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[Jurassic Park] what happened to the indigenous animals on the island(s)? | The island is large enough with sufficient biodiversity to support plenty of birds, animals, and insects. What happened to them with the influx of dinosaurs? | 15 | Isla Nublar is a sea mount, and was known among Costa Rican fishermen and the government for being almost nothing but rocks, jungle, and rain. Its native fauna population was relatively small and isolated to the heavier forest to the island's north. Mostly small birds, rats, snakes, possums, leeches, and cicadas.
When InGen bought the island, they cleared and developed the central and eastern part of the island mostly, and left the animals in the north alone as best they could. The dinosaur population was supposed to be kept separate and tightly contained for ease of public view. But when they started getting out, the small animals most likely became part of the new violent food chain for a brief time.
(In the novel) following the evacuation of Doctor Grant and the other survivors of the incident, the Costa Rican air force firebombed the island and killed most everything still living there.
(In the movies) Following the evacuation of Doctor Grant and the other survivors of the incident, a few return trips to the island were made and it was noted that the dinosaurs that had escaped were developing into a semi-natural ecosystem. Which included a few species eating the native fauna. | 12 |
[Marvel] if I had the eye of Agamotto, would it be possible to clear an area of radioactive contamination by just, accelerating the decay of radioactive materials | If I'm not mistaken, the eye can either revert something back to how it was at a point in time and turn it back to the present, or accelerate it's decomposition/decay
So would it be possible to clean Chernobyl by just accelerating the decay if radioactive materials by a few millenniums | 470 | Theoretically, yes. But on the other hand, it's not too clear how the Eye would work with it. When you speed up time around something, what happens to whatever it emits? Will you cause it to emit the elapsed time's worth of radiation in an instant? | 304 |
Arguments for ethics in the face of logical positivism? | I am a student of philosophy and often encounter people(often of a scientific mindset) who make use of arguments based in logical positivism to reject ethics overall. Although I do not agree with the logical positivist view that only empirical answers are worthwhile I cannot find a argument completely capable of combating this view which remains free from criticism that shows it to be less reasonable than the positivist view. If you have any insight here please share it. I must confess that this is an incredibly distressing issue for me and I honestly don't know what to do if I cannot find a logical response. | 17 | Historically, the logical positivists didn't necessarily "reject ethics overall". For example, AJ Ayer argued for a non-cognitivist metaethics. Many members of the Vienna Circle were politically active and were Marxists. And having known many people "of a scientific mindset" (I take it that you mean science fans or students of various kinds), most do not know what logical positivism is, and do not espouse, i.e., a verification theory of meaning.
It would be helpful if you could tell us a bit more about what you have in mind. | 18 |
ELI5: why does evolution, in the long run, seem to favour smaller animals? | I was just reading about the extinction of the [Dunkleosteus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkleosteus) fish and the giant prehistoric predatory sealife in general and started thinking: why it would seem, to a layman, that even without the mass extinction event, nature seems to default to smaller animal life every now and then? Why are there so few truely gigantic animals alive now, such as whales - is it just a question of sustenance? | 165 | I think this trend is just a misconception.
Up until the K-T extinction event, one could have easily asked "Why does evolution in the long run seem to favor larger animals?". Terrestrial vertebrates had been steadily getting larger ever since they crawled onto land in the Devonian period, culminating in the truly gigantic archosaurs during the Jurassic and Cretaceous.
This was a period from roughly ~400 million years ago to 65 million years ago during which animals pretty much kept getting bigger. That's over 300 million years worth of evolution, a much longer trend than the reversal in the last 65 million years.
It's only after the K-T extinction event that animals seem to get smaller, but if you compare modern megafauna to pre-Jurassic creatures, modern megafauna are much larger (not even counting cetaceans)! | 93 |
ELI5: Can alcohol really effect individuals differently at higher elevations? What about THC in marijuana? | 145 | Alcohol yes, if you are not used to the elevation. Alcohol does lower blood oxygen saturation, which means that less oxygen is being carried to tissues throughout the body. High elevation does the same thing because there is less oxygen in the atmosphere. Drinking at high elevations would combine both of these effects. This would only occur within the first couple days of being at a higher elevation since the body will recognize that there is less oxygen available in the atmosphere and generate more red blood cells in order to compensate. People who live at high elevations will not be affected by this, but may have the opposite effect when going to lower elevations.
THC no, because its affects have nothing to do with the cardiovascular or respiratory system, beyond the actual smoking of it. The change in atmospheric pressure is not likely to have much of any effect on the absorption of THC in the lungs. | 78 |
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[Marvel] Does Captain America enjoy food the same way we do? Or does his body metabolize it so quickly that its instantly converted to energy and he gets no satisfying feeling of being satiated? | 250 | Food enjoyment comes from the taste.
Everybody with the sense of taste and smell can enjoy food.
Superman for example doesnt need it but he enjoys it a lot.
Basically cap is like those people that can eat whatever and dont get fat. | 224 |
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[Batman] The Waynes are British instead of American. What city in Britain would they settle in? What would be the Gotham City of the UK? | 16 | Definitely London, or a fictional analogue thereof, the Waynes got stabbed to death by a mugger after coming out of a theatre in the west end and as such batman has a hatred of bladed weapons, instead of batarangs his primary weapon is a gun that fires non-lethal batletts. | 36 |
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CMV: Cryonics is not a currently viable technology, and no one who has been preserved up to this point will ever be revived. | There are great advances happening in cryonics, with regards to the preservation of organs. It is absolutely worthy of continued research. But we haven't reached the point where anyone who is being preserved has the potential for revival. As such, people who are contracting with companies like Alcor to be preserved in whole or in part are effectively giving money to scam artists who cannot possibly fulfill their side of the bargain.
Currently, my line in the sand would be the revival of any cryonically preserved mammal. Evidence that would change my mind would be to show that this has occurred. Failing that, I'm open to the possibility that viability for the preservation process can be demonstrated through different means, possibly by showing that it works with some other form of life and convincing me that the complexity of that task is sufficient to demonstrate the potential for revival.
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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!* | 24 | The fact that we cannot currently revive these people is acknowledged and irrelevant. The whole point of cryonics is that you are waiting for a time when medical technology can revive you from your frozen condition and cure you of whatever killed you. It is sort of ridiculous to say definitively that there will not be a time when currently frozen people can be revived. You cannot predict the future. Current technology allows for perfect preservation of all cellular structure including that of the brain. This means that everything that you are when you are frozen is preserved. It is very far from far fetched that some future technology could allow frozen people to be awakened and people several hours dead to be revived. Those two advances (fairly minor ones in the grand scheme of things) are all that stand between currently frozen people and their new lives. | 11 |
Are emotions really at odds with logic? | This is this popular media concept that emotions are inherently illogical but I disagree.
I think a truly logical person can still have emotions. You don't need to be a Vulcan to be logical. Logic doesn't need to dictate every decision we make, only the ones that require logic.
There is a time and place for either and sometimes there's even a time for both. Deciding on what you want to eat for dinner? Logic isn't important here.
A logical person should be capable of recognizing when emotions interferes in a job for example, and remove themselves in that event. If a doctor just lost a family member, the logical course of action is to take a leave of absence and take time to process.
What are your thoughts?
Do you think emotions are inherently illogical? | 33 | If you look at this from a neuroscience perspective then you get a very interesting answer.
Basically there are three areas of the brain, the brain stem which controls what your body does, the limbic system which does emotion, and the cortex which does logic.
BUT, they're actually layered, cortex on top of limbic on top of brain stem. Meaning that any form of logic that a person can experience actually HAS to be at least partially processed by the limbic system and emotions before it becomes a response. So it's impossible as a human to experience only logic, and depending on how you think about it, this may redefine what logic means from a human perspective. | 24 |
CMV: I don't believe there's any inherent morality in dressing modestly nor do I believe there's any inherent immorality in dressing immodestly. | I've never understood why society seems to think that dressing modestly automatically makes you a better person and wearing revealing clothes automatically makes you a bad (or at least less good) person. I think behavior determines morality, not how you dress.
I'm sure the modesty issue stems from our slut-shaming culture, but regardless of whether you believe promiscuity is wrong, judging a person by their clothing still doesn't make sense to me. Any person could be promiscuous whether they dress modestly or not.
Another problem here is defining and setting standards for modesty. I once heard someone define dressing modestly as dressing in a way that does not encourage sexual attraction. If that's the case then in order to dress modestly, one would have to cover every part of his or her body that could possibly be sexually attractive to someone else. There are only a few cultures/ religions that require this and most people in contemporary society would agree that wearing clothing to cover every part of the body is overkill. So if you don't cover everything then how do you decide what is morally right to cover? Boobs but not legs? What if you have a flat chest but really long, sexy legs? How is a woman showing her sexy legs but covering her flat chest considered more modest than a woman covering her legs but showing cleavage? I feel like society arbitrarily chooses which parts of the body should be covered and even those rules aren't consistent. Standards of modest dress continually change over time. Actual prostitutes in the American 1800's wore clothing that covered substantially more than what we would consider modest clothing today. If there were inherent morality in dressing modestly, wouldn't that mean that those prostitutes were morally better than "decently dressed" people of today?
I think modest dress is highly subjective and thus shouldn't be used to judge the morality of other people. CMV.
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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!* | 62 | Most people believe that modesty, or lack thereof, should be with respect to current standards. They would hold that the prostitutes of the 1800s were just as immodest as, say, a stripper working a club would be today because they're not judged on a static scale. Instead, their modesty is held to what is considered sexual or immodest during that time period.
In some cultures breasts aren't sexualised at all, so it would be silly to accuse the women there of being immodest by showing them. However, if that culture sexualizes, say, hair, leaving one's hair out *would* be immodest with respect to that culture.
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It is estimated that there are between 1-10 quadrillion ants on Earth. How did we come to that number? | 23 | Count/ estimate the number of ants in individual colonies of particular species.
Count/ estimate density of colonies of each species in different environments and ecosystems.
Multiply everything out by the measured area of those different environments and ecosystems on the planet.
| 26 |
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Can a human gain calories from eating common leaves? | I assume it wouldn't taste good, but if I was in a survival scenario would eating leaves from trees help? Could I get calories from them in any meaningful way? If not, is there something special about spinach and other leaf vegetables that makes them particularly healthy? | 29 | The calories that are available to humans even in the leafy greens we eat like spinach aren't much. It would take like 10-15 pounds of spinach per day for you to get enough calories to survive and at that point the amount oxalate you'd be getting would be a serious problem.
What makes leafy greens healthy to eat is not the calories, but the vitamins and minerals they contain. Particularly vitamins A, C, and K, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. All leaves will have these since they're indispensable parts of photosynthesis and cellular function for the plant.
The greens we eat have been bred for generations to have thinner cell walls, which means a higher nutrient-to-weight ratio, and also less of things like oxalates, tannins, and other metabolites that make them unpalatable, toxic, or even lock up the nutrients so that we can't digest them.
This would be the main problem, particularly with trees, which often have thickened leaves and a lot of secondary metabolites. They produce these things precisely to prevent animals from eating them. You'd be better off eating the leaves of herbaceous (non-woody) plants. In fact many like dandelion, lamb's quarters, lactuca (wild lettuce), plantago, etc. are perfectly edible and lots of people collect and eat them even outside of "survival scenarios".
tl;dr : You can get nutrition from any leaf that doesn't make you sick, but it might not be much. Definitely not much calories. You should look for the most tender, green leaves without nasty flavors. | 27 |
ELI5: Why the current president (assuming they still have eligibility) automatically gets the nomination from their associated party... | 17 | They don't. For example, in 1980, Jimmy Carter, the incumbent president, was challenged for the Democratic nomination by both Ted Kennedy and Jerry Brown. He ended up winning the nomination, but it definitely wasn't automatic.
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Why does water flow out in a twister when I drain the bathtub? | 75 | You can visualize this with a thought experiment.
Imagine that the water in the tub is not 100.00000% still before you open the drain.
Now sit atop a microscopic skin flake that is moving with this not-still water, in a random direction, not straight to the drain. Say you are moving to the right of the drain originally.
Now you open the drain and at first there is no twister. It just starts sucking water towards it.
You were moving to the right of the drain, but now the drain is sucking water, so there's a force pulling you towards the drain.
You already had a velocity, to another direction, but now you start accelerating towards the drain. You won't immediately stop going where you were going, make a sharp turn, and start moving straight to the drain (only cartoons behave like this). Instead, there will be a gradually increasing velocity component vector towards the drain, which is added to your original velocity vector which was to the right of the drain.
Your original velocity to the right is decreasing (unless you are rowing) naturally, and the velocity towards the drain is increasing. What's the result? You start curving towards the drain.
If you are imagining this right, you now see that you'll describe a gentle spiral towards the drain, right? And you can see that your speed will increase as you spiral to the center (like when you close your arms while spinning on an office chair).
But you're not alone in the bathtub. All "particles" of water will be subject to this sort of effect, and also interfere with other particles' movements (the magic of fluid dynamics).
If the overall average random movements were more clockwise, they will add up and the resulting twister will be clockwise and vice-versa (forget the folklore about south/north of the equator; that effect is too minuscule to make a difference; you can force the direction by stirring the water around the drain by hand before or after opening the drain).
Even a small average direction tendency grows into a well defined twister, because once the rotation starts and it's accelerated ultimately fed by gravity, the rotating stream drags water around it to the same direction (positive feedback).
You can also picture this imagining you're driving a car in a straight line and suddently you see your arch-enemy you must run over already at your left. You yank the steering wheel to the left, but you can't make a sharp 90 degree turn in real life; you describe an arc, and drift around the guy, spiraling towards him.
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ELI5: Why are bigger sizes of the same item of clothing the same price? | Seems like you should pay more for more material? | 34 | The materials cost (especially the difference in materials cost between two sizes) is an insignificantly small portion of the cost to design, manufacture, transport, distribute, advertise, store and ultimately sell you the product.
| 31 |
[Star Wars] My Padawan wants to wear black robes like a Sith, is this a problem? | I'm a Jedi Knight who just got his first Padawan assign by the Council, the training progresses good.
He learns from me, I learn by teaching him, everything is nice in balance, but lately my Padawan has started to wear black robes. They are still in the traditional cut of our order, but they seem a bit too reminiscent of the Siths to me, when we talked about it he said that Master Anakin Skywalker wears his Jedi robes ether black or even black leather, so I don't feel in the position to directly forbid it but should I be worried?
And since we are on the topic why IS a prominent Jedi wearing black robes like a Sith? | 219 | Why would it be a problem? This isn't some fantasy series where the good guys wear white and the bad guys wear black so the audience doesn't have to think too much. Black is just a colour, maybe he likes it for camouflage purposes or out of respect for a deceased relative. Or maybe he thinks he looks silly dressing in white robes that never stay clean. Black hides dust and dirt much better than "traditional" robes. Maybe he is a strict adherent to the no whites after galactic labour day rule. Quit acting like the fashion police, if he was turning to the dark side he's not likely to announce it by changing his wardrobe and growing an emo hair style. | 208 |
ELI5:Syria and what the hell has/ is going on | 76 | It's more complicated than this but to EL5 it:
in 2011 civil war broke after a few months of protests, followed by months of civil disobedience that was violently put down, especially during the Arab spring, between government and a rebel group called the Syrian Free army made up of former syrian military mostly.
This being the middle east, previous bad blood and complicated politics split syria up into many factions, including the Kurds in the north, ISIL in the east, the recognized government in the west, and a bunch of other groups. Just about everyone has been accused of horrible human rights abuses, but because ISIL is holding the oil and gas producing sections of the country and threatening to halt exports, they have gotten the majority of the west's attention during this conflict.
The government is still nominally in control of the country, controlling about 60% of the current population, but lost a lot of oil and gas fields to ISIL.
During most of this time but getting worse over the past 6 months many Syrians have been deciding that they had had enough and left the country, precipitating the current refugee crisis in europe. Syria borders Iraq, which is mired in its own civil war at the moment so is not a popular emigration target, Israel which is not very Muslim friendly for whatever reason, Turkey and Jordan both of which has seen huge *huge* amounts of people claiming refugee status. The camps there have filled up and economic conditions in the camps are terrible so people are leaving the camps and travelling to european nations, mostly germany at the moment.
A few words about this: a refugee is someone who is offered temporary residence in a foreign country due to fear of persecution in their own country. They remain refugees until they either return to their own country or get asylum in their destination country, which grants them permanent residence. 1.5 million syrians left the country since january, bring the total since civil war started, 3.9 million since civil war was declared, and this is showing no signs of slowing, and the war is showing no signs of ending.
It's a pretty shitty situation overall. | 38 |
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ELI5: Why does a high speed fan appear as if it is rotating in some distinct frames to human eye? | 84 | This is because almost all lights we use have some flicker. The lights are powered by 50 or 60 Hz mains, and so will often flash (or at least change brightness and olor) with each half-wave, so at 100 or 120 Hz. High quality LED or compact fluorescent use switch mode power supplies, which filter out the mains flicker, but they run at some thousands of hertz, and so flicker at that rate. | 38 |
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Why cant elements with atomic numbers above 94 be found in nature? | I thought it had to do with the half life of those elements but Curium 248 has a relatively long half life. Longer than Neptunium isotopes which can be found in trace amounts so why? | 19 | There's no law of physics that says they *can't* be found in nature. What is and isn't found in nature is set by two things:
1. What natural processes are available to produce it?
2. If it decays, what is its half-life?
For nuclides with half-lives significantly less than the Earth, even if they were produced in large amounts when the solar system formed, they will have mostly decayed away by now, and therefore won't be common in nature (some nuclides are continually produced by natural processes, and so they do exist in some amount naturally despite having short half-lives).
In the example you give of curium-248 (and actually curium-247 is a better example, because it's got a longer half-life), the half-life is "long" in human terms. But the Earth is a little under 5 billion years old, and the half-life in this case is on the order of 10^(5) years (or 10^(7) years for curium-247). That's still very small compared to the age of the Earth, which is on the order of 10^(9) years. So whatever amount of curium that was produced in the same astrophysical event(s) as the rest of our solar system will have decayed away by now. And there apparently aren't any ongoing natural processes which produce it in at least "trace" amounts (for whatever definition of "trace" you're assuming in the question). | 49 |
ELI5: Why does water sometimes make things slipperier (e.g. hydroplaning) and other times make things "stickier" (e.g. putting socks on wet feet)? | Hopefully the question is clear: basically, why is it that water on roads decreases friction, and water on a floor can make it easier to slip, but water droplets on feet make putting on socks harder? | 49 | It's a battle between the properties of fluids.
If you have lots of water, then the more influential property is the friction reduction *(Such as rain on roads)*, however, if you only have a few droplets as you mentioned with the sock, then the more influential properties are the cohesion between the water molecules. This means that the droplets on your sock and skin are trying to stick together.
Fun fact: Water is the most cohesive non-metallic liquid! | 28 |
ELI5: Why do we swing our arms when we walk? | Does it keep balance or is it just a habit? | 84 | it's a counterbalance.
Your body in fact is constantly fine-tuning your gait for maximum caloric efficiency. Now, you can help it by walking properly with a straight back, but if there's one thing the human body does extremely well it's maximise our efficiency when moving.
Swinging our arms means we can keep going without having to stop every so often to sort out our momentum. It means we're not burning valuable calories using our core muscles to stay upright against the momentum of our own legs.
Pretty neat, huh? | 68 |
ELI5: The reason for the impending writers strike? What resolution are each side looking for? | Also how long could one possibly last? | 92 | Television produced by HBO, Netflix, and Amazon have shorter seasons (typically 8-10 episodes) than conventional network programming (13 to 24 episodes). Writers are paid per episode, and often must sign an exclusivity contract, which prohibits them from working on more than one show at a time.
Additionally, the residuals payments for cable and streamed content is a fraction of the network rates.
This results in the writers making as little as 1/3 the money per year than in the past.
The Writer's Guild is looking for higher royalty / residuals for streamed and cable content, and an end to exclusivity rules.
The buyers (cable, Netflix, Amazon, and the networks) don't want to have to pay more for their content.
If the strike isn't averted, it could run until the next season (fall), when the content providers will need new content to attract both viewers and advertisers.
*edit: typo | 40 |
What is the real reason Superman can survive in space? | From a combination of media (comics/tv/film) we know Superman can survive in space and is more than comfortable without any atmosphere.
I understand Superman wishes to keep how he does this from becoming common knowledge, such details could be expose a potential weakness within the man of steal. I assume this is why we are shown mixed messages when it comes to supes in space to confuse the public and prevent them from asking questions like:
* [Does he hold his breath a very long time?](http://latimesherocomplex.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/superman1.jpg?w=600&h=404)
* Does he even require air? [Only using it to talk aloud](http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/7015/600743-superman677003_super.jpg)
* Does he emit a sphere of oxygen? [explaining why lois is conscious ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6LQMH53vuqU#t=73s)
* [Does he perform better with air?](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110822012210/dcanimated/images/thumb/9/9f/Superman's_new_space_suit.png/640px-Superman's_new_space_suit.png)
* The list goes on...
So, which is the real reason?
| 23 | According to Justice League medical files, kept in the Hall of Justice, Kryptonians have been theorized, don't need to breathe, and hence, don't need oxygen, they metabolize ambient energy from the sun for nourishment and energy. Superman has been replicating human breath for years, but it turns out that he hasn't been exhaling, just inhaling and compressing air within his lungs. This is the ability that lets him use "super-breath" to generate hurricane force winds in short bursts.
To converse in a vacuum he needs a medium for the sound waves to travel through. The second example that you have Green Lantern speaking with Superman in deep space. He could have created a simple bone vibration microphone, but he was already in space, and therefore his thoughts most likely went to a classic "sci-fi" style space helmet.
The third and fourth examples that you quote are from the fictionalized accounts of Superman's life that are the made for TV series that has the absurd "secret identity" of Superman as Clark Kent and the romantic lead of Lois Lane. This series clearly takes liberties with Superman's life and should not be considered factual in any way. The fourth account that you have is the cartoon version aimed at children and teens. The purpose of that show is selling toys (Superman and the Wayne Enterprises funnel proceeds of the show to charity), Space-Suit-Superman with the variant helmet goes out, sells 300,000 units and another orphanage can be built. | 12 |
[Big Hero 6] What are some military applications of the microbots? | With the success (maybe *too much* success) of the microbots, there’s no doubt the DoD is going to come knocking asking for a few million of these tiny little robots that can lift things and make temporary structures.
I can see combat engineers using microbots as construction material and/or emergency construction operating equipment. Microbots could probably, depending on the material used to make them (which I assume is some kind of durable and rust-resistant metal), be used to make makeshift or temporary fortifications for FOBs and outposts. | 16 | Easily deployable, mobile, and flexible cover in a battlefield. Surprise attacks by thin, stealthy tendrils that sneak accross enemy lines to sabotage the enemy supply lines, officers, and munitions. If the bots have to be in sight of the person controlling them, have drones with high tech equipment far in the sky, giving the controller awareness of the bots. Not a stretch considering sci fi tech is relativity common
| 17 |
[General comics]Why do superheroes wear such ridiculous costumes? | In the comics world, it makes sense for your character to have a garish outfit, it means they're easily recognisable despite being drawn by different artists and it stands out on the newsstand (hence spideys red and blue) but in the world which these characters live, what's the thinking behind it?
There are a few where it's clear, like Batman (he's all about the theatre and imagery, he's deliberately trying to be strange) and Ironman (it's not a costume, it's armour) but what is it about the average person that when they discover they can run faster than sound or find themselves bulletproof and they decide "I will use these powers to fight/commit crime and rid the world of evil/make myself rich, but first, I must make a costume from pink spandex, with no pockets!"
Why do they end up in outfits like [this](http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100113195026/superfriends/images/2/2e/Titans.jpg), [this](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/a/a6/20140729104234!Psylocke_MvC2.png), [this](http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_super/1/15388/1341133-wolverine_by_commanderlewis.jpg), or [this](http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_super/0/8015/212453-28047-green-arrow.jpg) ?
On a related note, where do they get these outfits from? They can't all be expert with a needle and thread and you aren't getting those boots from the doc shop | 21 | Generally tight fitting clothing allows for much more easily executed acrobatics. The color combos are just their personal brand... usually some personal meaning behind the colors.
As for the Flash specifically, he's wearing a suit that reduces drag and can put up with the friction against the air... or else his close may catch on fire. | 37 |
Is advertising unethical or a necessary part of modern society? | 110 | These two characteristics (being unethical and necessary to modern society) are not mutually exclusive. One could argue that advertising is both unethical *and* necessary to modern late-capitalist society. The conclusion would thus be that this society is *intrinsically* unethical, and should be restructured. Mark Fisher did some very interesting work on this topic, especially in his book *Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?* | 156 |
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eli5 why do we use "s" at the end of words with 0 quantity? | 0 elephants
1 elephant
2 elephants
100 elephants
I understand the "s" for quantities larger than 1 because it's plural (more than 1) -- but why for 0, which is less than 1? Why does it just "feel more comfortable" (including for me)? Is there a logical reason behind it? | 5,910 | Grammatically every numeral that is not 1 uses the plural. At least in english.
You would say there are 0.9 elephants instead of there is 0.9 elephant as well.
The reason it feels more comfortable to you is that learning the english language has trained you think that way. Other languages do it differently. And in casual english you could easily say something like there is no elephant at all. But if you use a numerical value it is just stuck in language and culture. Just a matter of being used to it. | 3,430 |
[Sunshine] According to Danny Boyle, the reason the sun is going out is that its being eaten by a Q-ball. What is a Q-Ball? | 31 | Physicist here. You know how a cup of water will freeze, but not all at once? It'll freeze at the top and the sides then the ice will work its way downward and inward.
That's effectively how a Q-ball works. The sun is 'freezing' into something like a solid, but a Q-ball doesn't care about the temperature of the object it's 'freezing'. It'll start at one side of the sun and slowly creep throughout the rest of it. When its finished the sun will look something like a crystal sphere, and it will not be very useful as an energy source.
(It's fiction; there is zero chance this can happen in real life.) | 33 |
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ELI5: The constant forward force of Windows updates has me wondering: Why do some PC games work on Linux and not others. | And, why still do some games work via Proton and Steam Play even when they aren't designed to, albeit with graphical hiccups and performance issues? It seems to have little to do with the age of the games as well. | 166 | Let's think of operating systems as human languages. You write a book in English and you want a Swahili speaker to read it. What do you do? Translate the book to Swahili. This is analogous to game available to both Linux and Windows.
What about Proton and Steam Play? Well, some books don't get published in Swahili so you'll have to hire a translator to read it to you. Some books are really easy to translate on the fly, but some use advanced concepts that the translator doesn't fully understand. So the translator makes some mistakes. They're obvious but you can still enjoy the book.
Now, try to give a book about theoretical quantum physics to a translator who works mainly with literary works. With all the hard to understand concepts and specialized words maybe they'll just say no to the job. | 167 |
[Halo] If the Jackal home-world's parent planet is known to us now, and is with in the forty light-year expanse of human colonies, does that mean that the UNSC would've of sent a colony ship to the planet, if so do we ever hear about such a ship? | 219 | The Jackal home system contains no planets which are near the Earth in size, only gas giants. The Jackal homeworld is a moon of one of these gas giants, which would make it much harder to detect by usual exoplanet detection methods than a lone planet of that size on its own.
The UNSC may not have known it was there, or may have been more interested in colonizing planets, and so not sent an expedition. Prior to the Human-Covenant war, slipspace travel was pretty slow and slispace-capable ships were very expensive. It would be unlikely for a ship to be sent on a multiple-week journey to a system that isn't thought to contain anything useful.
European nations didn't explore every landmass in the Atlantic before setting up colonies in the Americas, there were islands that weren't explored until centuries later. Similarly, although this system isn't too far from Earth, that doesn't mean it would be explored immediately. | 85 |
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[General] I have just gained the power to teleport. How do I test my abilities? | I was thinking of teleporting just one centimetre to the side to see how my powers work and feel, but I'm afraid that the orbit of the Earth will cause me to be left a few million miles away from it, since I'll be teleporting to where the Earth once was. I was also thinking of doing the maths to compensate for this, so I'll calculate my teleport to be where the Earth will end up in the split second it takes to teleport. However, I haven't tested my teleportation (because of the above-mentioned fear) and as such do not know how long the teleportation takes, making such maths impossible. In addition to this, if I'm wrong and it turns out my teleportation is relative to the Earth after all, I've just done a lot of maths to teleport myself into deep space.
What is a safe way to test my powers? | 18 | Fun fact: you are on Earth, you are moving at the same velocity it is. Theoretically speaking, even if your teleportation is not relative to the Earth, you should be safe. That is of course assuming your teleport doesn't mess with your momentum. You might have trouble if you teleport large distances, but a centimeter hop should be safe. | 23 |
Can plants get cancer from the sun? | Can plants get cancer from the sun? | 47 | Basically, plants don't really get cancer as we think of it. They can get uncontrolled growths, but they are more like our benign tumors, like warts. They don't kill the plant, generally. There are several big reasons for this:
1. Every plant cell is basically glued to its neighbors. They have cell walls that provide structural integrity and hold the cell in place. What that means is that you don't get cells moving around in a circulatory system like humans have. So cancer can't really spread in plants. With a few exceptions (brain tumors, other inoperable locations), cancer in humans that doesn't spread to distant sites isn't really that dangerous. It's very rarely the primary tumor that kills people, it's the spread of the tumor to distant sites that kills.
2. The cells that get hit by the sun in a plant are usually non-growing cells. Their dividing cells, meristem cells, are hidden away from the sun pretty well. So by the time plant cells are getting bombarded by UV, they have already stopped dividing and are glued in place. That makes it a lot harder for them to re-enter the cell cycle and start causing problems. | 48 |
What causes mosquitos to be super attracted to some people, and completely ignore others? | Mosquitos attack me with a vengeance, but they won't touch my sister.
I am 25. My sister is 23. If we both go outdoors and play a sport for 2 hours and wait until dark, mosquitos still do not touch her. It doesn't matter what I've done, mosquitos are on me like hummingbirds to nectar. I can even wear bug repellant, doesn't help much.
I've heard similar stories from friends and acquaintances. | 45 | There are various physiological factors that determine your likelihood of getting bitten.
* Blood type: Several studies have found that individuals with blood type O are at a greater risk, much more so than individuals with type A, B, or AB^1,2.
* Higher production of carbon dioxide will also attract a higher number of mosquitoes. In fact, traps are often equipped with CO2 tanks to be more effective^3,5.
* Production of certain acids on the skin such as lactic acid will contribute to one's attractiveness^4
**Citations**
1) Wood, Corrine Shear, and Dore, Caroline. 1972. “Selective Feeding of Anopheles gambiae according to ABO Blood Group Status.” Nature 239: 165.
2) Yoshikazu Shiraia, et al. 2004. "Landing Preference of Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae) on Human Skin Among ABO Blood Groups, Secretors or Nonsecretors, and ABH Antigens." Journal of Medical Entomology 41(4):796-799.
3) Dekker , T. and Takken, W. 1998. "Differential responses of mosquito sibling species Anopheles arabiensis and An. quadriannulatusto carbon dioxide, a man or a calf." Medical and Veterinary Entomology, 12: 136–140
4) Steib, Birgit M., Geier, Martin, and Boeckh, Jurgen. 2001. "The Effect of Lactic Acid on Odour-Related Host Preference of Yellow Fever Mosquitoes" Chemical Senses 26: 523-538.
5) Geier, Martin, et al. "Odour-guided Host Finding of Mosquitoes: Identification of New Attractants on Human Skin." 4th International Conference on Urban pests. (Oral Presentation). | 60 |
CMV: Money absolutely can buy happiness | I often hear the phrase "money can't buy happiness". I think this is complete nonsense.
Let's compare two people, person A and person B. Person A is a billionaire, person B works long hours for minimum wage. Person A, because of his riches, does not need to work. Because of this, he is free to pursue any manner of hobbies and interests. If person A has always wanted to be a painter, or a guitarist, or a pilot, he can afford to go to the best schools or hire the best tutors. He can spend as much time as he wants practicing and learning. Let's say person B has the same aspirations. He needs to pay for rent and food, how could he possibly find the time, let alone afford, the lessons? Whenever person A gets bored of something, he can just move on to something else. I suppose the argument against this is that he wouldn't be enjoying it as much because he takes it for granted, he wouldn't savor the small amount of time he gets to play the guitar or paint a picture. While this is true, don't you think person B would rather get an unlimited amount of time to pursue his interests? Between the two, person A must be happier.
But love must be the one thing that cannot be purchased. I have to disagree. There are a litany of dating sites and match-makers that cater to the wealthy. An episode of Morgan Spurlock's documentary series *Inside Man* explores this business, where people pay large amounts of money to someone who will attempt to set them up with a perfect match. This isn't a dating site where you simply create a profile and hope to meet someone you like. Person A is *considerably* more likely to find someone than person B, who can either hope to run into someone in person or can attempt to find someone on a free dating site. You could, I suppose, argue that person A would be in danger of attracting people who don't really love him, but are only with him because of his money. While this is a fair point, I think person A could easily defend against this by being wary of many of the people he is interested in. I suppose an argument is that person B wouldn't have to worry about this, and that's true, but person B is much more likely to settle for someone decent, but not ideal, than person A. Person A has a basically inexhaustible amount of time and money to find a good match.
But happiness is quite subjective. What makes me happy might make you miserable, and vice versa. The TL;DR of my argument is that, because of the society we live in and the way goods and services are acquired, the more money you have the more likely you are to be happy. A way to change my view would be to present me with some quality of life that is intrinsically outside of the bounds of capitalism, a quality that cannot be reached with money. | 55 | There exists at least one depressed millionaire. That person is not able to buy happiness with money. There exists at least one poor person that is happy. They have a job that they love, like a games store clerk, they have a wife and kids, and they have cheap hobbies that they love.
Money does not buy happiness. You have identified correctly, though, that money can prevent many of the things that cause misery. Medical bills, shitty jobs, being driven out of your favorite hobbies, hunger - money might not be able to buy happiness, but poverty sure can buy misery.
The saying 'money can't buy happiness' isn't supposed to mean 'so throw away all your money and you'll be happy'. It's a warning for the depressed millionaire that they can't cure their depression with miserliness and greed. Some problems cannot be solved with money, and for those problems, you need to seek a cure from within - a new outlook. | 51 |
How was the first software and compiler made? | 34 | The first program generators were assemblers, that translate assembly language into machine code. Those were written in machine code.
The first higher-level programming languages were written using assemblers.
Edit: the first *software* was written in machine code. It took a while before assemblers were developed and became common, because an assembler is not an entirely trivial program.
Machine code was entered via switches, or using things like punched paper tape. | 21 |
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I've read and re-read why time slows down when traveling the speed of light, I still don't understand it. | So, I kind of get that when something speeds up-- the mass of that object increases. Is that why? Because the object is going so fast that the increased mass means more gravity, and then that increased gravitational pull bends space-time?
Or am I completely off? Do I understand it at all?
Edit: Thanks everyone. I've never really been to this subreddit before, wow! Everyone is so friggin smart. | 72 | Essentially, everything is moving at the same speed through four-dimensional spacetime (the speed of light, to be exact). When you are stationary, you are only moving through time. The faster you move through the three spacial dimensions, the more it borrows from your speed through time. | 85 |
ELI5:Why humans newborns/children seem so helpless when compared to other species? | 82 | Because we have a large brain and stand upright (on two limbs rather than four). Those two needs mean that women's hips need to be large enough to allow a baby's head to pass through, but narrow enough that she can walk. The only way to reach both limits is to birth babies that are very undeveloped compared with other mammals, and let them do relatively more of their development after birth. | 88 |
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ELI5: Why are clouds white? | 18 | Hello! Clouds are white because of something called MIE scattering. As you may know, light is both a particle and a wave. The color spectrum is basically different frequencies of waves, that give off a certain color. The light that comes from the sun is known as “white light” ( which is a combination of every color of the light spectrum) and when this “white light” goes through our atmosphere and scatters with the molecules of clouds, the clouds reflect every single color and turns out white.
An easier example is an apple. When light hits an apple it absorbs the colors orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The only color that it doesn’t absorb, is red, that’s why we see that the apple is red. This is due to the size of the apple molecules, they are around the same size of the red wavelength and in effect, they reflect.
Hope this helps! | 17 |
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Is it possible for an environment to be so cold, an existing fire would be extinguished? | Assuming there was an infinite supply of oxygen and a fuel source. | 39 | Absolutely. The fire needs to be hot enough to be self-sustaining. Each reaction has to give off enough energy to trigger the next reaction. If the surrounding environment absorbs this energy then it is not available to trigger the next reaction.
Just for a simple example, if you've ever tried to put out a fire in a fireplace, you know that the simplest way to do this is to move the burning logs away from each other. Once they are no longer absorbing heat from each other, the fire will dwindle and eventually die without consuming the logs. | 25 |
ELI5: How is searching the internet, infinitely faster than searching through computer files? | How is it that you can search the internet and get millions of results in seconds, but when searching for a specific file on a windows computer, it takes what feels like forever in comparison ?
I understand a little bit of SEO, and how common searches get grouped together, but even with that, how is it still nearly impossible for my Windows computer to find a file when I give it the exact name, but google could find me millions of files with a search that is \~related\~ to the name of the website / file? | 45 | Because the internet is constantly being indexed all the time. That means, essentially, whenever you are searching for something, someone else has already found it before you, and so they just relay to you the results of their previous search rather than searching for it anew. Your hard drive, however, isn't indexed until you actually search for something meaning you actually have to go look for it. | 73 |
ELI5: How come you can give a person any number and they can iterate forwards or backwards on demand but with the alphabet most seem to only Have a few fixed points to start from and can't as easily go backwards | 21 | Because the order of the letters are completely arbitrary. And there are many more letters than there are digits.
Numbers are systematic. You *learn* to count by memorizing only 10 different digits, then use a simple system to make more numbers. Counting backwards is just removing 1 over and over again.
For the alphabet you need to memorize each of the letters, and their order. To recite the alphabet backwards you'd need to learn that order just like you once learned it the "right" way.
I think many people, like me for instance, learned the alphabet by learning it as a song (twinkle twinkle?), because melodies are easy to remember for some reason (that's how our brains are wired). But singing a song backwards or starting in a random place in the middle of it isn't as easy. | 13 |
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[the Hulk] Progression from thor ragnarok to avengers movie | Wasn’t he supposed to be world breaker hulk after/during being in sakaar? He seems so underpowered for the avenger movies. Is there some event in between that I missed or did they not want to go to deep into his story line? | 18 | No. The MCU didn't do the World Breaker Hulk storyline, it just used some elements from it.
While it's possible he got stronger, or at least more developed as an identity having been transformed for so many years, none of WBH's defining events happened to him. | 38 |
ELI5: What Are The Principles Of Chicago School Economics? | What are the principles of Chicago School Economics? The Pros and Cons? | 20 | The core principles include favor of free markets and supply-side economics as opposed to Keynesian economics. It prefers monetary policy as opposed to fiscal policy. Probably the most influential scholar was Milton Friedman, who may be the most influential economist in modern day. It continues to have strong influence among a significant faction of the GOP in U.S politics. This faction would be best described as neoliberal, libertarian, or classical liberal. The demographics tend to be the most affluent and influential.
I can't tell you its pros or cons because that is subjective and political. | 11 |
[Wanted] At what point did Sloan start fabricating his own targets? Where any of the targets in the film actually sent from the Loom of Fate? Towards the end when all the members of The Fraternity were targets, was that from Sloan or the Loom? | 17 | It happened when his name came out of the loom. He chose to ignore the loom rather than kill himself and in doing so perverted the brotherhood to his own selfish goals. Im sure a handful of targets were legitimate but by the time Wesley joins every assassin's name had come up. This means in at least a significant way each was killing people to make Sloan's agenda rather than fate's a reality. Without knowing every target's details it's safe to assume everyone killed not by Wesley was illegitimate otherwise Wesley's name would have turned up. | 16 |
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ELI5: what is Eid, the Muslim holiday? | Is it like Christmas for Christians? | 57 | Eid al-Fitr marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. During Ramadan, observant Muslims are required to abstain from food and drink during daylight hours, and the celebration of Eid al-Fitr marks the end of the month and is marked by both prayer and celebration to Allah. | 38 |
What is the difference between atomic, nuclear and hydrogen bombs? | Most sites are giving me mixed answers. I know some of it does overlap, but I can't find a clear answer. Moreover, is hydrogen bomb more powerful and destructive than a nuclear bomb? I'd like to learn more clear distinctions between these weapons and how destructive they can be as a comparison in terms of, say, size/weight/amount of material in the bomb vs size/area covered/extent of explosion, if that makes sense. Thanks in advance! | 416 | "Atomic bomb" and "hydrogen bomb" are not really modern terminology, but they're both subsets of nuclear weapons.
But generally speaking, "atomic bomb" refers to nuclear weapon designs which are either fission-only, or boosted fission.
And then "hydrogen bomb" (also known as *thermonuclear*) refers to weapons which derive a significant amount of their yield from fusion reactions, in addition to fission.
>Moreover, is hydrogen bomb more powerful and destructive than a nuclear bomb?
"Hydrogen bombs" *are* a type of nuclear weapon. And generally higher yields can be achieved with them than with "atomic bombs" (fission-only or boosted fission), for a given mass of fuel. | 368 |
ELI5:Are electric blankets bad for your health in any way? | Not sure if this is the best subreddit to ask this question but fuck it. My roommates have an electric blanket that they turn on before they get into bed and back off when they get in bed because they say the electromagnetic field it emits is bad for your health in a number of ways and can lead to various side effects. Does this have any truth to it or are they just paranoid hippies? | 15 | No, the electromagnetic field emitted by the current running through the blanket will not harm you in any way. With regards to overheating, you'd be unable to stand the heat before any damage occurs , unless you're an idiot and try to overheat yourself using one, you're going to get uncomfortable and take it off/turn it off long before the heat does any damage.
The only real risk for an electric blanket is electrocution and fire risk. Both can be mitigated if you're sensible. | 15 |
[Star Wars] Is number of midichloreans or density of midichloreans more important? In other words, did Vader lose force power due to the loss of the midichloreans in his arms and legs when they were chopped off? | 40 | Neither. Midichlorians are micro-organisms that are attracted to force users, not the source of force powers. There is a corelation between high midichlorian count and force prowess, but it's not an exact science. That said, Vader did become less powerful, partly because some of his power was devoted to keeping himself alive and partly because of the somatic components of some force powers that he was no longer able to do. For example, force lightning requires channeling the energy through your own body. Something he could no longer do due to being encased in sensitive medical equipment that conducts electricity. | 71 |
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ELI5:How do people learn to hack? Serious-level hacking. Does it come from being around computers and learning how they operate as they read code from a site? Or do they use programs that they direct to a site? | EDIT: Thanks for all the great responses guys. I didn't respond to all of them, but I definitely read them.
EDIT2: Thanks for the massive response everyone! Looks like my Saturday is planned! | 4,227 | Hacking is the second side of a coin.
To find exploits, you need to understand how something works.
For example, to do sql exploits, you need to know the syntax and all the common mistakes that developers make during development. Such as adding unsanitized user input to their queries. | 1,701 |
[Harry Potter] Why did Voldemort not just throw baby Harry out of a window? | Harry was a baby with no way to defend himself, Voldemort could have just thrown him out the window and Harry would have fallen to his death. | 28 | He had no reason to believe that the Arvada kedavra spell would backfire. At that time literally nobody had ever survived the killing curse and the magic through which Harry survived had long since been lost. | 73 |
[Citizen Kane] Would Charles Kane have ended up any happier and better of a person if he had gone into the sled-making business instead of the newspaper-making business? | After all, >!His last words were the name of his childhood sled!< | 18 | It's not necessarily that Kane was happiest around sleds; it was that specific sled that was a symbol of the childhood that he lost. That childhood was replaced by his ambition and his desire to earn enough money, or power, or influence to fill the hole that was left behind. What he missed was a happy childhood with a loving mother.
If he was making sleds, he might have earned himself a bit of comfort providing that bit of fun to kids, but he'd still be chasing the one thing he couldn't have: one more day of innocence with a family that didn't send him away to chase dreams and aspirations that he was too young to care about. | 18 |
Eli5: How do photo restoration artists know the supposed colors of greyscale images? | Are the colors based purely on their assumptions/imagination, or do the greyscale images retain some sort of data that tells what color on what part? | 656 | I often color old black-and-white photographs as a hobby and, most of the time, you just have to guess when you colorize an image.
Sometimes, for famous people, you can do historical research to find out the color of their hair and eyes or even their homes' furnishings (for instance, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna had reddish gold hair and blue eyes and her mauve boudoir was all lavender with pistachio green carpets). You can also do research to get a general idea of the kinds of colors that were popular, say, in the Victorian or Edwardian eras... but that's pretty much it. | 576 |
ELI5:water is h20 , hydrogen peroxide is h202, how can one extra oxygen molecule turn into something that can kill you | title. | 2,177 | Short answer: because changing even one element in a compound will drastically change how it interacts with other chemicals.
Long answer: H2O is remarkable stable and wants to stay that way. H2O2 is still stable, but it will give the extra oxygen atom to any compound that it can, so it can be more stable. Unlucky for living things, cell membranes will end up taking this extra oxygen and they will no longer be able to hold their form. Once the cell membrane falls apart the cell will die. | 1,802 |
[Culture Series] just how powerful are The Culture? | 88 | The Culture are on of the few Level 8 civilizations currently "in Play". Generally there are 4-9 Level 8 Optimae around at any given time. In general any level 8 will trounce a level 7 civilization, and so on down the line.
Their are more powerful forces than the Level 8 civs. The Sublimed for example are civilizations that have moved on from the physical realm and transcended to another plane. They are thought to be incredibly powerful, but also uncaring of what happens in the Real.
Elder Civilisations are ones that have moved on from normal galactic politics and want to be left alone, wherever that may be (home planet, other places, artifacts, whatever). Best not to trifle with them.
As to how powerful the Culture is, they are normal or above average for a level 8. Casual planet busting is a good description. Any old GCU (General Contact Unit, an exploration and scientific ship) can waste a solar system. Actual OU (offensive Units, or later called Picket Ships) are much more deadly. GSV (General Systems Vehicles) could take on millions of ships from less advanced civilizations, a war prepped GSV would be a match to fleets of equivitech opponents. | 63 |
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How hard is it to learn Dresdenverse magic without being taught? | Assuming that you don't have any books or knowledge of magic in general. You just realize at some point that you can do inexplicable things. | 46 | no really that hard, sadly. The magic in the dresdenuniverse is basically changing and effecting your surrounding with energy provided by your emotions. So if you will it hard enough and your emotions are strong enough it will just happen. But here lies the risk of doing magic untrained if teached correctly a wizard chooses a dead language to trigger his spells, why? Because it gives an isolating barrier between your mind and the forces of live and universe you are manipulating at that moment so an untrained natural is at heavy risk to trigger a spell by excitement and to fry his brain out in the process. Secondly a professionally trained wizard has one attitude drilled in to him- discipline of mind to control the forces you conjure and steer. Imagine you are a teenager who because he just thought it is cold started a fire out of nothing in his room. You are scared you don't know what is happening - that is strong emotions and a lack of strong will also known as magic going wacko.
*So short yes you can "learn" magic but the training is more for the sake of your survival and protection of others because without 90% of young wizard and up burning down a house before the forces of magic fry out there brain changing them in to vegetables for the rest of there life. | 29 |
ELI5: How does Nair hair removal work? | 319 | It eats away at the keratin in the hair (the chemical that does this is potassium thioglycolate). That makes the hair really weak and not able to stand up or hold its structure. Then another chemical (calcium hydroxide) destroys the hair at the root. This makes the hair easy to simply wipe away as it is no longer connected inside your skin as it was.
Think of it like stripping the bark away from a young tree then allowing for the roots to die. This will make the tree easy to pull up if it doesn't simply fall over first on its own. Then it's just a matter of cleaning away what has fallen. In this example the tree, but on our skin, the hair. | 166 |
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ELI5: how do sinkholes happen | 1,320 | Have you ever been to the beach and made a sand bridge? You put your arm in a trench and build a tightly packed layer of sand over top. If you carefully remove your hand the sand stays and makes a tunnel/bridge. But if you touch it, it'll fall in on itself.
Well, deep underground there are pockets of water with lots of dirt piled and packed tightly on top of it. The water does a pretty good job of holding up the dirt, like your hand did with the sand. But , sometimes those pockets of water can be drained out over long periods of time or from movements in the earth leaving big bubbles of air. Air is not as good at holding up the dirt, and sometimes the dirt will collapse into the hole like the bridge.
The issue is very common in Florida because of our natural aquifers, big tunnels of water under the ground. The aquifers drain very easily and if the earth moves around too much, it collapses.
You'll often see sink holes filled with water but the principle is the same. It's a lot easier to make a water balloon pop if there is a little bit of air at the top. And once the sink hole pops, all the dirt sinks below and the water rushes up to the top.
edit: fixed fishy typo. | 1,333 |
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ELI5: Why is it frowned upon to dislike reading, but perfectly fine to dislike other equally important subjects like math | 17 | Math isn't something that is used in everyday life to the same extent that reading is. Yes, math is extremely important, but on a day to day basis you don't use much more than simple addition, subtraction, or multiplication. You don't typically going around using trig, calculus, or alegbra.
Reading is something we do every day, even if it's something as simple as reading a menu. Furthermore, reading is a good way to expose yourself to new and opposing ideas. Reading, or rather just being literate, also makes it possible for you learn new skills and gain more knowledge. You cant teach yourself complex math or mathematical theory if you can't read. | 18 |
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[Star Wars] Why is Palpatine so strong with the dark side? | The dark side typically entices those going through emotional turmoil, twisting their intentions into something they would normally never hope for, eventually infecting their psyche, overwhelming them with thoughts of loss, attachment, and fear. These sorts of emotions also fuel one's dark side power, resulting in something of a feedback loop. Vader over his loss and self-hatred of losing Padme, Maul with his rage and obsession over killing Obi Wan, Dooku with his distrust of the Jedi Order; all had their fixations.
Given all this, why is Palpatine so damn strong with the dark side? We really don't see him go through any emotional turmoil; in fact, he doesn't seem to take anything seriously and almost seems to be having fun being evil. This is in such a stark contrast to the self-loathing nature of the other Sith. Did something happen in his past to set him off? Was he just always a selfish sociopath? Is he just so good that he doesn't even need the emotional connection anymore? | 98 | Arguably, Palpatine’s “pure” sith motives might be why he’s such a powerful dark side user. He is like greed incarnate, craving power over all things and stopping at nothing to gain it. His greed is virtually bottomless, and the more power he gets the more he craves.
He also may be privy to ancient Sith teachings that enhance his power, that he never intended on passing down to his apprentices so as to avoid the fate of Plagueis. | 107 |
ELI5: Why is society so averse to people taking their own lives? | I mean I understand the social stigma around suicide, but with the /r/videos post on the front page showing a guy getting shot to "save his life", I can't help but wonder why a society would make it illegal to claim one's own life. | 23 | There are a lot of emotional and cynical responses to your question, but only a few of them touch on a small number of the reasons that suicide is considered a crime.
There is an emotional basis to making it criminal to kill yourself. Most suicides (like most homicides) are attempted as a result of hasty decision made while under severe mental and possibly physical stress. It isn't common for suicide attempts to be cold, logical and rational decisions(though some are), and is often viewed as a permanent solution to what is most likely a temporary problem.
But there are a lot of non-emotional reasons for why suicide is considered a crime. The first and coldest reason is that someone committing suicide is about to waste a lot of people's time and a lot of money. Someone's gotta investigate the incident to make sure it wasn't homicide. Someone's gotta clean up the mess you left behind. Someone's gonna have to provide grief counseling for the people you left behind. A successful suicide victim means a lot of work and man-hours spent by the rest of society with absolutely zero gain to show for it (some might argue that if the person committing suicide was a drain on society's resources there is a gain, but forget that this person still had the remainder of their life ahead of them to start being a positive contributor to society). This puts the act of suicide into the category of selfish behavior.
It goes even further, though. Each person in civilized societies that have decided to make suicide a crime represents a significant investment made by that society. A lot of money, time, and resources went into bringing you up. If you're like most people, you went to a public school which is paid for by society under the expectation that the basic education you recieved will enable you to be a productive member of society willing and able to contribute. Your parents, likely also contributed a small fortune and significant time to raise you into adulthood, and western society has a reasonable expectation that this investment is worthwhile because you will carry on the family legacy and hopefully provide care for your parents when they are no longer able to care for themselves. Suicide throws all of that time and investment away, and often its for no good reason. So a successful suicide attempt not only costs society a decent chunk of time and money to deal with after the fact, it also represents a significant loss in all the time and resources invested in keeping you alive and molding you into a productive member of society from the day you were born.
And finally, there is debt to be considered. A significant number of suicide attempts are made as an attempt to escape crippling debt. A successful attempt can often result in the party that loaned you money having to swallow the loan as a loss. By making suicide illegal, police forces now have reason to protect the economic interests of lenders by preventing a suicide attempt taking place. It sounds callous, but its really not fair to the banks and other lending institutions to have to swallow a huge loss because the person they loaned money to offed himself to get out of it. If it weren't illegal, you'd have situations where people would take out massive loans or open up lines of credit to spend frivolously in order to really enjoy their last days on earth before killing themselves and not having to deal with the consequences.
Suicide is illegal to protect the interests and investments society has made into every single individual in that society. A lot of people don't realize how much time and money has been spent on them just to get them to adolescence. Its a massive loss and huge waste that suicidal people aren't in the right mindset to be thinking about. Making it illegal serves to act as a deterrent while also protecting the interests of the society as a whole. | 39 |
eli5 ira,roth ira, | 15 | IRA: You put $1000 in it. You don't pay income tax on that $1000. It grows for a while and turns into $10000. You don't pay income tax on that $9000 of growth. Eventually you withdraw $2000. You pay income tax on that $2000.
Roth IRA: You put $1000 in it. You already paid income tax on that $1000. It grows for a while and turns into $10000. You don't pay income tax on that $9000 of growth. Eventually you withdraw $2000. You don't pay income tax on that $2000. | 34 |
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[Man of Steel] Why did Zod want to terraform Earth? | Earth's natural environment is clearly better for Kryptonians, giving them god like powers. The movie also makes it clear that with enough concentration, they'd be able to overcome the side effects of its atmosphere in a couple of days at most. What was the point of committing mass genocide? They probably would have been successful in taking over Earth if they hadn't tried to terraform. There's no way Superman could have stopped all of them on his own if it came down to a pure fight. | 21 | Zod wants to recreate Krypton exactly as it was - minus a few 'troublesome' bloodlines that ended up endangering it to begin with - or as close as he can manage. A world where everyone are basically physical gods that can punch through mountains, fly into space at supersonic speeds, shoot lasers from their eyes, etc. is not going to be the Krypton he wants and, as a society, may very well be inherently self-destructive. To do anything less than his utmost to bring back Krypton as close to its original state as he can manage is anathema to Zod. It's literally part of his DNA.
On top of that, Zod and Faora were able to adjust so quickly because they were bred soldiers, trained over their entire lifetimes to have total control of themselves. The average Kryptonian is probably going to have a much tougher time. Clark is mentioned as having severe breathing difficulties as a baby. It's not unreasonable to assume that it's a very real possibility that he, and by extension other Kryptonian children, could have died in Earth's atmosphere. | 27 |
Reading Marx and Hegel has turned me off of Analytic Philosophy. What's the best defense of the worth of that tradition? | A little about me, for context: I've always been broadly interested in philosophy, but only when I started reading Marx and Hegel did it totally transform my thinking.
With the exception of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (which I think count as Analytic, and were also transformative for me), it seems like all the interesting philosophical questions are out of reach of the analytic method. Consider Marx's take on utilitarianism:
>The apparent absurdity of merging all the manifold relationships of people in the one relation of usefulness, this apparently metaphysical abstraction arises from the fact that in modern bourgeois society all relations are subordinate in practice to the one abstract monetary commercial relation.
I mean, I consider this critique to be quite scathing, once fully unpacked. It's not even, strictly speaking, just philosophical - it merges philosophy, history, psychology, etc. And the analytic method, it seems, doesn't even have a way to respond!
In spite of this, I obviously don't want to be dismissive of philosophy, and I want to be fair and open. Therefore I ask for readings that will (hopefully) restore my respect for the analytic style.
Thank all of you beautiful people!
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EDIT: it seems I really don't know what analytic philosophy is so the post is moot. Thanks for responses. | 93 | That utilitarianism doesn’t adequately acknowledge the separateness of persons is actually a central criticism within analytic philosophy.
Anyways, is the problem that you don’t think there are any interesting ideas in analytic philosophy, or that you happen not to like the writing style typical of analytic philosophy? | 54 |
ELI5: If it's illegal to deface US currency, what's with those penny squashers? | 1,343 | This is covered in 18 USC 331. It says that whoever *fraudulently* alters coins is guilty of a crime. The key word there is "fraudulently." If you alter a coin with the intent of defrauding somebody, you're guilty of a crime. If you alter or destroy a coin you own for reasons other than committing fraud, then you're just wasting money.
The origin of this statute goes back to the days when coins were made of precious metals, and their value was proportional to their metal content. In those days, you could shave some of the metal off a bunch of coins and melt it down to get an ingot that you could sell, while still passing the coins off as legal tender. The law exists to deter people from doing that. Today, coins have no intrinsic value so the practice of shaving them for their metal is extinct. | 1,010 |
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Just got my PhD offer! What advice can you give to a new student? | Hello everyone,
I'm so happy I finally got a PhD offer in my field of interest! The University is in the neighbouring state to my current home (I live with my family), only a 1.5hr plane ride away so I don't think it has fully hit me that I'm going to be moving soon.
What advice can you give to a new student? It can be as specific or general as you like. I would love to have some things at the back of my mind before starting my course.
Short context on the course: it is based in cell biology and I'll be working with drosophila models to characterise a particular signalling pathway. I have been granted a 3-4 year scholarship to fund my stay.
General context: I've done a 3-year bachelor degree and 1-year honours research degree. My previous supervisors said I had a real drive and motivation for research which they haven't seen in many students they've mentored. I do tend to be very hard on myself and hate failing. I love writing and going deep into background research to substantiate my experiments, I loved writing my thesis last year and I love presenting at conferences.
Thank you so much in advance for your time and advice :) | 32 | This is not supposed to sound rude or offensive, but you need to get used to failing. A lot.
You'll fail when the data you've collected is full of artifacts. You'll fail when your two dream journals reject your paper. You'll fail when the superstar PI of another lab doesn't reply to your email.
Failing is a part of academia. Don't get used to chasing the high of earlier days of getting everything right the first time. | 45 |
What experiment shows that gravity travels at the speed of light? | I've seen it mentioned on this forum that gravity travels at c, but I'm not sure how anyone could set up an experiment to confirm that. Do we have experimental evidence, or is it more of a "well, according to our theories, it should behave this way" kind of thing? | 44 | Gravitational waves have yet to be experimentally observed, but the purpose of experiments that are attempting to do so (such as LIGO) is to use these waves as telescopes, not as confirmations of General Relativity. General Relativity has been confirmed in many other ways by many other experiments, and also happens to predict gravitational waves propagating at speed c. Given its extraordinary previous predictive success, there is not reason to believe that it is wrong in this instance. | 14 |
[DC] The US government drone strikes the Joker. What waves does this make among the super community and the public at large? | The Joker has, once again, escaped from Arkham Asylum with some of his goons. Batman and the GCPD are in hot pursuit, but in the middle of their chase, the Joker’s car suddenly vanishes in a ball of fire.
The Gotham City Fire Department extinguishes the flames, and finds the Joker’s charred corpse in the driver’s seat. The Clown Prince of Crime, after several years, millions of dollars, and hundreds dead, has finally been stopped by a guy sitting in the Nevada desert.
The President holds a press conference, where he declares the Joker’s gang an active terrorist group and justifies the assassination with the following:
> - has manufactured and deployed chemical WMDs on American soil on multiple occasions (Joker Venom)
> - has exhausted the ability of Gotham City, the New Jersey state government, and the federal government to incarcerate or rehabilitate him
> - has carried out hundreds of bombings and mass shootings, including bombing a school full of children
> - has killed more than 500 people, the largest body count of any terrorist group save Al-Qaeda
> - has caused billions of dollars of damages
How do the supers, villains, and the public take this? | 124 | I think the mainstream superhero community would object to what could reasonably be seen as an extrajudicial killing. The Joker was presumably a U.S. citizen, intentionally targeted and killed by U.S. forces without a trial.
The administration would go through your bullet points and respond that he was an unlawful combatant and posed an imminent national security threat. The protesting superheroes would respond that the Joker was fleeing, not engaged in hostilities, and under the Fourth Geneva Convention, even unlawful combatants deserve a fair trial. There would probably be a Congressional inquiry with lots of televised testimony, but no real outcomes.
The general public would mostly be concerned about the government's use of armed drones in U.S. urban areas.
The supervillain community would probably be relieved, and try to scoop up anything left of the Joker's organization - but with the same fear that they could be next.
Edit: Eminent/imminent | 95 |
ELI5: How America became a 'Christian' nation, when the founding fathers tried so hard to stop this from happening? | I see a lot of stuff on here, especially on /r/atheism, about how, despite many American's beliefs, their country was in fact *not* founded by christian men. Most of them held more deistic stances spiritually speaking and explicitly made statements against Christianity and revealed religion as a whole. How then, did America get to a point in which it basically identifies itself as a Christian nation and how come so many make this misconception about their own forefathers? Did people like Bush have a part to play in this Christian image of America? | 110 | Now be careful, because you ask a loaded question that isn't a complete picture of history. The men who wrote the constitution were almost completely Christian. They did not hate religion, they simply felt (most at least) that the government should not choose which religion to make "official" and should not stop people from following any belief they want. This is not "anti-religion" by any measure. They did not "look to the bible" to write the constitution as some now claim, but that does not mean there was no Christianity at the root of America. After all, many of the states were first founded by religious groups hoping to practice more extensively their faith than they were allowed elsewhere. So yes, some of the first American settlements were founded on Christian values even if the constitution was not.
Belief that this is a Christian nation is not a new one. The history of America is filled with periods of Christian revival where the government ruled on very theocratic lines. The revival we are living through now started in the mid 1970s. The dawn of the media centered mega churches gave new life and organizational support to Christians who once again asserted power over government. They were key in Reagan's coalition and have been die hard Republicans ever since. Bush 43 was simply the latest in a sting of Republicans to be supported by the evangelical Christians. It was not the first time and it will likely not be the last time.
What might make this time different is that unlike past times, irreligion is a viable and popular alternative. Among people under 25, 1/3 do not believe in god, that is very new. Past revivals were about degrees, was the government christian *enough* was it the right *kind* of christian, but it had always been assumed for most of American history that Christianity was just the "standard." But churches only have power when they have a captive audience and modern media has allowed them to stay captivated 24/7. They need an enemy and cause to talk about and no cause is more righteous than "taking back our country." That's why this might seem more intense, but it is not *not* new. | 195 |
[Cats] What does Jellicle mean? | I'm a cat, and I just moved to a new neighborhood. It seems like a fun place. Everyone is constantly singing and dancing. But, there's something I don't understand. The other cats keep using the word "Jellicle".
I have never heard this word, and I have no idea what it means. I don't want to look dumb in front of the other cats. Can someone please explain this word to me? | 305 | It's the name of their gang. They are the Jellicle cats. They organize the Jellicle ball each year, on the night of the Jellicle moon, which is when the full moon lines up with the sky light in their base, the Russell Hotel. | 269 |
Why haven't species developed more eyes? | It may sound like a stupid question but it seems odd to me that so many animals have only two eyes. I know a lot of herbivores have developed eyes on the side of their head to allow them to see predators from behind them, why haven't they just developed eyes on the back of their heads, so as not to have decreased visibility in front of them? | 43 | Species don't develop new traits specifically to accommodate some need. Mutations are entirely random and only "stick" if it increases survivability long enough to become homogeneous among the population. | 40 |
ELI5: how does the NES light gun Zapper work? | 40 | When you press the trigger, the whole screen goes black for 1 frame. Then in the next frame, the target area lights up white. The Zapper has a detector that tells the NES whether it has detected a black to white transition. The NES then knows that the Zapper was pointed at a target. | 50 |
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CMV: The black community needs to revolutionize our culture if we're going to exit the cultural spiral we're in | Edit: (This came out lengthy so I condensed my view into three points indicated below and the information above each is where the reasoning comes from so no one has to sift through everything to glean my point.)
The connection between being black and struggling is ubiquitous. You'll find no dearth of prominent black people romantacisizing "the struggle" to the point that it defines us. However, a keen weakness of our culture compared to others is what our goals tend to be so far as success, especially when it comes to our youth. We just tend to define ourselves along the lines of what we don't have. The majority of us don't have married parents, those of us in urban neighborhoods are very likely growing up in neighborhoods with safety issues or economically depressed communities. It's actually getting to a point where being a high school graduate or not having a criminal record are hallmarks of general success not just assumed fundamentals. That's all certainly true and a sad state of affairs, but that's not my issue.
My issue is in how we handle it. We Don't. Atleast not en masse. Just as a culture we've become tribal and short sighted, even to our own detriment. For example, academic excellence is simply something not impressed into the vast majority of black youths. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0095798413481384
The above article and the references it links show on one hand, a general apathy towards academics in both peer and parental sources among black youths and the corresponding apathy in the actual youths. Even anecdotally I can say for myself school was basically just a place to hang out and see people and do just enough work to slide along to the next grade and I'd venture to state my experience isn't dissimilar to a lot of others. So I think:
1: We have to become a people that puts value into academic success and holds those of us who achieve high.
To that end my second and much bigger point is that we need to stop actively holding each other back. Among the black community there are "black" things to be doing. I grew up practically addicted to rpg games and ever since primary school I knew I wanted to be in the military (achieved that and hated it but besides the point), so I was the kid that a huge interest in reading, an odd and relatively expansive vocabulary from all the fantasy novels and Baldurs Gate, and wasn't interested in trying drugs or stealing ipods since I didn't want to jeapordize my dream job. Literally the only people that gave me crap were my own, I was the odd guy out "Trying to be white". And as I got older the associations became wilder, for example people took me deciding to date white students as somehow confirmation of my trying to be white. Early in high school Obama came into office and I was staunchly against a lot of his stated policies so refused to join in the enthusiasm, clearly I must be self hating became the conclusion. All of these examples not to soapbox my life story but to give just first hand examples of how we can tear each other down.
We would shout "Racist" at any outsider who said that being black meant talking in half slang, voting Democrat, not giving a shit about school, sticking to sisters as dating partners and aspiring just to rap or slang or set up some other sort of hustle. So we shouldn't do it to ourselves, because most people want to be accepted by peers so most people will just adopt the mannerisms they feel they have to.
2: We have to work harder and emphasize that we're all black, not just "real" blacks and then all the rest.
My third and final point is more so about the after effects of the other 2. The environment set up by the first two don't really set up a lot of us for large academic and professional gains. For example I'm a law student, and while not the only one there definitely aren't a lot of other black guys here. If I get bogged down in law school and want to get someone who can empathize or offer advice I can't go to my black peer circle. If I want to use connections to get a summer job none of my parent's friends or my own friend's parents know someone in the legal circle to network me with, there just isn't that big of a net. And if I were for example a Jew or Asian where much vaster percentages of them go on to higher education maybe I'd have college or even graduate level parents who have connections in this arena. Maybe I'd have family friends that weren't just store employees or working at the prison but instead doctors and engineers. The lack of real academic excellence means those of us who do shoot for it and make it are on a bit of an island if we wish to foster bonds with our own. More of us rising though means more opportunities all around. For example if a decade from now I mold myself into a beyond mediocre attorney the next generation of black youths that are for example my friends children, old classmates, family friends and such would have me as a resource to utilize for things such as recommendation letters, advice, job opportunities, connections etc. The more of us that can reach professional heights the better for us all.
So,
3: We need to encourage higher professional goals so that it can become progressively easier for those that come after to achieve as there are
(Deeply apologize that its a bit lengthy tried to be concise and show where I'm coming from all at once. Also sorry if it seems heavily anecdotal, wanted it to be understandable without everyone having to sift through links and graphs.) | 22 | It sounds as though you've faced a lot of abuse over the course of your life from black people who wanted to tell you how to behave. Now, you want to tell other black people how to behave.
I think you were both wrong. 'Black' things to do are whatever black people do. There's no reason why a black kid can't read a lot of fantasy novels and dream about joining the military. Any assertion that black people ought to be doing things one way or another is racist and not based on any reality (with the possible exception of wearing less sunscreen).
The idea of the 'black community' is toxic to people who define themselves as such. African Americans are Americans, which is already a community to belong to. So is humanity, perhaps the military too.
Racial stereotypes are harmful, even when they are invoked using the language of a shared bond. It is sickening that other people think they should be entitled to have any say in who you want to date based on your and their skin colour.
The solution here is not to try to guide the 'black community' one way or another; it's to be yourself and do what you think is right. It's not an issue to handle en masse, it's a personal choice that each individual, regardless of race, makes for themselves. | 10 |
[Harry Potter] Why do wizard paintings talk but wizard photos don't? | You can interact with both (like when Moody made people in a photo move), but only the paintings can have a conversation with you? What kind of magic goes on in the actual painting of a person to make their image talk? | 29 | I suspect the paintings don't have the memories of the persons they are of; they are more like eternal actors.
Photos may be similar to a pensieve. They capture the emotion of the subjects, preserving it in one perfect moment. However, they aren't nearly as powerful of magic as the pensieve, and can't have genuine interactions with the viewer. | 23 |
How different would the Earth be today if the Permian-Triassic extinction event did not occur? | I know this is an oddly specific question, and I couldn't find anything using the search bar. I'm just curious how this would have effected Earth and biodiversity as a whole. | 56 | It is impossible to answer precisely what current biodiversity and faunal composition would look like in that hypothetical never-never land of "what ifs".
The most we can say is that natural selection would have continued to operate, but with a greater number of lineages to choose fromthan those who were cut off by the Great Dying. And the relative importance of surviving lineages would (probably) not have been the same either, but life is a lottery and a hypothetical outcome is quasi-impossible to predict.
But lets have a look at some of the lineages which might have survived in later times, some to die out, but later (perhaps cut-off by the K-T event?), others perhaps making it to our days:
* Trilobites;
* Eurypterids;
* Orthid and productid brachiopods;
* Several orders of insects (caloneurodeans, monurans, paleodictyopteroids, protelytropterans, and protodonates);
And that's just by focussing on a very coarse taxonomic level, the survival of individual genera and species within lineages has the potential to completely upset future faunal assemblages. Ninety-something (depending on source) of marine species are believed to have croaked in the Great Dying. Had the dice fallen differently, a quasi-infinite number of potentially differently populated worlds could have emerged on the other side.
So who can say? | 26 |
[Tolkien][The Lord of the Rings]How long did Frodo carry the ring? | I know Hobbits age slower than humans. It always seemed to me that the journey took years, if not decades. How close am i? | 380 | He inherits the Ring on his thirty-third birthday 23rd of September TA 3001, but he then just stashes it away with Bilbo's other belongings.
He then starts actively carrying it once Gandalf returns and warns him that it is in fact the One Ring once he decides to transport it to Rivendell.
23rd of September TA 3018 on his fiftieth birthday he starts the journey. Now actively being a ring bearer.
The One Ring was destroyed on the 25th of March TA 3019. So this gives us a time window of **26 weeks to the day.**
As for the entire journey, Frodo returns to the Shire where in The Scouring of the Shire they finally defeat Saruman on the 3rd of November 3019 ending their adventure. So the entire journey took 1 year and 9 days. | 451 |
CMV: Acts of God should not be legally allowed as an excuse to not pay out insurance claims. | Acts of God events are exactly the moments people need their insurance pay outs the most, thats the whole point of spreading the financial risk across large chunks of population.All of those acts are predictable events that we just happen to not have a good model for yet. Even things like global pandemics actually already have yearly projection models ( they were telling us one is imminent for years). Insurance companies have good enough actuaries to do a pretty good estimation on what the premium should be to account for them, they just choose not to because it is more profitable for them to be able to deny people's claims.Additionally is there is an industry out there that can afford to invest billions into better seismic, weather and other other models - its Insurance industry.
Insurance industry should not be able to be risks free for itself where they always make money regardless of what happens, because with big enough events they claim Act of God and government has to bail people out. Classic privatize the gains, socialize the losses.
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Edit: Due to this conversation i realized that my issue is not Acts of God, but unethical behavior by insurance industry. | 31 | You can find an insurance company that'll insure you for basically anything, including the acts (of God or otherwise) that you mention. And if you can't find a company that will, what's your suggestion? They're forced to, somehow?
It's not like insurance companies get out of paying for hurricane damage if the policy includes hurricane damage. "Acts of God" is simply a term (that's not really used much any more) to describe a bunch of things that aren't covered by a policy. The resulting lack of pay-out is because you bought an insurance policy that didn't cover you for the thing that caused your loss - that's all there is to it. | 17 |
ELI5: what is the crust in your eyes when you wake up? Do some people get more or less? Why? | 22 | It's mostly salt and other parts of the tear liquid. Your body constantly covers your eyes with tears to keep them moist. Normally we blink to disperse that liquid. When you sleep you might produce more tears than you need to keep the eyes moist and some leaks out from underneath your eyelids. What is called sleep is what remains on your skin after the leaked tears dry out. | 55 |
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[Marvel/DC] What DC heroes would J. Jonah Jameson be okay with? Which heroes would he have a problem with? | 147 | Jameson hates masks and vigilantes. He would like Superman, Shazam and maybe Wonder Woman as both are basically themselves when they fight.
Heroes like Batman, Green Arrow, Hawkman and Flash are no good because of the masks and vigilantism. The Green Lanterns and Aquaman have outside allegiances, Martian Manhunter is a Martian and so on.
If Jameson existed in the DC Universe, Batman would likely be his obsession instead of Spider-Man. He's everything Jameson hates about superheroes. | 178 |
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[Rick and Morty] Why is Rick so adamantly against Beth and Jerry's relationship, when his survival depends on a person produced by that relationship? | It's clearly not just a new thing, either. Like, he doesn't just not want them to be together. It seems as if he regrets them ever being together, and doesn't want them to have anything to do with each other.
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However, it's well established that he's dependent on Morty for camouflaging himself from his enemies. So, shouldn't he support the relationship that produces Morty in the first place?
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Related side-question: In Rixty Minutes, we're introduced to many timelines in which Beth and Jerry never met, and they have much happier lives. Where is Rick in those? Did he ever return to Beth? Was he killed? Shouldn't Beth be in deep shit with aliens after they find her and Rick with no Jerry or Morty waves to hide them (given that we know she's smart like him with similar tendencies), or at the very least involved in his space adventures? | 53 | Mainly he regrets them being together because of the fact that Jerry ruined Beth who,as Rick’s daughter,had a lot of potential for greatness.Add on the fact that Jerry sabotages himself and you have a relationship Rick does not support.
As for Morty being essential for his survival you are right.However deep down he doesn’t want to survive as Rick believes and knows that his life is not special and is meaningless.And he technically doesn’t need Morty as he can easily kill anyone who comes after him.
As for Alternate Beth and Rick,it’s likely that he developed some alternative type of defense from trackers or they just simply kill whoever comes after them etc… | 47 |
How to actually learn philosophy? | I believe this is an underrated question: When trying to learn about new topics within philosophy, how do self-taught learners and graduate students go about finding resources on the subject they want to learn? I am tired of just typing “x subject books” into the google search bar because the books that google recommend are not at all what my philosophy professors recommend. Is there a method you follow if you want to learn a new subject? I am already aware of the SEP but that can not be all that graduate students or self-taught learners use.
Also do most people choose to read books or papers? I was told books is common for intro level or beginners but papers are key as you get upper level. | 162 | I would search for syllabi, which can often be easily found online. If you want to know more about metaphysics, google “metaphysics class syllabus” and they usually have the university listed so you know its reputable. | 60 |
[General Time Travel] Why does nobody ever suggest preventing WWII and the Holocaust by saving Archduke Franz Ferdinand? | The most common suggestion is to kill Adolf Hitler. Some people prefer the somewhat more ethical approach of encouraging him to be a painter or kidnapping him as a child and raising him differently. Why does nobody think of preventing WWII by preventing WWI by preventing an assassination? There's nothing unethical about that and you can prevent two world wars for the price of one. It's also less likely to end up with Germany declaring war anyway but with a more competent leader. | 89 | Most people believe WWI was inevitable. The combination of militarism, interlocking alliances, imperialism, and nationalism was a powder keg, and the assassination the spark. A huge world war was *going* to happen; you save the archduke, and the next day another cause prompts it. | 132 |
What makes kosher dill pickles sour if they explicitly do not have added vinegar? | 172 | Traditional pickles are made by bacterial fermentation of natural sugars to produce organic acids such as the acetic acid of vinegar. The low pH of the resulting pickles acts as a preservative to prevent further spoilage. Many modern 'pickles' are simply fruit or vegetables soaked in vinegar and as such are not authentically pickled. | 67 |
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How do a bunch of small noises combine to make a very loud noise? | So I was watching Game of Thrones last night. The soldiers started to slam their spears into the ground. One spear doesn't make much noise, but a lot of spears makes a lot of noise. Why is it that when a bunch of people do the same thing at the same time it suddenly seems like all of their noises are added to each other?
I guess in my head I have the thought that it would just be the same level of noise but coming from all around, this is obviously not true.
What's the science behind this?
I'm not exactly sure what to tag this as but I'll put physics because it seems to be the closest. | 24 | Read up on constructive/destructive interference in waves. Basically when sounds are the same frequency and phase the peaks lines up and the troughs line up and then add making the amplitude (volume) bigger. | 12 |
Do galaxies die? How many years would that take? Could some of the most distant galaxies we've observed be long gone today? | 49 | Well, it depends on how you define "death". Galaxies collide and merge with each other, so lots of the galaxies we see that are billion of years old may not be there anymore, because they have merged with nearby galaxies, and thus today they would look totally different. Their constituent stars would still be there, however, more or less, (minus any that have died since), since galactic collisions are usually pretty harmless to the stars within the galaxies, since the chances of stars colliding during such an event is extremely low due to the sheer amount of empty space in between stars in galaxies.
All things being equal galaxies will eventually "burn out" though, as all their stars run out of fuel and die, and slowly all the lights will eventually dim for every galaxy in the Universe. But that process takes trillions of years because even after a star runs out of fuel, it turns into a white dwarf which still glows fairly brightly for a VERY long time.
| 13 |
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If someone jumped off of a building, and were tackled at full speed right before they hit the ground, would either party survive? | I was arguing with my friends recently about this; I will attampt to explain.
Someone jumps off of a building and is travelling at a speed that if they hit the ground they would die no matter what.
If someone came from the side and tackled the falling person at the last second (maybe 2-5 feet above the ground), would either of them survive? | 15 | It would be hard to tackle them in any meaningful way without exerting an upward force. A person falling 100m will only take about 0.03 seconds to travel that last meter. If no upward force occurs, that tackle will be little more than a nudge, which will be of no benefit to them, and little harm to our would be linebacker.
If upward force occurs, the person's deceleration will be spread out over a greater distance (1 m vs. a few mm) which would improve survivability. That will come at the expense of the linebacker, who would be absorbing the blow.
The most likely outcome? Even if the linebacker did everything he could to reduce the fall, the person will likely die if falling from a signficant height. The linebacker faces a lesser, but still pretty serious risk. | 13 |
ELI5: Why don't humans have a mating season? | Humans seem to be sexually ready to reproduce at all times. Why don't we have a "mating season" like most other animals? | 53 | Jared Diamond discusses this in The Third Chimpanzee. In brief, sex is a means by which a woman bonds with her mate. Since human babies take years to raise this bond is critical and therefore it's beneficial to any offspring if their parents get it on a lot. This makes year-round sex a good thing so male partners don't run off. Also the woman's body hides her own fertile time from her so she doesn't just try to have sex when she isn't fertile. The selective pressure of that adaptation should be pretty obvious. This implies lots of our ancestral women were using the rhythm method at some point, and evolution selected for those who were bad at it. Because babies. | 50 |
ELI5: Why do humans like to watch other humans dance? | 58 | One theory is that dancing is a way to demonstrate bodily symmetry. Symmetry is one of the main criteria we use in determining beauty, as it can be a decent indicator of good genes and good nutrition, both desirable in a mate.
So it taps into primal mating urges far older than civilization. | 26 |
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ELI5: Why is the two envelope paradox, uh, a paradox? | I watched a lecture today by Laurence Krauss, and he got me interested in the 'weirdness of infinity'. So I google infinity, and came across the "two envelope paradox". The problem is stated as thus:
>Let us say you are given two indistinguishable envelopes, each of which contains a positive sum of money. One envelope contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep whatever amount it contains. You pick one envelope at random but before you open it you are offered the possibility to take the other envelope instead.
Now to my middling IQ brain, this seems like a "duh" to me, it seems like a standard 50/50 probability. One of 2 envelopes contains the most money. Yet, when I look at the [wikipedia entry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_envelopes_problem) for this problem, I see a mile long page with what looks like a bunch of higher math, and statements about all the ways it's been attempted to be solved.
What? Why is this a problem? I don't understand why this is a paradox, and not just the same thing as flipping a coin.
| 42 | The paradox is that there's the obvious (and correct) answer that you came up with. However, if you use the mathematical tools of probability theory, you get a different answer. The incorrect probabilistic thinking goes like this: You pick your envelope and look inside. Let's say you see $2 inside. How much is in the other envelope? Well, it's either $1 (half as much) or $4 (twice as much). So if you switch, you either lose $1 or gain $2. Since you have more to gain than you do to lose, it would be a good idea to switch. That's the "switching argument" the Wikipedia article talks about.
This is a fun problem that if you don't know any probability theory, the answer is obvious and the question is silly. If you know know just enough probability theory, you can use standard mathematical tools to analyze the problem, but you'll get the wrong answer. The Wikipedia article talks a lot about why these tools fail for this problem, and what are the right mathematical tools to use to analyze it. | 36 |
[Courage the Cowardly Dog] How are the Bagge family able to afford to go to many different places all over the world? | I mean know they have a farm and all, but the problem is that they always seem to be struggling. I mean they are unable to grow any produce, Eustace is a cheapskate, there are not that many animals except for Courage & a bunch of chickens, and so on. | 40 | They are most likely living off of retirement and social security, possibly some kind of farm subsidies. And if we're being real here, does Eustace really seem like the type to file his taxes and government assistance paperwork honestly?
I would attribute any world travel to either a sudden windfall, successful grift, or new line of credit. All spent irresponsibly, because Eustace.
Poor Muriel likely has no clue about their finances. | 44 |
CMV: It’s wrong to tell people they HAVE to be attracted to/date a certain group of people | I’m not referring to people who challenge someone making blanket statements like “all x people are unattractive” “all x people will eventually cheat on you” because those are obviously based on stereotypes and prejudice. I’m talking about people who say it’s wrong to not be attracted to or want to date people with x characteristic whatever that may be. People have their own personal reasons for what they want in a relationship/sex and it’s wrong to challenge them on that or require they give a reason for refusing sex or a relationship with someone. Dating isn’t activism. Dating is incredibly personal and feeling pressured to be romantically or sexually involved with anyone just spells disaster for every party involved. People can’t control what they’re attracted too. Even if they could, their reasons for not dating someone should not be challenged (again I’m not referring to when they make blanket statements as mentioned above I’m referring to personal reasons). If prejudice is influencing their decisions than they should focus on working on the prejudice beliefs to be a better person in genera, but it’s not ok to assume that every single person who is not attracted to x person is feeling this way out of prejudice.
Maybe I’m reading into what people are saying wrong, but some of the comments surrounding this subject that I’ve seen are concerning. Also this is my first post in the sub so please bear with me as I learn the rules, I will try to respond politely and in good faith | 19 | Nobody is saying you HAVE to date a (for example) transgender person. If you want to have biological kids that's perfectly valid. What people are saying is that blanket statements like "I wont date a transgender/black/Asian/etc." Are almost always rooted in bigotry, and one should ask themself why they would make such a blanket statement. | 37 |
ELI5: What determines whether liquid being poured out of a glass is going to pour out and down the side of the glass rather than straight out? | 53 | It's all to do with the speed of the water as it passes over the lip. If the water is moving slowly then it will not overcome the force holding it to the glass (adhesion). However if it moves quickly, the water has more momentum and it can break free and pour away from the glass.
If the water cannot "break free" of the surface then it will simply roll over the lip of the glass and trickle down the outside.
The spout on a jug, you'll notice, curves downward slightly when the jug is held at a pouring angle. Obviously the more vertical the water stream the faster it flows, so jugs pour nice clean streams if water. | 38 |
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[Doctor Strange 2 Spoilers] What happened to Wanda? | Is she dead or what? | 159 | Vague uncertainty. As the rocks fell her magic fired off.
That could have been her magic disapating on death or her using her magic to escape death.
Strange and Wong didn’t seem to care enough to confirm either way as far as we know. Probably out of a Hobson’s Choice, in the end she had a heel face turn as she realized what was happening to her:
* If she died, let her body stay buried. No reason to disturb her rest.
* If she lives, what she needs now is self reflection and healing. Not the people she tried to kill and in turn tried to kill her tracking her down. Best to give her that space. | 245 |
ELI5, how can we in America be charged with crimes if we are intoxicated, but not be able to give consent if intoxicated? | Just seems conflicting. | 159 | You can give consent all you want when you're drunk. What you can't do is accept the consent of a drunk person. We often say "a drunk person can't given consent", but this is really a way of informing the person who consent is being offered to that it's illegal to regard that as consent when the individual giving it is intoxicated.
| 73 |
ELI5: Out of the tons of radio signals that are constantly around us all the time, how does my cell phone know exactly which one(s) to "listen" to when I'm calling someone? | Basically, how is the phone able to filter out all of the other "noise" that must come from the hundreds, or even thousands, of other radio signals around us to give me EXACTLY what I want to hear, with zero interference? | 41 | There are electronic devices that are called "filters" that block out certain radio frequencies. It's like how an FM radio works; only the station you want is allowed through.
The cell phone companies basically buy the right to exclusively use certain frequencies. (Different frequencies are like different colors.) One company might be allowed to use one frequency, and another company uses another frequency.
Your cell phone is programmed by your cell phone company to only look at the frequencies they've purchased.
Now, you have to share that frequency with every other customer of that cell phone company. One way they do this is called TDMA which basically means everyone who is on a call for a particular cell phone tower gets a small amount of time to send/receive, and they all take turns. The amount of time is so small, and the turns change so quickly that you don't even notice. It's like how a cartoon might have something like 60 frames per second, and they flip so fast that you can't tell that it's not a continuous image.
Another method is called CDMA, but that uses complex math and these things called orthogonal codes. | 19 |
Is there a limit to how high a person can fly a kite? | As the string gets longer, the weight of the kite increases. But also there tends to be more wind higher up. A larger kite would lift more string, but at some point a single person wouldn't be able to hold a very large kite in high winds. So, is there a limit to how high a person can fly a kite? | 201 | This is really a question about the limits of materials science. In some ways it's similar to the problem posed by a theoretical space elevator. How thin and light can you get the string without it breaking? How high can you get the surface area of the kite while keeping the weight down? | 103 |
ELI5: For conjoined twins, how do the two brains control one body? | 23 | Conjoined twins aren't a regular phenomena, so there isn't really a set of rules as to how it'll work out. It's pretty much a case-by-case thing.
I will point out, though, that it's not really "one body". It's two distinct bodies that are fused together. Each brain controls it's own body, even if those parts are fused to another body. | 12 |
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[Underworld] So William and Marcus were bitten by wolves and bats that made them the first vamp/werewolf ,but in their era were they never bitten by any other animal like a dog? a cat? horse ? rabbit? | Their farther was never bitten by anything???? if they had would they be weredogs and were rabbits? and why didn't Marcus turn into a werebat creature instead of a vampire ? | 19 | Their bloodline is rather magical. Being bitten by animals may have been a metaphor rather than actual fact. But assuming it's fact it's likely the animals that bit them were also magical to some extent. Or at least aligned magically in some way. Bats beings of the night and wolves beings of the hunt. As for Marcus he did turn into a werebat rather than a vampire. It's just centuries of repression and evolution have created the lycans and vampires. Marcus rejected his bestial nature and retained his human appearance after some time. William embraced the beast and became it. But both were considerably more monstrous in appearance and ability than their later descendants. | 22 |
Why does Tim Burton's Batman seem so cavalier about killing? | In Batman Returns, he kills at least two badies with the Batmobile flame jet and a bomb. He also backhands Catwoman off a roof.
Why is this Batman so unconcerned with taking life? | 35 | His world was much more violent and cynical than any other universe that has a Batman.
His genesis was not from a random mugging by a desperate Joe Chill, but a cold, brutal murder by Jack Napier. Jack clearly took pleasure in shooting the Wayne adults and even took time to torment him with a chilling question, just to prolong his fear. (And he likes the way it sounds.)
A Bruce that is traumatized by Joe Chill sees crime as an awful thing, but also a faceless, complex problem that requires a complex solution. He recognizes sometimes people have real problems and need help, not punishment. At his core, he simply doesn't want anyone else to feel what he did that night.
When Jack Napier tortured him and killed his parents, Bruce realized this was a personal struggle with a personified incarnation of crime. This Bruce saw Jack everywhere. Criminals were not just superstitious cowards, but monsters that needed to be punished. This Batman was much less of a detective and more of a brutal avenger, doing whatever it took to end crime right then and there. He had no patience for people that might provide a valid story behind their actions and zero tolerance for people that violently broke the law. | 74 |
ELI5: How does time dilate? Why does time slow down at higher speeds? | 30 | You have a limited amount of "motion". We are spending 99.9999% of our motion "moving thru time", the rest is spent on "moving thru space". Light spends 99.9999% of its motion "moving thru space" and the rest "moving thru time". The faster you travel thru space, the less you travel thru time. At light speed, you're not time traveling, at all. But that's relative.
Edit: Travel through time or travel through space, you can't do both at 100%. They add up to 100% though.
Edit: Just realized, this analogy does not work for *gravitational* time dilation. Don't ask me how to explain that. | 53 |
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Eli5: why do space rockets have all the cables still connected during the first seconds of lift off? | 3,510 | In the event of an engine failure or other type of abort at liftoff they still want the cables and hoses attached so that they can safely shut it down and pump out the fuel rendering it safe for people to enter the launch ramp. Thes aborts can happen right at liftoff so the cables needs to be attached during the liftoff and then disconnect right after this.
A funny accident was with the Redstone-Mercury 1 launch where there was actually a fault with the length of the cables and the sequence they were disconnected from the rocket which falsely triggerd an abort when the rocket was only inches off the pad. The rocket did land again without damage. But since the cables were disconnected there was no way to control the rocket from a distance. It was therefore sitting on the launch pad full of fuel pressurized in its tanks and nobody could do anything about it. To make matters worse the capsule, sensing the engine shutdown and the short freefall ran through the rest of the launch and landing sequency including disconnecting from the rocket and deploying its parachute, and senisng a problem with the main parachute it deployed the spare parachute as well. So now there was a space rocket full of fuel on the launch pad and two dangling parachutes from its top that could catch the wind at any time, and the weather forecasts predicted winds. | 3,858 |
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