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Would animals with non-round pupils (such as cats and goats) see a different shaped image to us, additional to that which is granted by the different eye position? | 9,597 | When light passes through an aperture, each point of out-of-focus light (what photographers call bokeh) takes on the shape and size of that aperture. If you took a near-sighted member of each species and put them far away from a point-source light, each of them would see it as a different shape. A cat would see a vertical slit shape, a goat would see a rectangle, and so on.
Why is this useful?
Let's take the cat for example. The vertical bokeh created by their pupils means they see things with a vertical blur to them and the horizontal remains sharp. If their prey tends to flee sideways, this means they can let more light in their eyes while still seeing exactly where their prey is going.
There are similar evolutionary reasons for the shapes other irises take. | 5,426 |
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[The Incredibles] Okay, so, Supers were outlawed and stopped their careers. But why did the villains stop? | 183 | In addition to what /u/ErrSnorlax said about it no longer being fun, sometimes the villains just... won. Not all villains are world-conquering psychopaths. Some are motivated to just kill or ruin specific people, or make enough money to accomplish something specific. Without supers, some of those villains did exactly what they needed to do and then stopped. Street-level thugs who tried to take advantage of the situation were taken out and/or arrested by police and military forces trained to handle people with powers.
With a super on the scene, many of their fights were one-on-one, with big flashy move and a lot of destruction. When regular humans are sent after such beings, non-super tactics are involved. Real fights are generally very short and not exciting to look at, especially when a life is on the line. So the villains who didn't retire/give up or surrender were probably taken out rather quickly and in a way that wouldn't make for exciting news coverage. | 162 |
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[Star Trek]Why did Species 8472 evolve to be so deadly? Their native environment, Fluidic space, is just an endless expanse of organic goo? | I mean fluidic space can't have any gravity or it'd have collapsed into an ultra massive black hole. given that I'd expect most organisms there to resemble Jelly fish rather than bipeds | 17 | Species 8472 is currently the only sentient species in fluidic space. This doesnt mean species 8472 was *always* the only species in fluidic space. Combined with their immediate plans to purge our galaxy of all life, it can be inferred that they fought wars with other inhabitants of fluidic space, and emerged as the sole victors. In order to accomplish this, they became the deadliest motherfuckers in existence. | 30 |
ELI5 Why do we bury the dead 6' under and not 2', 3', etc. | 157 | Tradition and wild animals. The last thing anyone wants is for a passing dog to dig up Grandma and bring her half decomposed leg home.
Also, putting them six feet under makes it very unlikely that a flood or other natural disaster will dig out and deposit the corpses all over the place, as that is both a sever health risk and a hassle to re identify and bury *each* and *every* corpse back into it's place. | 205 |
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eli5: Why are really fucked up hateful subreddits allowed to exist? | I know that reddit is a place where free speech and and freedom of choice are encouraged but why are certain subs like r/rapingwomen and r/coontown still allowed to be on the website even though they encourage violence and hatred? I like this place just as much as the next person, it sucks that people using it as a tool to spread their awful filth. | 22 | The point of freedom of speech is that it's not up to you to decide what is "awful filth". You think it is, which is fine, but the people who post there (not me) don't. To ban their stuff would be to say that your opinion was more important than theirs.
Also, it's easy enough to not be subscribed and never have that stuff show up. | 69 |
CMV: As a feminist I'm really bothered how male-to-female trans-people portray what it means to be female | I feel like they're acting and it often feels very campy. I don't like how they say "well my brain is more feminine", like excuse me that's something that women have been trying to get away from for 1000 years. Why did Caitlyn Jenner feel the best way to become a woman was to get all trussed up in a corset on the cover of vanity fair? Why are so many m2f trans people so into makeup and fashion?! If that's what being a woman is to you then why not stick to drag? In conclusion, an article that lines up with my views. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/what-makes-a-woman.html | 27 | Most feminists pay lots of lip-service to the idea of *choice* - the whole point of the feminist movement is to allow women to *choose* what being a woman means to them. Being a tomboy is supposed to be okay; being ultra-feminine and liking pink/frills/makeup is supposed to be okay; remaining single is supposed to be okay; getting married is supposed to be okay; going to work is supposed to be okay; remaining at home to take care of the house/family is supposed to be okay.
And now you're saying that one way of being a woman is *not* okay? How is that in any way feminist? You're picking out one set of traits/behaviors *that does not harm anyone* and saying "this is not okay." What you're saying is that *you* get to decide what it means to be a woman - whereas most feminists *claim* that it's up to every individual woman to decide. What you're saying is emphatically *not* feminist.
[Edit] You know what this reminds me of? The childfree movement is supposed to be all about how it's okay to *choose* to remain childless. But if one of them later changes their mind, that person is seen as a "traitor" to the cause, and making it harder for the rest of them to be taken seriously - never mind that *the whole point* of the movement is ostensibly about the validity of non-traditional choices. Sheer hypocrisy. | 68 |
ELI5: Why are people more attractive when they smile? | 141 | Actually a study found that's only true for women (in regards to male being attracted to them), the study found the inverse for men, it found that men who smiled in a picture were perceived less attractive (on average obviously) | 92 |
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[Futurama] How and why do the Neutrals do anything? | How does anything get done in a civilization where no one cares about anything?
Like, people build shelter because of protection from the weather and other elements, but I imagine that a Neutral would be like, "I feel nothing about this cold weather" and promptly freeze to death.
Or starships? If Neutrals have no feeling towards space exploration or anything, why did they build them (or at least join a space-faring civilization that did build them)?
Likewise, how do relationships work? At one point, a Neutral goes, "If I don't survive, tell my wife that I said, 'Hello'".
Why does he feel the need to say anything at all if he presumably has no feeling one way or the other towards his wife (and she presumably would have no emotion towards his death or survival)? | 55 | Just because you have no strong opinions doesn't mean you can't accomplish things and doesn't mean you don't feel *anything*. Shelter is necessary to survive, that's not controversial. Cold weather isn't an opinion, if you freeze to death you die. If they're anything like us advancing technology is only natural and nobody would have strong enough feelings to oppose or abuse it. | 60 |
[Warhammer 40k] So I keep hearing that the Chaos Gods also personify good traits. What famous examples of them acting on said traits are there? | Are there [eucatastrophes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucatastrophe) and the like to go along with the horrible atrocities committed by the Gods and their servants, or by wannabes in their name? I don't mean just the occasional thing-that-happens-to-result-in-someone-being-happy* events, I mean large scale events on par with the events associated with their more negative traits. If the Chaos gods are truly, well... chaotic... to the point where they sometimes even decide to team up despite hating each other, why wouldn't they do good things fairly often as well as bad?
*Or at least as happy as you can be in the Grimdark WH40k universe.
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Also, what are the practical effects of Slaneesh "eating" so many other Gods?
I would think that it gave him/her/it a power up, but Slaneesh was already powerful enough to gobble up an entire Pantheon and nearly did so. Then most of the Eldar gods got "eaten" and then... according to the sources I've seen, Slaneesh was still weaker than Khorne, Nurgle, and possibly Tzneetch. [That doesn't add up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnyjw5LUj0#t=0m23s), even if you take into account waxing and waning powers.
I thought that Slaneesh may have gained control of their portfolios (think of the Forgotten Realms gods), but that also should give him/her/it a huge power boost, or at least a boost over time, and yet... nope.
Furthermore, it appears that a distinction is made between what Slaneesh did to the gods that got devoured and what was going to be done to Isha before Nurgle rescued her. That implies that the devoured ones are not being tortured or whatever either, as if Slaneesh wanted to do that to Isha and could do so after swallowing her, he would have.
I guess there are other possibilities too... thoughts? | 31 | Ok – here’s the deal.
Each of the four represent real concepts of emotion – but understand that the big four are the absolute personification of these ideals taken to wild and illogical extremes.
Khorne – is the god of bloodlust but also one of martial honor and valor. Khorne can stir the heart and fill you with courage to not only stand up to the impossible, but to triumph over it.
Nurgle – is the lord of decay – but also rebirth. From death springs forth life and from life comes death once more. As such his power waxes and wanes as his plagues spread and are beaten back. But even still Nurgle is the most nurturing and comforting, often referred to as Papa Nurgle – you see his influence in doctors and medicine – sickness and poxes ravaging the body and being expelled.
Slaneesh – is the Prince of Pleasure – and freaky hentai nonsense aside is also the Patron of perfection. Every musician who has ever slaved to perfect their piece, every artist who struggled to get the portrait just right – is a prayer to she who thirsts and their fruits are her blessing.
Tzneech – is the god of knowledge and change. Have you ever wanted to know why stuff works? Have you ever wanted to twist it into a better shape? Even your question OP is a machination of Tzneech.
The four are ever present in our lives and the eightfold path is one that we tread carefully. Chaos will never die – but it can be limited and restrained. That is what the Imperium seeks – to silence the whispers that push people to the insane and perverse extremes.
The Grimdark is best divided into two camps. Order and Disorder.
Order being the Imperium, Eldar, Tau, and Necrons.
Disorder being Chaos, Dark Eldar, Orks, and Nids.
Order fights for control and hegemony – Disorder just wrecks stuff. Now order and disorder may have infighting or even wildly different beliefs – but they represent control vs anarchy. Think of order as a disciplined scientist and disorder as a force of nature.
Now Slaneesh – She is only really 10,000 years old. Yes eating the Eldar and all of their Gods gave him a slight power boost – but she is still young. Especially when you figure that Khorne has been cracking skulls since day 1 and Tnzeech has been scheming before the Eldar discovered depravity.
All those yummy Eldar Gods put Slaneesh in the Chaos God club, but not at the top. Keep in mind the other 3 have been around for at least 4 times as long. To use an example of High School in the USA – Slaneesh is a badass Freshman who makes the varsity squad by knocking over a couple of juniors. She gets to start – but make no mistake – the other three are seniors and have been doing it longer and better.
| 48 |
CMV:Christianity and Islam both have elements not found in other major religions that are conducive to violent extremism. | Nowadays, it seems the "enlightened" view is that all major religions are pretty much the same. While it is true that they have many elements in common, and that they have all been interpreted and practiced many different ways throughout their histories, I feel that these two have some unique attributes.
**Exclusivity**- Major denominations of both Christianity and Islam believe that they are the only correct religion. Not only that, they believe their religion is associated with the sole source of good in the world, while other religions are associated with evil. They therefore cannot see the value of any cultures outside of their own. Outsiders exist to be one-sidedly enlightened, not to exchange knowledge with and learn from each other.
**Eternal Hell**- Hinduism and Buddhism believe in reincarnation, while Judaism is vague about the afterlife. Christianity and Islam, by contrast, are very "high stakes" religions. This naturally lends a strong sense of urgency to the actions of their followers. This is worsened by the notion that the thing you do to be sent to Hell is not believing in the right religion. This means that your neighbors aren't just ignorant, they're dangerous, and their ideas can send your loved ones to eternal damnation.
**Manifest destiny**- Many religions have a notion that they're only "for" people born into them. Christians and Muslims, on the other hand, have a mandate to convert the world. This naturally brings them into conflict with other religions.
The is not to say that these religions don't have their good points as well, but I think it can't be said that they're the same as other major religions.
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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!* | 20 | Let's talk about Hinduism for a bit: now it is true that Hinduism talks about reincarnation, we die in order to become more complex beings with the hope that we would one day end the cycle of reincarnation in order to access Nirvana.
This has been the explanation to place a harsh cast system that strictly prevents anyone from moving in the social ladder, that means that many people weren't allowed to become something they were better for in the first place, and higher cast members would be considered as divinely superior to the rest. This social structure can be considered as very violent an still harms Indians today. some fight to end arranged mariage and climb the social ladder, or not being considered an inferior being.
The Bible and the Koran both have some pretty violent texts as well as peaceful-like texts, what really change with time was the way it was interpreted, they both had ups and down in History. | 16 |
ELI5 how the pyramids were built, and why there are conspiracy theories about it. | 15 | The pyramids were built using ramps and pulleys and thousands of workers who labored for decades.
There are conspiracy theories about them simply because they are old and big and unique. There are very few buildings around that are as old as the pyramids -- 4000 years. People wonder why anyone would build something as huge and impractical as a pyramid. But we simply do not know enough about ancient Egypt to explain everything about them. | 17 |
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How is single sign on (SSO) more secure than having several logins when it’s basically using the same password for everything? | 19 | The theory is that heavily securing the SSO system is far more effective and efficient than trying to heavily secure each other system independently. Would you rather trust a specialized SSO company to secure their stuff or trust all tens or hundreds of sites you may login to, ran by admins of varying capabilities? Not to mention having a single really good and long password you can remember is far superior to having many different weak, or even strong, passwords you'll have to put down somewhere. Of course in a personal environment SSO is in a bit of competition with password managers, which don't require the same level of trust of a third party entity (especially if it's an open source password manager). | 11 |
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how do I explain butler's gender performativity to a biologist? | i've entered a discussion with a biologist about butler's theory, and he keeps saying that butler "denies biology". he *does* seem to understand the difference between sex and gender, but is having a hard time understanding the idea that "sex is already gender from the start". any ideas? | 15 | Butler doesn’t say there is no such thing as biological sex, just that gender ends up producing significant constructed notions about biological sex and what a biological sex entails. Just reaffirm that the existence of sex is not without its own major presuppositions, projected onto it by the performativty of gender. | 24 |
[ASOIAF/GOT] Are any of the gods real? Which ones, and how do we know? | 387 | There is no definitive proof either way.
The only two Gods we have any kind of proof that they might exist is the Lord of Light and The Many Faced God, and that "proof" could be followers attributing wild magic to an imaginary source deity. | 461 |
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CMV: I don't think everybody deserves the right to vote. | Im talking about the U.S. here because I'm not sure how it works everywhere else. I don't think those who are uneducated about politics and the candidates that they're choosing between should be allowed to vote. It doesn't seem to have any benefits if a person votes based on factors like what their friends/family think about the candidates or something they heard on Reddit.
I started to think about this when my friend told me I should register to vote. I should note that I know almost nothing about the current presidential candidates (or any election for that matter) and never had any interest in politics. I know I should be more educated about whos running the country Im living in but as of right now Im not too interested. My friend convinced me to register and I decided I was going to vote for Bernie because I heard he supports weed legalization and I heard some people say he was a good choice. Then I realized, why should I be allowed to vote if I have no idea about anything in this election? It feels like my vote, based off of a couple minutes of research and what I've heard online, would not be beneficial towards the selection of an appropriate leader for our country.
I understand most people who don't know much about politics would choose not to vote anyways, but what about those who are doing something similar to what I was doing, making judgements off of what other people say, which could be biased and lacking important information.
I don't know how a system could be implemented in order to "test" individuals for political competency but I do feel that some people just shouldn't be allowed to vote, myself included.
Thank you for reading, please change my view Reddit.
Edit: ∆
Wow that was fast, read through 5 replies so far and I have changed my view. Thanks for the great replies everyone. | 122 | Pragmatically, restricting the right to vote is nearly impossible to enforce fairly. The people in power have a vested interest in keeping their power and, if the government can restrict the right to vote, then they can selectively enforce those laws in order to change election outcomes. Because of this possibility, the only way to make sure all elections remain fair is to allow everyone an equal vote. | 88 |
ELI5: Why are eSports so much more popular in South Korea than other places? | I've been watching a lot of Overwatch League and one pretty apparent thing is that a ton of players come from South Korea. I've heard the explanation to this is that eSports in general is extremely popular in South Korea. Is this true? If so, why aren't they more popular other places? | 15 | Rewind back to the mid-90's. The country had decided to heavily prioritize its broadband infrastructure. (Google the Korean Information Initiative for more info) Between 1995 and 1998, the government heavily funded the laying of fiber-optic lines throughout the country, making for readily-available, cheap, and fast internet access.
Of course, you need a computer to use this infrastructure... and computers are expensive... So there was great demand for internet-cafes where you could access this high-speed resource without necessarily needing to pay high prices for your own computer.
In a heartbeat, internet-cafe culture was EVERYWHERE. Per-capita, the US doesn't hold a candle to South Korean connectivity. If you had a cafe near you, you could get online, and given that such a high proportion of the country lives in high-density urban areas, this basically permeated the entire country.
Note that at this time, in the US, you'd be lucky to even have a 56.6k dial-up modem, let alone broadband.
1998 rolls around, and Starcraft gets released. Korean school children eat it up. It becomes the most popular activity at internet cafes (which are ubiquitous). An entire generation grows up on Starcraft. And overnight, it becomes the national pastime.
Entire channels pop up to broadcast Starcraft. Sponsorships, teams etc. arise. Korea becomes the birthplace of eSports, and the rest is history. | 26 |
ELI5 why increased atmospheric CO2 levels don't just mean healthier more lush plant life which in turn offset that CO2. | . | 15 | Photosynthesis = H20 + CO2 + Light (particularly UV/V/B light) made into O2 (oxygen gas) + C6H12O6 (Sugar).... Let's keep that simplification in mind for now.
When we think about plants making O2 to offset the CO2 production, you run into two key limitations: water and rate of photosynthesis. When there is no water (particularly clean, harmless water), it prevents the process of photosynthesis from occurring. That is why a drought can be devastating in that regard. This usually isn't an issue as rain forests contribute much of the plant-based global-O2 generation and these environments are not insanely water deprived (but global warming and deforesting have still affected this cycle in some regards).
The biggest issue is rate of photosynthesis. Just because more CO2 is present, that does not mean the plant will engage in photosynthesis much quicker. Think of it like this: let's say your car tops out at 100mph. Does adding more gas in your tank make your car faster? The answer - no. Your car (plant) is still limited by its internals (plant chlorophylls) regardless of how much gas (CO2) is in the tank (atmosphere).
Also, the Ocean makes about 70% of oxygen. Phytoplankton and the sorts, and they are also in danger due to the dropping quality of ocean water in some regions.
EDIT: Phone auto corrected "in danger" to "endangered." | 13 |
How much water does it take to offset the dehydrating effects of an alcoholic drink (0.6 fluid oz)? | Alcohol dehydrates you. But how much water would you need to drink to offset the dehydrating effects of a standard alcoholic drink (0.6 fluid oz)? | 28 | There is no simple answer to this, because the dehydrating(diuretic) effects of alcohol are a function of your BAC, not the ABV of the drink. There is a relationship between ABV and BAC but it includes other factors such as body weight, amout of drinks consumed, when the drinks were consumed, personal tolerance to diuretics effects, how full your stomach was when you started drinking, whether you are male or female, age, and other things. Without accounting for these factors it is very hard to simply correlate ABV and dehydration.
P.S. This is why you should treat
your pharmacist with respect. It's not an easy job they do. | 11 |
Are there any modern Philosophers who defend Polytheism? | Hey, I have recently been reading about early Christian Church history and something that seems to be brought up a lot are these "pagan philosophers" in places like Egypt which critiqued Christianity. I also heard some people mention that polytheism may have stronger responses to things like the problem of evil, due to the existence of evil Gods, as well as the good Gods. This made me wonder, are there any modern philosophers who still defend polytheism? I tried searching "polytheism" on the SEP and IEP but the closest I got was the article on Hindu Philosophy on IEP. If there aren't any, which book or person should I read if I want the most sophisticated articulation of polytheism, or is that not a thing in western philosophy? Thank you. | 23 | In *Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance*, Nesca Robb argued that the fashion for (often veiled) polytheism among the scholars of Renaissance Italy, such as Ficino and Poliziano, was not passed onto the next generation of philosophers for complex religious and social reasons; the witch-craze had emerged and the Reformation had become the locus of theological thought.
However, while academic philosophy moved away from polytheism (and eventually any religion), it was championed by artists and poets. That affection for polytheism became very prominent within the Romantic Movement and, through it, passed into later Western culture where it's remained a strong theme.
There are writers around associated with Neo-Paganism who advocate polytheism (Timothy Jay Alexander is the latest to do so with some philosophical understanding) but few work in academia and none are part of the "canon" which is heavily orientated towards Aristotelian modes of thought and exclude nous and other kinds of apprehension. *Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture* by Wouter Hanegraaff might be worth reading in relation to some of these ideas. | 22 |
ELI5: What can high-profile law firms do to win cases that smaller law firms can't? | In other words, what's the difference between highly-paid attorneys and lower-paid attorneys? | 49 | Larger top-tier/Magic Circle law firms pay their employed solicitors very well, and they're very large organisations. This gives it three main advantages.
First, they have more people that they can put on the project (which achieves certain economies of scale/cost).
Second, the people they have are likely the best lawyers around, because they are given more money for working with the big firms than the little firms.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the size of the firms allows the lawyers within to become more specialised. Many big legal matters are complicated, and your local attorney will have to know about things like contracts for goods or services or land, conveyancing, family law, basic criminal law, etc. That means your local attorney will necessarily have less experience and knowledge than a specialist in any one technical area because they won't have the time to devote to other things, like corporate insolvency, or intellectual property. They'll only know the basics well, where a lawyer from a big firm can have specialist knowledge of the area of law that's relevant. | 44 |
ELI5: What exactly is happening when you squirt one drop of Dawn in a pot of greasy water, and all the grease radiates away to the sides of the pot? | Bonus points if you can explain to me why it's so damn satisfying. | 46 | There is a layer of oil floating on the surface of the water. The water holds together and the oil rests on top.
The soap molecule attracts oil on one end and water on the other. When the soap connects with the water it breaks the surface tension and the oil moves to the outside. It's like if you were hanging on a rope bridge and the middle broke and you swung to the side.
Anyway, this happens with all soaps. Dawn is not special. If soap didn't do this it wouldn't clean. | 18 |
Is there a way to use radioactivity to produce energy, other than using the heat it generates? | 2,474 | Yes, there is something called a beta-voltaic cell, which operates similarly to a photo-voltaic cell, except the high-energy electron from the decay excites electrons in the semiconductor, rather than a photon doing that. | 1,259 |
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[Back to the Future] What would happen if I put the DeLorian on a roller bench, ran it up to 88 MPH on the speedometer and then turned the time circuits on? | 30 | Nothing.
It's not the speedometer or the wheels that triggers the time travel, otherwise when Marty was stuck in 1885 they could have rigged up a gear system to spin the wheels to 88MPH.
The time machine itself needs to be traveling at 88MPH relative to its location in spacetime to break free of the time steam and travel through time. | 56 |
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Can a star have more than one fusion core? | Other than supernova, could for example a blue supergiant/hypergiant have hotspots not in the center that cause fusion? | 36 | The Evolution of some very massive stars (> 8M⊙) leads them to a state in which fusion is occuring at numerous locations within the star. For example:
Initiallly H fuses into He in the core
After 10 Myr,
* core H is exhausted,
* He core contracts, heats.
* H fuses to He in shell around the contracting core
When core temp reaches 170M K,
* core He begins fusing into C and O
* H fusion continues in a shell surrounding the He burning core.
After ~1 Myr,
* core He is exhausted.
* C/O core contracts and heats
* He fusion continues in a shell surrounding the contracting core
* H fusion continues in a shell surrounding He shell.
At core temperature of 600M K,
* core C begins fusing into O, Ne, and Mg.
* He fusion continues in a shell around the C burning core
* H fusion continues in a shell around the He shell.
After < 1000 years, core C is exhausted,
* the O/Ne/Mg core contracts and heats
* C fusion continues in a shell around the contracting core,
* He fusion continues in a shell around the C shell,
* H fusion continues in a shell around the He shell
At core temperature of 1.5B K,
* core Ne begins fusing into O, Mg, ...
* C fusion continues in a shell around the Ne burning core,
* He fusion continues in a shell around the C shell,
* H fusion continues in a shell around the He shell
After a few years,
* core Ne is exhausted,
* O / Mg core contracts, heats
* Ne fusion continues in a shell around the contracting core,
* C fusion continues in a shell around the Ne shell,
* He fusion continues in a shell around the C shell,
* H fusion continues in a shell around the He shell
At core temperature of 2.1B K,
* core O begins fusing into Si and others
* Ne fusion continues in a shell around O burning core,
* C fusion continues in a shell around the Ne shell,
* He fusion continues in a shell around the C shell,
* H fusion continues in a shell around the He shell
After a few months,
* core O is exhausted,
* Si core contracts, heats
* O fusion continues in a shell around the contracting core,
* Ne fusion continues in a shell around the O shell
* C fusion continues in a shell around the Ne shell,
* He fusion continues in a shell around the C shell,
* H fusion continues in a shell around the He shell
At core temperature of 3.5B K,
* core Si begins fusing into Ni and Fe
* O fusion continues in a shell around the Si burning core,
* Ne fusion continues in a shell around the O shell,
* C fusion continues in a shell around the Ne shell,
* He fusion continues in a shell around the C shell,
* H fusion continues in a shell around the He shell
This lasts perhaps a day. Tomorrow the star explodes. | 47 |
ELI5 Why do dogs and cats lean their head to the side when puzzled? | 40 | We anthropomorphize our pets all the time. Him turning his head to the side might make us think that he's puzzled, but he is not necessarily puzzled. He could just be at attention or trying to hear something. | 20 |
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CMV: You should be mindful of others while exercising your own freedoms. | Nowadays I see a lot more protests and just people generally wanting to assert their rights despite it causing obvious stress for unrelated people. My view is that I think that people should be mindful of other while they are being themselves. Essentially that even if they have the right to be somewhere or to do something, they should exercise self control for consideration of others.
However this is a subjective topic, I can’t really give you absolute rules in my logic but essentially I believe people shouldn’t be selfish when asserting their rights.
I think the majority of the examples that I can think of are protest-related for example:
1. You shouldn’t protest in a public space like a library or hallway where it will affect the people unrelated/uninterested in your cause. They have their own daily agendas and even though you are not outright infringing on their rights, you shouldn’t unnecessarily make their lives more difficult. Much like blocking traffic too during protests.
2. Another example I can think of is public spaces like the beach or spaces with children, I know it’s your right and your body. But even if the beach doesnt have rules on dress codes please don’t wear anything borderline nudity. Families often go there for a family time.
3. But in events like gay pride events where it is expected that there are some risqué costumes, I don’t think it is selfish because the date was set specifically for that event. All participants that go there should expect a certain amount of nudity or risqueness. Much like the library example, if the library is holding a protest event, I don't think it's selfish to be loud and disruptive because that space has been reserved. Or like how you should expect traffic to be blocked during a pride event.
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To summarize: I know it is your right to be who you are and sometimes you need to think about yourself, but there are others around you and should think about them too. | 17 | Sometimes oppressed peoples have to mildly inconvenience unoppressed people to gain awareness and *hopefully* gain allies. None of these things are ever usually more than a slight inconvenience for the people that are “not interested in their causes” as you put it.
It forces people to take a second and realize that some people live their entire lives in an oppressed position. Any random interaction can be violent and confrontational and most people don’t even care about the cause as you said.
| 10 |
[Death Note] Why do Shinigamis need to constantly kill multiple humans in a short timeframe if the years of each victim gets added to their own? Surely one human every 10-30 years would be sufficient or is there some kind of exchange rate between human and Shinigami lifespans? | 24 | Shinigami are *incredibly* lazy. Like, lazy enough to almost die because they let the clock run down.
So when they realize that they haven't killed anyone in ages, they go and "fill up" by whacking a whole bunch of people. Then they go back to being lazy. | 46 |
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ELI5 how do underwater flares (or matches) maintain a flame or light when they are surrounded by water? | Just watched Crawl (2019) and got me thinking.
Edit: i should clarify, why do they not extinguish like a normal flame. | 77 | We're used to seeing fires that get their oxygen out of the air, but that's not the only way to do it. If you heat up a material with a lot of oxygen in it, like a sulfate, a phosphate or a nitrate, it can break down and release oxygen gas. So a mixture of, say, magnesium metal and some kind of nitrate, could keep itself going underwater. The nitrate breaks down and releases oxygen, then the oxygen helps burn the magnesium. | 90 |
[Shrek] How did Farquaad become start leading Duloc? If we look at the musical he’s not royalty so how did he take land from the fairytale creatures? | 88 | Perhaps he was a pettier landholder that seized power after a previous monarch died. Or maybe he DIDN'T seize power. Maybe Duloc is actually quite small and simply enjoys autonomy due to larger powers being occupied with more important military matters at the moment than securing such a pitiable holding. If that's the case, he's in a pretty precarious spot, once it becomes worth it to take Duloc, the actual kings of surrounding kingdoms will probably make quick work of him. Marrying into a royal family is a pretty savvy move here, even if he's doing it for his own petty reasons. Instead of being conquered by a larger power he can join the royalty and be in a far stronger position to defend his lands. That is, unless he marries himself into a Kingdom so far, far away that their armies are incapable of defending his seat of power, but who'd be dumb enough to do that? | 92 |
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[Star Wars] Did Vader ever reminisce about his life as Anakin? | I know he's basically miserable and bitter 24/7, but, did he ever have moments where he's just sitting in his meditation chamber and thinks to himself "Remember that time I cut off Dooku's hands, that shit was awesome". Basically, was Vader ever even the tiniest bit nostalgic? | 47 | Probably not. Like you said, he lives a very miserable life. Hell, his palace is set on the planet he lost his limbs, humanity, wife, and supposedly his unborn child.
If he does look to his past, it's just to make himself more angry or upset, which helps reinforce his connection to the Dark Side. Being on Mustafar is a source of psychological pain as it serves as a constant reminder of the horrific moment he became what he is now. During his meditations in this dark place, he might think about past moments like watching his mother die, Ahsoka abandoning him (that's totally how he would interpret it over the years), or other dark moments during the war. Never to think about how awesome they were, but to self-flagellate over not being powerful enough to change the outcome. That anger and desolation only makes him more powerful in the long run, no matter how much it hurts. | 36 |
[Alien] Are all facehuggers identical, regardless of Xenomorph variant that laid the egg? | Can all facehuggers turn into any variant of Xenomorph from human to Predalien? | 16 | The face hugger is the xenomorph at its absolute base form. They're designed to take on the most needed traits of the host to maximize the resulting morphology of whatever spawns' survivability and lethality. | 22 |
CMV: Transitioning to publicly funded healthcare necessitates a drop in healthcare quality for upper middle class citizens | The country I live in has likely begun the transition from a public/private sector medical system, to an almost entirely publicly provided system. Currently the wealthiest citizens use the private sector exclusively, and pay large amounts to medical schemes who fund the bulk of this use.
With the shift to a national healthcare system, the medical aids will be dissolved, and the government will begin paying medical expenses for those who need it. The price will now be set by the government, and all healthcare that can be provided through the public healthcare system must be given through that system. Private individuals cannot seek to bypass the healthcare system in order to choose their own medical professional, except in situations where the public healthcare system will not provide the necessary treatment.
From my perspective, this leveling of healthcare rates will naturally push those healthcare professionals who excel in their specialization to seek out other systems that reward based on merit and ability, likely resulting in them leaving the country, and the healthcare system that they once were apart of.
I don't deny that such a system will result in a net increase in the quality of healthcare received by the entire population, at least in theory, and as a tax payer I think that it is justified that I should contribute towards subsidizing this system if it has a net positive effect on public health as a whole. However, I don't see how this cannot negatively impact the quality of healthcare that those considered upper middle class would otherwise receive, and I don't think such a sacrifice on my part is justified. | 29 | Having a national healthcare service doesn't stop people getting private health insurance in itself, regardless of your own countries policy. In the UK, which has socialised healthcare, a fair number of people still have private healthcare (often through their employer) and some even have plans which pay for healthcare abroad. This means wealthier people can still access better, or at least faster, healthcare if they choose. | 15 |
Do airline crews suffer a higher ratio of radiation illnesses? | It seems to me that even a marginal exposure, over a large number that work in the business would result in a higher incidents of cancer or other illnesses vs the average population. | 58 | The amount of radiation received by airline crews is small roughly 2 mSv per year. It's not known with certainty whether these levels are harmful or not. According to the linear no-threshold model, any amount of radiation increases the risk of cancer, however, according to the radiation hormesis hypothesis, small amounts of radiation actually decrease the chance of cancer. If the linear no-threshold model is correct, then the effect would still be small, 1 Sv increases the chance of developing cancer by 5%, working for 20 years would receive roughly 40 mSv. Which would result in a 0.2 % higher chance of developing cancer.
There are studies underway in areas with high levels of natural background radiation to determine the effects of long term exposure to low levels of radiation. The city of Ramsar, Iran has the highest natural background radiation levels in the world, with some people receiving doses great than 100 mSv per year. Wikipedia has this to say about the area
>Early anecdotal evidence from local doctors and preliminary cytogenetic studies suggested that there may be no such harmful effect, and possibly even a radioadaptive effect.[8] More recent epidemiological data show a slightly reduced lung cancer rate[9] and non-significantly elevated morbidity, but the small size of the population (only 1800 inhabitants in the high-background areas) will require a longer monitoring period to draw definitive conclusions.[10] Furthermore, there are questions regarding possible non-cancer effects of the radiation background. An Iranian study has shown that people in the area have a significantly higher expression of CD69 gene and also a higher incidence of stable and unstable chromosomal aberrations.[11] Chromosomal aberrations have been found in other studies[12] and a possible elevation of female infertility has been reported.[13] | 21 |
ELI5: If all ingested carbohydrates are just reduced to glucose anyway, what makes "simple" carbs (soda, pastry, Wonder bread) different compared to "complex" carbs (whole wheat, rice)? | 42 | Simple carbs are broken down very quickly, while complex ones are broken down much more slowly. Complex ones offer a more stable source of energy. You'd have to eat a lot more of simple ones to get the same result.
Complex ones also have other compounds in them that are helpful to metabolism in general. | 31 |
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Is crying an inflammatory process? | After I cry, especially for a while, my eyes feel sore and my eyelids get puffy and red, and they can take almost a day to feel back to normal. I also feel tired for the next +/-12 hours.
Is there an inflammatory feedback mechanism from crying?
Also, this brings up another question: does anyone know the scientific or evolutionary origin and purpose of crying? Is it an adaptation?
Thanks 🥲 | 591 | It's a release of certain hormones, whether it's a sad or happy cry, that can cause swelling/inflammation of certain glands and ducts around the sinuses. This is a automatic reaction to keep producing moisture so neither your eyes or sinus drys out to a detrimental point. | 271 |
ELI5: Why does liquid sometimes pour straight down the sides of a cup when held diagonally, instead of straight down where we’re actually aiming? | 16 | Water likes to stick to things (that's why it runs down your arm in the shower). Pour spouts are shaped so that the water can't grab on. If it doesn't have a spout, you have to turn the cup almost upside down to prevent it from holding on to the glass (like it does in the shower). | 12 |
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[Harry Potter] If magic suddenly ceased to work in the world where would that leave the wizarding community and how might they adjust to the new paradigm? | 50 | Grief Counseling Services Contractor here!
What you're suggesting here would be tantamount to us muggles losing electricity. Their entire civilization is founded on the principles of magic. Many fundamental services and goods are rooted in magic (think transportation, communication, construction, protection, banking). On top of that, wizards that are not directly connected to the muggle world tend to have very little knowledge of it. With that in mind, we would basically see the wizarding world split into two primary factions: those who can integrate and those who cannot.
The people who can integrate comfortably with muggle society will be mostly fine. Many of them already hold muggle jobs, or are at least educated enough to survive. Expat wizards higher up in muggle society (government officials and the like) will be able help their family, friends, and close acquaintances with the integration process, minimizing the impact on their lives as much as possible. It would take a number of years, but by the second or third generation, these folks will be fully integrated and will not feel the sting of loss.
The other side will have a much, much harder time. They've lost their way of life. Some will suicide at the prospect of having such a radical shift in their lifestyle. Some will actually go insane. Some will try to cling to their old lives and die. Some are in dangerous places that were otherwise protected by magic, or that they could easily magic themselves away from, and they will also die. There will be riots, and others will be killed or hurt.
Those who survive the initial hellstorm have a difficult prospect in front of them. Try to merge with a society they never had any interest in being a part of (and may hold in contempt), or cling desperately to the old ways. Again, many of these wizards have no marketable skills outside of wizarding society. What does the world need with a Floo Network inspector? Or a wandmaker? Or even a seamstress?
The most hardcore base will struggle to find and fix the missing magic. Your question seems to preclude that possibility, so we assume they spend years and years, become a secret society as membership dwindles from people losing faith, and eventually most of the old ways will be lost as their knowledge turns into legend. | 53 |
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CMV: Writing is more persuasive when we vocalise it (say it out loud) first. | A curse on business and academic writing is the Myth of Professionalism. This is the belief that to sound like we know what we’re talking about we have to use formal, abstract, high-register language, ie long, fancy words derived from Latin and Greek (think ‘construct’ instead of ‘build’, ‘depart’ vs ‘leave’, ‘request’ vs ‘ask’). High-register language is solemn, emotionless and soulless. I think it makes writing sound more drone than human; it alienates readers and kills personality.
Instead, I think any piece of persuasive writing has more impact (ie clearer, more readable and livelier) when you vocalise what you’re trying to say and use that as your first draft.
There are three reasons I think vocalisation works:
1. Because we use normal, mid-register language (aka ‘plain English’) when we vocalise, as opposed to formal, fancy language, it makes us sound more human and more approachable. So it helps tone of voice.
2. For the same reason, it helps us clarify our message; we immediately know when something sounds clear and when it doesn’t. It makes our writing clearer.
3. Mid-register language has more emotional energy than high-register language. It gives our writing more energy.
Change my view. | 172 | Interesting topic. A couple of clarifying questions, if you will?
1) How about a non-native speaker, who has learned most of their vocabulary and diction from books and movies (rendering it vastly different from what you refer to as "mid-register language")? Can they not be as persuasive, even if their writing is clear and concise?
2) Why do you think vocalization would be the solution, and not something different, e.g. a diagram of interconnected ideas, a list of bullet-points?
3) Why would "more (emotional) energy" make the text more persuasive? Wouldn't the text then constitute an appeal to emotion more than an appeal to logic? What if the concepts being communicated rely on logic more than emotion? Should you not make the text fit the idea, rather than the other way around? | 32 |
ELI5: The Boltzmann Brain | I've read a bit about it but I still don't quite understand. Is a Boltzmann brain a consciousness that just randomly forms in the vacuum of the universe? This question stems from a Wikipedia page, about the timeline of future events, and trillions of years from now is around the estimated time that a Boltzmann brain will form. | 54 | The "Boltzmann brain" isn't really *anything.* It's a thought experiment in thermodynamics created to explore an interesting and complex question.
Thermodynamics is basically the study of heat and the flow of heat. Heat is a property of matter — it's got to do with energy on very small scales — but it *behaves* like it's a kind of fluid, moving from place to place across gradients the way water flows downhill. Since literally *all work in the universe* is a function of the flow of heat, a lot of work's been done on the subject of thermodynamics to better understand just how heat behaves.
One of the fundamental principles of thermodynamics is the idea of *equilibrium.* This is the notion that *differences* in heat will, over time, tend to "even out." When you drop an ice cube into a glass of water, you create a thermodynamic system with a significant heat gradient in it. Heat will flow out of the water and into the ice cube, melting it, and eventually the entire glass will reach a uniform temperature.
One of the interesting conclusions of the idea of thermodynamic equilibrium is that while it's *possible* for a system in equilibrium to move into a non-equilibrium state, it's so *vastly improbable* that you can safely assume it'll never happen. There's no physical law that says one spot in your glass of water can't spontaneously get cold and freeze into an ice cube. But it's so incredibly unlikely that you could watch a glass of water for infinite time and never see an ice cube form.
And yet … we exist. We, hugely complicated and structured collections of matter, exist in nature. We're *here,* when the laws of thermodynamics seem to imply that we shouldn't be here. Our emergence would seem, at first glance, to be even more improbable than an ice cube spontaneously forming in a glass of tap water.
Ludwig Boltzmann was one of the great thermodynamicists. But even he was perplexed by the existence of seemingly thermodynamically impossible things like human beings. He proposed an idea to get around the apparent impossibility of our existence: Maybe we *are* just ice cubes that formed spontaneously. After all, as we said before, there's no physical law that says ice cubes can't form in glasses of water. It's just *really improbable* that they should. But in an infinite universe, isn't it possible for the vastly improbable to happen? Since there's nothing *preventing it,* then it in fact *can* occur, and the fact that it did isn't itself a violation of the laws of thermodynamics. We're only surprised to find that we exist because, well, *we're the ones who are noticing we exist.* If "we" were somehow disembodied minds observing the cosmos at a larger scale, the fact that there's a tiny, completely insignificant thermal fluctuation in this one invisibly small spot doesn't seem all that surprising, or even particularly interesting.
There's a problem with that idea, though. If it's possible for *us* to have emerged in the universe in the way that we did — as complex biological organisms that evolved greater complexity in a steady process taking place over millions of years — then it's also possible for a conscious, thinking being to just emerge *spontaneously* out of, for instance, a glass of water. Boltzmann advanced the idea that, thermodynamically speaking, in fact it's *vastly more probable* that a thinking being should emerge spontaneously out of thermodynamic equilibrium than what happened with us. So if we exist, then the universe should, mathematically speaking, be *packed wall to wall* with these spontaneously emerging "brains."
Except it isn't. And that, to Boltzmann, looked like a paradox. If a vastly improbable thing happened once, then why didn't a *much more probable* thing happen proportionally more frequently?
Boltzmann never resolved that problem to his own satisfaction. But he also died more than a century ago, before the advancement of biological science gave us the insight we have today into how natural selection works. The short version is that natural selection *amplifies the improbable.* Because organisms reproduce, and pass on their traits as they do, an improbable thing only has to happen *once* for it to be amplified and distributed through an environment. Over a long enough timeline, *tiny* changes give rise to vast complexity. It ends up *looking like* something hugely improbable happened, but in fact what happened is that over a very long span of time, a long series of only *slightly* improbable things happened. Those many slightly improbable things added up to what appears to be a highly ordered system, but which in fact is just the product of a gradual process of emergence over time.
Basically, it's like the idea of flipping a quarter and getting ten heads in a row. The odds of that happening are quite small — just one in a thousand — but anybody who's spent time flipping a coin knows that that kind of "run" happens really often. In fact, it's far more probable that the tosses of a coin should present series of heads or tails than it is to get heads-tail-heads-tail-heads-tail for a long time. That's because the coin itself has no memory. It doesn't "know" that it came up heads three times in a row, and therefore coming up heads one more time in a row is unlikely. The coin has no natural tendency to "balance itself out" by giving you a tails after you've gotten a heads. Every flip of the coin is a whole new proposition, one with a 50/50 chance of going either way.
So the ultimate resolution to the "Boltzmann brain" thing is that we — human beings — aren't so vastly improbable after all. Our existence doesn't flagrantly violate the laws of thermodynamics, like the spontaneous formation of an ice cube in a glass of water would, or indeed the spontaneous formation of something that can think. Our existence is cumulative, the product of a great many things which weren't really that improbable at all. | 201 |
CMV: Pedophiles are constantly discriminated against unfairly | First off let me clarify that I am not a pedophile or anything related.
So my view came to me when I was reading a random sub. He basically revealed that he's attracted to children and he gets off to just manga depictions of children. Just like that, the OP went ahead to ban him stating his intolerance for pedophiles.
While I understand that having sex with a minor much less a kid is wrong, as long as one doesn't actually act upon his urge and harm anyone it should be acceptable.
There have been researches that also show that pedophilia is not a cultivated choice but rather something that you are born with. That means that pedophiles don't actually have a choice and did not actively start developing a fetish for young children.
I've seen an interview with a 21 year old pedophile, he went to countless number of therapists and shrinks in hopes of aiding his fetish but all but one of them turned him away. While he does admit that sexual intercourse with a kid is wrong, it's not a given choice and something he can just change.
He declined to reveal his identity fearing the stigma people will develop against him even though he did not act on it, instead actually tried to 'cure' it.
So what do you guys think? Start changing my view!
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 18 | Sexual urges are such a powerful human force that they're hard to ignore in practice. Let's take model pedophile citizen Joe Likeskids. He is sexually attracted to prepubescent children as strongly as a normal person is attracted to adults. But, he has never acted on this attraction in any way. Would you feel totally ok with Joe being, say, a schoolteacher or babysitter of young children? Or would you feel a strong urge to discriminate against him even if it feels unfair given his good conduct?
Also, link to the interview you mentioned? With regards to therapy, it definitely seems like a problem in the system if people attracted to children can't get therapeutic help. | 17 |
[Avatar: TLA] Why doesn't Long Feng point the Gaang to the Generals? | Long Feng more or less explains to the gaang that the Earth King is a figurehead and is not concerned with the war. The gaang puts all their energy getting through to the Earth King in order to mobilize an invasion force.
The Earth King doesn't even know of the war. But there *is* an Earth Army fighting the Fire Nation, so the Council of Five knows of the war, and are evidently directing miliitary action without the knowledge or consent of the Earth King. So why didn't Long Feng say *"I am Long Feng, chief advisor to the King and head of the Dai Li. The King does not deal with matters of war, only domestic policy. I'll arrange for you to meet with General How, on condition that you do not bother the Earth King with any of this."* | 39 | The generals are nominally acting under the authority of the Earth King, but they may not know that Long Feng is controlling the Earth King. If the Gaang got too involved with the generals, the generals could realize that, or the king could find out about the war through them. Either way, Long Feng’s grip on power would be threatened, which is why he tried to keep them away from anyone with authority. | 39 |
CMV: Incest should be legal. | ##
Yeah. You heard right.
Yup. I know. God the horror right?
This is not Alabama, nor do i have any hidden feeling for family members. The thought of that alone makes me want to vomit. I would like to think i am a decent person, and i did not experience any tragic childhoods or anything. This is just a pure opinion.
I used to think incest is gross, and i still do, but i realized that i could not come up with any reason to make consentual sex between family members illegal, without shooting myself in the foot. I only tried evualuating it logically and i have no baggage with this topic.
\- I thought " Well, i think it is gross" but i then again, since when is another person's comfort with your activity THEIR concern? And since when is that grounds for legalizing or delegalizing anything? For example I think any form of anal sex is disgusting, but that does not give me power to stop others who want to do it.
\- I also thought about the children born with defects argument, and that too cannot be entirely valid. For one, does that mean as long as it is protected sex than it is okay? Are same sex partners exempt from this rule? Although it is true that people born from incestuous couple are significantly more likely to have birth defects (about 10x more than non incestuous children) that raises a question, are people with dominent genetic disorders not allowed to have sex because of the child they may likely produce? It is also weird to arrest parents for having a child, even if that child is given an unfortunate life and body. Is policing sex even a good thing?
\-I also thought about the "it's rape" argument but no. **Rape is rape. I am not going to even pretend that forcing yourself onto another person is okay in the slightest, but incest alone is not rape**. Ofcourse if one of the partners is not in the right state of mind to have sex or are too young then i will root for that bastard's arrest, but incest can be consentual. However if the person is using their position as a family member to coerce a person into sex that too is contemptible.
The other arguments i came up with are arguments that coincidentally are used against homosexuality. **Ofcourse the 2 are in no way the same**, and homosexual sex and heterosexual sex deserve to be treated the same, but the arguments and their counterarguments still hold. You know the "it is unnatural","it is against God", etc.
I do not support incest in any capacity, but i ultimately believe that if all parties are consenting, and no illegal items are being used, do whatever the hell you want. I find it hypocritical to say "what you do in your bedroom is your business, except when it is incestuous. Then it is our business". I certainly do think that those who have incestuous sex are troubled, but they are entitled to sex too.
I won't go rooting for incest any time soon, but i personally do not see the need to make consentual sex amongst family members illegal.
There, you may call me crazy now. Wanna change my mind? | 17 | The issue is there is no way to protect people from grooming at the earliest of ages and in the privacy of their own home. There is no problem with people of consenting age who have been free to develop their own thoughts and feelings on the issue but children and babies cannot protect themselves from been brought up to believe and behave and want things decided by their parents behaviour. | 19 |
Are psychosomatic symptoms cultural? Regional? | Somatization and psychosomatic symptoms (such as headaches, back pains, diarrhoea, stomach cramps, respiratory distress, chest tightenings, etc) are prevalent in most populations.
But do those symptoms tend to be more prevalent in specific cultures? Does one group of people exhibit primarily psychosomatic gastrointestinal symptoms, whereas a different group of people will have mainly musculoskeletal symptoms? Do people in Japan somatize mostly in headaches whereas people of a middle upper-class income exhibit mainly backpain?
Are these differences of a cultural or regional nature? Do they evolve over time? | 18 | Yes they are.
People from collectivistic cultures (China) are more likely to report somatic symptoms as a result of depression - things like sleep problems or difficulty concentrating. Meanwhile people from individualistic cultures (U.S.A) are more likely to endorse the typical depression symptoms Americans are familiar with - depressed mood, suicidal ideation, feelings of guilt or worthlessness.
Schizophrenia also has a different presentation depending on culture. Some cultures experience catatonic behaviour whereas some cultures tend to psychologize with delusions and hallucinations.
Meanwhile, some psychosomatic disorders are culture-bound. For example, frigophobia involves intense sensations and fears of cold and it's seen almost exlusively in Taiwan and Sri Lanka.
There are a variety of proposed reasons for these different presentations. For example, people from collectivistic cultures may experience greater percieved stigma as a result of mental illness for fear of burdening their very close and valued relationships. Therefore they will report physical symptoms (for which they can't reasonably be held accountable) like muscle pains and sleep disturbances. | 16 |
[Star Wars] Solo: A Star Wars Story Megathread (Solo questions go here ONLY!) | Y'all know the drill. | 99 | So, sorry if this is a stupid question, but does this movie confirm that the Imperial Infantry is mostly made up of the basic imperial troopers and the stormtroopers are more like elite forces like in the EU? | 74 |
ELI5: Monsanto Protection Act | I've read other ELI5 regarding why Monsanto is bad, but I don't get the Monsanto Protection Act. What is it? All the articles I read are saying it's bad but don't explain what it is in an understandable way. | 25 | Genetically engineered crops are regulated. Once they get approved, farmers can grow them. However, if someone screws something up (like the environmental assessment), the approval can be revoked. This means farmers might be in the position of having crops that were legal when the planted them but illegal now. The thing everyone is up in arms about right now allows farmers to request that the USDA, if they deem it fit, to allow the planted crops to be grown as normal that season and not be destroyed until the GE crop in question can be officially cleared for cultivation again.
td;dr This thing isn't to protect Monsanto, that's just sensationalist nonsense, it is to protect farmers. | 51 |
[ASoI&F] Do the old gods have individual identities? | Is there a list of the actual gods worshipped by those who follow the old faith anywhere? Is the drowned god an 'old god'? How about the various gods worshipped across the narrow sea? Or is it just a vague belief in a vast number of indistinguishable nature spirits? | 42 | > Or is it just a vague belief in a vast number of indistinguishable nature spirits?
This is it. The term "Old Gods" came from followers of the Seven. The "old gods" are actually nameless spirits of a religious system closer to animalism than modern theism. It was a type of religion worshiped by children of the forest and later adopted by by the First Men. | 36 |
[DC] Have there ever been times DC heroes have killed without becoming horrible monsters? | It seems that in nearly every single timeline, whenever a DC hero kills for any reason, they end up becoming bloodthirsty and often tyrannical shells of their former selves who mercilessly slaughter everybody for the smallest offenses, or for even so much as whispering unkind words about them, and it seems like the League treats this is an absolute guarantee, without negotiation and compromise.
With that, has there been a time where the heroes have killed without this happening to them? | 20 | Wonder Woman killed Maxwell Lord. The rest of the Justice League wasn't exactly thrilled about this, but they eventually accepted that she was right and at no point did she become a bloodthirsty tyrant as a result.
Green Arrow has killed in several timelines, either as a last resort or by accident.
Superman executed General Zod, Quex-Ul and Zaora by exposing them to kryptonite. He doesn't talk about it and he's not happy about it, but they were genocidal. | 37 |
[The Matrix]when people in the matrix breed are the kids they "have" actually related to them? | Like suppose a man & woman in the Matrix have sex with the aim of having a baby.
Will the machines actually go the trouble of finding the two of their sleeping bodies, extracting sperm and egg, combining them, so they can provide them with a kid that's actually theirs? | 34 | Tech is a bit more advanced.
They can probably extract a cell from each parent, splice it into a single offspring, and then it would gestate in an artificial womb. No need for it to specifically be egg and sperm. | 39 |
When a bolt of lightning strikes in the middle of the ocean, how far down does it go? | does it have enough energy to strike all the way to the bottom, or does it just stop after a certain depth? and if so what depth | 51 | Remember that lightning doesn't have downward momentum or anything like that. The surface is essentially where the charge is dispersed. Measurements of exactly what the radius is have not yet been reliably taken, and current evidence suggests that it can vary greatly depending on a variety of factors including water salinity, temperature, and even whether the lightning is a positive or negative stroke.
Source: Am a meteorologist | 43 |
Why are rotary engines considered unreliable, or "bad" when compared to piston engines? | 676 | One of the main problems are the rotor tips. In a piston engine, the cylinder and piston have a rather large contact surface which is constantly lubricated and seals the combustion chamber against the crank case. In a rotary engine, the tips of the triangular rotor drive along the chamber walls to seperate the chambers. This means they have to be very precisely positioned and bear a lot of load, compared to a regular cylinder lining.
The tips have to be extremely abrasion resistant and hard, but function as tight seals as well. That's a difficult trick to pull of and makes the whole system somewhat less reliable. | 425 |
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[Star Gate] Why does it take a "source" chevron to activate the gate? | Wouldn't it limit the number of destinations, by requiring all gates to have one chevron that is specifically associated with it? Or is it a sort of "vector" marker that delineates the direction of the wormhole? | 52 | The point of origin symbol is unique to the DHD for every Stargate and it's always in the same place. This means we don't have to waste time finding out what the symbol is as Daniel did on Abydos.
As Daniel explains in the movie, the first six chevrons refer to specific points in space. Where those points intersect refers to the destination. The point of origin gives you, as you suggest, a fixed reference point. | 31 |
Argentina and Turkey, both upper-middle income countries, have the highest minimum wages (PPP) in the whole world. Is this system sustainable and what will be the consequences for that? | I was recently checking [List\_of\_countries\_by\_minimum\_wage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_wage) article on Wikipedia. I was expecting to see common high-income countries such as Norway, Germany, US etc. at the top 10 even for PPP, but seeing Argentina and Turkey in the first and second respectively was interesting. I know that c. 40% of the population in Turkey is on minimum wage which is a huge number compared to other nations, so this partly explains why it is one of the highest. I also acknowledge the significant number of undocumented migrants and refugees that Turkey hosts and existence of an informal economy mean that some people earn less than the official wages anyway. I'm guessing both apply to Argentina as well.
Is this system even sustainable? What lead to this situation? Wouldn't it be better economically to lower it at that point?
Edit: Since some answers (that was deleted) claim "it is because of the inflation"; the figures are in international dollars, not the local currencies, and it is purchasing power parity, not the nominal values. | 93 | I think that table shows PPP based on 2016 figures but the minimum wage are more recent. For example Turkey changed their minimum wage a lot in 2021.
This makes their minimum wage PPP look high but actually what's happened is inflation has been huge in both countries. Meaning the minimum wage purchasing power is actually very low.
It's a mismatch between the dates of these two data sets. | 75 |
What prevents a normal, healthy heart from going into cardiac arrest during very, very intense exercise? | During really high intensity anaerobic activity your heart rate can get to very high rates, close to 100 % of your theoretical maximum. Assuming a normal, healthy heart what prevents the heart from going 'too fast' and going into an aberrant rhythm, and cardiac arrest?
I asked this question to an electro-physiologist and he basically said, you'd pass out, or be too fatigued, it really can't happen and that evolution would have sorted that issue out, if it ever existed, very rapidly. This answer made sense to me. I'm just curious as to what mechanisms exist to prevent it from occurring. It seems as though the human body has contingencies in place for a lot of things and I assume there would be a few for this. | 47 | The heart adapts to higher rates. For instance heart rate is normally controlled by the sino-atrial node by a balance of sympathetic (+) and vagal (-) inputs. But the heart also gets sympathetic inputs to other parts of the muscle which alter the action potentials and conduction (e.g. shortening it), so that the fast rate doesn't cause problems. The atrio-ventricular node in a healthy heart won't conduct rates higher than 150-200. Arrest rhythms can be 300 beats per minute because they are generated in the ventricle itself or down an abnormal pathway.
There is also probably regulation upstream of this, i.e. in the hormones and nerves. Some states and drugs can cause arrhythmias through abnormal stimulation so intense exercise must not cause as much. | 11 |
CMV:The best pro-choice argument is utilitarian, not feminist. | _____
I think feminist pro-abortion arguments that revolve around a woman's choice and her control over her body are entirely ineffective in convincing pro-lifers because most pro-lifers don't really give that much of a damn about women's choices.
The correct way to argue for the pro-choice position is to say that not aborting babies that are unwanted leads to bad outcomes for the society and results in net-utility losses.
There are two reasons why this is the case:
* This Wikipedia article lists a lot of reasons why children born as a result of unwanted pregnancies are "likely to be less mentally and physically healthy during childhood". They are also less likely to get a good education. "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_pregnancy
* Children born as a result of unwanted pregnancies are more likely to be bad members of the society and "to have delinquent and criminal behaviour." Again look under the 'Facts' section of the Wikipedia article.
So it seems like forcing parents to have children that they had by mistake leads to suffering for the unwanted child, and to utility losses for the rest of the society.
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than just downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 338 | By framing it as a "women's issue", pro-choicers avoid the main fallacy of your argument. Using the "utilitarian approach" would make no distinction between an unborn child and a 2 year old child who is no longer wanted. Every utilitarian argument made in favor of abortion can be equally applied to the 2 year old. The idea of of killing 2 year olds because the are "inconvenient" is unpalatable to most people, even pro-choicers. | 177 |
What causes rocks to be such a wide variety of different colours instead of just grey? | Here's an [example pic](http://i.imgur.com/5yqZYLN.jpg) posted earlier in /r/pics. | 89 | Different types of rocks or minerals are made up from different chemicals. For example, an Albite Feldspar (found in the Earth's crust) is (Na or Ca)AlSi3O8 and is white or colorless unless it has impurities. It's because these chemicals can be arranged in a wide array of crystal structures (In the Albite Feldspar example this structure is called Triclinic). These structures affect the wavelength absorbance of the rock; and with it, the color we see when we look at it since it's reflecting light it doesn't absorb.
Edit: grammar | 29 |
ELI5: What would the galaxy images popular in r/spaceporn look like to the naked eye? | So as far as I know, the pictures of galaxies are colourised to show the different gasses present.
Do we know what these galaxies would look like if we were actually there looking at them? Would they have these colours? Or would we just be able to see the light from the stars in the galaxy?
Sorry if the title is weird, really couldn't figure out how to word it properly. | 67 | many would be mostly be very faint light from the stars themselves. In many of the pictures the telescope is identifying gasses in the galaxies and use a computer to apply the color of choice to the gasses. you may see clouds of blue and red but in reality they are transparent. you might give hydrogen a blue color and oxygen a red color, nitrogen... lets make that green. kinda like bob ross working for nasa | 31 |
Why do most poisonous household products say “Do not induce vomiting?” | It seems like if you drink poison you’d want to get it out of your stomach quickly before it gets absorbed. Not inducing vomiting seems counterintuitive. | 24 | Some substances, like bleach, can also do harm going back up your esophagus. So, if you drink something that burns your insides on the way down, why force that same harmful, corrosive substance back up? Also, depending on the substance, the way to treat it is sometimes simpler than vomiting it up and going through all that added stress on your body. | 34 |
ELI5: Why are protein bars so dense? | They are always so firm and heavy, like bricks. Whereas a normal candy bar is kinda light and fluffy. Why can’t protein bars be like that? | 48 | Because the ingredients that make up protein bars, which are high in proteins, are different that the ingredients that make up a candy bar, which is high in sugar.
So it isn't super simple to just do the same thing, because youre starting with two different things.
There is also the function of marketing, Protein bars market themselves to have XYZ GRAMS OF PROTEIN to appeal to those who want a lot of protein, to get that number bigger they pack the bar as densely as possible. A light fluffy protein bar wouldn't have as much protein in it. | 74 |
Why are the seatbelts on cars, buses, and airplanes different? | More specifically, why does a bus use the fiddly two point seatbelt that takes forever to adjust? It’s not as secure as the three point car seatbelt, and it’s not as easily adjustable and removable as a airplane seatbelt. | 1,955 | Airliner seatbelts are different because airliners are vastly different from buses and cars.
Airliner seatbelts are there primarily to move your body down as the plane goes down. If there's a patch of turbulence which causes a rapid descent, your body continues moving the way it's been going, and the airliner smacks into it, hitting you on the head and killing you.
Airline seatbelts are designed to be easily removable via a clawing motion, because people are panicked and instinctive when there's an airplane crash, and the occupants likely only have minutes if not seconds to evacuate before the whole plane catches on fire. On the other hand, airliners are so comparatively safe that the airline industry has effectively lobbied the FAA to not have to install 3-point seatbelts, because the fuel/retrofit cost isn't worth it for the handful of people who might be saved per year (zero people died from an accident on an airliner in 2017, for instance, and only two people have died from an accident in the last decade on a plane operated by an American airline).
Airliner crashes are essentially binary events: either everyone dies on an airliner, or nobody does. A three-point seatbelt wasn't going to save anyone in the 737 Max crashes, or UIA flight 752, or Malaysian Air 370. | 1,314 |
[The Mummy] When Imhotep takes Mr. Burns' eyes (and his tongue) how was he able to see clearly as Mr. Burns' needed glasses and was pretty blind without them? | 99 | The eyes Imhotep had after the regeneration were Imhotep's actual eyes. He just had to use Burns' eyes as the catalyst and raw material. Also helped that the regenerated eyes were in Imhotep's ocular cavities, not Burns'.
Similar to how his internal organs weren't desiccated dust after he assimilated them, even though they'd been exactly that in the canopic jars for thousands of years. | 112 |
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Where does light go? | If I have an electric light switched on in a room it gives off light. Photons I presume. When I switch it off what happens to them? Where does that energy actually go?
The previous question may answer this but why doesn't light bounce around in the room forever? | 25 | When your light is switched on, electrons are being pushed along a Copper wire into a thin Tungsten wire, which is very resistive. The electrons in the resistor bump into the atoms as they flow around, which causes the material to heat up. When a material is hot enough (around 3000K) it emits a lot of light, through a process called blackbody radiation. Tungsten happens to have a melting temperature around 3700K, so it is a great material for light bulbs. There are many other types of light sources, but this is the simplest to understand. As long as the Tungsten wire is hot, it will give off light. When you turn off the light switch, the electricity stops flowing, and the Tungsten wire cools down.
The light emitted by the bulb travels in every direction, and hits the various objects in your room. The whiter the objects, the higher percentage of the original light is re-emitted each time they are hit by photons. The blacker the objects are, the higher percentage of light is absorbed and makes the object hotter.
If the room was filled with very smooth conductive surfaces like mirrors, the light would bounce around many times. Very clean mirrors are around 99.9% efficient, which means that 1 in 1000 photons are absorbed as heat and the remainder are reflected. Because photons travel at the speed of light, they will bounce around in the room a few thousand times at most and eventually all be absorbed. Light travels around 30cm per nano-second, so in a 6m wide room it would take 20ns to cross once and around 50-100us for almost all to be absorbed.
TL;dr : The light is all absorbed as heat by objects in the room less than a milisecond after it is emitted.
| 24 |
ELI5 How does sleeping late harm your body | Hi first time poster here. I understand sleeping late does harm to your body but what I don't understand is if lets say I form a habit of sleeping at a specific timing (lets say 4am, and wake at 12 the next day), so I get about 8 hours of sleep every night.
Would this affect my body somehow because this just seems to me like my circadian rhythm has changed and its akin to just living in another country with a different timezone.
Sorry if I worded it badly, English isn't my forte. | 19 | Hello! So quick disclaimer: I’m not a sleep specialist or anything but have read a few books on the subject.
Basically your body has a natural circadian rhythm which ebbs and flows roughly with the time of day (e.g. sunset and sunrise). Sleeping through this circadian rhythm can cause your body to feel groggy (almost jet lagged) despite you getting your full 8 hours sleep.
Lack of sleep or poor quality sleep is extremely important to avoid and has been linked to higher rates of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and dementia.
I really recommend getting into a good sleeping habit where you sleep and wake up roughly the same time every night and morning. It will help massively with productivity.
Also if you’re really interested in the matter, you should consider reading a book called “Why we sleep” by Mathew Walker. It’s very interesting and quite eye opening! | 10 |
Is a book from 2015 too old to learn from? | Hello all. I have in my possession a book on JavaScript coding, but it's from 2015. Could I learn from this book, or should I seek something more up to date? Thanks for any help. | 29 | IMO - you can definitely learn the basics from it, but be sure to UPDATE your knowledge with current developments.
ES6 was a major milestone \~ mid June 2015. If your book (u mentioned 2015) has included ES6 thats great, if not, make sure you follow the releases post 2015 especially ES6 (being the biggest one), with subsequent releases adding on new features. | 34 |
ELIF: Three Mile Island accident | 24 | Nuclear Energy is a kind of energy that requires us to take a very powerful reaction, make a safe place for it to be started, start it, watch it, control it.
Three Mile Island (TMI) accident was a situation gone bad and an inadequate design for proper watching/controlling.
The accident was caused by a bad valve. This valve caused a situation in which the operator had a hard time understanding the problem.
When this accident occured the control system was designed to make a noise when probelm A,B,C, and D happened. when problems A-Z happened there were lights to turn on.
When this valve got stuck most of the lights turned on and all of the announcements did. This made everyone get very scared.
When people get scared sometimes they don't think as well as they usually do.
The accident eventually caused a partial meltdown. In nuclear reactors everyones big fears are meltdown (when the reactor melts into a big pile of unctrontrollable fission products) and environmental release.
This reactor had a partial meltdown, which means it did not reach critical mass, and it did have an environmental release, which means some of the gasses got into the air.
From this accident the USNRC required that all nuclear plants must share almost every mistake they make. It is quite often that someone falling off a loading dock, falling down stairs, marking a part wrong, will cause a notificatio to the entire industry.
Also from this accident it caused the nuclear industry to adopt strict requirements on displays and alarms. It categorizes the alarms in order of importance, they must also follow ITAACs and other requirements.
At the time the plant was very new so the accident is well known to be causesd by wolverine and some crazy mutant made with parts of other mutants having torn the bitch up with their mutant powers.
The enigma is how did the crazy mutants become mutants before the radioactive environmental release?
Edit: Terminology | 17 |
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ELI5: Why did the Iraqi Army and the ARVN in the 70s failed so miserably, despite after having the US invest billions of dollars in them? | It seems that after the US left Iraq in 2011, the Iraqi army has plummeted, (source:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/world/middleeast/american-intelligence-officials-said-iraqi-military-had-been-in-decline.html?_r=0) as did the ARVN in 1972. | 125 | Training and equipment aren't the only things required to have a successful army...
Commitment and resolve are important too...And it just wasn't there for these armies...
These conflicts in particular have/had levels to them that "we", meaning the US Government, didn't understand, maybe willfully...They were/are a lot more like our Civil War than WWII...Brothers fighting brothers...People separated by artificial, arbitrary borders...
South Korea might have gone that way as well, but, the North was brutal and the US still has significant troop involvement there, 60 years later...
Getting ourselves into conflicts like these is not something we should be doing lightly...They require decades of commitment and MONEY on OUR part... | 40 |
If aluminium has no fatigue limit, why are flexible shaft couplings often made from it? | If I understood correctly, aluminium is bound to fail after a high enough number of cycles, unlike for instance steel, which can take small loads indefinitely.
Then why is it that a huge amount of flexible shaft couplings seems to be made from aluminium, which would seem to be a horrible material for this application?
| 69 | It also could be a sacrificial piece, where they plan for the aluminum piece to fail in the event of an overload, rather than the more costly or important steel parts. Similar to a shear key used in shafts couplings. Rather than have the whole thing be ruined if there was a problem, a cheap Al piece takes the load and predictably fails | 31 |
[One punch man/Marvel] Could Mumen rider wield Mjolnir? | I don't know too much in-depth knowledge of one punch man I've read most of what's out and watched the anime. But the reoccurring character Mumen rider reminded me of Captain America before the experiment.
The most prominent example was when he used his own body to occupy the deep sea king for at least a minute or too to try to save civilians. Another one was when he went to help the survivors of the attack by Boros and stared at the ship in the distance which made me think he wished he could do more.
I know a big requirements for wielding Mjolnir is that you have to be willing to kill and that's one of the only thing I think might disqualify him from using it.
What do you guys think would Mumen rider be able to wield Mjolnir? | 55 | The Unlicensed Rider is the only character in the OPM universe who might be worthy. There is a fair argument to be made that he lacks the lust for battle of a Thor, but so did Jane and she was chosen. Lest we forget, Mjolnir is sentient, even if it rarely shows this. It chooses it's wielder. Mumen Rider is the most selfless, bravest, and fiercest hero. If anyone could wield the hammer with honor, it's him. | 80 |
ELI5: What makes medical grade skin adhesive patches so sticky, and how are they able to stay in place for weeks at a time? | 62 | Really strong glue chemically bonds to the surfaces it's applied to. Scientists found a glue that chemically mixes with the skin permanently.
But it only reacts with the top layer of skin. As your skin cells die off and shed, the chemically bonded cells are shed too.
So when the patch comes off, it's not really the glue that wore off, but the skin it bonded to. | 72 |
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I believe children born with severe illnesses that have no cure should be euthanized. CMV. | Hear me out.
If you speak with people that have been clinically dead, or even if you have been under anesthesia or even just a deep sleep, you don't realize you were under until you're out of it. It happens suddenly, it's painless and most people recall to be at peace. Even if you look at dead bodies, they look very peaceful.
In some cultures, death is a gift and is the greatest gift there is. Even here we have a saying "he/she is in a better place now". So why do we let these kids live on and why do we test them and try and try even though we know the end result. I'm not talking about down syndrome or any manageable disorders, I'm talking about those that are painful and greatly reduce the life expectancy of the kids.
**I should rephrase the "should" in the title. What I mean is that euthanasia should be be allowed, sometimes encouraged at the discretion of the parents and health care professionals. I do not mean mandatory euthanasia.**
EDIT: Some clarification on my view. I'm also talking about severe birth defects, if you Google that you'll understand what I mean. Although reconstructive surgery has made some impressive breakthroughs, that only deals with a minor percentage of birth defects. What about the cost? The average parents can't afford to pay to keep these kids alive, especially knowing that it might not end well.
EDIT 2: There are some really good arguments here mainly the fact that a lot of the diseases that can be cured were at some point incurable. Also we can't decide who deserves to live or die and the child or loved ones might actually cherish every moment the child is alive. However research is leaning towards being able to detect the defects early in the pregnancy to avoid this situation entirely. My view still stands but I do understand the other arguments.
Great discussion guys! Just when I slowly start to think about changing my view, someone brings up a great argument that re-enforces it. | 279 | The problem with your position is that it requires someone other than the person with the severe illness to assess whether their life is on balance worth living. An individual can assess the entirety of their experience and determine whether the good outweighs the bad or vice versa, and they can make an informed decision on whether life is worth living. The problem arises when you say that *others* should be given the power to decide to euthanize those with birth defects -- are those others in a position to assess the whole of the child's internal life? What if the child, despite being in pain or having some disability, also greatly enjoys living such that despite their pain they very much want to remain alive?
I have known people who had severe chronic pain but still found great joy in life. How would we know that the child does not in fact derive pleasure on balance from living? We can't ask the child unless they are old enough to speak and understand such weighty questions. And if we did ask the child and they wanted to die, that would not be euthanasia, it would be humane assisted suicide.
Surely there are cases where it would be merciful to euthanize children whose lives are constant agony, but how do we tell these children from the ones who enjoy life despite their disabilities? Both types of child may cry, both may *seem* unhappy, but we cannot be anything close to certain regarding their subjective, internal lives.
I think the situation is similar to the reason we require such a high standard of evidence for capital punishment. Surely some guilty people go free because of it, but we find that it is better to let a few guilty people go free than to execute someone who is innocent. In the case you are presenting, isn't it better to err on the side of caution to avoid killing children who would very much want to go on living? | 168 |
[Harry Potter] I just heard that the Dark Lord is back. What's in it for me if join his side? | This morning's Daily Prophet said that You-Know-Who is back and attacked the Ministry, Harry Potter is some kind of Chosen One, and Sirus Black is dead.
At this point, the war could go either way and I'm thinking about becoming a Death Eater. I've heard Dumbledore talk about how wizards should be nice to muggles but what's in it for me if I become a Death Eater? Do I get muggle peasants/slaves to work for me in our new world order? Is the pay good? When do I get my sweet ass tattoo? Tell me what a Death Eater recruiter would tell me.
A little bit about me. I graduated Hogwarts with decent grades, I got Exceeds Expectations in all my O.W.L.s. I'm not political and I don't particularly like Dumbledore and muggles but I don't have a grudge against them either. Both my parents were half-bloods so I do have some muggle genes in the family but no one has to know that. | 18 | Not being murdered by You-Know-Who as a blood traitor as quickly. Maybe a place in the Ministry of Magic once he takes it over and if he likes you enough.
Though seriously, I've got a wand pointed at your face, two giants behind me and a pack of dementors off hunting Muggles ready to be called at a moments notice. What's your pick?
| 20 |
[IT, 2017-19] Why does killing IT only work in the second movie? | It's been a good minute since I watched these movies, I've never seen the original with Tim Curry or read the books. I can only go by the information given in the movies.
In the first movie when the children approach IT, he is disguised as Georgie. He's shot in the forehead. Then he changes back to IT and it becomes this total confrontation.
In the second movie towards the end you learn two things. First, that the ritual was a farce, a placebo, it doesn't really do anything. And secondly, that all things must follow the natural law of the shape they've taken. That's how they wind up killing IT, because he has to obey the law of whatever shape he's in.
But I would think that 'Shooting kid in forehead, kills kid' would have been a natural law in the first movie. Can someone explain why he didn't die when they were kids? | 18 | IT is a creature of the mind, it is not the natural law of his form that he has to follow but the laws imposed n it by strong collective belief, thus a placebo is as good as the real deal to him, but just like a placebo the ritual did not work because they did not all fully believe it would , shooting fake-georgia did nothing because they were fully aware that was not a child but an eldritch horror, and bullets do nothing to eldritch horrors, had he been shot by someone who was just a deranged child murderer it probably would have done actual damage | 21 |
Why does my breath smell so bad in the mornings? | 69 | You're dehydrated, and mouth bacteria thrive in dryness. When you go to sleep, your salivary glands stop moistening your mouth, and these drier conditions allow bacteria to multiply, and in turn, start crapping everywhere.
This is also why Mouthwash will make your breath smell nice at first, but make it smell like ass later: (nearly) all common types of mouthwash uses Alcohol to bind the its chemicals together, which will rapidly dry out your mouth on contact. Sure, it kills the germs, but it also sets the stage for them to make a whopping comeback. | 52 |
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Why is water immersion so effective at temporary burn pain relief? | Say you burn your hand on the stove. It hurts a lot, but nothing serious enough to seek medical attention for.
You can tough out the pain until it eventually goes away, or you can put your hand in cool water, which makes the pain disappear until the water warms up. If you take your hand out of the water, the pain is worse than you felt before starting the water, and it seems to last longer.
Is the cool water numbing nerve receptors? Or is it pulling the heat out of the burn to prevent further damage? Why does the effect wear off so quickly when you remove your hand from the water?
| 47 | When you get a burn, the skin damage is just the surface of what is changing in your body; most of the damage is occurring internally under the skin as thermal damage. Running cold water does two things, it bombards your sensory nerves to distract it (same as distracting a child from getting a needle by rubbing the arm at a different site), but more importantly, cold water helps stop the spread if thermal burn beneath the skin which the naked eye cannot see.
Edit on iPhone: in anesthesia for example, if u get a spinal for surgery, the doc has to test for pain before surgeon makes incision. You can do this two ways, one is with a blunt needle, the other is with ice. Pain and temperature and fine touch are carried by the same fibers. This is why you can run water to "numb" the feeling of a burn, the same nerve once depolorized needs time to repolarize before firing again and since the two sensations share the same nerve fibers, you only feel the cold and no longer the painful burn. If you stop the water, the nerves repolarize and fire again but this time with pain. | 22 |
How does one read information from qubits? | When the qubits are being read by the outside world, they would collapse - how do we make sure they collapse so that the information is accurate? | 33 | This is the entire challenge of creating quantum algorithms, and there's no set method. The way that you manipulate your qubits will vary depending on what sort of problem you're solving. The basic idea, though, is that since quantum states can interfere with each other, you arrange it so that states corresponding to correct answers constructively interfere, while states corresponding to incorrect answers destructively interfere.
The simplest quantum algorithm is probably the Deutsch-Josza algorithm, which solves the following problem: Given a function that takes as its argument a string of 1s and 0s of length n and outputs either a 1 or a 0, and given that this function is either a) constant, meaning it gives the same result for all inputs, or b) balanced, meaning it returns a 1 for exactly half the possible inputs and 0 for the others, how can you tell which of a) or b) is correct?
The solution is essentially to take n qubits, in a superposition of all possible states, and manipulate them so that any state that returns a 1 picks up a negative phase shift, while any state that returns a 0 is unchanged. If the function is balanced, then the half of the states with a negative phase shift will exactly cancel out with the other half that are unchanged, whereas if it's constant, all states have the same phase and so all reinforce, and this is set up to be linked to the probability of measuring a particular state, where all the qubits are 0, in the output. So you measure the output, and if you get all 0s, then you know it's constant, and if you get anything else, you know it's balanced.
This is a simplification, but it should give at least a sense of how it works. | 21 |
ELI5: Why does ball skin move on it's own and if I hover my finger over it, why does it all seem to rush towards the heat? What is going on there? | 140 | Your scrotum is a genius little bit of biology, that keeps your testes (and the sperm inside them) safe and at the right temperature even while your body has to get much hotter. Because the inside of your body is too warm for sperm to be made there, the whole thing has to hang outside, and respond very quickly and carefully to changes in temperature to keep the sperm and sperm-producing cells safe and healthy.
The most common movement you'll see -- where the balls seem to move up or down, sometimes one at a time -- are caused by the cremaster muscle. This expands and contracts to either hang your balls lower (to keep them cool) or pull them up inside you (if it's too cold outside). This is why men "shrink" in cold water -- the body is protecting the testes from the cold.
Another common change is caused by arousal and sexual activity, although many people never notice because it usually happens right before orgasm -- your testicles (usually your right one first, for unknown reasons) will actually raise up a bit into your body to help allow more sperm and ejaculate to make its way to the penis. This is actually really important to having healthy orgasms (or at least ejaculations) and older men often encounter problems when their muscles lose the strength to carry out this sort of precise reaction.
Finally, your nuts can get congested. Yeah, congested. Actually, vasocongested. Basically, they swell with sperm and extra blood flowing into the pelvis to help your erection -- sometimes up to 50% larger than their normal size. In some cases of intense, long term arousal, testicles have been recorded as more than doubling in size. Regardless of the scale of the change, the scrotum almost always goes back to normal within a few minutes of orgasm.
So basically: Your cremaster muscle can pull your scrotum up into you or let it hang loose to cope with temperature changes; your testicles rise up slightly before orgasm to help you come more efficiently, and blood can swell the scrotum during arousal and make it larger.
I never thought I'd learn so much about balls while trying to help answer a stranger's question on the internet at 3 in the morning...
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[DCU] Can someone drown in the Lazarus Pit? | 84 | No. People don't drown in water because there is a fluid in their lungs, they drown because the water is in the way of oxygen reaching their blood vessels.
Sufficiently oxygenated fluorocarbon liquids are breathable, and the Lazarus Pit has them as part of its makeup. | 81 |
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CMV: Lotto scratchers should require people to re-enter the line at the back. | Most people have probably seen this before. You're in line waiting to buy gas/food/smokes and someone 5 spots ahead of you is at the counter diluting their lotto scratchers down to a losing ticket. It's flat out inconsiderate to let someone play their game potentially for 3-5 minutes while people are waiting behind them to make purchases, especially ones that take less time. If you are redeeming a winner with your purchase, that's one thing. If you are procedurally buying more tickets with old tickets that should require someone to move to the back of the line. I think this change in the way we engage with convenience stores would be an all around improvement. This is especially so because you can easily scratch a ticket while in line, and if you lose get out of line and go on your way.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 29 | Damn. Is this really an issue you've run into so often that you wanted to make a CMV about it?
I can't imagine anyone disagreeing outside of whatever assholes do it and whatever cashier is too lazy/passive to tell them to move along. | 37 |
[James Bond] Are there restrictions to what 00 agents can buy/spend? | Do they have to document/itemize their expenses?
What is considered not eligible for purchase? Is there a limit to their expenses? We know there is a limit such as the re-buy in Casino Royale. What would be the likely threshold to spending before they need approval? | 44 | Depends on what the cover is. MI6 isnt dumb, if he is pretending to be a millionaire playboy they make sure he has enough in his account to spend like a millionaire playboy.
If he is doing regular spy shit he gets a stipend for sure, possibly just access to the company card where they ask him basics about his expenses after a mission | 57 |
ELI5: How can you pinpoint your location with GPS on your phone without service on the ground, but can’t do the same on an airplane? | 17 | It works in plane too....if you have an unobstructed view of the sky with at least 4 satellites.
Given cramped space and metal ceilinge of typical airliner body this is 50/50 chance of working if you're in window seat. But if you do it on a private small plane with a big plastic window, it works just fine. | 18 |
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ELI5: Why are you always told to widen the crack before fixing it? | When you go to fix drywall or tarmac, the first instruction is to widen the crack. Why is that? | 22 | You widen the crack to remove loose materials and be sure to get the filler all the way in the crack. Nit widening could leave loose broken pieces that will inhibit the effective fix. Also, if the crack is narrow, it would be more difficult to get the filler all the way into the crack. | 12 |
What evolutionary advantage is there to internal organs feeling pain when without modern medicine, there's nothing a person or animal can do to fix what's causing the pain anyway? | 67 | Pain can be an indication of something you can change or be careful of. You could change your diet. You could exert yourself less. You could protect that part of your body. These types of changes could prevent further disability, allow for better healing, etc. | 79 |
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ELI5 how seedless fruits keep being grown? Like if you have a seedless clementine, or grape, what is used to plant the next generation of that fruit? | 23 | There are two ways to get seedless fruits. For clementines, grapes, and other things that grow on long-lived trees or vines, the plants are propagated by cuttings. This is true even for the ordinary varieties of most of these plants. All grapes of a particular variety are descended from one original grape plant, which had cuttings taken and rooted to form new grape plants, and then cuttings of those taken to form new plants, and so on. The same goes for most fruit tree varieties.
So if you find a mutant grape without seeds, you just cut off a shoot, plant it in the ground (or more likely graft it to some rootstock but that's not really important for this discussion) and grow more seedless grapes.
There are exceptions though, for single-season plants like watermelons, seedless plants are usually produced through hybridization. It's similar to how horses + donkeys produce sterile mules...people figured out that if you hybridize certain varieties of watermelon with certain other varieties of watermelon (in this case diploid with tetraploid varieties) you get sterile offspring. The seeds of this hybridization grow into plants which can't make developed seeds themselves.
EDIT: forgot one method. Some seedless fruits are grown by simply preventing the flower from being pollinated. Not all plants will do this, but some will still form fruit even if there's no fertile seed inside. Pineapples for example will grow seeds if pollinated, but can't usually pollinate others of the same variety. So farmers grow a bunch of the same variety and avoid getting seeds in the fruit (although you occasionally still find one). Pineapples are pollinated by hummingbirds and some bats, so in Hawaii they banned the import of hummingbirds to avoid having their pineapples pollinated. | 42 |
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Why do investors buy bonds with real negative interest rates? Are they irrationally incurring a real loss? | 54 | TL:DR, the profit maximizing risk adjusted payoff can be (minimizing) a loss, if all your options suck.
You have to consider their other options. By making the distinction of "real negative interest rates" you say you believe that inflation is going to be higher than those bonds' rates, therefore they would be worse off if they held cash. Then there is a real possibility of stocks falling nominally given a recession which plenty of people think have a higher than normal chance in the next year or two, so given that might happen people could end up worse off if they buy stocks. So, for some people given risk tolerances and timelines, bonds it is. | 71 |
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ELI5: Are GM crops/food as bad as many people seem to think they are? | 391 | Damaging health claims are nonsense. No reputable studies have ever been produced linking health concerns with GM crops. It's just the same kind of tenuous link people make because the rise of cancer diagnoses and the use of GM crops roughly correlate (like autism and vaccines, or ice cream and polio).
As for environmental concerns there are some concerns that are reasonable and some that are not. GM crops are often bred to be resistant to pesticides, which can lead to pesticide overuse. However the bigger problem as it turns out isn't that it kills off most of the plants in the area, but actually that it encourages resistance to pesticides, which is not good for agriculture. They may also produce pesticides. The genes that allow the plants to do this can escape into the wild and negatively impact insect populations. GM crops may also exacerbate monoculture issues, which are issues that result when lots of plants are genetically similar, making them vulnerable to disease. Part of GM research is involved in the introduction of apomixis to crop plants, which is a form of asexual reproduction that makes plant progeny identical to the parent.
The stuff about Monsanto being terrible is pretty much nonsense as well. They haven't actually done a lot of what they're accused of doing, and really they seem like a normal company.
Finally, GM crops are useful in that you can increase yields and encourage plants to grow in otherwise hostile areas. However, a lot of the world's food problems come from logistical problems and corruption, so it's overly optimistic to say they'll solve everything. They're a useful and interesting method that should yield some good results though. | 448 |
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ELI5: Why is it tough to sleep at night even when you're tired, but easy to fall back asleep in the morning when you've just had a good night's sleep? | It seems like it should be really easy to fall asleep after going 16 hours without sleep, but often people just lie in bed for an hour or more, and then after 8 hours of sleep, they have trouble staying awake enough to get out of bed. How does this work?
Edit: Thanks to node_of_ranvier for the explanation! | 1,679 | It has to do with your heart-rate. When you're going to bed after 16hrs without sleep your heart is probably still pumping blood around pretty quick. Especially if you've had coffee, an energy drink or some other form of caffeine to keep you awake. However when you wake up after having been asleep for a solid night of rest, your heart is beating at a much lower pace and until you raise your heart-rate back up (by doing some physical activity such as standing up out of bed or masturbating) you'll find it's very easy to go back to sleep. | 909 |
[Matrix] What happens to a person when an Agent hijacks their body? | Asking from the following perspectives:
1) Is their consciousness obliterated, or stored somewhere for return to the body if the agent leaves it?
2) Do the agents ever leave an occupied body (other than via death)?
3) What is the perspective of other people? For instance, if your boss turns into an agent in the middle of a staff meeting and walks out - what happens next? Does the Matrix cover it up with a false memory? Do people remember lost loved ones but don't know what happened to them?
4) Can agents hijack non-human life? I presume there aren't any cows/dogs/etc. plugged into the Matrix, but if they were, theoretically, could it be possible? | 69 | When an agent takes a body the person is rendered unconscious. They wake up in their bed with no knowledge of what happened or how they got from where they were to there. Killing an agent doesn't kill the person. Agents use the body as an entry point into the matrix and nothing more. They can't use animals or inanimate objects as they're simulated completely and have no access to the layer outside the matrix that the agents exist in. And when an agent enters the matrix everything around the entry point is reset after. Seeing a change will be a déjà vu moment for anyone that witnessed it | 49 |
ELI5: Air weighs 14 pounds per square inch, yet we don't feel it crushing us. The notion that internal pressure somehow acts as a counterbalance just seems to mean that we're being crushed in both directions. Shouldn't we feel this massive weight on us? | 8,671 | If it helps, we're already "crushed." Our species evolved on this planet; we evolved "resistance to crushing of 14.7 psi_a" as part of the process, because otherwise our ancestors would've died.
With regard to the physics, most of our body is water, which is relatively incompressible, so that's not a hazard. What the barometric/atmosphere pressure *does* push on is the pockets of air in our lungs. Coincidentally, those pockets of air are *also* at about 14.7 psi_a (except we're actively breathing in/out), so the net force of the atmosphere on our lungs is basically zero. This means that there's no crushing at all; both sides being pushed the same means no net force to collapse our lungs. And our bodily structures, as mentioned above, evolved to survive that pressure, so they won't be damaged. Hence, we are crushed into a ball by outside pressure because we have internal pressure to resist it, and our individual cells/parts don't get crushed because they are individually strong enough to resist this pressure. | 5,010 |
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[Kenobi] Question about Vader *spoilers* | Why did Vader absolve Obi-wan of his guilt? After their duel, when Obi-wan apologizes, Vader says:
“I’m not your failure Obi-wan. You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. *I* did…”
If he hates Obi-wan so much, why did he absolve Obi-wan of his guilt? | 32 | Because by claiming it for himself, he cements his identity as Darth Vader, rather than as Anakin. He *needs* that, because he could never survive facing the things he has done through Anakin's eyes.
He can't hate Obi-Wan for turning him into Vader if he *wants* to be Vader, and he is desperate to believe that he does. He *has* to believe that he does. If being Darth Vader isn't what he wants, then everything he has done under that name suddenly falls upon his shoulders and he has no answer to it.
Sometimes it is easier to keep being the monster than to try to be anything else. | 87 |
CMV: Emotional Regulation should be a required course that goes from Preschool to College. | As someone in his 30s currently going through emotional regulation. Mindfulness. And the idea that *you don't have to trust every thought you have*. I've lived inside my own head for a long time, and I've found that it had an overly detrimental effect on my ability to deal with my emotions, with my traumas, or even noticing how I actually felt. Even though I felt like someone who was very capable emotionally, the truth is emotions ran amok in me.
Raising my kid now, and seeing television shows talking more about how you need to acknowledge all your emotions, and let them sink in until you feel better is new to me. Having gone through several therapists, I've learned that accepting an emotion, and not acting on the urges they push is the best way to deal with them.
Breathing techniques, mindfulness as a given, and acceptance of your thoughts are all things that are extremely beneficial. I feel as though these are skills that should be taught to young children continuously so that they can utilize them.
It is unfortunate that Media tends to glamorize and loves people that lash out with their emotional trauma, and act on those emotional urges (the negative kind). Real strength is learning to accept those emotions and not acting on them. Beyond just children's parents teaching them this, and TV shows, I would love if this was a part of the overall school syllabus.
**Edit**: For anyone curious about why it would need to be taught for so long when the reference material is just a few short pages. Here's why -
A big part of emotional regulation is mindfulness. The requirement for mindfulness is slowing things down, learning to accept thoughts, and being aware of your emotions/body. A part of getting there is through meditation and breathing. This can be guided, or not. People meditate for years since it's a skill that takes practice, and it takes a lot of practice to do it well. I would assume that would be a part of the daily learning as much as PE is. | 988 | Everyone who suggests things that should be learned in school neglects to say what it is replacing. Having a topic from pre K to graduation is an especially large emphasis on the topic. So what are you getting rid of? History? Mathematics?
The bad news is Johnny doesn't know what photosynthesis is; but the good news is he's very calm about it! | 193 |
[Spider-Man] Would he be able to heal back to normal from an injury that would kill or disable a normal person? | In the ps4 game, he mentioned that after a bad run in with one of his villains, he had to change the material his visor was made of, because the broken glass could have blinded him. I guess I'm asking specifically, would that really have blinded him? In addition to more durable eyes, he has a more rapid healing factor. I'd think he'd just be majorly inconvenienced, and maybe with a bit of surgery back to normal. | 35 | I think that in comics, he was once blinded by acid(?) in his eyes and healed from it.
Pieces of visor would still be a problem, because even though he can heal from it, he would have been blinded in a fight. | 26 |
cmv: The protests are spreading fascist and anti-free speech ideals and are becoming more discriminatory than their message | NEW TITLE: Radical Protesters are spreading Communist ideas and are becoming more discriminatory than their message.
firstly i want to state that I am not white or american I am a Canadian and a brown person, but I feel like this needs to be said I also want to say that I know that George Floyd was killed unjustly but that leftists are twisting his message.
right now, more than ever people are being silenced in their views and are being "cancelled" because they said something that doesn't resonate with people, specifically the progressive democrats.
before I was in agree with the protests that these are a good thing but then I started to listen to some conservative podcasts and videos and I realize that their spreading division and racism instead of ending it and honestly it's getting to the point where it's not even about racism
people who criticise the riots and protests are immediately ousted on social media as racists who are spreading hate and discrimination, sometimes in the aftermath losing there Jobs or businesses over such. like Alexander Katai who was forced to denounce and apologise for his wife, and fired him anyways, A professor Gordon Klein was fired after refusing to oust students from exams. Those threatened him with death. A business owner in Alabama named Michael Dykes criticised the protests in a text to his employees but noted that George Floyd didn't deserve to die, one of his employees posted the text and called him hateful, soon after his restaurant was attacked, what's even more brain dead and bigoted is that Candace Owens tried to help the owner by setting up a GoFundMe page and within hours 200,000 were sent, GoFundMe decided to delete Candace Owens account and they accused ms Owens of spreading I quote "Inflammatory statements that spread hate, discrimination, intolerance and falsehoods against the black community" WHICH MAKES NO SENSE BECAUSE CANDACE OWENS IS BLACK.
in Minneapolis it's gotten to the point where people are rioting for the entire abolition of the police department which is honestly one of the stupidest things I've ever seen from the USA. People need to stop supporting anti-free speech sentiment and ideas. These people need to stay in their homes and stop spreading hate and anger that will divide the states undoubtedly. | 56 | Good points already being made, but I'd like to address your last point. You have been mislead by your conservative talkers, which is not surprising. The message that is spreading "defund the police" or "disband the police" is not about having no police. Generally speaking in both cases, the intent is not to do away with law enforcement, but to reexamine the purpose/scope of law enforcement today and recreate it as an entity that can carry out those duties.
Specifically, "defund the police" is not about taking away all their money, it's about acknowledging that the police are called upon in situations where they are unqualified and not the best person for that job. Loose dog, call a cop. Homeless person, call a cop. Crazy guy, call a cop. There are more qualified people to call for lots of these scenarios, and defunding the cops to fund these other organizations - animal control, HHS, etc - should reduce the cops responsibility which would allow them to get back into their communities and rebuild the trust that has been lost.
"Disband the police" is a more extreme interpretation of the last sentiment. These people feel that the current system is unfixable. It was begun by whites to round up escaped slaves and it can't change enough. There is just too much ingrained bias, too many bad apples, and no way to correct it under the current system. They want to start over. Build a new institution that addresses these problems from the ground up.
Disbanding the police would essentially fire everyone and make them rejoin a new agency with new, defined conducts and policies to better address the world today. They could hire back the "good apples" and let the bad ones rot away.
Conservatives, especially the talking heads, love to deliberately miss points. They know everything I've just said, but rather than explain the nuance, they just rev up the base by intentionally "not getting it." They knew what Kap was kneeling for, they know what Black Lives Matter means, and they know what Defund the Police means. They do this on purpose. | 34 |
What would the discovery of the Higgs boson mean in terms of practical application? | The media is apt to compare the work going on at the LHC to the space race in the 60s, an endeavor that produced discoveries that changed the face of modern technology. If the experiments at CERN really do reveal the Higgs boson, what exactly does that mean in real world terms? What new technology might we expect from such a discovery? | 41 | Much like the 60s space race, actually being on the moon wasn't practical. It was the technologies that *got* us to the moon that were. The same is largely true of particle physics. Knowing that a Higgs boson exists is nice and it tells us about the universe we live in, and maybe there's some unforeseen technology out there using it. But the "practicality" comes from designing new superconducting equipment, software to search through mountains of data for rare signals, and other associated technology used to *find* the paricles. | 42 |
Why don't steel bridges e.g. the Sydney Harbour Bridge, suffer metal fatigue? | Millions of tons of moving, vibrating trains, trucks, busses and cars every day. Forces of wind and rain. Fierce heat and cold yet no-one ever talks about fatigue in the steel. Especially in cables like Brooklyn bridge or the Golden Gate Bridge? | 2,244 | If you keep the stress below a certain limit, you can go an infinite number of cycles (N) below a certain stress (S) for steel. A material’s S-N curve describes how many cycles to failure at a given stress. The curve for steel levels off and stays flat at a certain S, heading to infinite N (horizontal axis). Most materials are not like this, e.g. aluminum always has a finite fatigue life, so you have retire or refurbish your airframe eventually. Note that even if you design to stay in infinite regime for steel, you still have to maintain and inspect, because of corrosion, trauma, etc. It’s important to keep a bridge well painted. | 3,250 |
ELI5: The reason for the difference in quality between a still frame taken from a video shot in 1080p, and a 1920x1080 resolution photograph | 55 | Generally a movie frame will be much more highly compressed than a still frame, i.e., the average number of bytes used for a movie frame will be less than for a still frame of the same size. Movies just can't usually afford the number of bytes.
Movies do have one advantage over stills in that consecutive frames will generally be very similar. Movie compression is heavily based on this so that most frames are encoded by saying "this frame is exactly the same as an earlier and/or later frame except ..." and then giving a list of differences. This means that movies can (on average) achieve the same quality with many fewer bytes. Nevertheless, movie stills will generally be of lower quality than a photographic still.
Of course there are exceptions. There are plenty of over-compressed 1920&times;1080 JPEG images out there of poorer quality than typical, high-bitrate blu-ray frames. | 31 |
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CMV: Media outlets and governments scrubbing the internet of the Christchurch footage is counterproductive. Everyone should watch the footage. | So I woke up my news feed yesterday, being bombarded by warnings about the Christchurch livestream footage that was leaked all over FB, Twitter, etc. Hundreds of warnings, from governments, media outlets, and individuals who watched it and regretted it. Warnings like "do not watch it" "do not share it on social media" etc.
So what do I do? I immediately start looking for the full version (was pretty hard to find that many hours after it happened; honestly impressed with the efficiency by which censorship can be enforced online). I find it, and watch all 16 minutes. The car drive, the approach to the mosque, the initial open firing, the reload, the individual shots he fired at the bodies, one at a time, to make sure they were dead, the exit from the building, the open fire down the sidewalk, and the drive back. All 16 minutes.
Why?
I've always been of the belief that, the last thing you should do when something horrific happens is close your eyes. How can you fight evil if you can't even look at it?
I remember when I was a kid, maybe 12 or 13, my Dad showed me a video that was leaked at the time, of a Middle Eastern terrorist televising the beheading of an innocent person (I think it was before the James Foley incident). Not a clean, quick beheading like you see in the movies. Sawing at the neck for what seemed like minutes.
Now that might seem crazy, to expose someone that young to something that horrific. But my Dad told me, "You need to know what humans are capable of. The overwhelming majority of them are good, beautiful, peaceful, decent folk, but there are people like this out there, and you can't turn a blind eye to them. Face it like a man and always keep in mind that, while the majority of mankind is capable of producing tremendous displays of love, cooperation, and compassion, humans aren't perfect, and some are capable of equally strong displays of violence, fear, and evil."
The emotions I felt during the first minute or so of shooting, were by far the most depressing moments I've ever felt in my entire life.
For 20 seconds or so it was pure, dark sadness.
Then that depression gave way, displaced by the most overwhelming feeling of violent anger that I've ever felt toward a person. I'm almost 30 now, and I've never felt such an intense desire to hurt a human being (the shooter).
That lasted about 20 seconds, before again those feelings of anger were displaced by a third awful feeling. Despair. I started to cry. Not crazy balling crying, but a sensation of a few drops trickle down my cheeks, a sensation very foreign to me.
Like I said, these were thee worst feelings I've ever felt in my entire life. Depression. Anger. Despair. Nothing else I've experienced even comes close. The very definition of rockbottom.
So I can understand why media/governments want to withhold footage. To protect people from witnessing such horrific acts of evil. To protect children, who are far too young to have their innocence tainted by watching something so awful.
There are other reasons as well. Legal ones, like withholding key pieces of evidence such as this, at least until various criminal matters are investigated privately. Perhaps another reason is to prevent other potential shooters from being inspired by such a raw account the act. Perhaps another is to prevent the conflict between muslims and christians from progressing to a more violent state (people reacting in anger and whatnot). That's especially relevant in relation to that Trump threat of "getting tough."
So my position is this. Despite all these seemingly valid reasons, they are still trumped by the importance and responsibility people have to witness what evil humans are capable of. The emotions I felt, while awful in feeling, were also feelings that I want to associate with this act, as motivation to investigate the problem and try to find a solution. I just don't think that's as likely to happen if I had simply averted my eyes, and went about my day. I also think that it's particularly necessary to watch because it was a white shooter and muslim victims. The media and people in general seem to hold this perception that it's only terrorism if it's the other way around, but that simply isn't the case.
I suppose a successful changing of my view would involve a rational explanation of how I am underestimating the practical importance of any or all of the reasons stated two paragraphs up (the reasons why the footage should be censored/removed).
Also, I realize that it's only been a day since the footage was circulated. Emotions still super high, and it might be a good idea to hold off on discussion of this on CMV until people sort of settle down. But personally I think it's good to discuss it while there's still -some- emotions present, because a lot of these events end up being forgotten, or having their significance just sort of fade into the numbing of so many of these acts happening.
EDIT: I just want to clarify. I don't hold the position that even young kids should watch it. When I say "everyone" I mean your average, adult citizen. I understand that a line like that is fairly arbitrary, but I'm sure that for the sake of argument we can agree that at a certain point, the whole tactic of protecting innocence wears off. | 15 | The footage is part of the terrorist act. It was streamed to spread fear among those it depicts being murdered and to encourage copycats and spread white supremacist memes. There's a reason the shooter wrote all over their gun and filmed themselves. These were conscious choices on how they tried to present their murder to the world.
We don't normally have footage like this in similar shootings but people still feel the same about the tragic loss of life. We don't need to see their murder to understand they were killed for an atrocious ideology. We can focus on the victims lives and the loss without seeing their murders on a screen. | 11 |
ELI5: Why do cats like to sit/sleep in boxes, even when its clearly not very comfortable? | 15 | Its actually comfortable to them.
Cats value having walls around them and a place to hide. A box gives them walls on all sides and is concealed. Not really different from a cave or den if you think about it. | 26 |
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ELI5: why can't we choose to rotate our eyes individually like a chameleon? | Also, why can some people cross their eyes easily, but others have a hard time or can't altogether?
Googled it and couldn't find an answer | 357 | The same reason we don't manually control our digestion system: We have no need to.
EDIT: Deeper explanation: Predators have their eyes both facing forward so they can judge distance (depth perception) when hunting prey. If we want to look left, we can look left. If we want to look right, we can do that too. It doesn't take long for you to look left and right and have an idea of your surroundings. Whilst true that it takes more energy to keep looking left and right, the quality of our vision is better because you have this contant depth perception.
Animals which are hunted from all directions (like fish) have eyes on the sides of their head so they can have a greater arc of vision to see oncoming predators. This requires less energy, but they have no depth perception. Luckily, they don't need it. They don't need to know how close a predator is, they need to know WHERE it is, and swim as fast as possible in the opposite direction.
We're predators. We need to see what's infront of us so we can hunt and navigate more easily. | 280 |
Are people who had bronchitis more likely to die from COVID-19? | I'm curious if scarring on your lungs from past illnesses like bronchitis makes you more vulnerable to COVID-19, as I heard the virus also causes damage to the lungs. Thanks in advanced :) | 131 | Yes. Covid19 is a respiratory infection so any damage or weakness in the lungs puts you at a greater risk. Asthma and obesity would also increase risk. Ultimately it seems that age is the largest risk factor though. | 95 |
[Harry Potter] The World is at the brink of Thermonuclear War, do the Wizards intervene? | Save the Muggles or ignore them? | 34 | Despite having a significant muggle born population most of the ruling class of the Wizarding World seems oblivious to the human world. Under most cases they would probably not be paying enough attention to intervene in an official capacity. It may only be after the bombs have fallen that someone would take notice.
On the other hand it wouldn't take many wizards to prevent an nuclear war if it was caught early. A few Obliviates would remove any memory of an intention to launch. And they could probably remove a missile launch so that to the enemy it would just look false alarm ... And there were a few false alarms during the Cold War. | 51 |
ELI5: If Time 'Stops' at the Speed of Light, How Does Anything Happen To Light Itself? | As you get faster and faster time "slows down".
Photons have no mass and travel at this 'top speed', so how does anything happen (bounce off surfaces, being detected by your eye, travelling through space etc.) when it is not affected by time? | 22 | Nothing does happen to light. The only "things" that can "happen" to light (and that's using the terms loosely) is that it can come into existence, and it can stop existing … and in the frame of reference of light, those two events happen at both the same instant and the same point in space.
Say you have an atom. That atom has electrons. One of those electrons, we'll say, gets excited. We don't care how; it just does. Sooner or later, that electron is going to drop back to its lowest possible energy state. But the energy it has to shed to do this doesn't just disappear; it can't, because energy has to be conserved in this situation. So the energy radiates off as light. Like … kpew. Specifically, a *quantum* of light, which we call a photon.
Sometime later (in the frame of reference of an observer) that quantum of light interacts with some other charged particle, almost certainly another electron in some other atom. A variety of things can happen at this point, but they all involve that quantum of light ceasing to exist. For example, it can be absorbed by the electron, knocking it up into a higher energy state. At this point, the quantum of light stops existing; it just goes away. The momentum it carried becomes part of the electron.
If you imagine what that experience was like for the light quantum — which you really can't do, strictly speaking, because the math doesn't let you, but we can *imagine* it qualitatively just for fun — you find it went like this: At some time which we'll arbitrarily call t1 and point in space we'll arbitrarily label x1, the light quantum came into existence. At another time t2 and point x2, the light quantum stopped existing. In the imaginary, not-real frame of reference we've concocted for the light quantum, t1=t2 and x1=x2. That is, the photon is emitted and absorbed at the same instant and in the same place.
To a distant observer, however, t1 does not equal t2; some time elapses between the emission and absorption events. Also x1 does not equal x2; the events happen at different places. However — and this is really basically key to understanding all of modern physics — t2-t1 = x2-x1. Always. For every observer, no matter what. In other words the amount of time it takes for a quantum of light to cross between two points is always exactly equal to the distance between those two points. All observers everywhere will always agree on this. Even the photon itself would "agree" about this, in our imaginations, because if t1=t2 and x1=x2, then t2-t1 = 0 and x2-x1 = 0, which means t2-t1 = x2-x1.
That's what makes light special. It always propagates between two points in the time equal to the distance between the two points. This is universally true for all observers, no matter what, no exceptions ever. | 37 |
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