post_title
stringlengths 5
304
| post_text
stringlengths 0
37.5k
| post_scores
int64 15
83.1k
| comment_text
stringlengths 200
9.61k
| comment_score
int64 10
43.3k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
ELI5: what happens when lightening strikes the ocean? | What happens when lightening strikes while there are people swimming near by? What about the fish? If water conducts electricity, how come everything in the water doesn't get electrocuted
How far would you have to be from the point of impact to barely feel the electrical current?
| 30 | A lightning bolt is a huge amount charge transfer that is very focused. Once it hits the water, there are a lot of conductive pathways for the charge to follow, so it starts to rapidly spread out. Thus, near the striking point the moving charges are all close together and you get a huge amount of current, which is harmful. The farther away you are from the spot, the more the charges get to spread out and the lower the current is at any given point. Thus, eventually it becomes safe and people/fish are unharmed!
I do not have a good feel for how far that distance is though. | 10 |
ELI5: Touchless car washes that spray liquid after liquid to "presoak", "power wash", "sealant", "protective coating" and other things, how does this work? Does spraying X liquid after Y liquid after Z liquid really clean and do anything to protect a car's paint? | Edit: as in no need to really dry/wipe off the prior application? Or is it really just a soap and wash that gets most of dirt off? | 693 | X liquid gets things loose so Y liquid can spread it apart when scrubbed. Then your car is clean. Then they spray on Z liquid which acts like plastic wrap. Sticks to the car but let’s other things slide off. | 495 |
ELI5: How can my headphone jack tell the difference between my car's aux cord and my headphones? | When I plug my aux cord into my phone, it usually goes to full volume. However, the phone almost always stays at about half volume when my earbuds are connected. Can my phone detect the difference between the two? | 12,066 | Yes, through difference in “impedance”. The aux port on your stereo probably has an input impedance of about 1000 ohms. Your earbuds are about 20-25 ohms.
The stereo has a high input impedance because it doesn’t need to load down the source because it has its own amplifiers, Your earbuds need all the juice they can get, though
| 6,133 |
If we can "freeze" light for a minute, does that mean that we can "freeze" time? | 30 | No. The freezing of light actually involves absorbing light in a very cold gas. It's so cold that the atoms have an "absorbed" state that lasts a very long time before re-emitting the light in its former trajectory. Not directly related to relativity or anything like that. | 32 |
|
How do Black Holes exist? How do we know? | A friend of mine doesn't believe in Black Holes especially with the complex ideals. Please tell me something that I can just read to him to prove/explain to him how Black Holes exist and why we know its there. | 48 | Black holes don't emit light so we can't directly see them, but because they have lots of gravity, some objects get locked into orbit around them just like the earth orbits the sun. We know they're there because we see stuff orbiting around them with telescopes. | 22 |
ELI5: How do airplane tires not explode on contact with the ground even though they bear the weight of several hundred tonnes and travelling well over a few 100km/h? | 19 | The tires are engineered to be extremely tough and to distribute the weight evenly. That said the challenges for aircraft tires is very difficult and they wear out quickly. And of course sometimes they *do* explode. | 14 |
|
CMV: People who take a halfway, “sometimes” stance on a woman’s right to abortion are invariably wrong. | To clarify, I don’t have a specific view on the morality of abortion. Would I have one myself, no; but on the legal side I’m pro choice because I don’t believe that I or anyone else should be entitled to decide whether someone else should be allowed to have one based on moral judgments that are always relative and subjective. That said, I am not posting to argue for either the 100% “pro-life” stance OR the 100% “pro-choice” stance. Rather I’m here to make a point on the wishy-washy stance that “abortion should only be legal if certain conditions (e.g. the mother was raped, incest is involved, etc.) are met.” I think this view contradicts itself. Allow me to explain.
If you think a fetus is an innocent life with a right to be born, it stands to reason that you think abortion is the murder of an innocent life.
But if you think abortion should be legally permissible in scenarios in which you pity the mother or believe the child may be deformed (incest), you are saying that it’s okay to murder deformed babies, or babies that inconvenience/emotionally harm otherwise “chaste” women whose pregnancy was not their fault.
Therefore it appears to me that it’s not the life of the fetus that is sacred to you (after all, why would it be justifiable to murder any baby for someone else’s problems or for something that is not their fault?) but the “punishment” of women who failed to be chaste. After all, the circumstances of a child’s conception should make little difference if you truly believe that abortion is murder. Murdering babies can’t be “sometimes” okay, if that is what you genuinely believe abortion to be.
My conclusion here is that those who take a “sometimes” stance do so not because they genuinely and wholeheartedly believe abortion is murder (like the 100% pro-life folks) but because they wish to impose repercussions on women whom they view as promiscuous or irresponsible. These are the women who “must” carry to full term. That is why I see this stance as disingenuous.
Change my view.
EDIT to clarify that I am referring to social reasons to permit/not permit abortion (not trying to debate the ethics of late-stage abortion, for example). | 20 | I think for pro-life people, it's not necessarily the fact that they consider abortion to be murder *alone*, but rather the fact that they consider the right of the fetus to live to be above the right of the mother to choose. Meanwhile pro-choice people believe the reverse.
If you look at it on this comparative scale, a decision of the more important between two fundamental rights, then it makes total sense that context can change someone's view on it. For instance, a pro-life person might believe that a fetus's right to life supersedes a woman's right to choose in most cases because the mother already *had* the ability to choose not to have sex, or to choose to take better precautions against getting pregnant, and thus she doesn't deserve a 'second chance' at the expense of the fetus's right to life. But the same person might feel it's different in the case of rape when the woman didn't have that choice to being with, and that in such a case, the woman's right to choose does come above the fetus's right to live.
| 13 |
ELI5: Why is Carfax, a commercially owned company, allowed to collect all kinds of information on our cars, and sell it to others for money? | The more I'm researching the company, the stranger this seems. Apparently mistakes are common, and hard to get fixed, yet they severely affect the value of your vehicle. They get this information from insurance companies, from *police*, but also for example from oil change companies that will report your mileage to them. How is this allowed? It's not like I signed up with Facebook and they then sell my info. I never made any agreement with Carfax. Where did we give permission for this extensive reporting?
I ask, because I'm selling a car, and the buyers just emailed me this morning to say that the Carfax report lists my car as having been totaled in Florida last year. Not only has my car never been in an accident at all, my car hasn't even been in Florida (it's registered in OREGON), and I'm the only owner.
I can't believe that an idiotic mistake by a company I want nothing to do with, and that I never authorized to collect my information, has now reduced the value of my three year old car to virtually nothing, until they fix it. IF they fix it. They don't even have a phone number listed. How can all this be legal? Why isn't this kind of service run by the DMV? | 792 | Every bit of information that is on Carfax is either:
1) Not information that qualifies for privacy protection
2) Information that is already public - this includes police records
3) **Information that, somewhere down the line, you agreed to allow another company to sell**, likely in a very long sale contract, online agreement, or other similar instrument.
That's how they do it.
Source: IP attorney. | 290 |
Why is the inner solar system rocky (inner planets), the outer solar system gas (outer planets), and the far outer solar system rocky (Oort cloud, transNeptunian objects)? | I get why the inner planets are rocky and the outer ones gas, but why do we "go back to rocky" when you go even further out from the outer planets? | 111 | Fundamentally this comes down to the "frost line": how far out from the Sun do we need to be before water freezes?
This also depends on the reflectivity of the object in question (the more reflective it is, the less sunlight it absorbs, the colder it is), but generally speaking, it's somewhere in the outer portion of the Main Asteroid Belt separating Mars and Jupiter.
This turns out to be crucial for which planet forms where. A forming proto-planet needs to weigh in around 5 - 10 Earth-masses before it has sufficient gravity to hold onto hydrogen gas. In other words, a proto-planet needs to build up a pretty substantial mass of just solids before it can grow even faster using gas. That is far more likely to happen if you can build your planetary core out of both rock and ice beyond the frost line rather than just rock inside the frost line.
Also note that subsequent migration can then alter planetary positions later. We see a lot of exoplanet systems where Jupiter-sized planets spiraled inwards after formation to end up with an orbit closer than Mercury is to the Sun; we *think* our own Solar System was spared from this fate only thanks to a resonance between Jupiter and Saturn.
I would challenge your assertion that...
> why do we "go back to rocky" when you go even further out from the outer planets?
When you get beyond Neptune, the bodies out there are somewhat rocky, but primarily they're *icy*. For example, the density of rock is usually somewhere around 3 g/cm^(3), while the density of ice is about 1 g/cm^(3). The density of Pluto, meanwhile, is 1.88 g/cm^(3), suggesting its got a *lot* of ice. To some extent, you can think of Pluto as a giant proto-planet core that never really gathered enough mass to get started.
This also makes sense because there's more than just one kind of frost line. While we usually means the *water* frost line just inside Jupiter's orbit, there's also the CO2 line farther out (where carbon dioxide freezes into dry ice), the methane line beyond that, and the nitrogen ice line even farther out than that. So far as we can tell, the objects beyond Neptune have lots of nitrogen ice, because that's just about the only place it can form. | 93 |
ELI5: Why do wall sockets only have 1 or 2 plugs? | I've always wondered why there were only two. Can't we add more? | 36 | There is typically a code (for safety) regarding electrical wiring. There is always the option of running more wires to more outlets, but there is a limit to how many sockets can be wired for a single pair of wires (by code).
Also a outlet boxes are very standard items - they are low cost because they are made in large volumes and made to common specification. Anything custom will be very expensive. More outlets means more circuits, means more wires, larger distribution boxes and more circuit breakers.
Lots of things can be done (within the electrical code for homes) but it is a matter of paying a lot more. Most households don't bother with the added expense. | 30 |
[MCU] If Thanos was similarly knowledgable to Tony Stark and knew Strange's Mystic Arts, why he never used this knowledge? | He didn't even use nanotech like Stark or Quill | 42 | Stark? He had a spaceship the size of a small city, a cyborg daughter, and a sword that could shatter Vibranium. He's clearly got some good tech going on. Just because it's not stated to be nanotech doesn't mean it isn't. On a personal level, it's clear that he relishes the simple things - he retires to a farm, not a high-tech home of the future; he chooses to brawl with his most powerful opponents instead of shooting them with a super-gun.
Strange? He probably lacked the talent to use magic effectively. With most systems of magic, you can know all the spells and rituals in the multiverse, but if you don't have actual magical talent you're wasting your time at best, and more likely risking your soul. | 82 |
ELI5: Why are 'do' and 'don't' pronounced differently? If 'do' is pronounced 'doo', shouldn't 'don't' (do not) be pronounced 'doont'? | 255 | It's just one of those quirks of the English language. "Won't", for "will not", adds an 'o' before the 'n', which makes even less sense. Languages change over time, and clunky pronunciations like "doon't" or "willn't" get smoothed down to easy pronunciations. | 138 |
|
In comparison to the sun, as viewed from Earth, how large does the sun look on Mercury? | Does it basically look the same size? 2x larger? 3x? 1.2x? | 30 | The sun as viewed from Earth subtends an angle of about 0.533 degree. From Mercury, it subtends an angle between about 1.14 degrees at aphelion and 1.73 degrees at perihelion.
So measuring (approximately) linear dimension, the sun appears between about 2.1 and 3.3 times as large from Mercury as it does from Earth.
Measuring *solid angle*, however (i.e., think "area"), the difference is between 4.6 and over *10 times* as large. It depends on which measure you think is more appropriate-- for example, if you look at two circles, one of which has twice the diameter of the other, is it "twice" as large (twice the diameter), or "four times" as large (four times the area)?
| 38 |
[Guardians of the Galaxy] Spoiler: why didn't Yondu...? | [Spoiler for the last half of the film:](#s "Why didn't he just destroy Ego's core with his arrow? surely it would have fit through the same gaps as baby Groot, and even if it couldn't, it could probably pierce the rocky substance blocking the way. if they just guided his arrow to the core and got on the ship, Yondu wouldn't have had to die.") | 33 | Yondu is in ultimate control of the arrow, so it's limited to his senses. That's why he needed to get to the control center of his ship before he could go on his ship-wide murder spree, so he could keep track of the arrow via the consoles.
So he wouldn't be able to guide the arrow through the cracks that Groot climbed through because he wouldn't be able to see the arrow at all. | 63 |
How many years will it be until the 'maps' NASA sent out on the interstellar probes to locate Earth will no longer be useable by possible aliens who pick them up? | Wondering how long until the star maps that NASA had sent on the voyager probe (the gold disc type messages with the star chart to find our solar system) will be outdated due to star deaths etc. Will the Sun burn out first, or will stars drift far enough through space to render them unreadable? | 1,030 | Star maps sent out on spacecraft are based on pulsars. These stars are extremely long-lived and easy to identify based on their frequency. The maps should be relevant for billions of years.
Although keep in mind that the plaques are mostly symbolic. The chance of anything finding those probes is nearly nonexistent. | 517 |
I think they're called 'for profit' colleges, but I'm not sure. Places like ITT Tech and University of Phoenix: why are they bad? | Or is that just a matter of opinion? My parents made me watch a special on it a while back when I was looking for schools to apply to, but it all went completely over my head and was so technical and confusing...I think I ended up falling asleep. | 36 | They have a profit motive. The thing is, academic standards aren't really profitable; to get the most money, you want to accept as many students as possible and ensure that none of them drop out. So a for-profit college's degree doesn't really mean anything; nobody will care if you have it. | 20 |
Is there an actual difference between, say, microwaves and infrared waves, or did we just decide on random numbers to separate them? | 37 | Photon frequency doesn't have any well defined natural boundaries. Practically, the categories we separate EM radiation into has to do with how that particular radiation is created, manipulated and detected, i.e. how it interacts with matter. It makes sense to separate radio waves from microwaves from visible light because the methods for generating them and ways of using them are completely different. However, there is certainly a degree of arbitrariness in exactly where those boundaries are. | 35 |
|
[Star Wars] Do some force users have more precognition then others? Who has the best precognition? | Also do some force sensitive people get precog? Why isn't there a sniper character with precog? | 20 | Yes, Sifo Dias is known for his ability to predict events; even as a padawan, the Jedi Masters were in awe of his abilities. He predicted the clone wars when no one else did.
The reason we dont see force sensitive snipers is because we've yet to meet many force sensitives who are not part of the two major groups. The Night Sisters used bows which was no doubt aided by their abilities, though. | 29 |
How can Nietzsche like Christ and hate Christianity? | Like, did he have some secondary sources that talk about Jesus? All his info comes from the Bible, but if his message was perverted like he says, why would Christians compile the New Testament when most of it contradicts its main work, the Gospels? And what is his admiration of Christ then, when his figure was invented by Christians? | 23 | >Like, did he have some secondary sources that talk about Jesus?
He had thoughts about which aspects of Christianity strayed from Jesus's message, and which did not. It's not like he's the only one to draw these conclusions: when you read something like Paul it's not hard to get the picture that there are parts of Jesus's message and life that he places less emphasis on and parts that he places more emphasis on (think about 1 Corinthians 15:17 for instance).
>All his info comes from the Bible, but if his message was perverted like he says, why would Christians compile the New Testament when most of it contradicts its main work, the Gospels?
Why indeed! Nietzsche has a lot to say on this, both in *The Anti-Christ* (his big anti-Christian screed) and much of his other work too.
>And what is his admiration of Christ then, when his figure was invented by Christians?
This too is covered in *The Anti-Christ*. Nietzsche doesn't think Jesus was invented by Christians - he think Jesus existed. | 26 |
Does hypnosis work? | Is it a real thing? Or is it just a magic trick? And if it works, how so? Can one get hypnotized by watching videos? | 35 | Suggestion works to some degree - for example, it has been successfully used as a mild alternative to analgesia, in dentistry for example. It is in no way comparable to what is popularly shown in media (e.g. against your own will; making you think you are a chicken, things of that sort) | 24 |
ELI5: Why is the CIA allowed to black out parts of declassified documents? | Initially I thought it was just to protect the names of specific people involved - and indeed, that is definitely one reason they do this - but sometimes in declassified documents you'll see entire sentences or even paragraphs blacked out completely. I know it's the government, not just the CIA, who decides what gets declassified, but what's the point of declassifying a document if the CIA first gets to cover up the most sensitive bits? In the case of particularly damning documents, such the recent torture pieces, what's stopping them from simply blacking out the entire document? Do we know anything about the type of information that normally gets covered up? Is there *any* policy on this, or does the CIA just kind of do it and expect people to deal with it? Is it even carried out by the CIA in the first place, or is somebody else in charge of this?
I've been wondering this ever since I saw an old document about Charlie Chaplin in the communism witch hunts, where nearly full pages of the document had been removed despite it being a supposedly well-known and well-publicized scenario. It seems more relevant now than ever, though, as the torture documents have similar censorship and this is extremely unnerving for such an already controversial release.
EDIT: Thanks, everyone. The answers explained the law in place to determine what should and shouldn't be blacked out, and shed some light on the process and who's responsible for it. A lot of the info on what actually gets cut is still fuzzy, but that seems natural considering nobody can actually know exactly what that info used to be.
EDIT 2: Even the information on what's actually cut seems pretty clear now, or at least the type of thing they normally remove. I marked this explained a while ago but the explanations that are still coming in have been very helpful too. Thank you.
| 2,586 | The easiest, non-conspiracy way to explain it is simply that the act of removing the information is what allows the documents to become declassified.
For example, in the sentence:
"Mr. Ahmed Jones informed us of the super secret password to the al-qaeda clubhouse: pepperoni."
The sentence could be "declassified" by removing sources and methods:
"Mr. [redacted] informed us of the super-secret password to the [redacted]: [redacted]."
When you remove the sensitive information, there's nothing left to warrant the classification, so it can be downgraded. | 3,178 |
[General] what are some good military tactics for large-scale, ground based, superhuman combat? with flight, enhanced speed, enhanced strength, and other abilities, what better strategies are there than an all-out brawl? | 63 | questions a bit to vague, exact powers would be needed to formulate any sort of plan, if there just flying bricks the battle strategy wouldent change much beyond higher scale collatoral damage and being able to extend it upward
worm is a an excellent read if you want examples of powers being used very creatively and with actual strategy | 50 |
|
Why does the comet NEOWISE appear to have two tails? One that bends and is white. The other that is straight and is blue. | I think I understand why comet tails bend away from the sun and why they would be white. But I don't understand the second "blue" tail that seems to be straight and is at a different angle.
[Pic as an example of my question from NASA.](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200722.html) | 28 | The blue tail is ionised gas - i.e. charged particles. Charged particles are sensitive to magnetic fields, and these are following the Sun's magnetic field outwards at high speed. The other tail is dust, gas, and vapour being stripped from the comet's halo by the solar wind. This material isn't as bolted onto the magnetic field lines, so it's more puffy, and spreads out as it orbits the Sun. | 56 |
ELI5: The monty hall problem | 47 | Count the success rate for the two different options:
3 doors, prize is behind door #3
Option 1: Never Change
Pick door 1 - lose
Pick door 2 - lose
Pick door 3 - win
total success: 1/3
Option 2: Always Change (keep in mind they always open the
door *not* containing the prize)
Pick door 1, 2 is shown, switch to 3 - win
Pick door 2, 1 is shown, switch to 3 - win
Pick door 3, 1 or 2 is shown, switch to the other - lose
total success: 2/3
Edit: Fixed odds for option 2 | 47 |
|
[MiB] Why did Jay chase the alien in the beginning of the movie? | You never really get an explanation but it must have been big. I mean he had two uniformed cops and Jay who was in plain clothes.
What did he do to get such a reaction from the NYPD? | 21 | I would bet carjacking, grand theft auto, trying to jack a ferry, or something else. All the registered aliens were trying to find a way off Earth as fast as possible because the Bug was coming, and he was probably cutting legal corners trying to get to a spacecraft. | 28 |
ELI5: How do planes not become covered in ice when flying in -70F temperatures? | 202 | Planes try to avoid flying into areas that contain high amounts of moisture like clouds. When that isn't possible there are de-icing systems on the plane that prevent the buildup of ice around critical areas like the engine inlets and leading edges of wings and probes. They work by heating up or by passing bleed air from the engines underneath the surface or an electric heater. This is the reason why the leading edges of engine intakes on most planes aren't painted. | 302 |
|
How do market makers “make” the market? | Hi guys,
I never understood this.
How exactly do they “make” the market?
Thanks, Rick | 64 | For there to be a market for a security, somebody needs to buy and somebody needs to sell at a given price. This requires a pretty amazing coincidence that both exist at the same time. When you extend that to every financial product in the entire market, it's an even more unbelievable coincidence. The reality is that if let's say Tesla is doing badly - everybody wants to sell and nobody wants to buy, so you end up with a major mismatch. If the security is illiquid, then frequently nobody even knows what the price really is.
The market maker comes in and offers to take what is called inventory risk. If you want to sell it, he'll buy it off you first. Then he'll try to sell it as quickly as he can. To take that kind of risk, the price he buys it at is lower than the price he sells it at. This is why when you go to a currency exchange, you'll see they quote a buy price and a sell price which are always different. When the security is more illiquid or more volatile, that difference is set larger to reduce his risk. This is called a spread. Sometimes the market maker still gets it wrong, he might buy it today, Tesla collapses tomorrow, and he is forced to sell it lower than he bought it. Consequently there is still some risk being taken and market making is still a serious skill.
If you're the one issuing the security, market making is an important service you sometimes pay for. Without a bank to market make you securities, they become very unattractive and the price can collapse. | 74 |
Why does choked flow happen and why it is related to the speed of sound ? | I'm diving into the venturi effect (example: rocket nozzles and chocked flow happening in the admission valve of a ICE) and it seems that when the gas approaches the speed of sound, the flow starts to choke. Why does this happen ? | 2,528 | To preface this answer: information about a medium travels at the speed of sound in the medium. So if you change the conditions of a flow at one point, the effect on the medium travels at the speed of sound upstream in the medium.
If you imagine a venturi nozzle and a flow condition where the speed of sound is achieved at the throat, and your downstream flow is travelling at greater than the speed of sound, any disturbances downstream of the throat won't propagate upstream. Picture yourself splashing around in a river where the flow travels faster than the wave speed; no one upstream of the river will be able to see your splashing around. Now there are two ways to achieve a choked flow scenario from here:
* ~~Increase the pressure upstream of the throat~~ **EDIT:** Forcibly increase flowrate upstream of the nozzle
* Decrease the pressure downstream of the throat.
If you try ~~increasing the pressure~~ forcing the flowrate to increase upstream of the nozzle (perhaps by increasing power on a compressor), you end up forcing air to get to Mach 1 before the throat. If you picture it does that instantaneously before the throat, because of how supersonic flow behaves it will actually decelerate to subsonic flow just downstream of the Mach transition. And speed up again and slow down again, etc. etc.. This just creates a bunch of shocks in your convergent nozzle where heat is generated but the flow doesn't speed up. And once it gets to the throat, it hits mach 1 anyways and accelerates in the divergent section.
If you decrease pressure downstream, on the other hand, you get a situation of underexpansion at the outlet of your pipe system. Unlike subsonic flow where the information about the new reduced downstream pressure propagates through the system quickly and stabilizes the flow pressures and velocities, the underexpansion remains at the outlet in the form of an expansion fan. Remember: information can't travel in a medium faster than the speed of sound, and if the flow travels faster than the speed of sound, the information downstream never propagates to the rest of the system.
EDIT: Changed "increase pressure upstream" to "increase flowrate upstream". Your behavior from the reservoir leading up to the throat will not depend on absolute pressure of the reservoir. | 423 |
ELI5: How closing our eyes for about 10 mins trigger our brain to sleep | It isn't that I wanna know how we fall asleep, more how closing our eyes specifically triggers it. | 27 | Blocks out stimulus so your brain doesn’t have anything that it must focus on. Same way it’s easier to sleep in a quiet and dark room; there is less stimulus for the brain to process, allowing it to rest | 22 |
Why did the first stage of the Saturn V use different fuel from the second and third stage? | I'm kind of wondering here, why did they use Kerosene (or RP-1) for the first stage, and Liquid Hydrogen for the second and third? Does it have something to do with the thrust and efficiency? | 28 | It is solely to do with thrust and efficiency, actually. Kerosene is energy dense, and liquid at high temperature. It doesn't need to be cryogenically cooled, like liquid Hydrogen, and can be stored in a much smaller tank. You save weight on fuel tank size, insulation, etc. Being more dense also makes it easier to burn a lot of it in a short amount of time and produce more thrust, because you're not having to push huge volumes of liquid Hydrogen through your system.
However, because the combustion products are heavier, they can't be thrown out the back by the rocket engine at as high a speed as burning liquid Hydrogen. This means that the combustion is less efficient. Lower stages are always less efficient anyway, though, because they're dealing with the atmosphere (not the case in space).
For a lower stage, you want to produce a lot of thrust, and you aren't as concerned about efficiency. You want to pack a big bang for a little buck. When you get to space, you want to start using more efficient propulsion techniques and fuel sources so that you're getting more out of your payload. | 25 |
[Transformers] What kind of components are transformers made of? | Are they made of human components like wire and motors? If so how do they come in to existence? And why do the have muscles? | 19 | They seem to be made from a combination mechanical, moving parts and advanced electronic circuitry. Transformers actually start out a more simple mannequin like shape, with a relatively smooth surface. Fully grown transformers are made primarily of durabyllium steel. While their parts are similar to human components, they are decidedly much more advanced. | 10 |
ELI5: Why hasn't Youtube tried to remove Adblock? | 64 | They get their revenue from ads, which come from viewers, which come because YouTube is, by far, the favored video sharing site.
If they block Adblock then those users leave so the content creators are encouraged to leave and then the other users leave.
Allowing a small percentage of adamantly anti-ad users to view the site without ads winds up hurting them less than trying to force them out. | 48 |
|
I predict our eventual move to the cloud will end 99.99% of piracy. CMV. | With Internet infrastructure slowly developing and improving, cloud solutions are slowly becoming more viable. Sooner or later, as we are moving with Microsoft's Office 365 and Adobe's Creative Cloud, pretty much all applications and games will run virtualized on a server. Screenshots of the applications will be sent from the server to your PC and any input will be sent from your PC to the server. We can already see this happening for games with Nvidia's shield streaming service.
With complete cloud solutions (we haven't quite reached this yet), the companies no longer provide you with a copy of the program code (in binary that is) and therefore in order to modify the application, you would have to either physically go to the server or hack the server which is incredibly hard and relies on a finite and shrinking amount of security holes created due to human mistakes.
Change my view. | 39 | That could only apply to utility software and video games, where the content is reliant on you getting interactive feedback.
But for every medium that can exist as a single data file, it would still be easy to rip that data out of the cloud and play on any device without the servers.
But how do you end music piracy, if every MP3 file can contain copyrighted music? How do you end ebook piracy, if every PDF file can have the text of a book inside of it?
| 26 |
CMV: A political party that 63.1% of people didn't vote for shouldn't have a majority government (UK) | Here are the results of how many seats each major party got, and the percentage of votes they had:
Conservative - 36.9% Votes - 331/650 seats
Labour - 30.4% Votes - 232/650 seats
UKIP - 12.6% Votes - 1/650 seats
Liberal Democrat - 7.9% Votes - 8/650 seats
SNP - 4.7% Votes - 56/650 seats
Green Party - 3.8% Votes - 1/650 seats
Even though I disagree with the policies of the UKIP party, I still feel that if they achieved 12.6% of the votes, there should be a fairer representation of them in terms of seats.
The green party and the SNP, for example, only differed in a small amount, percentage-wise, but had a huge decrease in seats (therefore influence).
To clarify: I don't know if making the system so that direct votes count as direct seats in government would work, however I do feel as the current system discourages people from voting. A lot of people voted 'tactically' rather than with what they wanted; I know I did.
It would be great to see some opposing views, any constructive criticism about my post would also be appreciated :)
EDIT: Typo on election results | 271 | It may be the case that only a plurality voted for the Tories, but *that's still more than the amount of people who have voted for there being a minority government* where either nothing gets done, or random small parties get to turn their propositions into law without even a plurality supporting either of them, by joining as coalition partners.
Sometimes there are interests that you can't proportionally represent.
If you bake a batch of cookies for 10 people, and 4 of them hate chocolate frosting and 6 love it, then there is not much virtue in proportionally representing their interests by putting less-than-usual frosting on it, that will just leave 10 people unhappy.
Even if there wouldn't be a clear 4-6 divide, but you throw in extra variables, the same principle holds. Satisfying the largest plurality will still be more popular, than angering everyone with a bad mixture that no one asked for.
Government is like that too. Several parties propose mutually contradictory programs. If you have to force two of them to work in a coalition, you are already getting a hodgepodge political program, based on party leaders' personal bargaining, that no one has asked for in advance. Even in the best case scenario, where the coalition partners try to represent their voters' principles in good faith, it will involve lots of compromise.
"Tactical voting" is compromise too, but at least it's in the hand of the voters. You get to decide which of your values are the most important, and line up behind that. In a proportional system, the government coalition isn't consisting of the values that the public finds the best fit together, but of the party leaders who were the most successful bargaining partners. | 48 |
[MCU] Was the original Captain America's shield as strong as the one he got later from Black Panther? | Given that Howard Stark had probably never worked vibranium before is it possible that he may have not been able to produce an optimum strength shield?? | 51 | The double wrist mounted ones? They’re both Vibranium, no reason to assume one is better than the other. The Wakandan shields are better offensively, but caps shield is larger and can bounce. He’d probably prefer his own. | 45 |
ELI5: Why do phone batteries die at low temperatures, even if the charge amount is nowhere near 0%? | I found a previous post on this but the explanations were not really something a five year old would understand. | 262 | The protection circuit in the battery shuts it off. Li-Ion batteries mustn’t be discharged below ~3.0V voltage. Low temperatures make the battery voltage drop. There is a deep discharge protection circuit, usually built directly into the battery pack which shuts it off. | 124 |
Eli5 How is James Webb slowing down? When it launched it was going more than 2km per second but now it’s down to 0.5km per second | 34 | Gravity.
Imagine you're at the bottom of a hill, and you roll a ball up it. As the ball goes up the hill, it slows down. The farther you get from the center of the Earth, the slower you go. The same thing is happening to JWST, just on a much bigger scale and the scientists did the math just right that the telescope will just barely reach the top of the hill. | 62 |
|
Learning to make good arguments? | I have noticed that I am not being able to make convincing arguments, probably due to a lack of formal education in Philosophy. How can I remedy that? Is there any book I can read or maybe even a short course?
To give some background information, I am a medical professional and active in medical research. I have never received any formal philosophy training. However, I feel drawn to philosophy quite a lot. My primary area of interest is the nature of existence, especially the philosophical implications of general relativity and quantum mechanics (again I regret to say that I don't have any training in physics or mathematics beyond high school and mostly depend on science communicators e.g. Carl Sagan).
Till now, I've read some works of Socrates, Nietzsche and a little bit of eastern philosophy.
Do you guys have any recommendation for me? | 23 | I’m going to tell you the secret to writing good arguments.
Write an argument. Let a smart person who disagrees with you (or can play devil’s advocate well) read and critique it. Revise the argument based on that critique.
Repeat over and over again. | 28 |
[DC] Has Bruce Wayne ever run out of money? | The man buys a lot for himself, supports several members of the Bat-Family, pours a lot of cash into making Gotham a better place (for all the good it does), and supports the Justice League in a number of ways including paying for all the damage they cause and buying them at least one super-high-tech base. Has there ever been a time when Bruce just plain spent everything he had on all of this, or came close to it? | 65 | There have been times in earlier DC continuities when Bruce Wayne has had to pull back on his spending, but that's not quite the same thing as running out of money.
Over the decades, the amount of money Bruce Wayne has had to throw around has significantly increased. Back in the 1960s, for example, he was only one of a number of millionaires who lived in Gotham City and didn't even qualify for the Forbes top 100 wealthiest men and women in the world. Back then, his socioeconomic authority came less from how much money he had and more from his aristocratic lineage, such as being the descendent of one of the founders of Gotham City and of a Revolutionary War hero, and from his constant public charity work. | 78 |
ELI5: Why your vision becomes grainy when you're in a dark room or when you close your eyes | Repost since my post got ''[removed]'' when I did not remove it myself nor did I receive a message as to why so I am going to assume it was a glitch on Reddit.
Like tiny fine dots that change colors and are red green and blue. | 22 | Our eyes have two different types of cells that detect light. Rods and Cones.
Cones detect color, there are (usually) three types that detect different wavelengths, corresponding to Red, Green, & Blue.
Rods don't detect color, only amount of light.
Cones have a much harder time detecting light when the light levels are very low. This is why we tend to lose our color vision when in low light. The cones practically stop working but the rods still work.
I don't recall fine dots that change colors, but I'd bet that what you are asking about is because the cone cells are struggling while the rod cells make up the difference. | 12 |
CMV: Lettuce Has No Place On A Burger | Let us face FACTS:
1. Lettuce is bland and does not contribute any kind of worthwhile flavor to a burger.
2. Lettuce detracts from the delicate balance of flavors that makes a burger a burger.
3. The shape of lettuce can often disrupt the even distribution of the sauces, causing it to pool in undesirable ways.
4. In larger burgers, lettuce just makes it more difficult to fit the burger in your mouth.
5. Lettuce is a cheap way for restaurants to make their small burgers seem bigger.
6. If you want veggies on your burger, there are plenty of delicious options (onions, tomatoes, jalapenos, peppers, mushrooms, pickles) [If you are a fan of Ronald Reagan, add Ketchup to the list.]
7. Freshly washed lettuce that is not properly dried can add extra unwanted moisture that can make the bread soggy and destabilize the consistency of the sauces.
8. Sure, lettuce might be the lowest calorie part of your burger, but if you are truly concerned with cutting calories, put down to double bacon chee and order a salad already.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That was fun. Thanks for humoring my light hearted post.
I'm awarding my Delta to kasx6, as I found her/his comment to be the most concise, well written, good natured and most persuasive.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 252 | Lettuce adds a bit of a crunch, especially if it's crisp and fresh-- it's the only real texture that prevents the burger from being a mushy mess.
Many "cheap" restaurants that you speak of don't really use much lettuce, and it's not all that cheap for them. Gourmet burgers from really upscale steakhouses use lettuce too, so that point (#5) doesn't make much sense.
It seems like you've never had quality lettuce on a quality burger and that you're going entirely on anecdotal evidence and your expectations rather than the reality. | 337 |
[DC]Since the Flash speeds up his subjective sense of time, all of the time, how many years has Barry Allen actually lived? | 172 | It's hard to say without knowing just how time converts from normal speed to his speeds and how many times he's used his speed (countless).
BUT when Bart Allen decided to read every book in the library he said he had spent around a year reading it all when it had only been 20 minutes to the other Titans. So I'd assume, relative to himself, Barry Allen has lived for a VERY long time. | 137 |
|
Is planting trees really a viable strategy to combat climate change? Isn’t all the carbon they capture released when the die/rot? | [This recent article](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions) tours planting billions of trees as an option to fight climate change. When these trees die and rot or burn, isn’t all of the carbon they’ve captured throughout their life released back into the environment? If that’s the case is planting trees really a solution to climate change? | 16 | Most of it is, but some is stored in the soil. However, say you have a tract of land that has no forest. Then you reforest it. The trees themselves will hold X tons of carbon per square km of forest. As long as that tract of land has forest, that X tons of carbon will be locked up in it....even if individual trees live and die and new ones grow. It's not a solution all by itself, and you have to keep at reforestation because if you let the overall number of trees decline in the future stored carbon levels will drop, but it's not nothing. | 13 |
What causes viruses to take different structures? As an example Ebola is a string like structure, where as the flu is spherical. | And does the structure change the effects, like symptoms, transmission,etc. | 46 | Beyond giving and answer like evolution, it is like a lock and key. Over time viruses change to adapt to changing host biology since their only purpose is to reproduce itself. Sometimes it is the conection site itself that changes and other times the body simply makes it impossible for the virus to reproduce.
For example their are certain humans who are naturally immune to HIV, their immune system actually recognizes and attacks the virus.
Viruses are sneaky and they rely on that fact to be successful.if the body detects the foreign invader or the virus cannot make a home in a cell then it fails and dies or gets passed on. | 11 |
[The Man in the High Castle] It's patently clear how the Nazis defeated the Americans, but how did they beat the Soviets? | Also, what about the Brits? Anybody wanna take a stab at that? | 205 | They got to Moscow, and the cowardly communists folded like a stack of cards.
HEIL!
EDIT: The British fought the Germans on the Beaches... and lost.
***
Non-universe answer:
Without FDR, there was no Lend-Lease act.
Stalin once candidly remarked that without the USA giving them support via Lend-Lease, they would not have been able to repel the Nazis. Something like 30% of all Soviet vehicles during WW2, with the exception of tanks, were provided by Lend-Lease. They received resources ranging from aluminium and steel down to clothes and rations.
The Soviets would have held on for a while. Assuming Operation Barbarossa started at the same time in the Summer of 1941, the Soviets would have probably still won the Battle of Moscow, purely because continuing to invade Russia once winter starts fucking insane. However without Lend Lease they never would have been able to effectively roll back the Nazi Invasion - especially without a western front. Either in 1942 or 1943 the Nazi's would have ~~done what only the Mongols had done before them and~~ taken Moscow (Ok Moscow has been conquered/leveled six times in history).
The loss of Moscow is a HUGE blow to Soviet Moral and could spell the death kneel for the USSR that Hitler gambled it would be. Forces from the Steps and Siberia would have continued to fight (Russia is *vast*), but with the the great Ukrainian bread basket and the oil fields of Caucuses presumably falling under Nazi control, the Reich would have had the resources to continue their conquests.
The Soviets had manpower like no army in history before it, but without Lend-Lease to equip them the Nazi's would have eventually taken Moscow. | 161 |
[Infinity War] Thor says to the Guardians about Uru weapons, "You simply lack the strength to wield them: your bodies would crumple as your minds collapsed into madness." Is there a deeper explanation as to why this would happen? | 655 | stormbreaker controls incredibly vast electrical currents, and its user interface operates through direct mental connection. If you are insufficiently resilient attempting to use such a weapon will literally cook you inside out.
The main issue is the base energy level of the mental interface, well the second main issue. the other is just how pathetically weak humans are. So you might say, well why not just tone down the mental interface to human limitations? Well thats where we get to the second problem, the energies stormbreakers fucks with are just too strong to tone down that far, it's just not safe around people.
We're like a squirrel and stormbreaker is the electric plants main transformer, there's just no safe way for us to hit something else with it while holding it ourselves. | 476 |
|
Why have "B's" become the new "F's" in university? | It just seems that most students in the universities in Canada believe that unless you get an 'A' you have failed. Any thoughts as to why this has come to pass? | 17 | Grades used to indicate the student's rank in the class--grading on the curve is all avout that. Under this system, a C meant that the student is average compared to other students in the class. Starting around the 70's, there was a shift in assessment philosophy to one where the grade reflects the student's work/competence without comparison to who else takes the class. This shift was slow and patchy; every time someone complaints of grade inflation, they are implicitly assuming that grading on a curve should be standard. But the new philosophy is clearly winning.
So what do grades mean now? Usually it boils down to this: a B means you did what was required with sufficient but lackluster competence. C means that you couldn't do what was required, but you show progress towards competence. To get an A, you have to do what's required with clear competence. No need to be "outstanding" (though many college catalogues still use that term), since you aren't being compared to other students.
So the students do interpret the grades correctly--anything but an A is deficient on their part. | 49 |
If a person were spinning perfectly horizontally in space, could they slow themselves by putting their arms out? Much like an ice-skater? | If we take the question further, what if the person had a pack with heavy chains that they could fling outward. Would this slow their spin down at all? Co-worker just watched Gravity... | 22 | I haven't seen Gravity, but the essential idea you are referring to is conservation of angular momentum. The answer to your question is yes, you could slow down your rotational speed by moving mass away from the rotational axis.
Being in space (away from the effects of gravity) should have no effect on this principle. | 11 |
ELI5: Are the 30% of ebola survivors just lucky or is there something other than proper care that directly lead to their survival? Are survivors left with any permanent physical damage and does surviving once build a tolerance or antibody to prevent future infection? | 38 | Care will matter. The two most prominent symptoms of ebola are vomiting and diarrhea. That will dehydrate you real fast.
The dehydration makes it difficult to fight it, it can even kill you through electrolyte imbalance right there.
However, dehydration alone is not the problem. Many people have been given IV fluids which are basically ironclad protection against dehydration and still died of ebola. IV fluids will only *reduce* the fatality rate somewhat. | 13 |
|
[Game of Thrones] Which gods do you think are real? | 22 | None are probably real in terms of being 100% the way they're described. But the Old Gods and the Lord of Light are probably real in some capacity.
The North definitely has some magic that could be derived from the Old Gods, warging and Bran's tree-boy stuff is real. So there is something magical connecting all of that stuff. Whether they're a set of animist gods that the old Northerners worshipped or something else is unclear.
The Lord of Light is implicated in some of the most replicable magic. The fire stuff is definitely real and characters are for sure brought back from the dead and have visions of the future. Whether it's some actual duotheistic religion with a fire god and ice god representing good and evil is not clear, but there is some actual magic going on. | 51 |
|
What does wind look like on an atomic level? | 16 | Wind is simply air with a group velocity. As such, it looks no different from air on a molecular level except that there is an overall trend of the particles to move in one direction. An individual particle may move counter to that direction of motion for a time, but it will likely collide with another particle and change direction. Overall, the average velocity of time is in the direction of the wind. | 20 |
|
ELI5: Why does the way back always feel shorter than they way there? | I certainly hope I'm not the only one who notices this, but what exactly is the mechanism that makes the way back from any given destination feel like it took less time than it took to get there in the first place.
EDIT: Did what I should have done from the get go, googled it and found [this article](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/story/2011-08-30/All-in-the-head-Why-the-return-trip-always-seems-shorter/50193384/1).
Turns out it has nothing to do with the fact that the route is more familiar but rather because you're always overly optimistic about how long it's going to take to get there, so the trip there feels long, which in turn skews your perspective on the way back making you feel pleasantly surprised that it wasn't that long at all. | 90 | If you are going somewhere for the first time you are devoting a lot more processing power to following directions and looking out for signs/landmarks, etc. That makes time and distance seem greater. There is also the anticipation of some event/experience to keep you mind working hard; again creating a feeling of greater time/distance.
On the return you are returning to the familiar. You don't have to process all the details around you because you have been there many times before. Typically going home also involves relaxation and comfort/familiarity. Your brain stops working so hard and time/distance seem shorter. | 42 |
eli5 How does a high pressure water jet cut a straight cut and not fan out on the bottom of metal that is three inches thick. | [https://youtu.be/Qo\_azIwSn5g?t=78](https://youtu.be/Qo_azIwSn5g?t=78) I'm asking because I don't get it. | 61 | Erosion. The water jet contains sand which, due to the speed of the water, very quickly eats through the metal. Once that water/sand mixture has hit something that makes it redirect (i.e. fan out) it has lost enough energy that it’s not cutting anymore. | 52 |
Could southern hemisphere countries get something similar to the polar vortex from Antarctica? | Is it a specific situation in the arctic circle? Or could South America/Africa/Australia also face this situation? | 37 | Good question!
Short answer, Yes. Tasmania and South America get hammered by Antarctic storms sometimes. But it doesn't happen as often or as easily.
The Antarctic Polar Front, the big circle of winds around Antarctica at approximately 55 degrees south latitude, acts like a wall, limiting the exchange of weather systems between Antarctica and parts farther north.
This atmospheric 'front' is a natural effect of the Earth's rotation and the energy differences between the cold southern latitude air (which sinks) and the warmer air to the north (which rises).
The same thing happens around the North Pole. A big difference is that the Southern Polar Front doesn't have any topographical barriers -- no mountains or land masses -- to disrupt the flow of air or change the energy balance. The wind chases itself in a big, continuous circle around the Southern Ocean without hitting anything.
In contrast, the Northern Polar Front gets disrupted by land and mountains and different air masses, scrambling the flow. So the northern hemispheres sees a lot more breakup of the polar front simply because of geography.
| 31 |
[Lovecraft Mythos] How is Cthulhu, an extradimensional eldritch abomination gets trapped in such infinitesimal prison under Rlyeh on the speck of dust called earth? | 60 | Cthulu, for all his power, is just a Herald hiding out on some backwater until he is needed.
Which makes you wonder what else is out in the universe that makes beings like him hide out somewhere so quiet. | 55 |
|
CMV: Democrat Leaders Extending the Patriot Act Shows Their Animosity Towards Trump is Mostly Rhetoric | Of course, most people are aware of the impeachment hearings against Trump. However, just yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to fund and extend the Patriot Act for an extended 3 months after December 20th.
It seems to me hypocritical to believe that Trump is unfit for office and abused his power and then proceeds to potentially give him more power--or at least extending the duration of his current powers.
Additionally, Representative Justin Amash attempted to amend the budget bill by removing the Patriot Act language but the amendment was blocked by the Democrats on the Rules Committee. Only 10 Democrats voted against the resolution, including AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Tlaib.
The Trump administration still retains authority to reinitiate the NSA call records program, the program where millions of innocent American calls had been collected, if they deem it necessary.
Given the fact that the Trump administration could potentially extend another 4 years, it seems questionable at best why Democrats would not strip him of some of the powers he could abuse when they had the opportunity to. Given this, it seems to me most of the rhetoric against Trump is just for show. When presented with something to act on, most of the Democrats chose to empower Trump, and allow his administration the power to listen and collect calls, information, and data on millions of Americans. | 42 | >It seems to me hypocritical to believe that Trump is unfit for office and abused his power and then proceeds to potentially give him more power--or at least extending the duration of his current powers.
Beyond those powers explicitly authorized by the Constitution, it is the job of Congress to both legislate what powers the President has and to ensure those powers are being used properly. It's not hypocritical to give the President one power while simultaneously accusing him of abusing a different power. | 11 |
ELI5: Why are there a lot of WW2 movies and almost no movies about WW1? | 20 | There was widespread opinion after WW1 that it shouldn't have happened, and accomplished nothing. Its causes are still a bit hard to understand, and it discredited pretty much every government involved in it to one level or another.
And while it was happening, the horror was ironically uneventful. People died in droves, but not much changed - the front lines did not advance much for most of the war. People might unknowingly clamber over multiple layers of buried corpses trying to capture the same few meters year after year.
World War 2 was very different. It was one of the few wars in history that can be legitimately called *totally* unavoidable, given the mentality on one side. Its causes were clear, its moral distinctions eventually were found to be absolute, and its events and movements were very dramatic.
Its outcome was also economically and politically profitable to the country that houses Hollywood, so lots of movies about it were inevitable. | 58 |
|
CMV: The world doesn't need a Hellboy reboot. | As a big fan of Ron Perlman and Guillermo Del Toro, I was absolutely blown away when I first read that Hellboy was coming out in 2004. It and its sequel are in my opinion two of the best mid-budget Superhero/Epic modern fantasy movies ever made.
I believe any version of Hellboy not starring Perlman or directed/co-written by Del Toro until *many, many* years from now is superfluous and unnecessary to the point of being an insult to the legacy those films created.
A part of those movies' collective strength was the directoral vision and passion for the source material Del Toro brings along with the gravitas Ron Perlman brings to a role he was born to play. Even under all that latex. Even if the new film is *good*, I can't see it being *better*. Anything *different* will probably just be more "accesible and mainstream".
The main truth is that this isn't a Spider-man 3/Amazing Spider-man 2 scenario. Every entry is critically acclaimed. They made money. Del Toro would probably come back, as would Perlman, if given the chance.
I subjectively take issue with unnecessary remakes of things done *recently*, and done *well*. Unless they can make a case for their existence, which so far this new Hellboy hasn't in my mind.
Please tell me why I'm wrong.
_____
> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 46 | Remember when people said the world didn’t need more Batman movies and then we got Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises?
The world doesn’t need it, but I’m not mad that we’re getting another. | 14 |
ELI5: What are those things in the sky that people are saying are chemicals and population control? | 59 | They are contrails -- condensation trails caused by aircraft.
Know how they kinda look like clouds? That's because that's exactly what they are -- artificial clouds created as a byproduct of jet travel. | 77 |
|
ELI5 What determines which body part gains more weight ? | 655 | All genetics. It’s nothing you really control. You can not spot burn fat with exercise. Meaning that crunches won’t burn belly fat. Exercise and diet that are appropriate, will cause you to lose overall body weight, from everywhere it stores it, most likely leaving fat where it first formed. | 450 |
|
Does the gravity of one object affect / attract another object sooner than light can travel between the two objects? | For example, is the Earth attracted to the *current* location of the Sun's center of gravity, or to the location of the Sun's center of gravity from ~8 minutes ago?
I think I remember reading about something like a "cone of possibility" (I know I'm probably butchering the term) that stated that one thing could not affect any other thing any faster than light could travel between them. But I also think I remember reading that gravity causes an instant attraction between any two objects, no matter the distance between them.
A follow-on question would be: If the attracting effect of gravity is in fact instant, and that force is "carried" by a graviton (or some particle / wave), then does that mean gravitons are super-light speed things?
Thanks, and as always, please forgive my ignorance (but that's why we have this wonderful sub!). | 23 | Nope, information about gravity travels at the speed of light. This is what we expect from theory, and while observations are difficult they seem to indicate this.
What you probably heard about gravity being instantaneous refers to Newton's theory of gravity, which is very useful but obsolete. | 27 |
What is the current consensus on using biological entities for information storage? | Every once in a while I read small news stories about people using dna to store images, or questioning the viability of using dna and rna as future methods of storing information like flash drives. Is anyone familiar with the topic and can give me a summary of how current professionals view this technology?
I am a nutrition science major in college so be gentle with the computer science. | 19 | DNA data storage is sort of in the same category as asteroid mining or a space elevator. The general consensus is that it's plausible at some future point, but the technology and funding isn't there yet. If there was a breakthrough or some major push to pursue it, it could happen in our lifetimes, but who knows what the future will bring.
The big advantage of DNA data storage is that you can store a tremendous amount of data in a very small physical space (~200 TB in 1 gram of DNA). It's also easy to make copies and lasts for thousands of years. The downside is that it's very slow and expensive to read/write.
With current technology, the use case for it would be a situation where you need long-term storage that is highly compact, and cost isn't a consideration. That use case also assumes that current flash storage solutions are too heavy or don't last long enough (~30 years).
So right now there isn't much need for it. The part that generates excitement is that there is a lot of potential there as technology changes. imo it will be used someday, probably to solve a problem that doesn't even exist yet. | 12 |
Are Klingons particularly intelligent? | Obviously humans run the gamut from very smart to very...not
But is the average Klingon more intelligent than a human, or about the same? Or less intelligent? | 19 | Klingon intelligence is comparable to human intelligence. It may not seem so at a casual glance, but this is due to cultural differences; the Klingons are a warrior culture, and warriors are honored above all others. This was not always the case; a few centuries ago, many professions were considered honorable (including intellectual professions such as scientists, teachers, and attorneys), but over time the role of the warrior has come to be seen as *so* honorable that other professions are close to *dis*-honorable.
Those other professions are still there; one need only look at Klingon technology to see that they know what they are doing. | 19 |
[Star Trek] Is Data the only immortal being in Star Fleet? | I'm assuming that B4 would eventually have provided a way for Data to be revived after the events in Nemesis.
If Data remained in Star Fleet (and didn't go to Cambridge), is it inevitable that sooner or later he would end up running the entire organisation?
If not, what do you think Data would be doing 100 years after the end of TNG? What about 1000 years?
Edit for clarity: I'm curious where Data would end up after huge periods of time. He struggles fitting in with humanity at the moment, but he does make progress, so its fairly logical to assume he would eventually out-grow us. His former friends would inevitably die off, leaving him a bit of a loner. If he did rise to the top of Star Fleet (and eventually he would, unless Star Fleet introduced a discriminating 'no androids' rule) he would pretty much stay there, as he wouldn't die off. Would he be a benevolent dictator, or would we have an 'i, robot' sort of situation?
Alternatively, would he head off and explore space by himself? Would he become a hermit? After several thousand years of putting up with petty humans, would he eventually start to hate humanity? Would he create his own race of androids? | 36 | You are coming at this backwards.
Data's endgame isn't success in Starfleet.
Most sentients have a childhood and dreams. Some dream of space, and then wind up joining Starfleet. Picard is an example of this. The point is, they joined Starfleet to demonstrate the humanity they already possessed, to make the galaxy a better place generally if only by following their dreams. But there is a distinction between Man and Uniform, they serve in Starfleet but they remain human.
Data joined Starfleet to develop and discover his humanity. For him the rules and structure of Starfleet kept him safe from gross misconduct in the real world while he developed. This is because he didn't have a childhood, or dreams. But in Starfleet he actively seeks to learn from and emulate the behaviour of those who possess qualities he associates with the best of humanity. The point is, he choose Starfleet so that he could be close to the best examples of humanity he had discovered. For much of his career/life there was no distinction between Man and Uniform for him as there was no Man. At points in time Data even considered forgoing any off duty time as he was capable of serving continuously.
TLDR: His goal isn't to be the best Starfleet officer and run the show. His goal is to become human. If Data remains in Starfleet forever than he will likely have failed. | 41 |
Can a turtle feel something touch its shell? | [This turtle](http://i.imgur.com/x3aDjLs.gifv) from /r/aww seems to be enjoying that brush, but my understanding was that there was no living tissue in that shell. When I brush my hair, I don't feel the comb in my hair because its dead, I feel the hair pulling on its roots which are alive. When I touch the tip of my fingernail, I only feel the vibration on the tip of my finger. If I'm gentle enough, I can't feel that vibration at all. It seems to me that if a turtle shell is at all like a fingernail as I was lead to believe it, that brush should be well under the force threshold for creating sense-able vibrations.
Could someone explain to me how that turtle enjoys that brush so much?
Edit: [Adequately answered](http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/36jmik/can_a_turtle_feel_something_touch_its_shell/crezccn) by /u/SabreToothMooseLion6 | 388 | A turtles shell is part of its bone structure and is used for many metabolic processes (like metabolic depression during anoxic conditions under water), so yes they can. It is quite sensitive because of the nerves that are required for those processes. | 87 |
ELI5: How were CDs and DVDs professionally made? What computers, software, and printers are used? | 24 | They use a clean room and production line.
Sound typically came from digital audio tape (in the '90s) and was then transferred on a glass disc called a master, using lasers. This master was then plated with metal to create a stamper. This entire process was relatively slow and took place in a clean room.
The stamper was used to mould large amounts of cds (which are made out of plastic) on a production line. This is a quick process that only takes a few seconds per cd. Afterwards reflective material was dampened on the disc and the disc was coated with lacquer for protection.
It is a different process compared to burning cd-recordables, as recordable discs have a layer with organic dye that can be burned using a laser. This also gives cdrs their distinctive color. | 29 |
|
Why is the fossil record poor for the Mesozoic in the Midwestern part of the USA? | 89 | If by Midwest you mean Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, etc, they simply didn't have much deposition during most of the Mesozoic. Everything was eroding away from the landforms of the area during this time. No sedimentary rocks = paltry fossil record. A little further West, excellent fossils from this period are found in the deposits from an inland sea during the Jurassic and the enormous Western Inland Sea in the Cretaceous as well as their associated lowlands. | 32 |
|
ELI5: we already know how photosynthesis is done ; so why cant we creat “artificial plants” that take CO2 and gives O2 and energy in exchange? | 14,664 | Artificial photosynthesis actually is a deeply studied field of research, where you use sunlight to drive a reaction that releases oxygen from various solutions. The problem is, the components needed in the reaction are inefficient, degrade/deplete quickly, or are expensive to make/maintain. | 8,520 |
|
ELI5: How does eBay prevent people from bidding up their own items with a different account? | I mean I could imagine that a friend and I both have eBay accounts. Hypothetically, I'll put an item up for bid with no reserve. If it doesn't get to the price point I want to sell it at, I'll have my friend bid it up to that point, or if it still doesn't get there, then he'll buy it and just give it back to me.
I can imagine a network of people doing this. Two people was just an example, and I could see that if one person sells something then relists the exact same thing a week later they'd know something is up. Or if two people kept relisting the same item back and forth they'd suspect something. But are there networks of like 10+ people who could get past eBay's people? | 185 | They don't care, because they take a cut of the transaction. If he buys something for £20 off you, you only get £19 and £1 goes to eBay.
Knock yourself out and do it as often as you want, you will run out of money before they get bored. | 154 |
CMV: The Reaction to the "Native Leader" vs. MAGA Catholic Kids Event Is Wrong, Bolsters "Fake News" Claim | Edit: a word here and there.
​
TL;DR; The original video was misleading due to framing and omission of context. The reaction was extreme and risks hurting children. Given the additional context that contradicts the original narrative, many individuals chose to double-down on their original claims and demands. The entire situation actually supports the #MAGA "Fake News" narrative that otherwise, is entirely false. This gives them concrete evidence to back up that claim in the future.
First off: I'm just *some guy* following the story whose tired of following it. I've got nothing to do with it. I'm not a Native American. I'm not a Black Hebrew Israelite. I'm not a Catholic. I'm an atheist. I'm registered independent, and I voted for Clinton. I can't stand the MAGA agenda. I think Trump has done irreparable damage both to America as a world superpower and to America's social fabric. I'd throw a party if impeachment proceedings started today. But facts are facts, wrong is wrong, and harming a child and a child's future because they represent something that makes you angry is **wrong.**
For the sake of completeness:
The original 3: 44-minute clip that started the outrage ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?time\_continue=109&v=sIG5ZB0fw1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=109&v=sIG5ZB0fw1k)).
The extended 1:46:18 clip showing everything that transpired with better context ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQyBHTTqb38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQyBHTTqb38)).
The immediate claims about the first video were that the Catholic MAGA hat-wearing student group were mocking Nathan Phillips, the Native American protest leader, and his group. Evidence of this put forth as the look on the children's faces, and that they were chanting "build the wall." None of the videos have actually captured evidence of the chant. It doesn't mean it didn't happen, but there is no video evidence for it. When Phillips showed up some of the students chanted with them. Some made "tomahawk" gestures. That's probably insensitive. But it does not make them racist, or the face of the patriarchy.
The full video shows that the entire event began with a group of Black Hebrew Israelite street preachers being basically horrible to everyone that had the misfortune to be within earshot. This includes individuals from the Native American protest group. It includes children from the Catholic group. They called the students crackers, peckerwoods, "dusty-ass animals" and "future school shooters." They call black individuals "Uncle Toms" and "Uncle Coon" and "Uncle Tomahawks."
Some media outlets have chosen to characterize this group as a group of "elderly black men" which *certainly* hides their actions and intentions. And if they're elderly, I guess at 36 I am elderly too.
In the face of the taunting from the BHI group, some of the students can be heard *defending* students that represent minorities including the black student, and a student called a faggot by the BHI group.
Nathan Phillips has stated that he saw a look of mob mentality in the faces of the young Catholics, and that he put himself between predator (the boys) and their prey (the Black Hebrew Israelites). Phillips very well might have de-escalated a potentially violent situation but his assumptions about who was actually making the situation tense were clearly wrong.
As one of the Black Hebrew Israelites points out "we're surrounded and they won't do a damn thing." That's correct. The students stood around chanting school chants and acting like silly kids. "They didn't do a damn thing," in spite of being mad-dogged by these angry, offensive street preachers.
The three-minute clip showing a young man in a MAGA hat with a cheeky grin being in Phillip's face was, as Bari Weiss stated in a conversation with Joe Rogan ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T77uFdw9HJA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T77uFdw9HJA)) a Rorschach test, in which all of America saw what they wanted to see.
Given the additional context, we can see that Phillips put himself directly in front of that student. The student did not choose to be there.
When I saw the three-minute clip I was outraged like many others. I saw a white MAGA-hated kid nose-to-nose with an old Native American man and I let all my assumptions guide me. But given the full context, its obvious those assumptions, in this situation, were incorrect. Some media outlets have tried to correct the narrative. Others have not.
Others have continued to call these students "the face of white patriarchy." Essentially, these students
Since this started, numerous individuals, both famous and anonymous, have demanded the children be doxed. They've demanded they be expelled. They've demanded that this situation prevent them from ever attending a college.
Essentially, these children represent systemic oppression and for that, they need to pay.
The students have been both successfully and unsuccessfully doxed. The students' families have received death threats. Another child that was misidentified and was not at the event was doxed and received similar threats.
This is wrong.
I won't argue that Covington Catholic, and the Catholic Church, in general, doesn't have a great track record on treating minorities, woman, and the LGBTQ community as equals, and with respect. But that's an awful lot of weight to put on the shoulders of these children.
And I keep repeating the word *children* because I don't want you to forget: *we're talking about children*. In spite of the fac that the video record (the only one that really matters IMO), doesn't show them behaving particularly badly, there have been calls to ruin their futures.
*Why would you want to prevent these students from getting a college education?* That's the place where they are most likely to learn a different, more tolerant, worldview.
Finally, this event provides concrete evidence of actual Fake News. Every time Donald Trump, /r/t_d, and other MAGA folks call a story that calls our Trump's lying and unethical behavior, they can fall back on the *Curious Case of the Covington Catholics Kids as evidence. In fact, he already has (*[*https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1087689415814795264?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1087689415814795264&ref\_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2019%2F01%2F22%2Fpolitics%2Fdonald-trump-covington-students%2Findex.html*](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1087689415814795264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1087689415814795264&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2019%2F01%2F22%2Fpolitics%2Fdonald-trump-covington-students%2Findex.html)*).*
In summary, the full video shows a group of grown men mistreating pretty much everyone around them. The children could have behaved better but they could have behaved *far worse*, and there's little evidence of them being racist or racially-insensitive, and *zero* evidence that they were about to become violent. Nathan Phillips was trying to do the right thing within the context he perceived, but his perception of what was happening seems inaccurate. The entire event was a non-event except for the tight framing of the original three-minute clip and what that clip represented to those that saw and reacted emotionally to it. | 43 | So which parts of the commentary regarding the original video were wrong? The students yelled at and mocked the Native American man, including making racially insensitive gestures. You continuously refer to this as "fake news", but nothing about it was "fake" except that it didn't properly show context of... an entirely separate group of shitheads riling up the students? It's not like the Native American man did anything that justified hatred being thrown his way, or that anything in the context made the actions taken against him any less offensive. There's not really a "self-defense" argument for bigotry, and even if there were it wouldn't apply since the Native American man wasn't doing anything wrong. | 22 |
[Who Framed Roger Rabbit] What about non-toony toons? | In the movie, they make a big deal about how the entire point of a toon's existence is to make people laugh. The thing is, that's not as true now as it was during the Golden Age of Animation, as there are just as many dramatic cartoons nowadays as there are comedic cartoons. Hell, that was even true back when the film takes place, with many Disney films like *Snow White*, *Pinocchio*, and *Bambi* having a lot of drama in them.
They also point out that it's impossible to (permanently) kill a toon with anything other than dip. It makes sense, knowing how characters in the classic cartoons can survive practically anything that's thrown at them. But a lot of animation nowadays has more realistic physics, even the comedic ones like *The Simpsons*, so it's easier for a character to die in one of those than it is in, say, *Looney Tunes*. | 28 | >In the movie, they make a big deal about how the entire point of a toon's existence is to make people laugh. The thing is, that's not as true now as it was during the Golden Age of Animation, as there are just as many dramatic cartoons nowadays as there are comedic cartoons. Hell, that was even true back when the film takes place, with many Disney films like Snow White, Pinocchio, and Bambi having a lot of drama in them.
They are probably there. Funny you should mention Pinocchio and Bambi because they are on screen at the end looking at the death of Judge Doom.
>But a lot of animation nowadays has more realistic physics, even the comedic ones like The Simpsons, so it's easier for a character to die in one of those than it is in, say, Looney Tunes.
That doesn't mean anything. Heck, even in the Simpsons, Homer has taken enough abuse falling off Springfield Gorge to kill him and he's been fine. The toons don't die unless the plot or the story says they die and even then it's acting. They simply don't die. | 26 |
CMV: I won't date this amazing girl for shallow reasons, even though I wanted to. CMV? | So, I met this girl on Tinder. I barely remember swiping right, but I got matched with her. We've been chatting for a few weeks and I can honestly say she makes me laugh out loud almost every time we chat. She's smart and funny and we share a lot of similar interests.
A couple of days ago, we met at Dunkin' for an espresso and we had a really good time (the location was convenient, don't sue us). The thing is, I can't find her attractive. I know it's shallow, but she's not my type and I would almost feel embarassed to be seen with her in public.
I know we can still be good friends, but I can't shake the feeling that we *could* be a great couple, if her looks were different.
I know I'm being shallow, so please CMV?
_____
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than just downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 25 | Finding someone unattractive is not a shallow reason to avoid dating them. If you date someone, you presumably want a full relationship with them - possibly leading to marriage. That full relationship ideally includes more than just friendship - it includes love and sex. And that requires sexual compatibility, which requires you to find her attractive. If you don't, you'll have a defective relationship where you are not satisfied and want someone else, and you'll hurt her one way or another.
So no, that's not shallow at all. | 69 |
Why does my Stainless Steel flask say "Alcohol based liquids should not be stored longer than 12 hours"? | I'm just curious what reaction occurs and how bad it is to leave the liquid in long term.
It also says "Do not store acidic or alkaline-based juices or citrus fluid". Anyone know the reason for that?
Edit 1:
Just wanted to thank this r/askscience community. I'm quite happy about the responses I've received. | 153 | If it is indeed stainless steel, the ability to form a passive layer has been shown to be strongly influenced by the presence of hydroxylic organic solvents (ie it's not as 'stainless' when you put ethanol in it) [1]. Since stainless steel contains both iron and chromium, and chromium is particularly adept at ripping your insides apart [2], leeching of such metals into your drink is probably not a great idea. Liquors which are acidic due to the presence of citrus would accelerate these processes.
[1] P.L. de Anna, Corrosion Science 25 (1985) 43
[2] S.J. Stohs et al, Journal of Environmental Toxicology, Pathology and Oncology 20 (2001) 77
| 136 |
[Star Wars] How well could a Jedi do in a lightsaber duel in the presence of a Ysalamiri? | Are Jedi skilled enough to use a lightsaber and anticipate their opponent's moves without using the Force? Or would they become incompetent in combat due to no training in conventional swordfighting without the Force? | 21 | They still are skilled, they just lose the precognition that they have. So rather than a preternaturally fast (due to predictions) fighter, they're slowed down to speeds more in line with regular but still well-trained folk. | 27 |
Eli5: how do living things move at a molecular level? | Sorry if its too complicated to ELI5
Edit: I'm asking, how can I control the atoms of the muscles in say, my finger? What do my brainwaves do to the atoms? | 86 | At the molecular level, molecules move around by brownian motion. Brownian motion is essentially the random motion of molecules just bumping into each other. Every time a molecule bumps into another energy is exchanged. An easy way to think of it is to imagine tennis balls being flung around in a hurricane. When the balls bounce into each other they change direction.
The trouble is, is that this motion is completely random. Nature has found a few clever ways to turn this random motion into directional, generally by using "molecular ratchets". One example is kinesin motor protein. This protein looks like a pair of legs, and walks along long rope-like structures called microtubules. The neat thing about kinesin is that the front foot is always locked in place, and the back foot is allowed to freely move. The random brownian motion pushes this foot in every direction, until it finds a foothold in front of the other leg. The new front foot then locks in place, and the back foot gets released, so it can take another step. This is one way that random atomic movements get turned into directional molecular movements. | 25 |
ELI5: What is a Markov chain? | I keep hearing about them and after looking it up I'm not much closer to figuring it out. | 39 | A markov chain is simply a "path" of various destinations, where each direction you take has a certain probability of happening.
For example, lets say every time you encounter a crossroads, you always take a random turn. This means that you have A->B(0.5)/C(0.5) chain. Thats a very simple markov chain.
An example of a slightly more complex chain would be:
1. Start in A
2. 30% chance to stay in A, 50% chance to go to B, 20% chance to go to C
3. B has 80% chance to stay in B, 10% chance to return to A, 10% chance to go to C
4. C has 0% chance to stay in C, 50% chance to go to A, 50% chance to go to B.
That is a markov chain. If you are in the chain, all you care about is your current position - if you are currently in C, it doesnt matter what probabilities A has, all that matters is what probabilities C has. | 40 |
How do rising interest rates combat inflation? | Printing a bunch of new money the past couple of years is what caused this huge increase in inflation, right? How exactly does raising interest rates combat all this new printing of money? | 90 | There are at least a couple of different ways to think about this. One way is to realize that raising the federal funds target is synonymous with taking money out of the economy. In order to push the rate up, the fed sells bonds and takes that money effectively out of circulation, lowering the money supply.
Another way to think about it is to realize that higher interest rates disincentivize economic activity. Saving becomes more attractive relative to consumption. Borrowing becomes more expensive, raising the cost of investment and consumption of durables. This lowers aggregate demand and puts downward pressure on inflation. | 143 |
ELI5: Am I keeping my eyes open while I'm awake or am I keeping them closed while I'm sleeping? | 477 | Both!
Most movements in the body are done by two muscles (for example, the biceps flexes/bends your elbow and the triceps straightens/extends it).
There is a muscle in the eyelid which closes the eye, and another which keeps it open. When you sleep, your brain forces the muscle that closes your eye to close it - this also happens involuntarily when you blink. You can also choose to activate a voluntary part of this muscle, like when you think about blinking or wink.
When you open your eye an opposing muscle is active, which you have less control over (when you widen your eyes, as opposed to opening them, a different muscle is activated). This is done an unconscious part of your brain (the basal ganglia).
Summary: three muscles move the eyelid - two that open it and one that closes it. You can consciously or unconsciously control the closing muscle, and your eye is kept open automatically when you're awake by your brainstem, which you can modify by activating another muscle to widen the eyelids.
Edited for "brain" (basal ganglia) instead of brainstem. | 233 |
|
The stock market crash of the 1930s. | Bonus points for explaining the reasoning of the implementation of the federal Reserve as I've been told that it was put in place to prevent the stock market from crashing again. | 38 | Well, everyone believed that they could make huge amounts of money from the stock market, so they borrowed thousands of dollars from banks, using this money to invest in the stock market. However, they had to be able to make enough from the stock market to pay off the interest on their debt. For one reason or another, the value of stocks began to drop, and since people had borrowed so much from the banks to invest in the stock market that they tried to sell all of their stocks-they didn't want to end up losing money. However, since everyone wanted to sell their stock, and no one wanted to buy, the price of the stocks continually went down, as people tried to undercut each others' prices, hoping someone would buy their stocks.
Eventually, people couldn't pay their debts, so those with money in banks panicked as well and ran to the banks to withdrawal their money from the bank. However the banks did not anticipate this, and did not have enough money on hand to give everyone all the money in their bank accounts. Many banks were forced to close, and those with money in those banks lost everything they had.
EDIT: The Federal Reserve was implemented to prevent bank panics as stated above. Basically, if a bank doesn't have enough money on hand for a withdrawal they take a loan from the government, and are able to give people their money back, even if the bank is forced to close. | 17 |
[The Boys] could Homelander have stopped the plane from crashing by using super strength to move whatever stick clearly controls the whole plane? | 48 | Most planes these days are fly-by-wire.
Which means that the "stick" (or yoke) that the pilot moves just feeds into a computer, and it's the computer that actually physically moves the flight control surfaces on the plane.
So it's like the yoke is no different than the thumbstick on your xbox controller. Without the xbox on and working, your thumbstick isn't going to do shit.
Homelander destroyed the dash in the cockpit (which houses some of the computer systems) with his laser eyes, but many of the computer systems are actually below the floor beneath the pilot's feet, and many more are in a server rack type structure behind the pilot.
Nevertheless, Homelander probably destroyed enough to make the fly-by-wire system inoperable. | 52 |
|
[Spongebob Squarepants] How is the Chum Bucket so technologically advanced even though Plankton isnt making any money? | The Chum Bucket is a notoriously crappy restaraunt across the street from one of the most popular restaraunts in Bikini Bottom. So how can Plankton afford such an advanced interior while making little to no profit? It's a miracle the place hasn't been closed down. | 15 | After the episode with the floating garbage patch and after noticing that buildings are old mufflers and whatnot i like to think that plankton is a scav repurposing the trash that sinks to the ocean floor. | 27 |
Regarding Guy Debord | What would you recommend i read before reading Society of the spectacle by Guy Debord? Are there any specific Marx texts i should read first?
Also, which of Marxs texts are the most important to have read before getting in to critical theory and the Frankfurt School authors? | 19 | Guy Debord was a humanist marxist in the vein of the young Lukacs- or what can be called Hegelian Marxism- and thus the most important text of Marx regarding "society of the spectacle" is the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Debord references not only Marx but also Lukacs's "history and class consciousness" and Hegel and Feuerbach heavily in his works. | 16 |
Are the terms "nuclear" and "thermonuclear" considered interchangeable when talking about things like weapons or energy generating plants or the like? | If not, what are the differences? | 7,294 | No, they're not interchangeable.
"Thermonuclear" refers to nuclear reactions occurring in an environment where the temperature is very high (think millions of Kelvin, at least). The term is particularly meaningful for certain kinds of reactions where both nuclei in the initial state are charged (as opposed to the case where you have at least one neutron in the initial state), because positively-charged nuclei repel each other.
Because of that Coulomb repulsion, two charged nuclei need a fairly high relative kinetic energy in order to have any chance of reacting with each other. This can be done either by accelerating particles to these energies using an accelerator/making use of particles which are produced at high enough energies, *or* by creating extremely high temperatures such that the kinetic energies of the particles in their random thermal motion is high enough. The latter is what's referred to as "thermonuclear".
So this term would apply to the reactions that happen in stars and other astrophysical processes, in fusion reactors, and to nuclear weapons which make use of light charged particle fusion reactions. In all of these cases, the temperatures are very high compared to what humans normally experience, corresponding to average kinetic energies at least on the order of around 1 keV, which allows some of the charged nuclei in the plasma to react with each other. (Even if they don't have enough energy to overcome the Coulomb barrier classically, they can still tunnel through, and the tunneling rate increases strongly with temperature.)
So when you're using a particle accelerator or radioactive source to initiate nuclear reactions, you wouldn't call that "thermonuclear". Or for neutron-induced reactions like the ones occurring in a fission reactor, would not be called "thermonuclear". But the high-temperature plasmas in stars and supernovae, in fusion reactors, and in modern nuclear weapon designs are all referred to as "thermonuclear". | 4,120 |
What do people here mean with "laws of physics start breaking down"? | Are they talking about the laws of physics as we know them start being incorrect and faulty or is it physics itself becoming unpredictable and weird like in a blackhole? | 15 | > Are they talking about the laws of physics as we know them start being incorrect and faulty
Yes.
> or is it physics itself becoming unpredictable and weird like in a blackhole?
If we don't have laws that can predict what happens then we don't have predictions. You could call that weird, too. | 28 |
What is behind the rise in suicides by 1/3 in the United States since the 1990s? | I watched the Wall Street Journal's video on this topic about how Angus Deaton and Anne Case did a study on the rise of suicides in the US since the 1990s. "Deaths of despair."
What are your estimates on the causes behind this trend as social scientists? | 82 | Emile Durkheim would argue that societies that lack cultural rituals that tie people together on a regular basis will see have an increased number of suicides. His book, On Suicide, is a statistical and theoretical foray into the suicide rates across the globe and gives us a keen insight into why suicide rates different from culture to culture and epoch to epoch. | 27 |
Eli5: How do beats per minute or the tempo of music affect your workout. | I have noticed that there are some pop songs that have a really fast beat and my heart rate increases first because of the music and when I am walking or working out to it I suddenly feel more energetic and I can do higher intensity workouts easily. | 71 | It’s a mental thing.
Scientists aren’t even sure the exact reason we Like music, but we know it definitely impacts us, from starting to tap your foot to the beat to feeling emotional from the song.
So a fast beat high energy song can definitely give you a sort of mental boost as your working out, as your brain wants to match the pace of the song. | 39 |
[predator] what would be too dangerous for even predators to even consider hunting? | 237 | I'd say something like The Flood from Halo universe. The single one is weak and not worthy to hunt, the infestation is too much to handle for a single hunter. Only chance is complete obliteration from orbit | 257 |
|
[Elder Scrolls] Why do we not see more machines being powered by magic? | Why would they need horses when they could create combustible engines and shit with magic? I'm not talking about weapons, just transport and industry. Mills, factories, and farming would be so much easier if they used magic. | 18 | Well, there are Dwemer automata (they aren't sentient or sapient, but they are powered by Magicka). Then there are the Orrerys, the Battlespires, the Sunbirds... Vehk-ships. Magical forges, scrying arrays, traps. Morrowind had an extensive teleport system which could be used by those who paid for it, there are the Falmeri wayshrines...
There's plenty of it. The problem stems from the less magical nature of Men. We see lots of more esoteric and automated uses for Magic by the Mer, but we've only really seen one Merish province, and what we saw was really just the frontier. | 27 |
ELI5: Why hasn't a male contraception pill been put on the market yet? | I would gladly and diligently take it. | 34 | Women's bodies, specifically the parts that are for making babies, are more strongly regulated by hormones than men. Men produce sperm constantly, while women only produce/release eggs at a specific time. That timing is controlled by a system of hormones.
Birth control pills hijack that system using synthetic hormones, usually preventing the release of the eggs, but that system is practically non-existent in men. That makes it a lot harder to make a male contraceptive pill. | 29 |
[1984] What led to the creation of The party and big brother? Also what is the point of divergence from our timeline? | 410 | If we look at how fascism got started in the real world, England and/or America probably got screwed over in world war 2, leading to "economic anxiety" which was taken advantage of by a dictator, who proceeded to conquer the Anglosphere to form Oceania. Your guess as to how Eurasia or Eastasia was formed, if they even exist at all rather than the Party of Oceania just setting their own troops against each other, both under the belief that the other is the enemy. | 263 |
|
[MCU]Are Pym Particles the cure for aging? | In Endgame, while testing the time travel device, Scott is accidentally made into a kid and then a baby. Tony says that without his guidance device, time moves through you instead of you moving through time. Doesn't this mean that this technology can be used to de-age people, potentially repeatedly? | 19 | I’d say yes, theoretically BUT Tony also said if you mess with time it will mess right back.
I always felt this statement fit the general physics theory that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Basically there’s always a price or equalizing reaction to balance out the scales. | 34 |
CMV: Halloween should not be moved to Saturday | There's a petition going around saying Halloween would be better suited for the last Saturday of October because it would be safer and easier for kids to go trick or treating.
Here are my 2 reasons why I don't agree with this.
1 Halloween is on 31st specifically for a reason. It's based on the Celtic holiday Samhain. Similar to the day of the dead, it's believed that this is when the the barrier between the dead and the living is the thinnest and spirits come back to visit. It's also the eve of all saints day if you're Catholic. These Holidays have been celebrated on this day for hundreds of years. For people to want to suddenly change that so it'd be easier for them and their kids to get free candy is disrespectful to people of that culture.
Should we change other holidays with cultural significance just to suit people's work week? I don't think so. My main argument here is that people are not respecting the culture behind Halloween and are trying to bastardize it so it's only about candy and partying. I've seen a lot of people agree with the petition for that reason alone. They don't have kids they just want to get sloshed and not have to go to work hungover.
2. Saturday wouldn't be any safer. DUI statistics say accidents increase on weekends and holidays. Having more drunk drivers on the roads while children are trick or treating does not seem like it would be safer for them and wouldn't be any safer for other drivers on the road.
I don't have kids, I just really love Halloween so I admit this really wouldn't affect me either way. I just don't buy the excuse that this is for the kids. From what I've read of people's comments, it's just inconvenient for parents to have to take off work early take their kids out late and then wake up exhausted the next day and have to go to work. There are always Halloween events around town the Saturday before Halloween like trunk or treats, or costume party's and contests that don't go on late into the night. Why not just go to something like that rather than try to make 300 million people adjust their life to make yours more "convenient". | 45 | The US celebrates Easter on a different day than many other countries (on some years)... which you'd think would be disrespectful to Christians, the largest religious group in the US, but that is perfectly fine.
Samhain dates back to before the use of the modern Gregorian calendar anyway, so the specific date isn't a key element of culture of the celebration or else we'd be continuing to celebrate it based on the Coligny calendar. | 25 |
Role of LinkedIn in academia | Is it important to have a LinkedIn when you’re working in academia? If you’re not on LinkedIn, what are your reasons? | 42 | LinkedIn is primarily useful when job hunting, both as a platform for finding jobs and just general information gathering about different people's career paths.
I also find it very useful as a professional contact list that's always up to date. Particularly outside of academia where it's common for people to change jobs every few years and lose access to whatever professional email address they had when you were introduced. | 44 |
Eli5: what is EBITDA and why is it so important to executives? | 56 | Ebitda is effectively a term used to demonstrate the earning ability of a company
It stands for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. So what does that mean? Those 4 expenses listed are things that are going to happen regardless of the business function of the company, they have nothing to do with how the company is run (for example, everybody has to pay taxes, all physical assets will depreciate over time, etc). As such, if you want to make an apples to apples comparison across companies, you can strip those out and see how much the company is actually earning, regardless of the so called costs of doing business that have nothing to do with the actual running of the company
Alternatively, it’s just a fancy accounting term to make companies look better than their actual bottom line | 64 |
|
Why is it when I set my thermostat to 65°-70° during the winter it feels warm? Yet, when i turn my central air onto 65°-70° during the summer it feels very cold? | I'm really hoping it's not an embarrassingly obvious answer. I just can't figure it out at this moment. | 129 | Acclamation. You get used to a certain temperature range. In winter, you're body is used to colder temperatures so 65-70 is an increase in what your body has become acclimated to, where as in the summer, your body has become acclimated to temperatures higher, so this is now a decrease in temperature, thus it feels "cold". Same reason why a person from florida will come to maryland and have to wear a jacket when locals are wearing a short sleeves. | 55 |
Beta-blockers help dilate the blood vessels, but yet EP and NE cause vasodilation when they attach to beta-2-adrenergic receptors. Does that mean there are little to no Beta-2 receptors in the peripheral vessels, or does it mean less catecholamines bind to alpha 1 and alpha 2 receptors? | I am posting here because I do want an explanation, but I'd like it said in terms any average student would understand, which I don't think ELI5 would be able to provide this time around.
Edit: Thanks to all who have answered my question so far. I'm a nursing student taking Med-Surg (in my second semester out of four to take my NCLEX), which means for now a lot of the material is introductory, but so far I am understanding the material ~~well~~ decently. | 1,268 | I don't have time to provide a detailed answer at the moment, but the effect of Beta-andrenergic receptor antagonists is not to dilate blood vessels. In incredibly simplistic terms, alpha receptors are excitatory except in the GI, and beta receptors are inhibitory except in the heart.
So, consider this: epinephrine binds to a B-receptor in a peripheral vessel. Since it's *inhibitory* to the smooth muscle in the vessel wall, that vessel will dilate. If epinephrine binds to a B-receptor in the heart, it will have an *excitatory* effect. Meaning it will have a positive chronotropic (increased heart rate) and positive inotropic (increased cardiac contractility) effect on the heart.
Nonselective B blockers, such as propanolol, block these receptors. Which means that the effect on the heart will be decreased heart rate and decreased contractility, and a mild vasoconstrictive effect on blood vessels.
But thats in pretty simplistic terms. Hope this helped! | 83 |
ELI5 Why most languages use special names for the numbers 11 to 19? | For example, some languages follow the same rule regardless if its in 10s or 20s:
Japanese | Chinese |
Juu-ni | Shi er | twelve
Ni-juu-ni | Er shi er | twenty two
But other languages such as:
English | French | Romanian | Icelandic | German | Philipino |
Twelve | douze | doisprezece (two towards ten wtf) | tólf | zwölf | labindalawa
Twenty two | vingt-deux | Douăzeci și doi (two tens and two) | tuttugu og tveir | zweiundzwanzig (two and twenty) | dalawampu't dalawa
Initially I thought it was an european thing but not even koreans do it like japanese or chinese people, so why is that? | 37 | This is a holdover from older languages.
In English only 10, 11 and 12 have special names 13-19 all have the suffix teen or ten. We say thirteen three-ten, fourteen four-ten, etc
While French has special names for 10-16 but those names are derivative forms of 1-6. (onze douze treize sounds like un deuz trois) but when you get to 17 it's pronounced dix-sept ten-seven
This is common in Germanic languages and languages that have basis in Germanic languages like English.
Likely this comes from a time before writing language and numbers was common place and people were typically mathematically illiterate. The lower numbers 1-12 were frequently used in every day life so they gained special names.
The counting system that includes special words for 11 and 12 is found in Old English which dates from 5th century to 11th century. At this time the learned class spoke Church Latin and counted in Roman Numerals which didn't have unique symbols for 11 and 12 (X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV) or words ūndecim (one ten) duodēcim (two ten)
Some argue that having special names for up to 12 is a result of base 12 numbering, possibly because of the wide spread use of 12 hour time keeping or clocks which dates back as far as the Egyptians. But clocks didn't become common place in Europe until the 14th century, and Arabic numerals about the 12th century. | 48 |
ELI5: Why are most third world countries in warmer areas of the world? | Geographically, a majority of sophisticated first world countries tend to be in colder (maybe milder is a better word) areas of the world. Why is this? | 17 | There was a scientific trend in the past called Material Determinism that attempted to explain that the tropical regions were not as developed for reasons such as being warmer and thus making people lazy. This theory has been discredited a long time ago. There is no causation, even if there is some correlation. | 13 |
ELI5: Why do taxes get taken out of your paycheck, but then you get taxed again when you go to buy food at Burger King? | 68 | There are a lot of different laws written that include a lot of different taxes - where they are applied, and what those funds go towards. So, you might pay 10 cents a gallon in tax on gasoline to fund highway repair, and 6% on soda towards the general state government, and some amount of taxes based on your income to the federal government. | 42 |
|
ELI5: Do they first make the music in Disney movies or the drawings? It all blends so perfectly, I wonder how they do it | 39 | The music is composed separately though presumably the studio will provide guidance as to the rough timings they're planning. The recordings are often done with the musicians having a view of the final cut as they perform. | 16 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.