take sewage away from) homes and businesses in places that get really cold in the winter, without it freezing? native of Phoenix here, I don't get	Water and sewer pipes in cold places are buried deeper, usually below the freeze line if the installers have half a clue. My hometown in Oregon freezes regularly but our mains are 8-15' below ground level and keep flowing.
Why rent a house when you can buy one and pay for it every month, when you move out just sell it and get profits?	Buying a house requires one of two things: enough capital to buy it outright, or sufficient credit to get a mortgage. Not everyone has either of these things, especially when one considers that in the latter case it's only worthwhile if the interest rate is sufficiently low to make it a better option than renting. What improves credit and therefore interest rates? Having money and/or a high income is a big factor. Then there's the fact that while house prices generally increase overall, they can't be 100% relied upon to do so, and needing to move during a slump could potentially be utterly ruinous in this situation. TL;DR: if it's viable that often is a better option, but it's not accessible to everyone who needs housing.
Why does my vision become slightly blurred after laying on my back while viewing a computer placed on my stomach?	I'm no expert on this but having to, what I'm assuming you're doing, tilt your head on an angle to see the screen, means the blood isnt properly circulating to your head
Why do planes fly both east and west if the Earth rotates at 1000 miles per hour? Wouldn't a plane need to fly over 1000 miles per hour to make any progress in one direction?	We measure speed relative to the ground. So an object that appears stationary wouldn't be measured at 1000 mph just because it was on Earth. The air moves along with the Earth and everything along with it. If a plane had to fly over 1000 mph to make any progress, when you jumped, the ground would have move significantly below you.
Why don't we use microwave waves for water heaters instead of natural gas?	The speed at which a microwave works depends on the mass of the materials. That's actually a FAQ here (as in "Why does my microwave take longer to cook twice as much food when my oven doesn't?"). I timed this and discovered for my own stove and microwave, the break even point is just about one cup. The microwave is faster for less than a cup, the stove top is faster (at least on the big burner) for more than a cup. For the amount of water in a water heater, you'd need a huge microwave. You'd also have to solve the problem of letting water flow through it without having the microwaves leak out. Finally, there are places where gas is much cheaper than electricity.
Why do birds not get electrocuted when resting on a power line?	Electricity will take the path of least resistance. The electricity could go through the wire, or from the wire to the bird and back to the wire. People get electrocuted because they are touching the ground. The ground is low voltage and large, thus a very good receptacle for electricity. Even though a human is high resistance the ground is a very appealing place for the electricity to flow to. The bird leads nowhere except back to the same wire.
What are the "voices" Schizophrenic people can hear ?	Not all schizophrenics hear actual voices. More commonly, they simply have aberrant thoughts that seem like they are originating from someone else. This is probably why "mind control rays" and the like are such common delusions for schizophrenics. After all, if you are sane but start having thoughts that you would never have, then someone else must be putting those thoughts into your head, right? In the most extreme cases, these aren't just oddball thoughts. They actually hear a voice as if someone is speaking to them. Most of the time, the voices aren't saying anything all that extreme. Interestingly, some otherwise sane people report very occasionally hearing voices.
How does washing my hands protect me from viruses?	You got it when you guessed it is removing them from the surface of your skin. In great part this is to help others as well since you have perhaps coughed into your hand or rubbed your nose/face and picked some up. The mechanical action of washing your hands causes many of these to be sloughed off and sent down the drain. Soap helps with the mechanical action of lifting cells from your skin but along time under running water is also effective - with robust hand rubbing - between fingers - etc. Hot water will help liberate cells better as well as it makes the oils on your skin loosen up and wash off and take with them dirt/cells.
Why are tabloids allowed to report seemingly libelous stories?	For one, the requirements for libel for celebrities require the celebrity to show that the tabloid intended malice, and was not simply confused/negligent. Furthermore, cases against these tabloids can become costly as these companies are extremely powerful. The celebrity has a slim chance of proving libel, and the cases go on for years. Being apart of one of these court cases also brings attention to the celebrity’s private life, likely opening the door to more criticism. As these tabloids are known for their ridiculous stories on any celebrity, its likely not worth the celebrity’s time to fight it. Ultimately if someone believes what they read in one of those tabloids, their opinion likely isn’t important to any celebrity. _URL_0_
Google Translate's forming its own language	An article about it from Google: _URL_0_ Little bit about training neural networks: _URL_1_ An artificial neural network was trained for different language pairs. To much surprise, they found the same (or somehow similar) neurons activate for phrases with the same meaning for different language pairs. It's thought that this means the network encodes something common to all languages (such as meaning). That is, instead of translating cow (english) to vaca (spanish), it's translating cow to some internal phrase to vaca. The same internal phrase should activate when translating vaca to lehmä (finnish). Interestingly, this wasn't intended. Training artificial neural networks is somewhat of an automatic process. The training process happened to create the internal language on its own. The internal language isn't a language in a normal sense, being able to be spoken or written. Rather, it's set of clusters of neurons where each cluster has a unique meaning.
Why does a wet trampoline feel like it makes you jump higher? Does it actually do that?	I recon it doesn't...the only think I can think of is if it is cold water, the trampoline fabric/springs might get tighter as the materials contract.
Why don't Mac's get viruses?	They do, its just that there are a lot more Windows PCs out there. The entire purpose of a Virus on a computer is to cause as much trouble as you can before anti-virus updates and eliminates it. Ergo, if you want to cause as much trouble as you can, you write it for windows, not OSX or Linux. There are plenty of examples of viruses and malware written for OSX in the past though.
Why does bending material such as metal, plastic, i.e. eventually wear it down so much that it snaps off?	Bending stuff actually breaks the inside of the material, but hopefully not enough to break the surface. Some materials like metal and plastic are secretly buzzing and jiggling around on the inside, and might even fix some of those breaks over time, when warm enough. Sadly materials like wood or bread don't jiggle enough to fix anything, and the breaks sometimes get worse over time instead, eventually breaking the surface and 'helping' to snap off. Fun fact: Cheese and Plastic act alot like each other on the inside.
why don't truck and car companies (like Ford) make new trucks with new technology that look like the older models everyone loves?	Paraphrasing here, "if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse" -Henry Ford
Why is it that almost all black guys I have met IRL and seen on TV always have their heads shaved?	Because it's not the 90's anymore. Also Black hair on men longer then a half inch looks "savage" to many potential employers and clients, so professionally we have to keep it short. I had a luscious footlong Afro until I was looking for an internship this summer and one of my interviewers, a Black dude, suggested that if I really wanted White people to take me seriously, I needed to cut the fro. My dad, the Black parent of my mixed heritage, said the same thing to me growing up, but teenage rebel me didn't listen. Plus a lot of White people associate cornrows, dreads, box braids, etc. with thugs, and Afros are hard as FUCK to maintain. I spent > 3 hours a day on my bush.
When checking out a library eBook via OverDrive, why is there a limit as to how many copies the library has when it's a digital format?	I work at a library and do AP for bills like overdrive & similar. Each time the ebook is "checked out" we get charged. What we do is prepay the account for the year for the fees accrued from what's borrowed and also prepay a contract for the content on over drive and another for the use of the database. Basically it's how overdrive, publishers & writers etc make their money. Now it's doesn't cost as much as if you were to buy the regular book, or even an ebook on Amazon or B & N. I guess you can say it's like a renters fee like what you'd use to pay to rent movies from blockbuster. But it's the library's expense and you the patron get it free.
Why can't we process ocean water so it's drinkable, instead of relying on rivers/lakes for our drinking water?	We can. And in some areas we even do. It is incredibly expensive though. And seeing as that people like their water cheap, it is more advantageous to get it from lakes or underground sources than desalinate ocean water.
What happens to things that go in our eyes? Like where do all of the eyelashes go that we blink into oblivion?	They fall out. Your eyes produce more tears to make the process of getting foreign particles out of your eyes easier. They just eventually fall out.
what is your body trying to accomplish when having food poisoning?	All your body is trying to do is purge itself of whatever it is that's you've eaten that went off. Even once your stomach et al are empty, it's still feeling the effects of that food/drink and the only way it knows how to fix that is to keep trying to get rid of it.
why don't they put nutritional information or ingredients on alcoholic beverages?	Alcohol is regulated by a different federal agency than food and non-alcoholic drink and said agency has not set those regulations in place.
Why can one judge's ruling set a precedent? Isn't that too much power in the hands of one man?	If one judge is making the decision, it's likely to be a trial court decision. Trial court rulings can be appealed, and appeals courts have more judges. At least in the US, trial court rulings also don't set binding precedents; other judges may be persuaded by the ruling, but they can ignore it if they are unconvinced (whereas an appeals court binds courts down the appeal chain, and they can't just ignore it).
In those videos where they play opposing tones through a stream of water and they cause the water to take on an odd, often gravity defying shape that can only be seen through a camera, is that shape actually occurring or is it an illusion?	It's an illusion sorta. It's tied to the pitch of the note and the aperture speed being exactly the same or relative to indicate the water freezing or flowing backwards. There are plenty of videos on this. If you have trouble finding one I think I have one in mind.
Why is GMO considered bad?	First I want to say that there are some serious issues with our agriculture system. Now that that's out of the way, there are many different arguments against GMOs. 1. Naturalistic argument. "Because its not natural its bad". This can be ignored [$see here$](_URL_4_) 2. Infertility. A lot of plants are modified to be infertile. This means a lot of our crops are complete clones of each other. If there were to be a fast spreading disease, it can potentially wipe out all of a specific crop. (look up the banana blight) Now there are many good things about GMOs. Corn for example is completely modified to increase production, and likely saved millions (if not billions) of people over the years from starvation.
When i accellerate my car, why do i hear high-pitched noise through the aux input when nothing is plugged in?	Its noise off the generator or alternator. Cords like that aren't shielded like other people have said. Its basically RF interference coming from that because its often not shielded. Its usually not something noticed, and the stereo itself has filtering to block it. But when you plug something unshielded into it (your aux cord) you're creating an unfiltered path to the stereo, so you hear it.
How do (usually paid for) fake social media likes, favorites, and followers actually happen?	It's actually generally not controlled by a computer program, but sadly but people in countries with low wages, typically like Indonesia or sometimes the Philippines. Companies hire people and pay them very little to click "like" or "follow" or whatever on thousands of people's page/groups/companies/etc. that have paid for the likes, but as this takes very little time the workers can often follow hundreds or thousands of new links a day. Keep in mind that they will have little or zero engagement in the thing they've liked, which often hurts people on Facebook more than it actually helps because of how the programming is set up.
How is North Korea so well hidden from our view when the US has such high tech satellite imaging?	A couple reasons: 1. You and I don't have access to military satellite images. 2. Satellite images don't tell you anything about living conditions, secret facilities, or politics. It's easy to estimate population numbers, and how big the military is, how many planes and tanks they have, and those numbers are public knowledge. Who controls the power and makes the important policy decisions? We don't have a clue.
How do professionals know if a wound happened before death or post-mortem?	Wounds are classified as post-mortum, peri-mortum, and pre-mortum. Pre-mortum wounds will have clear signs of healing, an indication that the victim was alive and well before being killed. Peri-mortum wounds occur during the death, and may have minor signs of healing but are mostly unhealed. They will have more blood coming from them as the blood pressure pushes blood from the wound. Post-mortum injuries happen after the body is dead. Blood pressure is low, so there is less spatter and loss from the wounds, and there is no healing whatsoever on the wound. There are other signs that coroners look for, of course. In all, it is educated guesswork by the coroner to help patch together a timeline of death. They record every recent wound, up to and including the shaving nick on your face, when investigating the gaping wound in your chest.
why water tastes so cold after chewing gum or brushing your teeth.	[Sugar alcohols](_URL_0_). According to Wikipedia: > The cooling sensation is due to the dissolution of the sugar alcohol being an endothermic (heat-absorbing) reaction, one with a strong heat of solution. ELI5: What this basically means is that when certain chemicals in your gum dissolve into the spit in your mouth, it absorbs heat. When heat is taken away, things feel cold. Menthol is another sugar alcohol that has a cooling effect, but its effects are just illusions. I have some Extra Polar Ice gum and some Dentyne Ice gum in front of me, and neither contain Menthol. They both use Sorbitol, Mannitol, and Glycerol.
What is happening to our teeth so we have to brush them when we wake up?	Our mouth isn't sterile, and overnight you aren't doing enough to stop bacteria from growing back. We brush in the morning to clean it off again, even if you already brushed it clean the night before
The difference between ale and lager yeast	The top and bottom fermenting is somewhat of a misnomer - they both ferment throughout the body of the beer. Ale yeast tends to form "crops" on top, though. Ale and lager yeast are different species and prefer different temperature ranges for fermentation. Ale yeast usually ferments at a cool room temperature, while lager yeast ferments in the 50s, 40s, and down to just above freezing. Ale yeast tends to produce more esters and phenols, which give the beer flavor and aroma; lager yeast tends not to, letting the malt and hops shine on their own. Of course, "tends to" is about as close as you can get to solid rules, because there are dozens of strains of both species, each with their own characteristics.
If individual federal campaign donations are capped at $2,700, how do billionaires donate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to individual candidates?	correct, it does not count if it goes to a super-pac. but super-pac money cannot pay for things like campaign staff salaries. they need both.
Why do so many famous or successful people seem to be from South Africa?	Care to name a few? I don't see that trend
absolute zero temperature.	Temperature is molecules moving around like balls on a billiard table. The higher the temperature, the more moving around. Absolute zero is when they stop moving entirely.
Why do animals never seem to roll an ankle or pull a hammy?	Most animals walk on all fours, which is a very balanced way of walking. If something goes under one of their feet, they have 3 others on the ground that they can stand and balance on. Humans, on the other hand, have just about the most reckless method of transportation since we only walk on two legs. "Walking" for humans is more like standing on one foot, then falling forwards and catching yourself on your other foot. It's controlled falling. We have much less balance, and our weight is distributed over less points, meaning more potential for a fall and more weight being applied to joints when you catch yourself, resulting in more injuries.
Why do countries with small armies send their troops overseas to support countries with armies hundreds of times their size?	Small army doesn't mean bad army. And when you add numbers from more countries it's pretty substantial number of soldiers.
the difference in sorting comments between "best" and "top"	'Top' is purely 'highest voted', after the up/down delta. 'Best' takes into consideration much more, like how quickly a comment amasses upvotes, down/up ratio (not just the delta) and some other stuff.

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