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ELI5: How is Google Fiber able to get such high speeds and why is this not standard practice? | 185 | American infrastructure is hopelessly outdated, and the companies that are in charge of maintaining it have no incentive to upgrade since there is no other options fpr consumers. In other countries, the government is in charge of the communications infrastructure, so things get upgraded continuously. | 147 |
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ELI5: If the cost of hospital care is so high, why do doctors and nurses work crazy long shifts, which directly impacts the quality of care they provide? Why don't hospitals just hire more doctors and nurses? | 163 | Another point that hasnt been mentioned is that it's much cheaper for a company to pay an experienced RN or doctor double time than it is to hire another equally experienced employee.
You might double their pay for an extra 40 hours that week but you only pay for their healthcare, retirement, continuing education, etc benefits once.
Also for some places keeping the same person on shift can actually reduce errors that would occour from information loss during shift change. | 92 |
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CMV: Entertainment is never "objectively good" or "objectively bad". For example, Queen's music is not objectively better than Nicki Minaj's. | Hi folks!
A bunch of people have pointed out to me that there's a semantic ambiguity in this post; specifically in the words "good", "bad", "better" and "worse". For the record, I intended "good" to mean "either subjectively entertaining to me, or subjectively entertaining to a large number of other people", which is what the word would usually (but not necessarily) mean in this context.
Somebody else has pointed out that, given these definitions, my core argument is a tautology: I'm saying 'it's impossible for works to be "objectively good", so long as "good" means "subjectively entertaining"'.
I still stand by my point, but it might not be a very interesting debate topic any more. Sorry about that!
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Most of what we call "art" is actually "entertainment". Paintings and sculptures generally exist to give people something beautiful to look at, or else to stoke their emotions, imagination and thought. They serve no higher purpose. The same goes for music, film, animated media, comics, video games, and so on.
The idea that there's some objective distinction between "good art" and "bad art" is quasi-religious, with no basis in fact. There is no golden book in the sky which says "paintings which have accurate perspective are better than paintings which have no perspective", and if there were, I expect Picasso's ghost would have something to say about it.
Instead, the quality of entertainment is subjective. "Good art" is art which you, personally, like; "bad art" is art which you don't like. The works which are "good" or "bad" will vary from person to person, and there is no way to objectively grade one work as "better" than another (except, perhaps, by popularity).
I'll address some of the main qualities which are thought to objectively distinguish "good art" from "bad art":
* **Technical skill**. Works which are better at accurately representing the artist's vision, or better at skillfully evoking the audience's emotions, are likely to be *subjectively* better than more amateurish works, for obvious reasons. However, raw skill doesn't, by itself, make an artist good; they must also be sensitive to context. John Darnielle is the most skilled lyricist I can think of (to the point that I find his works excellent, despite the fact that I don't find them very musically interesting), but his songs are so high-minded and obscure that most people find that puzzling them out isn't worth the effort. The finest cellist in the world would not be a good artist if he only played music that people dislike, no matter how complicated and impressive that music might be.
* **Success at achieving the artist's goals**. Works which match the artist's intent generally make for better entertainment than works which fail to do so. However, there are some well-known exceptions. *The Room* was intended to be a serious drama; Tommy Wiseau entirely failed to achieve that; and yet it's still widely considered to be damn good entertainment, in its own surreal and bizarre way.
* **Originality**. Works which are created with originality are more likely to discover new ways to please their audience. When something is new, it's more memorable and it invokes a stronger emotional response. Therefore, original works are likely to be more entertaining than unoriginal works. However, this doesn't mean that "good art" must be original. Taylor Swift isn't much of a musical innovator, but since her music is written for a musically-naive audience of teenage girls, that doesn't actually matter; very many people find her music beautiful and thrilling, despite its unoriginality.
* **Intelligence**. I don't think I should need to elaborate on why "works created for a more intelligent audience are better" is an ugly and objectionable idea.
I don't believe that this is just quibbling. If more people acknowledged that it's not possible to objectively class entertainment as "good" or "bad", the art and entertainment world - on the internet, in particular - would be a much more pleasant place. In online communities, I constantly see people deciding that because they don't like a work, people who do like it must be *wrong*, and there must be something objectively bad in the work which *proves* that nobody *should* like it. This attitude generates a great deal of unnecessary grief.
Giving people a more subjective attitude would also prevent snobbiness, gatekeeping, and fetishization of "the way things used to be". It may also encourage reviewers and critics to report on whether their audience is likely to enjoy a work, rather than just doing what they usually do, which is reporting on the work's technical merits (or worse, its imagined "objective quality").
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> *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!* | 86 | > and there is no way to objectively grade one work as "better" than another (except, perhaps, by popularity).
And by how much revenue they make. There are various ways of objectively measuring art, so long as we define 'good' in a way which can lead to an objective answer. Art can also be a product, remember, and some products are more lucrative than others.
Generally speaking though, you are correct in assuming that the majority of time we describe art as being 'good' or 'bad', we are referring to our own subjective perception of its quality, and we are using our own personal standards of what constitutes 'quality'. | 39 |
What effect does the seawater brought inland by a tsunami have on local plants? Does it make the land infertile for a while? | 3,019 | In Holland we don’t have tsunami’s, but the results of salt water floods have been studied pretty well. For instance, after the 1953 north sea flood.
For the Dutch soil, all salt from flooding is washed away within 1-4 years. This depends on sveral factors, such as duration of flood, dept of the groundwater level, amount of moisture in de ground above groundwater level, precipitation etc
For some recovery nature needs some help. The (NaCl) salt water also worsens the mineral structure of older clay. Even if the salt itself is already washed away. Naturally the clay could take up to 8 years to recover. Fertilizing with gypsum is enough to repair this and this pays for itself in the first year.
A sweet water flood costs 1 year of production, a salt water flood generally 2-3 years.With gypsum that 3 years can be reduced to 2 years of loss. The second year some salt-resistant crops can be grown, so the economic damage could be a bit less. In fact, for weaker fields the silt from the inundation increases fertility in the long term. | 1,889 |
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What do you do when you’re burnt out? | I’m at the tail end of a six month, 45 hr a week bootcamp. I also work about 30 hrs a week to pay bills. My brain is fucked. I’m powering through, but I don’t want to just mail it in for the last 5 weeks of my program. I want to give my best. How do you guys cope/get through burnout? | 24 | Don't work more than about 6 hours a day on software. Just like anything, 60 hour work weeks will burn out anyone.
Also with software, more time doesn't equal more code, sometimes you need to give your brain a rest. | 19 |
[ELI5] How does charging a smartphone work? what happens after it reaches 100% and left plugged in, say, for 8 hours? | 41 | In all batteries, there is a chemical reaction that causes electrons to flow from one terminal to the other. When batteries are recharged, electrons are forced to flow through the battery in the opposite direction, which reverses the reaction so that it can happen again.
Smart phones use lithium ion batteries. Unlike some older types of batteries, these batteries can explode if they are overcharged. Because of this, phones have a built in circuit to prevent overcharging. When the battery becomes fully charged, the circuit will automatically stop the battery from charging. It is safe to leave your phone plugged in for 8+ hours thanks to that circuit. | 22 |
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Got invited for a phone interview for TT position! What should I prepare? | I am so excited, I got my first bite from the applications I sent in for TT positions in STEM. I've been shortlisted, and invited to a phone screening on zoom for 20 minutes. The people who invited me are related to my subfield. What should I prepare? Any tips greatly appreciated!!! | 147 | Woohoo!!!
From an R1 / research-intensive institution perspective:
Prep for the main questions:
1) tell us about yourself
2) tell us about your research
3) where do you see your research going in the next 5-10 years
4) where will your funding come from
5) what areas/classes can you teach (bonus points if you can name course numbers at their institution); they may also ask a course you could develop to add to their offerings
6) why this institution/dept?
Have short answers for each that convey you are great and well-prepared for the job (which you likely are). They may ask other questions, but those tend to be the most common.
Then strategically think about questions to ask them that convey you are intentional about launching your research program (and aren’t easily google-able)
Eg can you tell me about mentoring for junior faculty? how would you describe the culture in the department? How does the PhD student-advisor match work? What does a successful junior faculty member look like in this dept?
Don’t: negotiate at this stage or be long-winded
Best wishes!!! | 101 |
ELI5: Why do most trash cans have a sort of taper like \_/ ? | 18 | Imagine blowing up the garbage bag inside with that shape until it was at max capacity. You would still be able to wiggle it free. If it tapered the opposite way, you would be unable to remove it. Even a can with perfectly square sides, if it wasn't 100% rigid, the walls would bulge and create a wedge. | 24 |
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ELI5:how does your body know when to wake up. when you wake up naturally without an alarm how does your body decide thats it the right time for you to wake up. and how does it wake you up | 415 | Excluding environmental stimuli (e.g., light), the transition from sleep to wakefulness in the morning is due to two physiological process.
One is the circadian rhythm, which promotes wake during the daytime and promotes sleep at night. The circadian drive for wakefulness typically begins to increase a couple of hours before regular awakening. This includes telling the pineal gland to stop producing the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin in preparation for awakening.
The other factor is sleep homeostatic pressure. Across the night, sleep pressure dissipates due to the clearance of sleep-promoting substances from the brain. This means there is less and less drive to remain asleep.
Together, these two factors promote the onset of wakefulness in the morning. | 74 |
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How did the red fox evolve to remain largely the same species in North America as in Europe? | 101 | The same way wolves, moose, and many other species did, they walked from Eurasia across the Bering land bridge about 130,000 years ago. Too short of a time to see any real evolutionary changes and due to the similarities between climates there has been no need for too much adaptation. | 95 |
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ELI5: what is the ex post facto law? | i tried reading it on wiki but couldnt understand. | 31 | An *ex post facto* law is one with a retroactive effect.
Basically it would be making a crime out of something that has already happened. For example, in the US no legislature can pass a law that criminalizes things that happened in the past and were legal when they happened. Laws can only affect things that happen *after* the law is enacted.
This is to prevent the government from punishing people for things that were legal when they did them but may have become illegal later. | 17 |
I believe that prison gang members harm rehabilitation objectives and should be dealt with differently. Please CMV | Main claim to dispute: Due to gangs' somewhat likely negative influence on the desirable rehabilitation process, gang activities should be scrutinized and disrupted. This is perhaps idealistic so let's talk about the merit of the idea rather than challenges (costs, costs, costs) to implementing this. CMV
Let's say for the sake of argument that prison gangs may exist. Where a person enters the prison population and is forced to join a gang because that's how they will avoid being harmed. Sometimes prison gangs may be established based on race and/or ethnic and/or religious backgrounds (also linguistics, places of origin, level of education, etc); let this item cover every possibility as it relates to countries other than United States of America.
Let's assume that the official objectives of prisons may be for some prisoners (but not all) to rehabilitate and re-enter society with a better attitude and ability to function according to typical expectations (job, a place to live, how about not being in jail).
Gangs in prison may deny prisoners the opportunity to change their attitudes and instead may lead to exposure to violence and criminal activities (gambling, dealing drugs, assaults on demand) in order to gain status or be accepted by a gang.
Members of gangs should be given an opportunity to learn how to function in non-prison society, hold down a job and build healthy relationships. Gang members who fail to get with the program should be treated as dangerous and have their sentences reviewed because of their willingness to engage in violent and anti-social behavior that will likely lead to recidivism or just crime. CMV
What I do not see as relevant to the discussion is the ex post condition: why the person went to jail (three-strikes laws, selling weed, or crimes that statistically involve vulnerable or minority populations that are over-represented in prison). Any gang activity in prison without prejudice or preference should be treated harshly by corrective authorities.
Edit 1: So what do you think about gangs? do they help or hurt prisoners who want to leave prison? If you decided to complain about the system being broken and slanted, it is a valid critique but not a response to what I am asking. | 176 | What you need to look at is why people form or join gangs in the first place. It often boils down to safety; gangs offer shelter from an otherwise fairly violent prison environment so if you're interested in protecting yourself then a gang starts to look very appealing.
Someone who may not have otherwise wanted to be part of a gang might join because he fears for his safety. Gangs that are especially powerful can even protect other inmates from guards.
By cracking down you're actually encouraging gang activity. Repression by the guards is seen as a mark of honor by a gang, "Look at us, we're so dangerous they can't let us be together." There's also little evidence that I've seen to support that most of the measures taken now to undercut gang activity has much effect in reducing the gang's numbers. In fact there are whole gangs whose leadership *and* membership is in prison and they spread throughout the prison system. | 27 |
CMV, When bills are proposed in congress (state and federal levels) they should be atomic and singular, containing only the one law at a time. | It astounds me how the US system "works." Basically a group of people want to pass a particular law, but other people want another completely unrelated thing passed, so they attach them together to be voted on together. Many times the laws themselves are so long and convoluted that the senators and reps voting on them don't have time to read or digest them before voting on them... that is if they vote on them at all since many abstain or are off campaigning.
Why is the current system better for society as a whole than a one law, one vote? Wouldn't removing the BS and politics from the system benefit society as a whole? And don't give me BS about not having time... they already don't have time to read the bills in front of them, and they take hella long vacations and IF they are even in session, many are not present and campaigning for the next cycle. | 281 | Most of the time when this is done, it is done to gain support for the larger "main" item in the bill from congresspeople or senators who otherwise would not support it or who are on the fence.
If Congress needs 50.1% of the vote to pass a bill, and they only have 48%. They can add something like "$2M to fix a bridge in Iowa" and get the support from those Congresspeople who now don't have to pay for the bridge with state tax dollars and they can go back to Iowa and say "look what we did for you!"
Now, whether or not you believe this is morally right is another question. But let's say that first main bill benefited a large part of the country but it wouldn't have passed without the support of those Iowa Congresspeople. Maybe those Congresspeople promised not to vote for that kind of bill and in order to maintain their campaign promises to their constituency, they need to go back with a big "this is why we did it, don't punish us, look at the shiny new bridge we got you that will cost you nothing." | 42 |
[Star Wars] How did Palpatine set up Order 66 without anyone finding out? | Since we saw him simply tell Cody to "Execute Order 66", and all the clones instantly turned on the Jedi, they must have known about it for a long time. So how did the Order's existence never get discovered by the Jedi beforehand? Why didn't Cody tell Obi-Wan about it, or any of the countless people involved tell the good guys? | 257 | It almost was revealed when ARC Trooper Fives discovered the presence of a biochip that forced the Clones into acting on the order. Tragically the Jedi beleived he had finally snapped after witnessing the death of all his brothers in Domino Squad and was killed on the orders of Palpatine. None of the Clones knew about the order itself, the phrase was kind of a Manchurian Candidate thing.
Kamino was also invovled in the coverup because Palpatine had given them their key to increasing their political influence, so they as well did quite a bit to hide the presence of the order. | 257 |
CMV: In Rock Paper Scissors, Rock is the strongest and only loses to paper to show diplomatic respect. | Rock Paper Scissors is not a circular loop of power like it may appear but it is actually a straight line of power. Rock is strongest, Scissors is second strongest, Paper is the weakest. Rock is simply the best faction of Rock Paper Scissors, and that is why it gets the leading credit in the title of the game. Let me explain why.
Rock beat Scissors. Scissors beats Paper. Paper supposedly beats Rock but I don't quite believe that. Rock and Scissors both beat their lesser through physical applied force. Rock smashes scissors and bends them until they can't open. Scissors cuts paper into little pieces. Paper doesn't apply any physical force to Rock, it simply covers it up. I don't think this is a true victory for paper. Rock has a solid body and dominates Scissors, I think it can easily do the same to Paper. Rock could simply force its way through Paper and tear a huge hole.
Rock wants to maintain its subtle power and operate in the background, so it submits itself to Paper. Paper's victory is only possible due to the diplomatic surrender by Rock. Rock doesn't want to impose a Dictatorship on the world of Rock Paper Scissors by completely dominating the other two. Scissors and Paper would surely put aside their differences and overthrow Rock, completely eliminating it from the equation or throwing its nation into poverty. This upset of power would also leave Scissors at the top of the food chain, and it may enslave Paper now that Rock cannot defend it. Rock understands it must withhold its power for a time in which it is necessary.
In conclusion, Rock is not only the strongest with the ability to brutally annihilate the other two factions, but it is a peaceful nation. It has the power to take over the entire world of Rock Paper Scissors but it wishes to keep the peace and balance by giving a diplomatic loss and letting Paper have its time to shine. Rock is the strongest, the most peaceful, and the handsome-est.
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> *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!* | 301 | >Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
- Gandhi
The belief that victory can only be obtained through destruction is very scissor-litho-centric.
Paper's power is expose the folly of this view. Sure, a rock can tear a hole in a sheet of paper - but does it then cease to be paper? On the contrary, you can still write on it just fine. Destruction cannot harm paper. And of course, nor can paper destroy rock.
But put a paper on rock, and what do you have? The rock then serves the paper's goals, making it easier to write on. The paper becomes more effective not through the destruction of rock, but through the power of cooperation. By demonstrating the silliness of attempting to prove one's superiority through destruction of opponents, the way of the paper wins a victory over the way of the rock. | 233 |
[Star Trek] Why do none of the great powers (other than the borg) use city sized supercarriers like the UNSC Infinity from Halo? | Fun fact, the UNSC infinity is longer (but not taller or wider) than a borg cube.
A borg cube is [3 kilometer each side](https://borgcollective.fandom.com/wiki/Borg_Cube#:~:text=They%20are%20the%20mighty%20gigantic,of%20Borg%20mentality%20and%20efficiency.)
The UNSC Infinity is [5.7 kilometers long
](https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/UNSC_Infinity#:~:text=At%205.7%20kilometers%20long%2C%20Infinity,long%20from%20bow%20to%20stern.) | 27 | The Unified Earth Government is in two simultaneous total wars vs genocidal powers. The Borg are also in a total war with the universe. They invest a lot into warfare, because they need to.
The Federation is not- while there are tensions between them and the Klingon and Romulans, there's no massive conflicts. The universe is fairly peaceful, border skirmishes aside. So they don't invest a lot into warfare, because they don't need to.
So that's the answer- the Federation doesn't have city-sized supercarriers because they don't need them. | 41 |
[Fairy Tail] So is the type of magic a wizard used something they are born with, something they learn or both? | The show definitely hints at the type of magic being a born with trait (like with Lucy being a celestial wizard or people using magic without knowing what they are doing) but also reference mastering certain types of magic as if it’s something they learned rather than being born with. Plus some people know multiple types of magic | 49 | There are two overarching types of magic.
1. Caster Magic - Magic using the caster's body as a medium. Gray Filibuster's Ice-make
2. Holder Magic - Magic using an object as a medium. Cana Alberona's Magic Cards
The type of magic that wizards can use depends on their preference and inborn talent. Someone like Gray can learn fire-magic, but it heavily contrasts with his ice-make magic and therefore would have a much suppressed effect compared to his original magic.
All magic can be learned. But the costs of doing so are immense. Take for example Dragon-slayer magic. It is one of the most powerful magics. In return, if the user do not contain a dragon as a host, sooner or later the user will undergo Dragonification. | 18 |
[Marvel] My mutant power is super graphic and horrifying. Will the X-Men turn me away? | I don't want to be a mutant.
I'm 20, my powers activated when I was being mugged two days ago. A dude's skeleton just up and exploded inside of his flesh, turning him into a steaming, smoldering pile of meat. I ran away.
Now, I keep hearing Jean Luc Picard in my head and I'm worried they'll sicc Wolfmarine on me! I don't want to be a mutant! | 115 | You're actually the sort of mutant the Xavier Institute would want to reach out to help the most. They have experience with helping people with horrific and/or insta-death types of powers find a way to control/restrain those abilities. | 129 |
[Thor Ragnarok] Are the shattered pieces of Mjiolnir still enchanted or could anyone go pick them up? | 17 | Assuming it's like the comics, then yes they are still enchanted. In the comics a piece of Mjolnir is picked up by a frog who gets the power of Thor with his own tiny hammer. We see that frog in the MCU (in >!Loki episode 5!<) so it should be the same. | 17 |
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[Star Trek] What the hell is a feedback loop and why does it seem to affect every system on a starship at one point or another? | 18 | A feedback *loop* is where the feedback that a sensor is getting causes it to create more of that feedback, creating a loop to cause more feedback, creating a loop to cause more feedback, etc.
Lets use an example...
A temperature sensor sends a signal to a control system to turn on an A/C unit whenever a room gets too warm. Simple.
The A/C unit breaks so it blows warm air.
The temperature monitoring software senses warm air, and turns the A/C on higher.
More warm air.
A/C on higher.
More warm air.
A/C on higher.
etc
| 14 |
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[Spirited Away] what did the River Spirit give Chihiro and why was her first reaction to eat it? | 22 | In a generic sense, we know it's an emetic (it forces vomiting), as even a small taste makes Chihiro nearly vomit and the portion she gives to Haku makes him even expel Yubaba's seal. The seal is magic, however, so I'd argue that the object isn't just an emetic in a medical sense, but in a magical sense. It likewise forces No Face to vomit everything he's consumed in a magical sense.
I'd argue it's probably a bezoar, which alchemy holds to be able to cure any poison that you've ingested. Some traditions hold that bezoars are non-digestible food aggregates, basically solidified chunks of seeds, fruit pits, vegetable fibers, minerals, and other non-digestible matter... which is also stuff that could accumulate in a river. | 29 |
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[Guardians of the Galaxy] Why didn't the Asgardians come to the Nova core's aid. | Okay, forget the the obvious reasons and focus on the in-universe answer.
Its been established that heimdall can see every corner of the universe. Nothing escapes his eye, normally. its also been established that the Asgardian's watch over and protect the nine realms. When Vanir were under attack by the Marauders, the Asgardians came to their rescue.
Why didn't the Asgardians beam down and assist the Nova core when they were under attack by Ronan, who possessed one of the infinity stone, an artefact just as powerful and destructive as the Aether. If the Asgardian's took extra precautions dealing with the Aether, you would think they beam down and stop Ronan from wiping out an entire planet full of billions of innocent lives. Ronan was just as much of threat as Malekith and the aether. | 20 | Unfortunately in the grand scheme of the Universe, Xandar is a blip in the trillions of lives found across the universe. Asgard is unaffiliated with any of the established xenos empires. Ronan's attack on Xandar to outside observers is simply the latest conflict in the long war between the Kree and Nova Empire. Furthermore, Asgard only intervenes when there's a multidimensional invasion. For example, the Jotuns invaded Earth around the Dark Ages until Odin and the Einherjar repelled it. | 32 |
Is c an arbitrary constant? Could there have been
another universe that formed where c was different?
If so, how would that universe be different? | I mean, suppose there were two more universes that formed identically to our own, but one's speed of light was 1.5c, and the other's was 0.5c, what effects would that have on the composition or structure of those universes?
For example:
* Would galaxies form? Or stars and planets? Black-holes?
* Would atoms/molecules even be stable?
* Would time behave differently? Would gravity or the strong/weak forces be different?
* And finally, would the formation of complex life be possible in them? | 24 | The speed of light is like *π,* in that it's a geometric ratio. It's always going to be exactly equal to 1, as long as you describe it in terms of the ratio of a distance to the amount of time it takes light to go that distance. If you use other units for distance and duration, you'll get different numbers, but they will always reduce to 1. | 27 |
ELI5: What would it be like to be in the bottom of the Mariana Trench if the ocean was drained? | Would you be able to breathe easier than at sea level? Would it have an effect on your weight? | 89 | The air would be quite dense, about 4x that of sea level, and might result in a mild case of decompression sickness if an individual were returned to sea level without regular stops, but milder than an actual scuba dive. Breathing would be very efficient, though. It would be very cold, getting only a few hours of daylight depending on the orientation of the trench (I don't have any images handy). Gravity would hardly change at all, with the 7 mile depth being only a tiny fraction of Earth's overall radius. | 75 |
[MCU] Thanos's flagship is called the Sanctuary II. Was there ever a Sanctuary I? | If there was, what happened to it? If there wasn't, then why add the II? | 24 | That open "air" asteroid field with Thanos' chair where the Other hangs out and talks with Loki and Ronan is called Sanctuary. Not much of a ship as far as we've seen but they've at least invested some nice stair lights into it. | 36 |
[Dune] Why isn't Leto II known as Leto III? | Leto the tyrant, known as Leto II, and his twin had an older brother who was already named Leto II. What gives?
It's even brought up as a question (iirc in Heretics of Dune) some three thousand years after the God Emperor's death, but is then immediately hushed as blasphemous. | 33 | Regnal numbers don't normally count until the actual title is assumed. Prince Charles is not called Charles III and if he died before becoming King he would never count in the numbering.
I propose Leto II was only a nickname for the presumed future head of the Atreides house. | 51 |
CMV: Climate Change is the Most Important Issue Facing Humanity Today | Among all humanitarian issues in the world, I believe that climate change has the greatest change to destroy all of humanity as we know it. With an uptick in recent extreme weather events, I feel that the unprecedented destruction caused by climate change is nearing. Yet, no one seems to make a big deal about it because it is extremely difficult for humans to think about the future impacts of a present, slow moving issue. Furthermore, I think news coverage of the issue makes people believe climate change's existence and impacts is an even sided argument because there are one v. one debates, when in actuality 97% of climate scientists believe in climate change.
I think this issue is extremely overlooked by the general public and lawmakers because it has become a partisan issue when it is a humanitarian problem. In my mind, this is such a grave issue because war, poverty, and disease won't be issues anymore when the earth becomes uninhabitable. Many actions by the media and government feel like childish attempts to gain money and/or power, all while the earth is slowly dying.
What do you think? CMV! | 15 | >when in actuality 97% of climate scientists believe in climate change.
What, exactly, do you think this proves? It doesn't prove how much warming there will be. It doesn't tell you how much damage that warming will do. It says nothing about which mitigation strategies will be effective, which ones won't, and how much they will cost. Pointing it out is basically just a religious shibboleth, a way of shouting "I Science!" without actually bothering to think beyond a tribal signal. Have you thought about any of those other issues? | 12 |
ELI5: What is the difference between regular exercise that is healthy, and laborious excerise(manual labor etc) that causes joint/muscle issues down the road? | 18 | In a very general statement, not much. It is possible to overstrain and injure oneself during exercise just as it is possible to do so in manual labor.
Manual labor might be more prone to be repetitive (for just a few joints/muscles), last much longer at one go, require long periods at the same posture (sitting, hunching) and not allow for sufficient recovery periods - and this has a high likelihood of causing later problems. But not all manual labor is like that. And as you recognize, not all exercise is healthy either. | 20 |
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ELI5: It seems like "everyone" is getting cancer. Has is always been this way, like since the dawn of time, or is this something new, or...? | I've checked *all* of the explained cancer-related ELI5s, to no avail.
In modern times (at the present moment), it seems that cancer cases of any/all types are growing exponentially.
Is this simply because better medical technology is giving us more awareness of the subject? Or has cancer *always* been this prevalent? ...Or?
P.S. I'm sorry if I'm missing the buck here in finding the answer, or if someone has already covered my ELI5 request.
EDIT: I'm going to go ahead and risk a shitstorm by saying this...but, I realize that there are "CHEMICAL ADDITIVES IN FOOD AND TODAY'S HUMANS ARE SO DUM FOR EATING THIS SHIT AND SMOKING CIGZ". There is more to this ELI5 than your soapbox on modern man's GMO/Terrible Lifestyle. | 2,211 | Cancer is what kills you if nothing else gets to you first. We've made long strides in general health and treatment of many diseases, which has caused us to live longer, which makes cancer a larger percentage of total deaths than it was further back in history. | 2,036 |
ELI5 Why do dry-wipe pens stop permanent markers from working on a whiteboard? Bonus question: How can you counteract this effect? | 193 | The ink in dry erase pens are suspended in a solvent, and when the solvent dries it leaves behind the dry ink. This ink can just be wiped away because it's not absorbed into the dry erase board.
Permanent markers work the same way, except the ink doesn't wipe away. It still doesn't get absorbed into the dry erase board but it doesn't wipe away because of its formulation.
Long story short, the solvent in the dry erase marker ink also works on permanent marker ink, and then the permanent marker ink binds to the dry erase ink instead of the board.
To answer your second question, there are industrial sharpies that use different solvents that might prevent erasing on a white board. | 162 |
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ELI5: Can a planet without conditions similar to earth support any life at all, or have we just not found organisms that require other conditions? | So if a planet has an atmosphere of 90% hydrogen and we say it is "uninhabitable." Does that mean no organism at all could survive? Or is it that we just don't know about organisms that could survive in those conditions? | 40 | It's the latter. We only know life on earth -- life as we know it. It's possible there could be exotic forms of life elsewhere, but we have no idea what it would look like or how to find it. So we focus on the life we understand, because that's what we're best at finding.
To some degree though, we know the chemicals our life is based on are probably some of the best for "life". Carbon has specific properties that make it very nice for replication and other life functions. Silicon is very similar to carbon, which is why you often hear about people looking for "silicon based life" -- it's the most likely other element that could produce organisms that follow similar mechanics as ours. | 21 |
Would'nt a black holes gravity tear us apart before we get any where near it's event horizon? | So after watching interstellar i watched a couple of interviews with some physicists, and the topic of discussion always seem to be what would happen at the event horizon or inside a black hole. However something that's alluded me is, why aren't we already getting torn apart by the gravity when we get some what near it.
Like the stars we see getting eaten by black holes, where this acretion disk is formed and it's ripping off matter from the star or just ripping it apart completely. Is this something that happens because of the size of the star? | 182 | >Is this something that happens because of the size of a star?
Yes. Tidal forces depend on two factors.
The first is the gradient of gravitational force, which increases the closer you are to the centre of the black hole (this is relevant because for larger black holes, the tidal forces at the event horizon are much weaker than that in smaller black holes).
The second is how large you are. For a large object like a star, the tidal forces are huge because the difference in gravitational force acting on the close and far end is large.
These two factors influence the difference in force across the object, which the phenomenon of tidal forces arise from. | 55 |
How do you avoid being a crank? | With the immense popularity of the "What type of cranks does your discipline attract?" thread, I am afraid that I could be a crank myself one day. I try to avoid this by trying not to have opinions about fields in which I am not an expert in or are adjacent to mine, but I could still be a crank in my very own field.
The best thing to do, it seems, is to be humble and avoid certainty. Any other suggestions? | 19 | Fundamentally, a crank is someone who disagrees with a discipline's theoretical framework and/or methodology (in a Kuhnian sense, not in an academia is a shadowy cabal of masonic Jews sense - although there are also cranks of that flavor). So the best way to avoid being a crank is to professionalize within a given discipline, do good discipline-specific work and earn a reputation as a good scientist. Then, not only are you less likely to make bad assumptions and unfounded arguments (which is what most cranks do), but you will be able to square the less orthodox ideas you have with accepted theory, which is more right than wrong in most cases, and present them in a way that gets you taken at least somewhat seriously. | 27 |
ELI5 why do space rockets take off from a upright position instead of taking off of a runway like a plane, reach 40,000 ft and entering space from there. | 60 | A rocket has to go really fast to reach speeds fast enough to orbit, and the atmosphere is thickest close to the ground. So a rocket tries to get out of the thickest part as fast as it can to save fuel, then it turns sideways to get to orbital speeds. Basically it would waste too much fuel going through the atmosphere like a plane. | 116 |
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When physicists refer to "nothing", what does that really mean? | Arguments have been made that Hawking's statements that the universe can create itself from nothing are self-contradictory, because it breaks causailty. My hunch is that those making such arguments are just not familiar with the more complex aspects of physics, but then again, neither am I. I've heard of particles "popping in and out of existence", but I'm not sure what that really means. Can anyone explain to the layman what physicists mean when they say something comes from nothing? | 44 | You're probably talking about Lawrence Krauss' lecture "A Universe from Nothing."
What he means is that if you count the total energy density of the universe as positive, and the gravitational potential energy as negative, it cancels out to zero. | 17 |
[Pokémon] I went on an adventure, one thing led to another, and now I've tamed Arceus and captured it in a pokéball. Are there rules for this situation? | Is it legal to use in gym battles? Can I breed it to make more arceuses? Arcei? If so, am I allowed to sell the eggs? | 20 | Legendaries can't breed, generally. There are exceptions, but Arceus isn't one. And why would you not be allowed to use it during Gym battles? It's your pokemon. Not everybody has the skills to capture an Arceus. Having one on your team is reflective of your skill as a trainer. They wouldn't take that away from you. | 29 |
[Venture Bros.] So What's the Purpose of the Guild of Calamitous Intent? | 37 | Basically they're an oversight body for supervillains-- the villains abide by a bunch of inefficient rules and stick to small-scale crimes like revenge and bank robberies rather than world domination plots, and in return organizations like the military, OSI, NSA, etc. let them have their fun with their nemeses rather than just wiping them out. | 27 |
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ELI5:"Time heals all wounds" What exactly is happening here? Why do you feel less "hurt" as time passes? | 22 | It takes time to understand and process what happened, your hormones and emotional state have a chance to return to relative normalcy, and you adjust to your new existence as a slightly hurt person.
Imagine the string of an instrument being plucked, it strongly vibrates, and the disturbance dissipates over time.
Your current emotional state is sort of the sum of all the things that have happened to you, but the more recent things have a larger effect. So over time your wound is "healed."
Obviously, in terms of physical wounds, if it isn't permanent damage then the passage of time allows your body to repair itself. So because time allows us to adjust to emotional hurt, and to repair ourselves from physical hurt, it heals "all" wounds. | 20 |
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How exactly do mammalian lungs extract oxygen from air? | How exactly do the alveoli in our lungs selectively extract oxygen from air and get it into the bloodstream?
Thanks in advance | 45 | Lungs/alveoli don't selectively extract oxygen from the air. Any gas with sufficient concentration gradient and ability to dissolve in to water will pass in to the blood stream.
edit: This is literally true, haemoglobin has little to do with gaseous exchange across the alveoli membrane except in so far as it aids maintaining the concentration gradient. Haemoglobin principally facilitates the safe and even distribution of oxygen to all tissues irrespective of their circulatory distance from the lungs. | 17 |
ELI5: Why do marriage vows use the line, "Til death us do part" if in Christianity there is an afterlife (heaven). Wouldn't you still be with your wife/husband in that afterlife so? Why do these vows not transcend this life? | **Edit:**
Wow, I never expected this too take off like it has.
Thank you to everyone that responded, there is some very interesting discussion
**Edit 2:**
It's a shame people can't play nice. I am Athiest myself but was merely curious as to the reasoning behind that vow. I think mature discussion can happen between believers and non believers, but it seems not today | 15,803 | So far, everyone has given a religious reason from a passage of Scripture about Jesus's comments on the afterlife (an answer to a trick question he was asked by some Sadducees, members of a Jewish sect that didn't believe in an afterlife).
But that's not the real reason for the wording of the marriage vows. It has to do with the fact that you are free to remarry if your spouse dies.
The exact wording of the vow varies according to the denomination, but here's one version used by the United Methodist Church (in the form of a question from the pastor to the couple):
> Will you have this woman/man to be your wife/husband, to live together in holy marriage? Will you love her/him, comfort her/him, honor, and keep her/him in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful to her/him as long as you both shall live?
As you can see from the context, it's all about living together with your spouse and being faithful to them; but obviously, that only applies if you're both still alive. If you die, your spouse can hardly "comfort" you, or "keep" you "in sickness and in health" -- how would that even work? | 8,393 |
Did the 1918 pandemic have asymptomatic carriers as the covid 19 pandemic does? | 12,785 | As far as we can tell, most if not all viruses have the potential for asymptomatic carriers. Do we know for sure that the 1918 Spanish Flu did? Not with direct evidence. That kind of testing just didn't exist back then. But we can say with a fairly high degree of confidence that yes it did. | 5,492 |
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Do our bodies have defences against prions? | 115 | TL:DR Prions are a normal part healthy cells. They are not something the body needs to protect against, in most cases. Prions, in very rare cases (very rare) , can become misshapen and cause problems.
Prion diseases, also known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies or TSEs, are a group of rare, fatal brain diseases that affect animals and humans. They are caused by an infectious agent known as a prion, which is derived from a misfolded version of a normal host protein known as prion protein. Prion diseases include bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or "mad cow" disease) in cattle, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and variant CJD in humans, scrapie in sheep, and chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer, elk, moose and reindeer.
Prion diseases are associated with the prion protein, which is found in many body tissues, including the brain. Normally, prion protein does not cause disease and resides on the surface of many cell types. Though under investigation, scientists think normal prion protein might help protect the brain from damage. They do know that when many normal prion protein molecules change their shape and clump together, they can aggregate in brain tissue and form the infectious prions that cause prion disease. Prion diseases are therefore caused by an infectious, abnormally shaped and aggregated prion protein. Scientists are not sure why normal prion protein become misshapen. NIAID scientists co-discovered the prion protein gene and were among the first to show that abnormal prion protein can change normal prion protein to the abnormal, infectious form.
Source, NIAID research, a part of the NIH | 114 |
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[pokemon] It seems like all anyone wants to do is collect/battle/dress up their pokemon. Does no one in this world have a real job? Is the universe nearly post-scarcity? | Hear me out, I have been around 4 different regions (kanto, johto, hoenn, sinnoh) training my pokemon. Everyone and their mother has a set of pokemon, and nearly everyone i talk to only talks about pokemon.
The people that have jobs, outside of shopkeepers, usually also have pokemon ready to battle whenever. "bird keeper" "cyclist" "fisherman" "psychic" "rock star" "sailor". These seem more like hobbies than jobs. I've never battled someone named "Sewage treatment manager" or "retail sales rep". Does anyone NEED to work in this universe? I mean, pokemon centers are free and there seems to be a small army of clones keeping things together (looking at you officer jenny and nurse joy). We can digitally store our pokemon in computers and then re materialize them. We have advanced technology!
So, are people just working their jobs because they want to? No one actually needs to work, so people just do whatever they enjoy to occupy their time? Is money just a way to reward people for going beyond what is required of them?
**edit:** lots of great answers in this thread! Thanks everybody.
It more or less boils down to:
reduced scarcity -> more free time/money -> increase in recreational sports -> more frequent encounters with amateur pokemon trainers.
reduced scarcity -> less monetary competition -> more generous patrons -> sponsored pokemon gyms/trainers/competitions -> increase in public interest of pokemon training. | 67 | I think there are a couple of ways to look at it. The Pokemon universe, while not post-scarcity, certainly benefits from reduced scarcity, what with all the magic creatures providing near-unlimited energy and work. So there probably is a smaller number of "real" jobs out there.
But also, the player just doesn't run into everyone in the world. While you're out catching and training Pokemon, you'll certainly run into Cyclists and Fishermen and Hikers because they're out and about. You won't come across Middle Manager Jerome because he's inside a corporate building working all day before he goes straight home to Housewife Maude who has been busy taking care of family commitments. You will, however, run into their son Joey because it's summer vacation and he's out showing off his top-percentage Rattata.
But the player's bubble of interaction certainly doesn't comprise the entire Pokeworld. | 90 |
ELI5: Why do you have to wait a while before cracking your knuckles a second time? | I just dont get what exactly happens during the time period of cracking your knuckles and being able to crack your knuckles again. | 130 | When you crack your knuckles (or anything that cracks, really), you're expanding the area inside the joint, which is full of sinovial fluid (natural lube). As the volume expands, gasses in the fluid cavitate and come out of solution and make a pop sound as they rapidly expand.
The 'wait' is because you have to wait for the gasses to dissolve into the fluid again. | 77 |
Why do spiders legs curl up when they die? | 68 | Their legs operate on a sort of fluid mechanic, as in, they dont have muscles contracting their legs, they have fluid sacs that move their legs like a hydraulic system of sorts. When they die, they lose control over the hydraulics and they release pressure, curling up their legs. | 71 |
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How can a material remain radioactive after it has been exposed to radiation? | I was watching TV today and the topic of the Fukushima nuclear accident was brought up on the news and the reporter had mentioned "radioactive water" which got that way from exposure to radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant. I just wanted to know how a substance, such as water, can remain radioactive just because it was exposed to either alpha/beta/gamma radiation. What is the mechanism that makes this work? For example, if I expose a glass of water to a bunch of xrays or gamma rays, why is that water no longer safe to drink? How does radiation stay within the substance? | 18 | It's important to recognize the difference between radiation, and radioactive material.
Radiation is the particles and waves which are emitted, which can be ionizing or non-ionizing.
Radioactive materials are atoms which are unstable and emit radiation.
Some types of radiation can cause other materials to be radioactive. But in the case of Fukushima, the water itself is not what is radioactive. The water came into contact with the melted core material. The melted core material IS radioactive. Some of the melted core material dissolves in the water, and now the water carries the melted core material with it. So the water itself is clean, but it has dissolved radioactive materials and particles with it.
If you were to use ion-exchange and other types of filtration to separate the radiaoctive particles from the water, the water would come out clean and virtually non-radioactive. | 20 |
ELI5: What’s the scientific term for the tingling sensation (almost like a ground) that you feel when you say “gives me the chills”, and why does it happen? | 31 | It is technically called Piloerection! And it’s The same reason a dogs fur or spine-fur sticks out when it’s threatened, scared, or cold. The chills or goosebumps are typically a fear/excitement/body temp reaction.
Back when humans used to be super hairy - when we’d be aroused, threatened, or cold, out hair follicles hardened, and continue to do so because of instinctual reaction to external stimuli. In fear or threatening situations - the hair follicles stiffen to make the hair stick and and appear bigger so that your enemy or threat will be more inclined to back off. In cold weather, your body does this to thicken the fur to disallow airflow and keep you warm. As far as excitement goes, like when you hear a good opera and you get chills - it’s because music that good can make you feel vulnerable, which circles back to fear. Your attention has become fixed on one thing for an extended amount of time, so now you’re aware or your surroundings suddenly and your hair puffs out to threaten other predators into thinking your bigger. | 24 |
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[MCU] Is Natasha Romanoff a normal human or improved like Captain America? She jumped on ship flying 300 km/h, which doesn't look like you can do it without superhuman abilites | 34 | It's never established in the MCU (so far) but in the comics yes she is an enhanced human similar to Captain America but not by the same means and not equally strong though still stronger than an average human; besides her early training since she was a child she was enhanced in a facility called the "Red Room" using biotechnology. | 46 |
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[Star Wars] How would the Clone Wars have been different if Thrawn was the genetic template for the clone army instead of Jango? | 16 | Thrawn would have been a terrible choice for the clone army, because he's a strategist, not a foot soldier. Yes, you want your foot soldiers to have some intelligence and initiative. That's why they used Jango rather then some muscled up thug.
But Thrawn has too much ambition, and his prime skills are too strategic and big picture. An army of Thrawn's would be a million Generals and no Privates. | 23 |
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ELI5: How do live YouTube streams of TV shows get away with it? | I've spent all day binge watching live YouTube streams of South Park, Family Guy and American Dad on my TV and it's been great
But I've been wondering how these streams survive considering that when full episodes of TV shows are uploaded to YouTube they are always quickly removed due to copyright. | 98 | Because streams cannot be easily automatically processed by Youtube's ContentID system. Someone would have to report the stream to the copyright holder, then they would have to contact Youtube to shut down the stream. | 88 |
ELI5: What is actually happened when your eyes “adjust” to light? | Examples: walking out of a movie theater during the day - when someone opens the blinds in a dark room. | 15 | Two things happen: the fast response and the slow response.
**Fast response to light:**
Your iris dilates and makes your pupil (the hole in your eye through which light enters) larger so more light can get in.
**Slow response to light:**
When it’s dark, a chemical referred to as “visual purple” (I think its technical name is rhodopsin) gets secreted to your retina which makes the nerves more likely to fire when any photon hits it. That takes a lot of time to fade out of your eyes when it’s bright which explains why it takes so long for your eyes to adjust.
**Fun factoid:**
“Some historians” believe pirates are associated with eye patches not because of eye injuries but because of the need to rapidly go between the extreme Caribbean sun and the extreme dark below decks. Your eyes can adjust to light independently. So a theory is that pirates would switch the patch from one eye to the other to allow them to see well both above and below deck when fighting for control of a ship. | 15 |
ELI5 What do mosquitos do during they day? | 18 | First of all, any individual adult mosquito only lives for about a week. During this time, mosquitoes will eat (fruits, nectar, other sweet substances), rest, and find mates.
Female mosquitoes will also find hosts from which to gather blood. They need the blood of animals to help with egg production as the blood is rich with proteins. The process by which the proteins in the blood are broken down and then reformed into eggs can take two to three days, depending on species and habitat conditions.
Like many flies, mosquitoes lay their eggs in water; in doing so, the female will dip her ovipositor into the water over and over and create a "raft" of eggs. Eggs hatch into larvae in as little as 48 hours and become adult mosquitoes in one to two weeks.
Did you have any other specific questions about mosquito behavior? | 12 |
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[40K] Can a Chaos God starve to death? | Let's say everyone in the Galaxy promised to be on their best behavior and not spill any blood or fight for a few thousand millennia, would Khorne actually die after some time? | 34 | The Cabal did have the plan to have the Horus Heresy succeed so humanity would burn out and deny a massive chunk of sustenance from Chaos, so they at least think so.
And also in Fantasy, Slaanesh grew so bloated from consuming souls when the End Time blew up the world that s/he went into a food coma and was sealed off by surviving Aelves, so the opposite happens too apparently. | 21 |
What happens to bacteria once it dies? | After I boil water to kill bacteria, am I just drinking their corpses? | 17 | Yes, the denatured remains of proteins and other cellular components is present in any boiled water containing bacteria. The heat will denature secondary and tertiary structures of proteins, but usually not the primary structure. | 15 |
ELI5: Why do we round 0.500 up to 1? | 26 | Because you have to round in one direction or the other, and we decided to pick up.
Note this is not universal. In some financial accounting, you "round towards even". 3.5 would round to 4, but 2.5 would round to 2. The idea is to try to make the rounding errors cancel out. | 30 |
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CMV: Aside from the open-sourced nature of Linux, Windows is the superior operating system | I've recently switched to Linux (Ubuntu) from Windows because I believe in the principles behind open-sourced knowledge. With that aside, however, I've found absolutely nothing superior about Linux that justifies the pain in the ass switching over has been. So far I've had problems:
* Finding alternative programs which I used frequently in windows (Twine).
* Getting Firefox to run HTML5 videos (downloaded Chromium to solve this, but still - shouldn't be forced into a web browser).
* Of course there's the problem with lack of video game support for Linux - I'd say I only have roughly a third of my Steam games available to me.
* Speaking of Steam, I can't get the damn thing to recognize my HDD - it only wants to save games to the SSD. Weirdly, I even downloaded Kentucky Route Zero already to my HDD through the Linux-version of Steam and now today it won't recognize the HDD or the fact that the game is already installed.
* The documentation for Linux seems to be widely disparate between assumed knowledge. I've found stuff for how to do simple tasks like change a background or navigate using hotkeys, and I've found super-advanced Terminal documentation that means basically nothing to me. I'm looking for something for intermediate users, however. Like, perhaps a primer to the Terminal and why everyone thinks it's the bee's knees.
Things I've already considered:
* Yes, I know you can run windows apps through a program like Wine, but that's just an extra pain in the ass step that may or may not work correctly. I don't have to do this on Windows.
* Everyone says the Terminal is where it's at, but I've found nothing (see comment above) that is particularly useful in my day-to-day use of the OS.
Think that about sums it up. I'll probably continue to use Linux even if I am not convinced by you fine folk, but that's only because it gels with my personal beliefs. Still, I'd love to see what I'm missing! CMV!
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> *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!* | 15 | Security, control, ownership, privacy.
You have the power over your operating system. You control exactly what is installed, what is running, what is communicating over the web. Nobody has control over linux except the root user, you. You update what you want, when you want. Nothing runs that you dont allow to run. You are God over your computer.
Windows is hardly even your own PC. It does what Microsoft tells it to do and sometimes it might listen to you. It updates when it wants, runs scans when it wants, and reports what you're doing to microsft when it wants. It gives you a facade of being able to control these things but in reality regardless of the settings you choose Microsoft still has the controls.
Windows is suprior is one regard, usability. You can sit down and use it and it works. Its a tradeoff and you have to decide if you want control or usability.
Think of it this way if you get a puppy, it knows nothing, you have to spend a lot of time to train it. Eventually, that puppy will become your dog, it listens to you, does what you tell it to do and its loyal. Its YOUR dog. Thats linux.
Windows is another dog, some trainer trained it, it listens well enough, it will roll over when you tell it. But it has no loyalty. It will leave you when its trainer calls it. Its not YOUR dog. | 21 |
CMV: Simultaneously providing Ukraine with weapons and purchasing Russian oil/gas is hypocritical and cowardly. | So I just read an article from Businessinsider that europe can't stop buying gas and oil from russia. And from what I've read there have been no announcement of planed purchase-stop. I haven't even seen any announcement regarding even discussing it.
[https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/europe-cant-stop-buying-russian-gas-heres-why-/articleshow/89872439.cms](https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/europe-cant-stop-buying-russian-gas-heres-why-/articleshow/89872439.cms)
I've also read many European countries providing Ukraine with weapons/infantry-armour/aircrafts/drones and other war-supplies. Some of these nations are even the very same countries that are still purchasing oil and gas from russia.
Now, providing that all of that is true. Why is what Europe/US is doing not grossly irresponsible?
With one hand we are feeding Ukraine materials of war and with our other hand we are feeding russian military with money. Effectively giving both sides equipment and letting them kill each other.
The absolute silly amount of money that we feed the russian state with pretty much ensure that putin keep his power and gets to fund this tragic war. All of this results in a war that Ukraine simply can not win. It doesn't matter that the Russian have utterly botched the offensive and severely underestimated the Ukrainian resilience.
And even if russia eventually withdraws due to severe losses due to insurgency and/or a disability to be accepted as the new order. That same result could have been accomplished much earlier if either putin got dethroned or unable to keep funding the effort.
Either commit fully to the Ukrainian defence and stop all trade with russia as soon as reasonably possible or stop providing ukraine with guns that will just lead to loss of life for a cause that is doomed to fail and with the risk of those same weapons falling into enemy hands.
I understand why other countries can't enter the fighting directly. And I think that placing our foot at their economical throat is a realistic strategy to get the oligarchs to change leadership. But it can't be done half-assed.
Yes, stopping the oil and gas supply will be devastating for the western economy. But this is the cost of that cheap cheap russian oil and gas, it'll either be a reduction of western BNP or an increase of ukrainian suffering. And if you choose the second one, own up to your choice and take some responsibility!
&#x200B;
EDIT 1:
a lot of arguments seems to revolve around "Europe need oil" And I'm not disputing this. What I'm arguing is that choosing to keep purchasing oil AND providing weapons to ukraine is causing a conflict in strategy.
Not stopping purchasing oil essentially ensures that Russia will complete the invasion albeit with resistance. with the strategy to put the economical pressure on russia to eventually being forced to exit. while providing weapons is a strategy for trying to repel russia as soon as possible.
these two strategies clash and cause a conflict that essentially causes an artificial conflict that cause suffering for more people than needed. | 2,178 | It's not hypocritical. If these countries said, "everyone needs to stop buying Russian oil and gas" but don't make any change themselves, that would be hypocritical. But no ones saying that.
As you've pointed out, stopping the oil and gas supply would be devastating for these countries. But at the same time, they've found strict sanctions which have a major impact on the Russian economy, while minimizing the effect on their domestic economy. This is the way to go. | 595 |
ELI5: The Illuminati | People are always talking about the 'evil' and 'secret' organisation known as the Illuminati. Whenever I look it up I find hour long YouTube documentaries on pop music videos and subliminal messaging.
I don't get it. Can someone give me the gist of this whole thing? | 60 | Historically the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, a secret society founded in 1776. Due to it's secrerty, people have made up tons of conspiracies saying that the Illuminati secretly runs the media. No one knows for fact if it's true or not. | 26 |
[Pokemon] What have Jesse, James, and Meowth accomplished for Team Rocket? | It seems like all they ever do is chase one kid and his Pikachu and waste Team Rocket funds on elaborate machines that ultimately blow-up with nothing to show. What exactly have they done for the organization that not only warrants special communications with the Big Boss, but also special assignments to catch Pokemon in specific regions (looking at you X and Y series)? | 507 | They're deeply loyal for one, and suck ups. No matter what mission they are offered, they will take it. Not to mention, they're quite powerful Pokemon trainers in their own right, who can contend with and sometimes beat Gym Leaders and Pokemon league levels of talent. You want to have somebody like that on your side, especially with James, who has a remarkable gift for bonding with Pokemon.
As for these machines? The three of them are some of the greatest enginners in Team Rocket, capable of constructing stealthy submarines, electrical containment systems, and all variety of contraption, all seemingly out of thin air as they almost never have money. When tested, these designs almost always have flaws, but after their initial field testing of the prototypes, the designs are sent back to Rocket Labs to be refined and produced.
They also have the knack of ending up right in the thick of things, be it gym challenges or legendary Pokemon encounters. It's valuable to have eyes on the ground, and they serve as an effective decoy. Their high visibility makes them serve in some ways as the public face of Team Rocket-which works just fine. Team Rocket is seen as a bunch of bumbling wanna-be gangsters, who don't really pose much of a serious threat, and allows the real efforts to operate in the shadows.
On their own, their schemes almost never get anywhere, but they produce valuable research and intel for the organization, and all they need is an occasional video call and someone to bail them out of jail. | 800 |
Why does the pitch change when you zip a zipper faster/slower | 32 | Imagine yourself the zipper has a few points it will produce a sound on whenever you cross it. Each time you cross one of these marks it'll produce one sound wave.
Thus the frequency will be determined by how many marks you cross each second. Higher speed means more marks crossed per second equals more sound waves per second (higher frequency) which means higher pitch. | 26 |
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ELI5: Why are dominantly slashing weapons curved? Why do some curve backwards, which some curve forwards? | 75 | Few curve forwards and those ones are usually more for special purposes. Medieval polearms with backward hooks such as bills were intended to allow you to grab onto riders and de-horse calvary, or pull shields away from their bearers, for example.
For the ones that curve backward and away from the point of impact, it's so you can cut better and reduces the chances that your weapon will get stuck. When the edge of your swinging weapon is straight and you connect, it's harder to slice the weapon out and do further damage than if it's a curved edge like a cutlass. Weapons like the longsword were largely "hit, then pull backward from the direction you just swung to hit again". With the cutlass or katana, you "hit and continue slicing to pull your weapon free" to do more damage, cut tendons and increase bleeding, you don't just pull it back. | 64 |
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What is everyone's favourite philosophical quote? | 17 | I don't know where this Deleuze quote is from (I think it's from an interview?) but it's on the back cover of one of his essay collections:
>If you don't admire something, if you don't love it, you have no reason to write a word about it. Spinoza or Nietzsche are philosophers whose critical and destructive powers are without equal, but this power always springs from affirmation, from joy, from a cult of affirmation and joy, from the exigency of life against those who would mutilate and mortify life. For me, that is philosophy itself. | 12 |
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Do contact with the virus work as booster shots for vaccinated/recovered people? | 407 | Kind of. The shot results in a predictable dose of antigen exposure, response, and zero risk of actual infection.
An exposure to the virus will absolutely provoke a response that will have a “booster” effect, but how much of a response will vary tremendously based on the nature of the exposure, and there’s obviously a risk of infection. Even asymptomatic infections cause tissue damage in lungs, so one would want to avoid that, if possible.
The booster effect exists in both cases, but they are not equivalent in safety, magnitude, or consistency. | 304 |
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ELI5: at what point does electricity stop in water? | Obviously if we put live electricity in the sea, the whole ocean wouldn’t then become dangerous with it. At what point does the electricity stop? What stops it? | 373 | Depends on how you "put electricity" in.
When lightning hits the ocean, it can more or less flow in any direction through the water, and the power dissipates accordingly.
Just think of it expanding (hemi)spherically from the point it hits: the further it gets, the larger the area it covers becomes. The larger the area gets, the smaller the current per area becomes, until it is not noticeable any more. | 215 |
How do we get Vitamin D from the sun? Is it like photosynthesis in any way? | 108 | Photosynthesis is a process where photon is captured and its energy transported across a chain of molecules for the purpose of storing the said energy. This process is well-controlled at various steps, and organisms have evolved over the years to use the best spectrum of light available.
In humans the majority of Vitamin D synthesis requires sunlight at one stage, but the UV light just provides the activation energy to convert one isomeric form of provitamin D to another (i.e. there is no active storage of energy). This is a spontaneous process not requiring cellular machinery, and the effect is limited to the substrate and product. | 60 |
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Modern Islamic Philosophy | Are there any current schools of thought in Islamic philosophy?
EDIT:
https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/59ogrs/modern_islamic_philosophy/?st=iusq3gt5&sh=28eb9aa9 | 21 | What do you mean by Islamic Philosophy? It's a kind of ambiguous term. There were traditions of Islamic platonism and scholasticism in the medieval period, and today there are certainly intellectuals who speak and write about Islamic law (fiqh) and Islamic perspectives on politics and world events, but the Islamic world is more diverse than ever and there are few if any universally agreed upon authorities in the Islamic world, so there aren't really universally respected Islamic intellectuals. Some popular ones in the West that come to mind are Sheikh Hamza Yusef and Sheikh Omar Suleiman, as well as Nouman Ali Khan and Mufti Ismail Musa Menk. But are they philosophers? Not necessarily in the traditional sense. In fact, whether or not there can be such a thing as Islamic Philosophy is itself a controversial subject. There are schools of Islamic jurisprudence, i.e. implementations of shari'ah, and there are differences between Shi'a, Sunni, Salafi, Wahabi, and Liberal Islamic outlooks. You may get a better answer in /r/Islam, /r/philosophyofreligion, or /r/progressiveislam. | 11 |
Is it possible to imagine a universe where the fundamental laws of mathematics are different in the same way scientists can imagine a universe where the laws of physics are completely different than ours? | 94 | Mathematics is already not limited by this universe - it's only limited by our imaginations and the rules of a given mathematical system. E.g. set theory has one set of rules, category theory has another, and something that's possible or true in one system may not be possible or true in another.
As such, the "fundamental laws of mathematics" really have nothing to do with physical universes, and shouldn't be affected by them.
But if the question is about whether we might have a universe where putting two balls into a box results in the box containing three balls, so 1+1=3, that's not actually a question about mathematics, it's just a question about which of the many possible mathematical systems we can imagine apply to the universe in question.
One example of this would be the structure of space, which in our universe appears geometrically flat: so the angles of a triangle, even one with sides that are light-years across, add up to 180 degrees. But in a universe where space has some other geometry, e.g. hyperbolic, then the angles of a triangle in that universe would add up to less than 180 degrees.
This is not a change in the fundamental laws of mathematics, though. It's just a universe with different mathematical properties.
| 61 |
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ELI5 Why nutrient information like sugar and calories, isn't/doesn't have to be on alcohol? | 16 | The FDA requires all nutrition labels on food; however, alcohol used to fall under the jurisdiction of the ATF, who didn't require any labels; it however is now under the jurisdiction of the TTB, and they currently don't impose nutrition labels requirements unless the beverage claims "lite/light", "table wine", etc. In mid-2016, new laws were approved for nutrition labels on alcohol, such as the inclusion of sugar, manufactures have until mid-2018 to comply (mid-2019 is they are small companies). | 11 |
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CMV: Federal Judges blocking Trump's executive order on immigration is an abuse of power by the judiciary. | Everyone has free speech, including the POTUS, and pre-inauguration Trump. I don't care if his speech or catch-phrases were Islamophobic or racist against Arabs or anything else. The executive order itself (the 2nd one that was revised) was changed in such a way so as to fix the things the judges had a problem with the first time around. Now, their excuse for blocking it is because it “drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination.” This is just an attack against the draftee, and doesn't address the legality of the order itself, which is all that should matter. This is a blatant abuse of power for the judiciary to be taking part in, and is worthy of impeachment imo.
Or maybe there's precedent for this... CMV.
**UPDATE**: I have conceded that Trump's intent was indeed a Muslim ban, and that the intent is relevant. As such, I don't think the judges were abusing power. I found the death blow to my argument in the 1965 immigration act, which states: **no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.** Religion isn't included, but place of birth/residence *is* included. The only 'out' for Trump is in using national security as an exception. So... the Supreme Court will get to decide if that's a good enough reason to break with the 1965 act. Thanks for the responses.
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> *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!* | 174 | This is completely standard court procedure. The law cares very much about intent.
Let's say there's a company where a boss clearly insinuates he wants sexual favors from his secretary. He's then heard complaining about not getting them, but then to make things legal proceeds to fire her for a bunch of insignificant reasons like arriving 1 minute late.
Do you think the court is going to look exclusively at the official reason why the secretary was fired, or that the boss' intent is also going to be considered?
Let's say a person spends a long time telling everyone around how much they hate their father, how they wish they'd die, and how they stand to benefit from the inheritance. And then they both go on a trip, and the father falls off a cliff.
Do you think the court will only consider the autopsy, or that it'll also take this person's known statements into consideration about what could have happened?
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CMV: A 20-30 hour working week would improve the livelihoods of working people. | Over the last half century or so we have seen automation and women coming into work reducing the jobs available per person. This has lead to a worker surplus which brings down average wages and but increases profits for employers. This helps business owners and hurts the working population which contributes greatly to wealth inequality.
I believe that the way to counter this is to try to reduce the man hours worked by your average individual either directly or indirectly. I think this would increase the demand for labour and thus improve wages and spread them across the workforce. This is loosely tied to the idea of universal basic income which could have a similar effect.
However I've never seen this brought up in mainstream media and so I'm wondering why it isn't a more talked about topic. Am I wrong or missing something? Or is universal income just a better way of meeting the challenge?
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> *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!* | 583 | Reducing workers to a 20-30 hour workweek would improve livelihoods if "livelihood" is only tied to work-life balance and not to wages. Sure, more time to spend with the kids, but you won't have any money to do things with those kids. And the question can't stop there. If an employer has to double his labor force to match his previous production that employer will be made un-competitive in the world marketplace. Plus each employee carries an extra financial burden to the employer that doesn't stop at wages. Generally each employee costs an employer the wages + 30% in benefits and other costs (at least in the U.S.). So not only is the employer losing production but he has to pay a lot more for the production that he used to be getting. | 125 |
ELI5: What is particle spin? Im aware that it has nothing to do with the electron or whatever literally spinning, but that's about all I understand. What concept can it be compared to in classical mechanics? | 46 | Spin has no true comparison in classical mechanics.
It's simply a 'property' with that name. This happens a lot - Quarks for example will be red, green or blue - but they really have no color at all. It's just a notation for naming three different types. They may as well have called them 1, 2, or 3 quarks. Or apple, orange, banana quarks. Or square, circle, triangle quarks. Or chair, coconut, penguin quarks. The name of the property itself is *meaningless*.
I recall a good analogy from Hawking's BHoT, involving playing cards for what you can sometimes think of spin as.
In the analogy, "spin" is a measure of symmetry, basically the number of times you need to rotate to return to the original state. Consider a normal picture. If you were to spin it around, it would need one full rotation to look "normal" again - so it has a spin of 1. Imagine a playing card - perhaps a four of diamonds. If you spin it around 180 degrees - only halfway - it now looks the same as when you started. So it has a spin of 1/2. Some unusual particles (like the predicted graviton) have a spin of 2 - imagine a picture that, if you rotated it around, still looked different - until you rotated it a second time. *weird*.
But particle physics is just plain *weird*. Don't worry too much about it. Classical mechanics don't apply, and analogies and comparison are always fundamentally flawed in some way.
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[Star Wars... The Prequels] During QuiGon's funeral Palps lets it slip that he is the dark lord (Wait, was that my inside voice?) and the Jedi all confront him. How differently do the rest of the movies play out? | 43 | Palpatine dies, Dooku continues the war and doesn't win. Chancellor Padme Amidala becomes the first woman to lead the Republic, Anakin confesses his love for her to Kenobi who talks with him about Satine and his regrets, Anakin leaves the order and that's it. The Sith are done for good.
At some point Kenobi meets with Ventress and takes her as apprentice.
Bill Organa adopts a lot of the kids stolen by Palpatine, some of them join the Jedi Order, others don't, but they all are carefully watched by the Order.
Slowly dying some of the Clones find about the implanted chip, the Republic fixes it..
Darth Maul is the last Lord of the Sith, and keeps plotting to bring down the Jedi Order and kill Kenobi.
Luke and Leia join the Jedi order. Ventress becomes their Master.
When Yoda dies, Kenobi becomes the Grand Master of the Jedi Order. He regularly visits his friend Anakin Skywalker in Naboo. | 63 |
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When does cancer become terminal? | People with cancer survive with an operation or some sort of medical treatment but when the doctor says it's terminal, when exactly does that happen and what does it mean? Is it possible to survive after the cancer has been termed as terminal? | 27 | Quote: *Terminal illness or end-stage disease is an incurable disease that cannot be adequately treated and is reasonably expected to result in the death of the patient.*
Cancers typically become terminal when the growth of malignant cells impedes major organ function or have reached a level of metastasis (widespread growth throughout the body) where surgical removal is no longer an option and chemotherapy or radiation are either unsuccessful or would only further weaken the patient's body, and the only option left is to make the patient comfortable as they die (how long this takes is entirely based on the particular type of cancer and case specifics).
There have been many cases where a prognosis of "terminal" has been reversed due to aggressive treatment via new techniques or simply by virtue of the tumor growth stopping or reversing on its own, but **this is not common**. Often the media makes major news out of people surviving Stage 4 cancer, but these should not be considered statistically relevant cases, rather as remarkable ones due to various special circumstances. | 47 |
ELI5: Is a carb a carb? How do different carbs effect blood sugar levels, insulin, glycogen and diabetes? | I read that a carb is a carb and if it fits your macros then don’t worry. But then I also read that sugar is terrible for you and you should eat complex carbs because of blood sugar levels. Whats this all about? Blood sugar, glucose, insulin, and diabetes? Can someone ELI5? | 27 | As far as calories go its the same thing as far as your body is concerned. The difference is in how fast they are put into your bloodstream.
100g carbs in a bowl of oatmeal is going to be released into your bloodstream over a few hrs. Giving you a constant blood sugar level.
100g carbs in a soda will hit you bloodstream almost instantly, spiking your blood sugar, which will cause your body to produce a lot of insulin to deal with it.
The difference is how long it takes your body to get the carbs out of the food.
As well, if the goal is to eat less calories, drinking a soda will add calories without actually making you feel like you've eaten. As well it can make you crave more carbs when your blood sugar drops back down.
So carbs and calories that make you feel full and are released slowly are better in that sense.
So yes, if it fits your macros it's fine as far as calories are concerned, but if you get 1/3 of you calories from sugar in a day you'll probably be left feeling hungry and grumpy and craving food from having low blood sugar at some points throughout the day. | 13 |
Philosophy of thermodynamics | I'm starting my PhD in engineering in two months on the topic of 'sustainable and energy efficient building'. Because I am very into philosophy, I want to tackle this subject in a deeper way than the normal engineering approach. Specifically, I want to grasp the true concepts behind energy, entropy (and the related exergy).
When thermodynamics came about (Carnot, Clausius etc.) there was way more attention (and appreciation in my mind) for the philosophical concepts of energy/entropy etc. Nowadays, the focus lies on the mathematical side of things, forgetting what it all effectively means.
I would love to read all the classic authors myself, but, because the PhD is not in philosophy but engineering, I do not have the time. Do any of you have good references on the (philosophical) meaning of energy, entropy etc or some historical evolution of these concepts? | 132 | A readable but solid high-level introduction to these topics is Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan's *Into The Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life.* It's more science than philosophy, but it deals with the concepts well, and has a very, very broad scope.
I also really liked Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers' *Order out of Chaos* (written by a chemist and a philosopher respectively), but it's perhaps a tad dated now. | 39 |
ELI5: How is electric vehicle more environmental friendly when manufacturing of lithium-ion is hazardous? | I'm a big fan of electric vehicle but I just can't quite get the idea how does electric vehicle outweigh the hazard of battery manufacturing significantly that makes sense to pursue it. Thanks | 27 | It's debatable. How do you compare the environmental impact of burning gas and adding more CO2 to the climate change problem with the possible environmental impact of lithium ion technology production? They're not really the same thing, so economists and environmentalists will have to look hard at the ramifications. However, there is an aspect of hope in new technology. We are relatively new with respect to rechargeable batteries and infrastructure. By buying an electric car, you may be making an assumption that the technology, production process, and infrastructure will get better in the future as more people come on board. | 13 |
ELI5: How do people sing in tonal languages? If the melody is falling but the tone of the word is rising, how does that work? | 72 | At least in Chinese the tone of the word is ignored. You just follow the melody. The context will take care of identifying the correct meaning of the word. Also, most of the time the text is displayed in subtitles (on TV, DVD etc.). | 40 |
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[GoT/ASoIaF] What exactly is Arya and Gendry's relationship? | 37 | They're fond of each other, but not to the point that they're willing to give up the possibilities of their lives.
Having grown up an impoverished nobody, Gendry can't bring himself to abandon a life of wealth and respect as the Lord of Storm's End for the sake of a boat, and an uncertain tomorrow.
And having grown up as a noble lady, trained only to marry and breed, Arya can't bring herself to abandon a life of freedom and adventure for the sake of the castle she always had, and the opportunity to live out her days as Gendry's brood mare. | 48 |
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ELI5: How do engagement rings work? | Kind of never learned that part when I was young.
So how is this process work? after a man gives a woman the ring, she carries it with her and then takes it off on the wedding day? do the couple go for ring shopping after the proposal to find a ring for the man? I've seen people put their wedding ring on both left and right hand, does it matter?
Thanks. | 143 | Short version: Do whatever makes the two of you happy.
Long version: Emily Post documented the rules of polite society in the 1920s. It has been the standard of American tradition. For very formal couples or people with an eye to please their elders, this might be a useful read:
>THE ENGAGEMENT RING
>It is doubtful if he who carries a solitaire ring enclosed in a little square box and produces it from his pocket upon the instant that she says “Yes,” exists outside of the moving pictures! As a matter of fact, the accepted suitor usually consults his betrothed’s taste—which of course may be gratified or greatly modified, according to the length of his purse—or he may, without consulting her, buy what ring he chooses. A solitaire diamond is the conventional emblem of “the singleness and endurability of the one love in his life,” and the stone is supposed to be “pure and flawless” as the bride herself, and their future together—or sentiments equally beautiful. There is also sentiment for a sapphire’s “depth of true blue.” Pearls are supposed to mean tears; emeralds, jealousy; opals, the essence of bad luck; but the ruby stands for warmth and ardor: all of which it is needless to say is purest unfounded superstition. 10
> In the present day, precious stones having soared far out of reach of all but the really rich, fashion rather prefers a large semi-precious one to a microscopic diamond. “Fashion,” however, is merely momentary and local, and the great majority will probably always consider a diamond the only ring to have. 11
> It is not obligatory, or even customary, for the girl to give the man an engagement present, but there is no impropriety in her doing so if she wants to, and any of the following articles would be suitable: A pair of cuff links, or waist-coat buttons, or a watch chain, or a key chain, or a cigarette case. Probably because the giving of an engagement ring is his particular province, she very rarely gives him a ring or, in fact, any present at all. 12
> The engagement ring is worn for the first time “in public” on the day of the announcement.
>BUYING THE WEDDING RING
> It is quite usual for the bride to go with the groom when he buys the wedding ring, the reason being that as it stays for life on her finger, she should be allowed to choose the width and weight she likes and the size she finds comfortable.
| 45 |
ELI5: What is a proxy war? | I googled it but they keep using the term “actor” and I’m not sure what they mean by that? | 24 | *"You want to punch someone into the face, but you are not allowed to do it. So you send your little brother."*
Proxy wars are wars fought by (smaller) countries / organizations / armies ( = "actors") on behave of bigger countries / organizations / armies who cannot attempt to kill each other, usually due to political reasons.
Classic example would be the Cold War between the USA and the Sovietunion. Any military confrontation would end in a nuclear death spiral and the extinction on human civilization ... which may or may not be popular with the voters. So you go to Vietnam, Korea or Afghanistan, which are perhaps the most well known proxy wars.
SYL | 34 |
Why do we use parsecs instead of 3.26 lightyears? | I just learned this in school so I know near nothing about parsecs, so sorry if the answer is obvious. I just don't see the reason to say parsecs instead of using lightyears everywhere, you know, using one word and not multiple ones would be less confusing. Or are there certain things you can only do with parsecs? | 17 | Parsecs are definitely the convenient unit for astronomy. For some reason, light-years have become the standard unit used in communication with the public. Light-years are an easier concept to grasp (i.e. the distance travelled by light in one year), but parsecs really are more convenient to do maths with.
The parsec comes directly from how distances to stars are measured. As the Earth goes around the Sun, we are constantly seeing stars from different angles. This causes stars to move in little ellipses in the sky. This is called "parallax". The size of this effect tells us how far away the star is. You can see a similar effect when driving in the country. The fenceposts by the road appear to be moving really fast while the distant mountains appear to the be totally stationary.
A star is one parsec away if it moves in a little circle with a radius of one arc-second (1/60th of 1/60th of one degree) over a year. If its little circle is half an arc-second, it's two parsecs away. If it's 1/10th of an arc-second, it's 10 parsecs away. So, given that astronomers like using arc-seconds to measure angles in the sky, using parsecs makes the mathematics really simple. It's a geometric unit that we can measure directly. Light-years are less direct, because we can't directly time how long it takes light to reach us from a distant star - we have to calculate it from the speed of light and the distance.
There's also a convenient trick that 1 km/s is extremely close to 1 parsec per million years. Alpha Centauri is a bit over a parsec away. So if you know your speed in km/s, you can very easily calculate how many years it would take to reach Alpha Centauri or whatever.
So the real question is: if we actually use parsecs all the time, and they're more convenient units, why do we teach kids about light-years? It's probably because they're just a little bit easier to teach, but that's very much a social question rather than an astronomy one. | 47 |
CMV: Bail bonds are unjust and stupid. | I don't understand why bail bonds are a thing. Bail in general is definitely good, locking people up before their trials unneccesarily is something we should want to minimise. but why on earth is it that you typically need to post up money for bail? either someone is a flight risk/danger to the community, or they arent, whatever money they put up for bail doesn't change that. breaking bail conditions is already a crime that youll recieve extra punishment for, that should be enough, right? To me, all it seems to do is punish poor people who can't afford bail. | 33 | World is not black and white. We cannot say that this person will break their bail and this won't. If we knew that before hand we would lock up the dangerous people and let others walk.
Instead we ask "How likely is it that this person will run?" and "How much extra punishment we should place on them to discourage that running?". That is bail money. You give some money as carentee that you will return to your court hearing. After that you get your money back no matter how the hearing goes. If you don't come back that money is extra punishment in top of not showing up.
To run away you also need money. Money you might not have because you just paid bail. | 12 |
Why does fallen fruit begin to grow mold while fruit still attached to the tree does not? | My guess is that the tree as some form of defense against fungi but I am at a loss to what mechanisms make up that defense. | 1,742 | When the fruit falls, it gets squashed, bugs and ants start biting into it creating a nice entry for mold.
Sometimes fruit also gets moldy while still on the tree, typically when birds peck on it or wasps start biting it. | 1,512 |
ELI5: When soap breaks down the cellular membranes of cells why/how is it safe to use on our skin? | 80 | Our skin has a layer of dead cells on the top, as well as natural oils that form a somewhat protective barrier against certain things like soap. When your hands dry out after washing them a lot, that is your oil barrier being removed. Individual cells and viral particles pretty much don't have as thick of a lipid (lipids are fats/oils) layer as our entire skin surface does, so the soap degrades them more quickly. Our bodies are also able to produce much more oil to keep our skin healthy than each little particle can, so after our hands dry out some we still have living cells beneath the dried out dead ones that can generate more oil.
However, not all pathogens are extremely susceptible to the killing effects of soap, which is why scrubbing and washing off vigorously for \~20 seconds is so important: good soap in the right concentration actually forms small little bubbles called micelles which surround dirt, pathogens and other debris, and allow them to become much more water soluble. That slippery feeling is the soap working, so make sure you feel that before you finish scrubbing, and continue to scrub as you wash away with warm water! | 48 |
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[Bioshock] How did Rapture's building's withstand the pressure of the ocean? | In Bioshock 2, Sophia Lamb threatens to drop Persephone into a deep trench, which ultimately ends up happening. Based on Raptures location in the North Atlantic, we can assume this trench is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The Ridge goes pretty deep, but since we see all manner of plant life growing whenever we look out a window in Rapture, we can assume Rapture is in the photic zone. This places Rapture at a depth of around 150 meters. Credit for these deductions goes to [this article](http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=18192).
If pressure equals +14.5 psi for every 10.06 meters, then the water pressure in Rapture should be around ~216.2 psi. How do those art deco buildings withstand such pressure? Wouldn't they have to be reinforced to such a degree that there wouldn't be enough space inside to be worth it? To add to that, the buildings weren't even designed properly - they [leaked](http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Wales_%26_Wales_Architects)!
I love Rapture. But I don't see how it worked. Maybe if they were in Pyrex spheres or something, but it looks like they just dropped Chrysler buildings into the ocean and that was that.
Edit: [The city skyline \(sealine?\) for reference.
](http://i.imgur.com/ZpanOC0.jpg) | 156 | To be fair, the buildings in Rapture aren't exceptionally ludicrous in design, it's not like they tried remaking the Statue of Liberty under water or anything. It is not outside the scope of human engineering to build large objects capable of withstanding the pressure of the ocean, it's just really hard. Thankfully, Rapture was a place that was home to a lot of really crazy but very smart people. | 113 |
With two vaccines now approved and in use, does making a vaccine for new strains of coronavirus become easier to make? | I have read reports that there is concern about the South African coronavirus strain. There seems to be more anxiety over it, due to certain mutations in the protein. If the vaccine is ineffective against this strain, or other strains in the future, what would the process be to tackle it? | 7,553 | The Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna vaccine’s can easily be shifted to match newer strains. I’m not sure about the others, but it’s relatively simple to change the mRNA coding to adjust the type of spike protein you body needs to create | 3,790 |
[X-Files & MIB] Would Fox Mulder from X-Files be able to discover the Men in Black agency in Men in Black? | Also, would it change anything if Dana Scully we’re helping Mulder?
Edit: I forgot about their memory wipe, would Mulder be able to convince them to let him join their ranks instead of getting wiped? | 24 | Yes, multiple times. And every time he did, they'd neuralize him, pour some bourbon on his shirt, and dump him on his couch. He'd find out the hard way if it really was possible to get brain cancer from chronic neuralization. | 21 |
[Scooby-Doo] How rich is the gang? | I mean, we've seen Fred's and Daphne's families and they seem pretty loaded, but the gang in general seems pretty well-off and with constant source of revenue since it's never really an issue and Shaggy even shrugs off earning a million dollars in the first episode of "What's New Scooby-Doo?" | 381 | Fred and Daphne come from wealthy families but Shaggy has an absurdly rich family I’m pretty sure
They are essentially rich kids taking Velma and a dog on their trust fund adventures, I’m not sure if it’s ever stated exactly how much they have | 384 |
ELI5: Why are some animals born with the ability to walk, while others take years to learn? | I've seen birthing videos of different animals (chameleons, horses, giraffes), and they all start walking almost immediately, while humans and other primates take months, if not years to develop. Why is this? Is there a benefit to humans being immobile at birth? | 28 | An article from Scientific American from 2009:
Compared with other animals, human babies take much longer to learn to walk. Does this have something to do with our big brains?
—Mahmoud Dhaouadi, via e-mail
John Bock, an anthropologist at California State University, Fullerton, provides a reply:
A HORSE can walk within an hour after birth. A newborn baboon baby can cling to its mother’s hair while she jumps through the trees. Even among our closest evolutionary relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—babies are far more agile than their human counterparts. That’s because humans are born with brains that are largely immature, leaving babies with little control over their movements. This uniquely human attribute is the result of a lengthy evolutionary battle between big brains and narrow pelvises.
One of the first traits that differentiated humans from our ancestors was upright gait. There are several hypotheses about the emergence of this trait, but it seems to have offered a way to move more efficiently in open environments such as the savanna. Although our earliest human ancestors were very apelike in terms of their brains, their upright gait had changed their pelvis to look much like our modern one. This reshaped pelvis came with a narrower birth canal, making childbirth more difficult.
Meanwhile the new roaming grounds afforded advantages in acquiring resources and negotiating social relationships to those with flexible, problem-solving behavior. Over time, natural selection increased brain size in these early humans. But at some point, the selection for bigger and bigger brains collided head-on, so to speak, with the narrow pelvis. If babies’ heads got any bigger, they would get stuck in the birth canal and kill both mother and child. Although natural selection worked to maximize what could be done—for instance, babies’ heads compress as they twist their way around the bones in the pelvis—there simply is not enough room for a big, mature brain to pass through.
As it turned out, the evolutionary answer was to let the brain keep growing outside the womb before it matures. So in contrast to other mammals, humans have a good bit of development to do after birth. The result is a relatively undeveloped infant who needs lots of care and can do much less for itself than other newborn primates.
Physiologically, why is the sound of fingernails on a blackboard so unnerving? Is this effect particular to human beings, or are other creatures similarly affected?
—Rowan Snyder, via e-mail
Neuroscientist Josh McDermott of New York University explains:
PROBABLY A COUPLE of factors combine to make such sounds unpleasant. The first, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the presence of high frequencies. The range between two
and four kilohertz—approximately that covered by the highest octave of a standard
piano—seems to contribute the most to the nastiness of the sound. It is unclear why people tend to fi nd these frequencies unpleasant, but we know that noise-induced hearing loss most commonly occurs in roughly this region, so it is conceivable that the aversive reaction partly reflects the ear’s vulnerability.
The spectrum of screeching sounds is also much noisier than that of an instrument; that is, there is a strong random component to the sound. The noisiness probably results from the fingernails repeatedly catching on part of the chalkboard surface before sliding forward.
This catching and sliding also causes rapid fluctuations in intensity, giving the sound a “rough” character.
Roughness is known to be unpleasant—car manufacturers, who aim to produce minimally unpleasant engine noise, for instance, find that smooth sounds with minimal variation in intensity are preferred by listeners over those that are rough. It’s a bit harder to say why sound roughness is considered unpleasant—as far as we know it is not harmful to the ears.
Some scientists have proposed that screeching sounds are acoustically similar to screams, a sound to which we might plausibly have evolved an aversion. If this hypothesis were true, one might expect to find similar reactions in nonhuman primates, which also produce screams. Thus far only one species of monkey has been tested, and it did not
display the same aversive response to screeches that humans have. It may therefore be more appropriate to simply regard screeching sounds as a “perfect storm”—combining two properties that we know to be unpleasant, resulting in a single sound that is awful to listen to.
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Ask The Brains."
| 15 |
ELI5:What happens in your body at concerts when it feels like your heart is about to vibrate out of your chest when they hit super low bass notes? | 103 | Sound is effectively just waves of air moving at different speeds and sizes. While most of them are so small you can really only sense them with your ears, as you start to get really low, the waves start to get a lot bigger, to the point you can actually feel them. That feeling is the air physically vibrating your body, usually with what's called a ground sub. Some Front of House Engineers do this on purpose to get that "concert feel", and the wavelengths that do it best are actually below your threshold of hearing, in terms of pitch, but can be powerful enough to knock even a grown person over. | 42 |
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ELI5: How was the speed of sound initially measured? | 45 | A clever trick is to beat a drum exactly once a second, then walk away, looking back. As you recede, the sound will get more and more behind the sight of the drum being beaten, until eventually it's in synch with the *next* beat. Then you know you're exactly one sound-second away. Do this in several directions to average out errors, and you have the speed of sound.
Doing this with a group of 11 year olds we got to within 5% of the correct value. | 40 |
|
A family has two children. Given that one of the children is a boy, and that he was born on a Tuesday, what is the probability that both children are boys? | I expected the answer to be 1/3 as Tuesday is a totally arbitrary day and has no bearing on the results. However, the explanation given [here](https://brilliant.org/wiki/bayes-theorem/) (I've screenshot the relevant passage [here](http://i.imgur.com/X1k8Zba.png)) claims that the probability is 13/27 instead. While I follow the math, I don't understand how the additional information of the arbitrary day the boy was born on changes the probability at all, when we already know he was born on some arbitrary day. If we assume the other child was born on a Wednesday does this change the probability further? | 38 | You have to intuitively understand why the "1 boy" answer is 1/3. It is because the two children are interchangeable in this problem, so the information we're given could refer to either of them or both of them. Of the 4 possibilities (MM, MF, FM, FF), in 2 of them the information refers to either, and in 1 of them it refers to both.
By adding the extra "born on Tuesday" qualifier, there are far fewer ways that information could be referring to both of them. The either cases remain the same, but the both case becomes exceedingly unlikely, and so you approach the 1/2 probability where they are totally distinct.
Answering your question, if you are told that the other child is born on Wednesday, the two children are now totally distinct, your probability goes to 1/2 (this is the same as the first example on that page, "the older child is a boy").
Conversely, if you are told that the other child is also born on Tuesday, now they are back to being totally interchangeable and the probability is again 1/3.
It's not very intuitive. Working through it with counting can help, I've written up a reduced version of the question below, perhaps it will help.
---
Imagine weeks are 2 days long. You are told that they have a boy born on the second day.
~~M1M1~~ **M2M1** ~~F1M1~~ ~~F2M1~~
**M1M2** **M2M2** F1M2 F2M2
~~M1F1~~ M2F1 ~~F1F1~~ ~~F2F1~~
~~M1F2~~ M2F2 ~~F1F2~~ ~~F2F2~~
P(A)=1/4 P(B)=7/16 P(B|A)=3/4 P(A|B)=3/7
---
Edit: To re-emphasize the point:
- At one extreme, your information is about a specific child
- e.g. The (first / oldest / smartest / shortest) child is a boy
- In this case the only possibilities are that the *other* child is a boy, or is a girl; so 50-50 they're both boys
- At the other extreme, your information is as ambiguous as possible
- e.g. One of the children is a boy
- The possibilities are boy-girl, boy-boy, or girl-boy; 1/3 of them has both boys
- The "day of week born" qualifier is partway between the two extremes
- As the information becomes more distinguishing (e.g. born at 6:48pm), it tends towards the first case
- As the information becomes less distinguishing (e.g. born on a weekday), it tends towards the second case
| 20 |
How do relativistic effects affect planetary orbits? | I imagine its just some tiny little correction, but I'm curious about order of magnitude how large that correction is and qualitatively what its effects are. | 64 | The only planet whose orbit is noticeably affected by relativistic effects is Mercury. Mercury's orbit precesses around the sun, to a degree slightly larger than predicted by classical Newtonian gravitation. I've seen qualitative explanations of how relativity causes the extra precession, but most of them are misleading imo and what it comes down to is the relativistic equations predict the observed precession. | 35 |
Could a cosmic ray set off ammunition or explosives? | I've read about how cosmic rays can cause errors in computers.
I've also read about how they can damage genetic information.
This got me to thinking.
Could a cosmic ray set off the primer in a cartridge, resulting in a bullet firing unintentionally?
Or could a cosmic ray unexpectedly cause explosives to detonate?
I'm guessing it would come down to the amount of energy a cosmic ray could potentially deposit and how it interacts with something it passes through. But I don't know much about either of those things. | 50 | You may have read that cosmic rays have very high energies. That's true, but incomplete: they have very high energies *for such a small particle*.
They can cause errors in computers because transistors have been scaled down to microscopic levels, so the ionization caused by cosmic rays is meaningful at that scale. They can damage genetic information because the DNA molecule is storing information at scale of a few atoms, so if ionization breaks the molecular bonds then atoms may recombine in weird ways.
But at a macroscopic level their energy is negligible.
Ok, there's an exception to that. There are some *ultra high energy* cosmic rays where a subatomic particle may have an energy equivalent to a fast baseball. That's really a lot, but at the same time, higher energy particles traverse matter almost unaffected, depositing only a very small part of their energy.
So no, they can't cause a bullet to fire and they can't detonate an explosive.
> the amount of energy a cosmic ray could potentially deposit
Lower energy cosmic rays are the ones that deposit more energy in matter proportionally to the distance they travel, and it is negligible at a human scale.
> how it interacts with something it passes through.
Matter is made of atoms, and atoms are full of electrons. When it passes through it kicks electrons off their atoms. This may cause weird recombination and modify molecules such as DNA. It can also collide with an atomic nucleus moving it out of its place - it implies something for highly sensitive electronics but not much for humans.
Also note that these things about errors in computers and damage to DNA are mostly a concern in outer space, but fortunately on Earth we're protected by the atmosphere. The radiation level we receive on the surface is low enough to say we don't have to worry about it.
| 16 |
[Mortal Kombat] How do seemingly “normal” Kombatants sustain such horrific injuries without getting killed? | So I was invited to partake in a tournament called Mortal Kombat and while I haven’t had my first fight I’ve managed to watch a few. I saw this lady in blue with fans stab someone in both of their eyes and they managed to get back up and keep fighting. I saw another dude who looked like he was covered in electricity stab another guy in the gut and throw him with his spear and again the guy just got up like nothing happened. What the hell? How are these people not dead? More importantly am I going to be able to just walk away if someone just impales me on a spear? | 36 | A Mortal Kombat tournament is two things. First, of course, its a sport.
Secondly, it's backed by very powerful supernatural forces.
A blood sport where one guy gets his neck snapped 30 seconds in isn't very entertaining, nor is one where its a literal god vs a bunch of normal humans.
The powers behind it likely balance things out a bit, and this includes making normal humans tough enough to meaningfully take part rather then being vaporized instantly. | 35 |
[Twin Peaks] What IS Bob? | 35 | Bob is an extradimensional entity that feeds on the fear of others. He does so by possessing the bodies of people and committing crimes for the specific reason to hurt others. Some may call him a demon but he is something more than that. The fact is we don't know a lot about the Black Lodge so it is hard to pin down what he is. | 21 |
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Is there a difference in the energy required to freeze water, and the energy required to melt ice? | 26 | No, except that the values are exactly opposite. Freezing water releases energy, melting ice absorbs energy. For the same mass these values and equal and opposite. (This is all, of course, allowing for no change in the temperature) | 11 |
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[Generic Urban Fantasy]How much force is required to put a stake through a vampires heart and,realistically, what are the best ways to do it? | Let's assume that vampires have no form of supernatural endurance, and that we are operating in a universe where staking does kill(or at least paralyze) the vampire.
EDIT: this thread concerns the method of staking, not killing vampires in general. | 17 | You're welcome to do the accompanying scientific research if you're of a macabre bent, but quite honestly it's a pretty simple question with a pretty simple answer:
Men have been stabbing each other in the chest with pointy sticks for a very long time, very effectively. If they can do it, you likely can.
As to how, any way you can direct a sharp piece of wood at the enemy's chest with equivalent power to an angry male human will do the trick. The more complicated your scheme, however, the more points of failure.
That being the case, the simplest ways tend to be best and most effective. If you don't fear melee combat, approach from a position of ambush, aim well and with good form, and push through the target.
If you fear your skills are not up to the task, take up archery, and find someone to make footed arrows, or make them yourself. | 17 |
Why is liposuction limited to a certain amount? Why can't doctors suck out 100 pounds of fat from a person that needs to lose 100 pounds? | 570 | You can't take out a lot of adipose tissue, as a big cavity will result, and then a seroma will form (fluid pocket). You'd also wind up detaching the skin from the body in a way - a sort of Morel-Lavallee type lesion, and might wind up with skin necrosis. | 223 |
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ELI5: How has FloJo's 100m world record remained unbroken for so long compared to men's 100m sprint? | 18 | The wind gauge was incorrect during her world record time, which should have disqualified that specific run. She was still the fastest of the bunch on each other heat. The IAAF decided not to penalize her for the illegal tailwind, so her record stood.
It's also speculated that she was using HGH, and her retiring the year before mandatory drug testing was instituted. One person came forward and claimed to sell her some, but it was dismissed at the time. The Olympic committee at the time claimed they singled her out and did rigorous drug testing, and failed to find anything, though the doctor who did the examination was accused of covering up failed drug tests on other occasions. | 23 |
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