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[PS] Are the potion seller's potions really that strong, or is he just a rascal? | The potion seller refuses to sell me his strongest potions.
He says I am too weak for his potions, but I am going into battle and require only his strongest potions to be successful.
Potion seller seems to have no respect for knights.
If his potions are so strong, who is he selling to? I've half a mind to report this ruffian to the alchemist's guild...
What must I say to get him to sell me his potions???
I am going into battle...
| 286 | I was of two opinions on this
1) The potion seller is indeed a rascal. How does he manage a shoppe if there are so few customers who can purchase his potions?
2) His potions are indeed that strong, and he is just an eccentric wealthy purist.
I lean towards 1. | 112 |
How did 24 hours containing 60 minutes each end up that way? Why can't we have a standardized 100 units of time per day, each with 100 subunits, and 100 subunits for the subunits? | 1,670 | Many ancients (Greeks, Romans, Chinese) chose twelve hours from sunrise to sunset. Nobody knows why but twelve is a more convenient number to divide than ten (12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6). Later going to 24 equal hours per day is a fairly obvious extension.
The ancient Sumerians started a tradition of counting by 60, much as we now count by 10. Probably this is because, again, 60 divides evenly by many numbers. This tradition led to dividing hours in 60 minutes and minutes into 60 seconds.
The French tried to introduce decimal time with 10 hours, 100 minutes and 100 seconds in 1794 but it didn't catch on. They abandoned it even quicker than their new calendar. There hasn't been a serious attempt since.
People are just too used to the existing system and the advantages of decimal time don't outweigh the cost of changing. The metric system uses the second as its unit of time and changing from the 86400 seconds per day we have now to a decimal 100000 seconds per day would be problematic.
Apart from costs, the change would be dangerous. We don't change seconds for much the same reason that the foot is still the standard unit of altitude for aircraft. Any change to use metres would inevitably cause crashes as people mixed up the units. | 1,121 |
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[Star Wars] What did Darth Sidious teach Darth Vader about the dark side? | Hey all, we know who the Emperor was as a person/as a Sith, but do any of you know what he taught Darth Vader about the dark side? From what I saw, it looked like Vader mostly taught himself while he was just the lapdog and enforcer for the Emperor. Do we know if Darth Vader, for example, had the ability to transfer his essence like the Emperor did in the Dark Empire? | 20 | Not sure about specifics but from the recent Canon book ***Tarkin***,we get this section
>“The two of them were in Sidious’s lair, a small rock-walled enclosure beneath the deepest of the Palace’s several sublevels that had once been an ancient Sith shrine. That the Jedi had raised their Temple over the shrine had for a thousand years been one of the most closely guarded secrets of those Sith Lords who had perpetuated and implemented the revenge strategy of the Jedi Order’s founders. Even the most
>powerful of Dark Side Adepts believed that shrines of the sort existed only on Sith worlds remote from Coruscant, and even the most powerful of the Jedi believed that the power inherent in the shrine had been neutralized and successfully capped. In truth, that power had seeped upward and outward since its entombment, infiltrating the hallways and rooms above, and weakening the Jedi Order much as the Sith Masters themselves had secretly infiltrated the corridors of political power and toppled the Republic.
>Save for Sidious, no sentient being in close to five thousand years had set foot in the shrine. The room’s excavation and restoration had been carried out by machines under the supervision of 11-4D. Even Vader was unaware of the shrine’s existence. But it was here that they would one day work together the way Sidious and Plagueis had to coax from the dark side its final secrets. In the intervening years he had actually come to appreciate Plagueis for the planner and prophet he had been. Such perilous machinations required two Sith, one to serve as bait for the dark side, the other to be the vessel. Success would grant them the power to harness the full powers of the dark side, and allow them to rule for ten thousand years.”
So at bare minimum, this confirms that Palpatine was still planning to research/explore the dark side with Vader. | 23 |
Is it possible to separate alcohol from an alcoholic beverage by freezing the mixture and be left with the unfrozen, nearly pure alcohol. | Ok, I have this bottle of Admiral Nelson rum that I keep in the freezer and when it freezes, only some of it actually turns solid leaving part of the stuff liquid. I am under the assumption that alcohol cannot freeze but I could be wrong about that. So is the stuff that is unfrozen more pure alcohol or is the alcohol to well bound to whatever it is mixed with to separate? | 34 | Yes, traditionally some apple brandies were made this way (by letting hard cider freeze overnight in winter and then pouring off the alcohol). However, in America this actually counts as distilling, and is illegal. | 23 |
Is there any dark matter in my room right now? | 338 | **Short answer:** Maybe. It depends what dark matter is.
**Long answer:** *Dark matter* is a bit of a catch all term. It's just meant to describe the bulk of the apparent gravitating mass in the universe which is not luminous. We don't know what it is yet. The evidence is really really good that it exists, we're just not sure what it is.
Generally, 'dark matter' is used to refer to a presently unidentified kind of matter. For example, some people think that maybe there were just a whooole bunch of black holes floating through space, waaay more than any model for stellar evolution might predict, and since black holes don't give off light they would constitute 'dark matter'. But this isn't a favored answer for a long list of reasons.
A more popular idea presently is that dark matter is some kind of particle. Aptly called 'particle dark matter.' This kind of dark matter would be a heavy and abundant particle which just doesn't interact with the electromagnetic force, so it doesn't give off light and it doesn't really clump into planets and stars the same way that atoms do. There are a lot of hypothetical candidates with all sorts of fun names, like sterile neutrinos, WIMPs, and axions.
If one of these hypothetical candidates really is the dark matter, which whizzes around and could be all over the place, then there is probably some passing through your room right now, streaming through the earth like a ghost. | 259 |
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ELI5: If we've discovered recently that modern humans are actually a mix of Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens Sapiens DNA, why haven't we created a new classification for ourselves? | We are genetically different from pure Homo Sapiens Sapiens that lived tens of thousands of years ago that had no Neanderthal DNA. So shouldn't we create a new classification? | 6,932 | Two subspecies that don't fully diverge into new species generally won't get a separate name if they then create a hybrid.
Look to man's best friend: all dogs are *Canis Lupus Familiaris*, and a hybrid with the original *Canis Lupus* (a wolf) doesn't get a new third designation, it's either mostly wolf or mostly dog and is treated as such.
All modern humans are mostly *Sapiens Sapiens* by a massive margin, so they retain that name even though some have a low level of Neanderthal hybridization.
More generally, subspecies designation is sloppy work since the line between subspecies is typically very blurry. Unlike bespoke species that typically can't produce fertile hybrids, subspecies usually can and sometimes this is a significant percentage of the population. | 2,859 |
[LotR] Who exactly IS the Mouth of Sauron? | For those who don't know, he is the handsome man with slits in his mouth when Aragorn & Co. approach the Black Gate in the extended version. | 58 | He is a Black Numenorean, of the same race as Aragorn, only he is in the service of Sauron. Back when Numenor was at it's peak of power they invaded Middle Earth to defeat Sauron. The armies of Numenor were so vast and powerful that Sauron's armies literally fled, leaving Sauron at the mercy of the men of Numenor. They took him back to their home as a captive where he quickly spread his influence, lies and his wickeness amongst the men of the island. Two camps arose, the Elf-Friends, from whom Aragorn is descended, ad the King's men, who were won over by the lies of Sauron.
Sauron influenced the Numenoreans to invade Valinor and wrestle immortality from the Elves and Ainur. A foolish plan as the land did not grant immortality, it was just inhabited by the immortal. Those few Numenoreans who refused to sail for Aman/Valinor, instead sailed for Middle Earth. The armies of Numenor landed on the shores of Aman, Eru Illuvatar/God himself cast the armies into a cave for eternity and sank their island home. (The Ainur could do nothing as they had no authority over the race of Men, only God can punish them.)
The Elf-friends landed in Middle Earth, founded Arnor and Gondor, but also found that some Numenoreans who were still loyal to Sauron inhabited the land in various places. These Black Numenoreans served Sauron for centuries upon centuries. Their numbers are not known. The Mouth of Sauron's true name is not known, even he has probably forgotten it due to the madness of Sauron's influence. | 95 |
[Bionicle] What *exactly* are the Barraki? | Pre-Creeps from the deep mutation, what where they? There are a lot of species in the Matoran universe, but the six of them weren't part of the Matoran "life cycle." Nor where they Rahi. What are they, and where did they come from?
For that matter, what are Axonn, Brutaka, Bohtar, Sidorak, Roodaka, and the other "unique-species" characters in Bionicle? Nearly half the Dark Brotherhood comes to mind... | 20 | > There are a lot of species in the Matoran universe, but the six of them weren't part of the Matoran "life cycle." Nor where they Rahi. What are they, and where did they come from?
They were presumably designed by the Great Beings for some specialized function that required their unique abilities rather than those of Matoran. Since each was only required for one or two tasks, there was no need to introduce large numbers of each species and so the result was a large number of unique species with a few members each. The most influential non-Rahi species in the Matoran Universe by far are Matoran/Toa/Turaga, Makuta, Vortixx, and Skakdi.
> Dark Brotherhood
I think you're confusing the Dark Hunters and the Brotherhood of Makuta. | 11 |
Do humans get Antibodies against various pathogens that infect cattles via their milk, based on the same principle that human babies get antibodies against several pathogen from their mother's breast milk? | 114 | No because most milk is pasturized. The milk that isn't is generally considered unsafe. Its possible that you can get some random antibody but the risk to raw milk is far greater then any minimal benefit you'd get. | 57 |
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Why is gas under pressure cold? | This might be a stupid question and I still haven't figured this out..
So obviously stars are made of gas etc. My extremely basic understanding is that they're really hot because they're under extreme pressure.
Why is compressed gas in e.g. cannisters or lighters cold?
EDIT: Thank you everyone for your answers, it's actually pretty interesting. | 27 | The compressed gas or lighter only gets could when gas is released. If you don't press the button it will simply equilibrate to room temperature.
Your lighter and compressed gas consists of volatile organic compounds. Under pressure they are liquid, but in atmospheric pressure (i.e., when you depress the lever or press the button to release the gas) it turns into gas. In other words, the liquid evaporates. Evaporation is an endothermic process, meaning it takes heat from the environment to turn a liquid into gas. That's why it gets colder the longer you release gas.
It is a similar idea to rubbing alcohol on your skin making you feel cool - the alcohol evaporates and takes heat away from your skin. | 39 |
[Marvel] Would anyone mind explaining what is Marvel's Infinity war. What are infinity stones? | 153 | An excerpt and a quote to get your head wrapped around what the stones are:
>The Infinity Stones are six immensely powerful objects tied to different aspects of the universe, created by the Cosmic Entities so that way, each of the stones can possess unique capabilities that have been enhanced and altered by various alien civilizations for over millennia of years.
>Before creation itself, there were six singularities. Then the universe exploded into existence, and the remnants of these systems were forged into concentrated ingots... Infinity Stones.
So in marvel certain abstract concepts are actually entities (such as Death and Eternity being actual entities). These are the Cosmic Entities, and they created the Infinity Stones from the singularities that existed before the universe was created.
These stones can be wielded or even altered by beings within the universe that have enough power to do so.
The Infinity War is one such incident that started with the creation of the Infinity Gauntlet. A powerful being, named Thanos, was capable of collecting all the stones together and setting them inside a golden gauntlet then, using their combined strength, wiped out half of all sentient life in an effort to impress the Cosmic Entity Death, whom he loved.
This did not go over well.
The Infinity War is a sequel to this story where a hero named Adam Warlock attempts to seperate his being into two: one good and one evil. He did this to wield the gauntlet with all the stones in it wisely and logically.
This also did not go over well. | 128 |
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[IT] How could Pennywise kill the 300 original founders of Derry? | Was he stronger somehow? He is still vulnerable to guns and weapons.
What exactly happened to them? | 89 | IT doesn't always kill people directly. Sometimes it uses other means.
For example, the fire at The Black Spot was perpetrated by humans, but secretly motivated by IT.
The explosion of the Ironworks factory, which killed 102 people, was also caused by IT.
IT isn't weakened by bullets, but by belief. When It transformed into a werewolf, it's weakness was silver bullets because everyone knows that's what kills a werewolf. That's why the kids were so dangerous to It. They were young enough to believe they could beat it, and old enough to fight.
Considering that, it's no surprise that a bunch of pilgrims, who are generally superstitious anyway, and were drawn to found Derry by IT in the first place, would be easy pickings for the creature.
They were probably just eaten and their remains left to rot in the bowels of It's underground lair. | 140 |
Could someone be born with YY chromosomes? What would be the result? | 16 | No, you couldn't. Aside from the fact it's pretty much impossible naturally (females are XX, so the eggs can't have Y chromosomes), it wouldn't survive because of the large number of crucial genes on the X chromosome. | 30 |
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Can someone explain how exactly dd Gaston Bachelard in the words of Balibar "tear epistemology from the undefined commentary of ('inductive') relations between 'theory' and 'the facts'" and thus solve the problem of induction? | I came across this problem while reading: Etienne Balibar (1978) From Bachelard to Althusser: the concept of ‘epistemological break’, Economy and Society, 7:3, 207-237, DOI: 10.1080/03085147800000013 ([https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147800000013](https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147800000013)) in which Balibar in a note to the paper writes:
>One aspect of Bachelardian epistemology which has had important consequences will be held to be central. It is the thesis according to which *the* *concept* is the *unit* par excellepce typical of scientific knowledge because it is also the singular unity of (mathematical) theory and experimental technology: '...to incorporate the conditions of application of a concept in the very meaning of the concept' (Bachelard 1938 p. **3** 1) not in an arbitrary *isolation* of concepts but in their interrelation, their 'interdefinition'. (Cf. Bachelard 1949 pp. 51f, 144f) By this means Bachelard tears epistemology from the undefined commentary of ('inductive') relations between 'theory' and 'the facts' in order to propose for it the study of historical relations between constitution (and then transformation) of concepts and posing of problems.
Thus, is Balibar saying that Bachelard solved the problem of induction as identified by Hume? If so, can someone explain how did Bachelard achieve this feat? | 45 | Not a Bachelard scholar, but recently become acquainted with his works; basically he states (anybody knowing more please feel free to correct me), that there is no arbitrary position because the way you think and approach concepts are defined by how you imagine them beforehand - he states imagination is the basis of thinking.
He has what's described as a poetic approach to philosophy and science - I'd advise you to read or get a summary of Psychoanalysis of Fire; or Water and Dreams to get a clearer view on that. | 12 |
[Warhammer 40000] [Serious] How does does life of a Gue'vesa differ from the average Imperial Citizen? | For that matter how much is different in daily life? What is the core structure and values like?
How much or how little political freedom and rights do the Gue'vesa have to normal imperial citizens? | 42 | Generally speaking, it's slightly above average. Tau worlds tend to be better governed than Imperial ones and there is less focus on the whole "work till you die" mentality that most Imperial production centers have. The Tau focus on the communist-like principle of the "greater good" means you'll be giving the government pretty much everything you have anyway, but there is a good chance that some of it will make it's way back down to you.
Political freedom varies pretty wildly in the Imperium; planets range the entire spectrum from feudal serfdoms to democratic republics to tyrannical dictatorships. So your say in things as an Imperial citizen is mostly up to where you were born and how powerful your family is. However, Gue'vesa are almost unilaterally second-class citizens. The way Tau society works only the Ethereal caste actually have any sort of political clout but client species, like the Kroot or turncoat humans, have pretty much less than none. Your place in society is firmly to prop up the Tau bits of it and they'll make sure you know it, even if they go about it in a friendly way.
Once you pull away the trappings the fact is, you've traded one form of slavery for another. The Imperial way or the Tau way. The Imperials may be more brutal in their treatment of you but, at the end of the day, you are still a part of the team and they care about you as much as you are a human and thus like them. To the Tau, you are nothing more a tool. A tool to be taken care of, sure, but you'll never be anything more than that and need to know your place. | 49 |
[Alien] What was the alien doing when it tucked in Ripley's escape ship? | Was it sleeping ? Was it hiding ? | 31 | Hiding, escaping. It knew enough to know the large ship was no longer safe and figured out Ripley was heading towards a particular structure - the shuttle. It hid there, believing that since the human was going there, it would be safe. And had Ripley not noticed it, it would have been right. | 30 |
[Parks and Rec/The Office] If Dwight Schrute and Ron Swanson met in person, would they get along? | Or would Ron find Dwight phony and incompetent? Would Dwight respect Ron? Would they gravitate to a mentor/mentee relationship, or would they distrust each other? | 42 | Dwight would appreciate Ron's survival and self-sufficiency skills, Ron would appreciate Dwight's near-militant preparedness and his habit of investing in land (owning a farm, buying the building the office is in). Then Dwight would show his weirder German farming side and Ron would start making subtle comments about how they lost the war | 91 |
ELI5: Why can't water rehydrate dry skin? | 18 | The problem with dry skin is that water can leave your skin too easily. Normally your skin has oils to help retain moisture, providing a barrier water can't easily penetrate. Putting water on your skin doesn't replace this oil, and can contribute to removing it. | 12 |
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[Venture Bros. Season 1 only] We know why Dr. Venture was having bad cramps & stomach issues that sent him to the hospital. Why did everyone else at the Rocky Horror Picture Show need to go to the hospital? | 25 | I suspect Brock beat the shit out if everyone, based on the phone call we hear earlier of a frightened bystander claiming that Rocky's killing everybody
"Rocky who! Rocky I(?) Rocky III(?)"
"Horror!"
Brock and the family were all dressed like Rocky Horror characters, and acting like they just got done doing a job | 13 |
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ELI5:What is a "hostile takeover bid"? | Like when one company tries to buy another, but I don't really understand what's "hostile" about it, or when such a thing happens. Thanks! | 20 | It means without approval from the board of directors (those running the company). When a company is public that means anyone can buy their shares in the stock market. Usually when someone wants to buy one of the companies they'll ask the board to bring an offer to the shareholders. This is easier because the board can rally the shareholders and persuade them to vote in favor of the takeover.
However, it's not necessary. A guy could just buy 50.000001% on the open market if he wanted. Now he can take the company in whatever direction he sees fit.
edit: It's mostly "hostile" because if you're buying without the board's help you're likely going to fire every single one of them when you get control and replace them with your own. | 27 |
ELI5 Why do some dishes get so hot, sometimes even hotter than the food, after microwaving? | 30 | The microwaves generated are absorbed well by water and fat in food. However, some other materials also absorb the same microwaves, often better than food.
Metal is the obvious one. It can absorb microwaves so well it catches fire and/or ruins the appliance.
Some bowls and plates made of certain ceramic also can absorb microwaves well. Sometimes it's due to trace metals in the ceramic or glaze. Other times it's just what the ceramics are made out of. | 22 |
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Are huge compression ratios attainable in specific cases? | Ive been doing a bit of online research and the only things i seem to be finding are on general compression algorithms with ratios of 20-35% But is it possible to achieve much greater ratios in specific cases?
Im not well educated in this field and im probably missing something but even basic math expressions seem to "encode" information with way more efficiency than general compression algorithms.
2.1514733e+97 for example can be expressed as (27\^68).
compressing nearly 100 digits to just 4 and a symbol.
I feel like im failing to see something here or ive missed some obvious principle so any insights would be greatly appreciated. | 16 | Yes, it is!
The concept of Kolmogorov complexity might appeal to you. Consider that some photos may have simpler descriptions than others. Even if the description is made unambiguous (or, to use the proper term, "lossless") it is pretty easy to guess that any photo that is exactly one color over the entire set of pixels is easier to describe than a photo where each pixel is independently chosen at random.
The trick is to come up with a "language" of description where all the things you see most frequently have short descriptions, even if the things you see rarely might have longer ones. This is precisely what compression is all about.
Zip files are an example of this: they build a dictionary of words to describe the file as the file is scanned, which allows things the method "reads" to immediately reuse the index of a word in the dictionary instead of the entire word.
Even in jpeg, which is "lossy," care was taken so that the description of an image still results in something that looks very very much like the original data, even if it's not bit for bit the same.
Excellent question! | 14 |
[The Incredibles] What happened to all of the supervillains after the heroes were outlawed? | * I imagine that the supervillains would not care about the law banning superheroes and villains, as they have no problems breaking all of the other laws. | 33 | Believe it or not straight to jail. No more defense of illegal arrest or assault from a vigilante. No more squeaking by on a technicality due to tampered evidence or lack of evidence after a super fight. Wearing a costume was a crime so was using their powers or gadgets. They had no legal recourse and while they could argue and fight against the system plenty of super jails existed that only got tougher to escape from with all the new inmates. | 41 |
ELI5: Where does the cocaine go? | Like when you snort it, where the fuck does it go? The fuck happens to it? | 496 | Cocaine gets absorbed by the mucus membranes in your nostrils, and crosses over directly into the blood stream. This is why cocaine acts so much faster than say, alcohol. Alcohol has to reach the small intestine before being absorbed in large amounts, which can take 15-30 minutes depending on your stomach contents.
Cocaine bypasses all of that by having a molecular structure that allows it to cross directly into the very small blood vessels (capillaries) in your nose, and then distribute into your body at a very rapid pace. | 335 |
[MCU] When Deadpool is having his shoot out at the start of the film, who would deal with the insurance claims from the drivers who had to run for their lives? | 32 | [Meta note: Deadpool is not (yet) part of the MCU and instead exists in Fox's X-Men movie universe. However, he has referenced the MCU due to his knack for breaking the fourth wall which tends to confuse Watsonians.] | 41 |
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CMV: United States government structure places too much power in hands of the executive | I've heard the argument that the founding fathers designed the separation of powers, but the way I see it, it is the legislature that is supposed to have all the power in first place, and any power given to executive is too much.
I am not talking about the bureaucracy, even in parliamentary democracies, bureaucracies form the skeleton of the government.
But look at the Trump government, he appoints his daughter to something, his son-in-law to something, his son to something, his billionaire friends to something, why? because the people were asked to vote not for what the policy positions/parties they believe in, but what person they believe in, and have no further say in what he does once he assumes office. [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/gfd7hf/justice_dept_dropping_flynns_criminal_case/fpsucig?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/gf3u70/just_straight_cronyism_top_trump_and_gop_donor/) and so many more
It also inhibits the springing of multiple parties by creating a winner-takes-all system, where either you are in power or you are not in power, whereas, in a parliamentary system, even if you don't form the government you have some power/say in the direction the country takes. The current structure enforces the duopoly, in addition to FPTP elections. | 40 | To be fair, what we have now is not really how the founding fathers intended it to be. The 'Imperial Presidency' as it exists now, really started with FDR in 1930. The position had less far reaching authority prior to him. It's been gradually expanding ever since, but we don't seem notice a little power grab here or there over time. If you like the person doing it, then chances are you are mostly OK with them doing it. It's when we don't like a president, we notice every sliver of power, every lever of democracy they take.
There's no doubt, though, that this presidency is shining light on lots of weak spots in the system. There are so many things that weren't actually laws that we all just assumed every president would do just because all the ones before them had done so - tax returns, assets into blind trust, blatant nepotism, etc. The next time the Left gets in there with any political clout, they will codify a bunch of these "traditions" into law so they can't be exploited in the future. Make no mistake, Trump is evil and dumb, but there is an evil, smart person out there right now taking notes of all the weak spots. We need to shore up democracy before that person figures out how to become president.
But that'll only happen if we care enough to pay attention, show up, and hold our elected leaders accountable. De Toqueville said, "The people get the government they deserve." If we don't change this, we deserve what comes next. | 13 |
ELI5: When I start Task Manager, and I have 1 window with 4 tabs going on Google Chrome, why do I have 33 chrome.exe under "processes"? | My computer was running pretty hard, so I pulled up Task Manager. When I went to check processes, there were 33!! chrome.exe... I don't understand why so many would be running... Thanks | 15 | Chrome segments more than just tabs into separate processes. Each plugin (flash, java, pdf viewer, etc.) all run in their own chrome.exe process. Each tab also runs in it's own chrome.exe process, each extension (AdBlock, RES, etc.) run in their own chrome.exe, and then there's one parent chrome.exe which manages all the tabs and the windows.
This approach allows chrome to scale better on larger systems, and allows them to increase security and limit damage when a security vulnerability is exploited.
This approach does cause chrome to use a bit more memory than a single monolithic process, but not as much as Task Manager will seem to say. Much of the memory used by the chrome.exe processes is *shared*, which means that even though the memory is reported for each chrome.exe process, it only takes up space once, and all the other chrome.exe processes share that memory space. You can view memory/process details by typing "chrome://memory" into the address bar. | 13 |
[Avengers: Endgame] Was Scott justified in being upset that the kids didn't want a picture with Ant-Man? Was he really that well known? | It had been five years since his last public appearance and he wasn't a regular Avenger, so where did he think they would know him from? | 594 | I don't think he was upset that they didn't know him, he realized pretty quickly after he offered that they wouldn't. He got pissed because he didn't want a pity picture and Hulk wouldn't take no for an answer. | 613 |
ELI5: Why isn't the -cycle in bicycle and tricycle pronounced the same as the -cycle in the unicycle and motorcycle? Aren't they all cycles and not "sickles"? | 41 | It's all about English foot structure. What's a foot? The short answer is a foot is a two-syllable unit where one of the syllables is stressed. English is by and large organized into trochees, which are feet with stress on the first syllable. (Think words like *happy* or *pickle*; they're stressed on the first syllable)
English is a "quantity-sensitive" language, which means we also organize syllables into "heavy" or "light". Heavy syllables attract stress, and unstressed syllables are likely to be reduced (made light). This brings us to the -cycle words.
Notice the first two you mention are 3-syllabke words, and the others are 4-syllable words. In both cases, we would probably analyze them as consisting of two feet (although the former are going to have a *degenerate* half-foot of only one syllable). The key difference is that in the 3-syllable word the first syllable of -cycle is the tail end of the previous foot (the unstressed part of the foot), but in the 4-syllable case it's the front of a new foot (the stressed part).
* bicy-cle
* tricy-cle
* uni-cycle
* motor-cycle
Because English is quantity-sensitive, we don't like a heavy syllable in an unstressed position, so the heavy *cy* becomes light in the 3-syllable words. (Some more background: *cy*, pronounced /sai/ has a diphthong, which is like two vowels mashed into one unit, and this is considered heavy. Single lax vowrls are considered light, so this is what the diphthong turns into when it's unstressed in these words)
So it's kind of an interesting interaction between several features of English: trochaic feet parsed from the left edge, quantity-sensitivity, and vowrk reduction. | 53 |
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Were there any famous female philosophers in Ancient Greece? | All the books I've read contain names of a ton of male philosophers -- even the minor ones -- but absolutely none of female philosophers. From what I know, Greece was an intellectual powerhouse, so it's hard to believe that there were absolutely no female philosophers at all.
Did anyone document them? Or were socio-cultural conditions at the time not conducive for female philosophers to be open and public about their intellectualism? | 100 | We largely don't have writings from them, but some are mentioned, for instance: Diotima, who supposedly taught Socrates and to whom is attributed his teachings in the *Symposium*; and Hypatia, who is famous from Carl Sagan's *Cosmos* and related pseudo-history but was a legitimate historical figure working in the Neoplatonic context in late antiquity. | 117 |
CMV: Since the German Army is obviously in quite a shabby condition, it should be (mostly) abolished rather than brought back to strength | For background, see this [link](http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/09/26/german-military-struggles-with-hardware-problems)
Currently, the German military forces (Bundeswehr) - struggle with serious problems regarding the state of repair of their technical equipment and lack of recruits since the general draft was abolished some years ago. Currently, the Bundeswehr has serious technical issues sending 6 soldiers to Northern Iraq or the promised weapons to the Kurds in Turkey because of malfunctioning planes; it furthermore has serious troubles sending helicopters needed for [Operation Atalanta](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Atalanta).
Right now, about 4000 German soldiers are deployed in several operations abroad, with an active number of c. 182000 soldiers overall. Current cost of the Bundeswehr are abt. 33,3 billion € per year, quite a big chunk of the 302 billion € spent Germany spent overall in 2013.
My view that the Bundeswehr, as it exists now, is a thoroughly outdated army. It was envisioned and built in the early Cold War, when Germany was divided into two states and lived under the constant threat of becoming the front of World War III. West Germany needed a big army in that geo-political background. Nowadays, there is no state that would seriously consider actually militarily attacking or occupying Germany. The Russians that everyone feared in the 1950s did not attack, and even with Putin's foreign policy malarkey, they won't attack despite being - as I see it - the likeliest candidate, and even that is terribly unlikely. Germany is for all intents and purposes safe from invasion. If it would need an army at all, this army should not rely on huge numbers of soldiers but a small number of armed personell with high-quality vehicles (driving, flying, swimming, you name it) and cutting-edge weapon technology in conjunction with a reasonably-sized portion of the army that would be used for humanitarian efforts, rebuilding, state-building and training purposes abroad. I guess the number of soldiers could be a a quarter of what it is now and still function. I think this is a much more logical Bundeswehr to have in an era where we - luckily - do not have the threat of an all-out nation-state vs. nation-state war but will - sadly - face asymmetrical wars with heavy fighting of militarised groups (ISIS, Kurdish militas, civil war militas as in Syria, Boko Haram etc.). If at all possible, I would even remove the fighters from that new concept of the Bundeswehr and only have it have the humanitarian branch with armed defense.
Change my view! :)
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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!* | 85 | The problem is that eliminating the army makes it harder for the German Government to react to things. Armies are a big body of people who will do what needs doing, this means "Disaster Relief", "Political Posturing", and "deterrent" as often as it means "fighting a war". Getting rid of the army might cut about 10% of the budget, but you're also losing a great deal of the ability of Germany to protect Germans.
The army of Germany is not ideally designed for the challenges it faces today. The NATO membership (under which Germany is obligated to maintain an army) means that a traditional war would occur with US assistance, and the US army would readily trounce any conventional opponent it would come up against.
It's also important to realize that building an army from scratch when it suddenly becomes necessary has a long history of being an unmitigated disaster. War requires skills. Skills that require blood and suffering to learn and master, throwing them away isn't just dangerous but also disrespectful to those who died so that others might know. This is especially true because the world of 100 years ago (at the beginning of World War I) or 50 (at the height of the Cold War) is very different from the World today. Why are we going to assume that there won't be a need for a German army in 50 or 100 years?
Really, it would be better for Germany, the European Union, and NATO if German would to reorganize the army but maintain similar levels of spending and personnel. To change its charter to being primarily humanitarian changes the focus and training making them unequal to dealing with aggressively armed insurgency and would make it difficult to convert them back into a conventional army when the US no longer makes that need temporarily irrelevant. | 86 |
How important is it to dress formally for an interview? | I have an interview coming up in a day or two, for a clinical researcher/PhD position.
The interview is surprisingly in person instead of on Zoom. And I'm wondering how important it is that I dress formally? It's not anything like an interview weekend or a campus visit, but more strictly like coming and sit down and we'll have a chat type of arrangement.
Every sane person has told me I should wear a nice dress or at least a nice blouse, but I kind of don't feel comfortable in those clothes (I would look like a kid in adult's clothes). The weather will be relatively warm so I can't go with my usual shirt+pullover plan either.
Suggestions? Any advice/comments welcome! | 71 | Treat this as a job interview and select an outfit for that purpose. Just because you feel that you might "look like a kid in adult's clothes" doesn't mean that's the way you will be perceived. Furthermore, you don't want them potentially to remember you as the only person who was interviewed and didn't dress appropriately. | 177 |
Is there a German equivalent to Gutting’s French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century? | I’m looking for something which covers a rough narrative of German philosophy as it developed in the twentieth century. I found gutting’s book to be very engaging and helpful and was wondering if there was parallel of it for Germany.
There might not be a clear history/narrative to German philosophy in the way that Gutting is able to find in French Phil. (I don’t really know), so perhaps books covering broad movements in Germany (like Phenomenology) would be good as well.
Thanks! | 20 | Young has a three volume *German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century* which does this, although unfortunately it's three volumes so it's not quite as accessible. But you could pick a volume that looks particularly interesting to you, to start with. Or you could go with Gorner's *Twentieth Century German Philosophy*, which is much narrower in its coverage but is only the one volume. | 14 |
ElI5 What is bayesian mechanics? | 33 | It's a way of using the math of probability to make inferences that you might not initially think you could make.
Let's say you've flipped a coin ten times, and every time it came up heads. What's the probability that it's a rigged coin?
Maybe you know that every one in a million coins in circulation is rigged, but it seems like the odds of this particular coin being rigged is higher, because you flipped so many heads. So how can we get the actual probability?
Time for some math. But first, some notation:
P(A) is the probability of A happening.
P(A ^ B) is the probability of A and B both happening.
P(A | B) is the probability of A happening given that B happens. That is, we've assumed B, now what's the probability of A?
Now critically, P(A | B) = P(A ^ B) / P(B). That is, we take the probability of both happening, and then divide out the probability for B, because we're just assuming that as a given.
We can use this to figure out how likely it is that our coin is rigged.
P(rigged | ten heads) = P(rigged ^ ten heads) / P(ten heads)
P(rigged ^ ten heads) is just 1 in 1 million (assuming all rigged coins favor heads for the sake of this hypothetical). You have a 1 in 1 million chance of having a rigged coin, and if you do, then you'll always get ten heads.
P(ten heads) is a little more involved. It's going to be P(rigged ^ ten heads) + P(not rigged ^ ten heads). That is, if we don't know whether or not the coin is rigged, we have to account for the probabilities in the case that it is, and the case that it isn't. The probability of either happening is just the sum of each individual case happening.
The odds of a coin not being rigged are 999999 in 1 million, and then getting 10 heads with such a coin has a probability of (1/2)^10 = 1 / 1024. We multiple those together to get P(not rigged ^ ten heads) = 999999/1024000000.
We can now put together all our numbers to get
P(rigged | ten heads) = 1/1000000 / (1/1000000 + 999999/1024000000) = 0.001023.
So even with ten heads, it's still pretty unlikely you have a rigged coin.
Why this is interesting is that we've seemingly gone 'backwards'. The likelihood of getting 10 heads is influenced by whether not the coin is rigged, but we've started from the conclusion of 10 heads, and used that to go backwards to figure out whether the coin is rigged in the first place. There's no sense in which getting 10 heads can somehow cause a coin to be rigged retroactively, but we can still do math and gain information about the coin. | 47 |
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ELI5: How is gps for self-driving cars accurate enough when my google gps totally craps out any time I'm in a mall plaza? | 15 | Self-driving cars use more than just GPS to navigate; they also use onboard cameras to identify the road, other vehicles, pedestrians, traffic lights, and other potentially relevant information. If they lose GPS signal, they continue going along what was the plotted route until the signal is regained.
As the technology improves, they can also gather data on *where* GPS is likely to fail (such as a tunnel or mall plaza). In these instances, their navigation can plot more detailed courses in advance since the computer is anticipating a loss of satellite feed for a bit. | 16 |
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ELI5: What do the astronauts on the ISS actually do up there? | 18 | Mostly research. In order to best study an environment with little to no gravity, the best place to go is space.
Research includes tools and procedures for spacewalks, procedures for operating in minimal gravity areas, and any other microgravity research.
Other than that, astronauts are sent there to maintain and operate the systems onboard the ISS | 14 |
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ELI5 What stops humans from sleeping for days at a time? | Bears hibernate up to 6 months, why can't we? | 168 | One reason is that you can't store as much nutritients as a bear can. Your body is not situated to do this. Bears store nutritients to hibernate in periods where they would lack food and overall the period where they wouldn't be happy to live in.
If that makes sense. | 71 |
[World of Warcraft]Whose genius idea was it to put portals directly to Blasted Lands into every Capital City? | Who exactly decides that the risk of these portals ever malfunctioning within the heart of your city, which other side is right next to a rather large gate that has stampeding demons fighting into the world of Azeroth, outweighs the convenience of porting to the Blasted Lands.
Even if it is to boost your numbers defending the gate in the first place, wouldn't it be far easier and risk free to just gradually muster numbers the traditional way of flying/mounted/vehicles etc.
It seems like demons have made it into the Blasted Lands in the first place anyway, and they already seem contained with the few out-holds Horde and Alliance have there.
and exactly what is preventing that portal becoming two ways, who is maintaining the portal for those 24/7 hours 365 days a year? | 24 | The portals provide swift transportation for our officers and other important personnel, as well as to ensure a quick flow of information. Should our outposts in Outland fall, or even just the defenses around the Dark Portal, we need to know about it immediately.
They are constantly maintained by rotating mages, some of which are still novices and are sent there for seasoning. The Blasted Lands provide both an opportunity for practice as well as gaining experience with demonic entities. Invaluable lessons for every mage. However if the portal sites are ever in danger of falling into enemy hands the mages can sever the connection instantly. | 15 |
[LOTR/Harry Potter] Would Gandalf be a Professor at Hogwarts? | That question has been ringing in my head this week, and I was wondering, since Gandalf uses his staff for magic, he’d be fitting for Defense Against the Dark Arts and teach how to use spells with a magical staff instead of a wand.
Also what do you think his reaction/magic spells and attack would be if he had to fight Voldemort alongside Albus Dumbledore in the Battle of Department of Mysteries? | 18 | Gandalf doesn't use his magic like they do in Harry Potter, he can't just do spells willy nilly.
He would at best be a historian and perhaps teach magical history being around since the dawn of time and all. | 34 |
ELI5:Why do eastern countries (e.g Philippines, Japan) focus on discipline, honor and excellent grades more than western countries (e.g America, Canada?) | 18 | Because western countries focus more on creativity, individual achievement and social development? Many eastern schools produce children who can recite facts but not know how to use them. Many western schools have kids who are great at creative thinking but can't participate in a formal setting. Neither is strictly superior to the other. | 12 |
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ELI5: The Verizon workers going on strike | My understanding is that it is an economic strike. So I asked a friend of mine who works at Verizon "why not just quit?" They have hired temps to fill those positions and I could be wrong but because of the nature of the strike when it's over doesn't mean they also have job security. I was told clearly I don't understand picketing or collective bargaining. Although isn't picketing or strike a result of collective bargaining not working in the first place?
Edit: thank you all very much for clearing that up for me. | 15 | The issue is the value of a temp worker who can fulfill a task over the short term, and the striking workers who have training and experience in their jobs. While Verizon (or any company, really) can simply fill-in for striking workers with temps, or by pulling from other divisions of the company, the replacement workers won't be as good at their jobs as the striking workers. Or, at least, that's the principle.
The idea behind a strike is, at its most basic, to convince a company that they need the employees, and need to meet the employees' requirements to continue effective operations. So no, a strike isn't a result of collective bargaining not working, at least not in the sense you may have meant it - its a tool to make collective bargaining viable. | 10 |
ELI5: How come the same computer that runs a complex game like Battlefield 3 at high fps can lag when using simple programs like iTunes? | 47 | Game Developer here -- Your computer is made up of many parts, and different programs do very different things. Your video card's GPU has nothing to do with your hard-drive, and people who make video games avoid reading from the hard drive as much as possible as thats generally the slowest possible operation on a computer.
An application like iTunes may read from your hard drive, make slow (blocking) network calls, connect with other devices etc. It may be doing "less complex" things but its doing it with different hardware.
Also, some programs are written better than others :) | 46 |
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[MCU] How does the Hand get around the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu? | With the exception of Earth-1218, the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu is a universal constant. However, in their fight against Daredevil, Elektra and Stick, the ninjas of the Hand seem to do pretty well despite being masked and having overwhelmingly superior numbers. How is this possible? | 90 | It absolutely applies to this universe.
Just think of Matt's first encounter with a Hand ninja, the one where a single ninja has him outclassed and wrecks his shit (before he gets a lucky break and sets the ninja aflame).
You're simply misinterpreting how conservation of ninjutsu works.
One ninja is very dangerous for Matt, but he can hold his own and get lucky. When there are dozens of ninjas he can hold his own, even if it's a difficult fight, as long as the numbers don't completely overwhelm him. Same difficulty, with more ninjas, textbook conservation of ninjutsu. | 96 |
The Surface of the sun is estimated to be around 5700K but the Corona is estimated to be a few million degrees. How can this be possible? | I never understood how the surface could be one temperature but just a few thousand kilometers away it is such a huge drastic change? What causes this change in temperature. Surely it can't be energy added. | 46 | This is an excellent question. Speaking observationally, we see that energy *is* added to the corona somehow, but the process at work has not been identified yet. An important part of the problem is that the heating likely happens due to small-scale processes (which are difficult to resolve with telescopes) and that modelling them is difficult, because magnetohydrodynamics (which you need to describe the motions of the plasma) is computationally nasty. | 20 |
If our sun was the size of an average grain of sand, how big would our galaxy be on that scale? | 198 | By pure coincidence, one light year is ~63,200 astronomical units (abbr. AU, defined as the average distance from the Earth to the Sun), and there are ~63,200 inches in a mile. That means that one AU is to one light year as one inch is to one mile. Using this, you can look up astronomical distances and easily convert to everyday units.
So, if the sun were a grain of sand, Earth would be about 1 inch away. Jupiter would be 5.2 inches away and Pluto ~40 inches away. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is ~4.3 miles away.
Finally, to answer your question, the Milky Way, which is on the order of 100,000 light years in diameter, would be ~*100,000 miles* across. | 165 |
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Could Superman defeat an Earth-sized Xenomorph hive? | I really enjoyed reading [Superman/Aliens](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman/Aliens), and it got me thinking.
In the *Aliens* comic [*Outbreak,*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliens_(comic_book) a cult sends out dozens of infested hosts all over the world. The Earth is quickly engulfed and overrun with xenomorphs.
If Superman had been otherwise indisposed and came back to an Earth after the events of *Outbreak,* would he be able to defeat the xenomorphs alone?
Even with his powers and the sun to recharge him, I imagine it would be a difficult battle, as the xenomorphs rarely come out of their hives, so he would be engulfed in darkness
Clark Kent lost his powers eventually in the Superman/Aliens crossover. This lead to him being unable to continue with his personal edict of not killing any lifeforms. Is it at all plausible that he could defeat a an Earth-sized hive (millions if not billions of members) without killing them with his powers? Could he relocate them, or would death be the only solution? | 19 | In *Superman/Aliens,* he had to be deprived of sunlight very far from the solar system for the equivalent of days before his powers began waning. After all, he's not significantly weaker at night on Earth than he is during the day. It was the same in the miniseries *Final Night,* where the sun was being snuffed out by the Sun Eater, which had the same version of Superman. It took days for his powers to start to significantly fade.
With superspeed, he could take out any alien hive within minutes at most. The xenomorphs are fearsome critters to a normal human but unless one gestated inside a Kryptonian or Martian (DC version), they literally have no chance if Superman does not hold back. This is a guy who has literally taken nukes to the face and walked away.
The only thing that messed him up in Superman/Aliens was getting splashed in the eyes with their acid, and it only temporarily blinded him with his powers already on the wane. On Earth, with already knowing the danger of that, he would likely take proper precautions not to have that happen again.
And yes actually, he could beat them without killing them. After he subdued them he'd likely send them to the Phantom Zone. | 14 |
ELI5: Why do children build forts? | Why do children always feel the need to build forts? It seems that children do not discuss forts as vital to their existence. But many children make them without the knowledge that other children make them as well. Is building a home for ourselves in our nature even as children? Does this have anything to do with nesting? | 48 | Many aspects of play behaviour are mimicking adult behaviours. Children who built forts, play homes, play schools, or play workplaces are in many ways mimicking what they see adults doing. Part of play behaviour in mammals is for the young to develop and train the physical and cognitive aspects that will enable them to function as adults. In order to do this they must first practice these adult skills through play.
There are other aspects of play that may overlap or may be completely separate from mimicking adult behaviour. These include, but are not limited to: strengthening the body, understanding physical limitations, setting up peer and social groups, learning how to be a part of a social network, learning how to resolve disputes, or setting up a power structure. All mammals engage in play, and for reasons quite similar or exactly similar to our own in some cases. | 48 |
[Terminator] I'm stood roasting a T-1000 with a flamethrower. Please tell me it'll kill it or I'm dead. | 82 | You can kill a T-1000 with heat so it really matters how hot you got it and for how long. One known T-1000 was destroyed after being in molten steel for not that long a time, about 30 seconds. Molten Steel is about 1500 degrees. A flame thrower gets to about 1000 degrees. So there is a decent chance you killed it if you kept the flame on it for like a minute or two. | 61 |
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[startrek]how is it possible that the federation can go centuries without any contact with hostile races (IE the Romulans & Klingons) that directly border their territory, on Earth today governments maintain diplomatic relations with states the officially loathe? | 32 | The distances you're talking about in these cases are ridiculously vast, to start with, so you really have to be going out of your way to come into contact with someone; using two way communication to organise meet-ups and so forth. | 29 |
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[Endgame] Why did this happen the exact same way 3 different times? | I'm talking about the order of the stones in the gauntlet. With Thanos, it made sense. As he got them, he filled them in. But then after they collect the stones in Endgame and assemble it, they put it together in the exact same way as Thanos, just inverted because it's for a different hand. Then, when Tony gets the stones from Thanos in the finale, he once again assembles them in the exact same way. I highly doubt anyone took the time to memorize what order the stones where on the Gauntlet during Infinity War. So how and why did they assemble it the exact same way 3 different times? | 548 | It could very well be that they assumed the order had significance to how the stones function together. Obviously, something as powerful and far-reaching as the snap is the stones playing off of each other's power; So, they may have thought the order was important.
It's not far fetched that Tony might have looked back at recordings taken by his suit to see what order the stones were in on the gauntlet. | 793 |
ELI5: How did hydrocarbon lakes (oil and gas) form on Titan if Earths formed from broken down biological material? | Titan is one of Saturn's moons. There are more hydrocarbons on Titan than there is on the earth. All of ours (or so I believe) formed from broken down biological material. How did Titan come to be with so much hydrocarbon material present without ever having life? | 36 | Hydrocarbons, especially the simpler ones prevalent on Titan (methane, ethane), can be produced geologically as well. Titan also has a lot of nitrogen in its atmosphere (most of it is nitrogen), and the interaction between simple hydrocarbons, nitrogen, and sunlight/radiation gives rise to more complex hydrocarbons. | 19 |
[The Elder Scrolls/ General Fantasy] How does a short burst of fire or ice instantly kill somebody? | As a mage/ mercenary who makes a living offing bandits I recently came upon a conundrum. I've little experience with medicine or healing so how does the magic I use instantly kill somebody?
I understand that lightning could stop somebody's heart or mess up their brain, but how how does a burst of fire drop a bandit like a sack of potatoes? I know fire kills, but it usually takes a while and even those killed in house fires usually die of smoke inhalation as opposed to burns. | 217 | A strong burst of magical fire to the torso will raise your internal temperatures so much that your muscles start to cook. Soon the muscles in your heart and ribs are soft and unresponsive and you'll keel over and die.
Edit: And ice will damage their blood vessels enough to achieve the same effect | 179 |
Why, in popular media, are black holes depicted as flat? Wouldn't they be spherical like a planet? | 20 | They are spherical, and they are generally depicted as such. It's just that when you portray a spherical object in a 2D image, it looks like a circle.
What can be flat is the accretion disk, the gas and plasma that's orbiting and falling into the black hole. It forms a disk because any gas not orbiting in the disk would collide with the disk and become part of it. Gas and plasma are highly collisional and will exchange angular momentum quickly until they're orbiting in a relatively smooth, circular orbit. | 61 |
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Why do British singers seem to lose their accent? | I've heard that this has something to do with old English sounding more like American English today - is that true? | 111 | Singing is not the same as speaking. If you take classes on how to sing they teach you to open your mouth certain ways and to breath certain ways. There are more efficient ways to make sound when singing and these are pretty much universal.
It's not so much that British singers sound more American, it's that all singers lose their accents when singing. Whether you're American, British, Chinese, Russian... good singing produces similar sounds. | 136 |
ELI5: How do you grow thick skin mentally? How does a brain not care about someone's opinion? | What I always hear is "grow thick skin". I guess there should be a process to do that or a mental training. But how?
I don't talk about insensitivity or sociopath behaviour, but more like being toughy when it comes to little problem. | 29 | One thing that helps is experience, the first time someone expresses a negative opinion of someone, they have no idea what's going to result, and they're bound to wonder about all the potential results. When it's happened many times before with either nothing occurring or something positive happening (like bonding with anyone else who had the negative opinion expressed about them), the event isn't going to be as stressful.
Another thing that helps is feeling secure in your position. If someone knows that they are highly valued by others, they're not going to risk losing that relationship over a external complaints or opinions.
Finally, making the realization that when you do something embarrassing, many of the people you think noticed probably didn't actually notice, or only care for a short period of time. | 23 |
[Star Wars] If dueling against a Sith/Jedi with a lightsaber requires precognition, how was Pre Vizsla able to keep up with Darth Maul? | As far as we know, he wasn't Force sensitive nor did he have any enhancements like Grievous. In fact, he might have been slower than he could have been since his armor would weigh him down or impede him movement, however slightly. | 25 | > If dueling against a Sith/Jedi with a lightsaber requires precognition
It doesn't. It's just extremely helpful.
Cad Bane once fought Obi-Wan with another Jedi's light saber, and while he didn't win, he held his own for a minute or so. | 49 |
[jojo part 2] how did the pillar men get their abilities and were they ever human? | I’m sure this is probably explained and I either forgot or missed it. Buuut I’m afraid to google anything jojo because every time I get spoilers for stuff I haven’t seen | 22 | They were a separate race altogether who lived on earth thousands of years ago. They were a powerful race that had low reproductive rates which was evened out due to their immortality. They were weak to the sun so they mostly lived underground. We don’t know if they interacted with humans all that much but we do know that they tried to stop Kars when he grew dissatisfied with their society not taking over the world and created the stone masks as a way of controlling and feeding off of humans. So there was a live and let live relationship before Kars took over. | 24 |
CMV: People who still support Trump may not be racist but they are ok with his racist rhetoric and actions... | People who still support Trump may not be racist but they are ok with his racist rhetoric and actions which just seems like racism with extra steps making him a spokesperson some may say...from his support of keeping confederate monuments and bases named after traitors to his defense of white supremacist protestors, the confederate flag and calling countries predominantly populated with POC shithole countries the man has made it pretty clear where he stands. Why do his supporters turn a blind eye? If you support Trump then you are saying the hurtful things he says are OK... | 32 | This is like saying that Bill Clinton supporters are ok with cheating on your wife. When there are only two presidential candidates, you have to pick one. When you only have two choices, neither are going to line up perfectly with everything you believe. So you have to pick the lesser of two evils. I’d disagree that Trump uses racist rhetoric, but he is definitely careless and impulsive with his words and tweets. But he has been in office for years at this point and he hasn’t turned any of that rhetoric into racist policy at this point. It’s perfectly legitimate for someone who hates racism but also doesn’t want insane taxes, hate speech laws, or a welfare state to pick the lesser evil-that being Trump. | 16 |
Question about the center of the universe | Yesterday in my first year astronomy course my prof was lecturing about the start of the universe and how it has been constantly expanding since the Big Bang 14 billion years ago. He went over how the closer an object is to the expanding frontier the more quickly it is also expanding outwards and comparatively how objects close to that single point where the Big Bang happened are expanding out much slower. I have a few questions about this:
1. Would that single point at the center of the universe where the Big Bang originally happened not be expanding at all?
2. What would be at the center of the universe where the Big Bang happened?
3. What is beyond the expanding universe? Just nothingness?
Of course nobody has the exact right answer to these questions, I'm asking just to find out about some of the popular theories behind them. | 26 | >Would that single point at the center of the universe where the Big Bang originally happened not be expanding at all?
There is no middle of the universe. The Big Bang was the sudden expansion of all space.
>What would be at the center of the universe where the Big Bang happened?
See above.
>What is beyond the expanding universe? Just nothingness?
The universe is expected to be (as evidence has shown) flat and infinite. Beyond our observable universe is (as the universe appears to be homogenous and isotropic - i.e. the same everywhere) likely more of the same. This is evidenced by the apparent gravitational affects of bodies outside of our observable universe on objects on the edge of our observable universe. | 23 |
ELI5: I just read about IMAX's new theater laser projectors. How does a small group of lasers draw a 4K image on a 100' screen? | [Here is the article.](http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/10/imax-laser-projection/) I read I remember watching laser shows at my science museum when I was a kid. I remember thinking that the laser must move really quickly to draw these simple stick type images but it didn't seem too difficult to do. But projecting a full 4K image 24 times a second with just a few lasers doesn't seem possible. How does it work? I read the short Wikipedia article about laser projectors but it didn't clarify how it actually works. | 30 | There is no dot scanning super fast accross the screen.
Lasers can be collimated to long-focused dots like you see in a laser pointer or a laser light show, but they don't have to be. They can spread out and illuminate a large surface as well. This is exactly what's happening with laser projectors. An image is illuminated similarly to how it would be in a traditional projector, but instead of a light bulb, lasers are used as the light source.
Why?
- They last longer.
- They're precise in color. Your eye only needs Red Green and Blue light to reconstruct a true color image. Lasers generate very clean, precise color to illuminate the image with, and this color can be tuned to the peak receptive properties of your eye.
- They're power efficient. You can concentrate the power in the colors you need, so you don't end up wasting it on nearby fringes. You also get more light for your electricity (and less heat) than you get with a light bulb | 11 |
ELI5: The European Union (EU). What is it, and what does it mean to be part of it? | Assume I'm starting with almost no information, as I am not European and don't have much understanding of these matters. Pros/cons also welcome. | 29 | The EU is an economic and political union of independent countries.
OK, so what does that actually *mean*?
Firstly, economic union. The EU started out as the EEC (European Economic Community) which was essentially a free-trade pact between some of the major European countries. The idea was that they would reduce and eventually eliminate tariffs and trade regulations between the countries, to make it easier for their companies to sell products and services internationally.
Over time the aims of the EEC widened to include political goals, such as common regulation of laws including those not directly relating to free trade agreements. Notably a treaty in 1992, the Maastricht Treaty, effectively transformed the EEC from a purely trade-based community to become the EU, with a stated goal of "ever-closer economic and political union".
Today the EU comprises 28 countries and over half a billion people. Member states are -- in theory at least -- on a slow but steady progression to ultimately creating a United States of Europe, which would be a federal entity similar in some ways to the USA.
As part of this there are laws which mean that a citizen of any EU country can go to live and work in any other without requiring any permissions, just as a Californian can go to live in Massachussets without needing a passport or permission to do so. There is also a move towards creating a single currency for all the countries, although not all EU member countries use the Euro, and it looks likely that one of the members, Greece, will soon have to revert to another currency. | 19 |
[Mod Post] Updated Rules, Wiki, and Introduction of a "CMV Post of the day!" | **This is Mod post 35. You can read the previous Mod Post by clicking [here](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1iz66f/mod_post_looking_for_wiki_contributers/), or by visiting the [Mod Post Archive](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modpostarchive) in our wiki.**
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Hey, all. We have some new rules and other stuff that I think will be much appreciated. I don't want to make this post super long, so I'll dive right into the most important bits.
1. **Updated submission rule D**: now includes a restriction **requiring moderator approval to post from a throwaway account.** This is *not* an outright ban on throwaway accounts, [since as we mentioned in the wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_d) there are definitely legitimate times when throwaways are necessary.
2. **New comment rule 5**: no "low effort" comments. Similar to subreddits like /r/games, /r/askscience, /r/askhistorians, etc. etc. we will start removing comments that add nothing to the discussion. Reaction gifs, memes, puns, or one-liner jokes should not be used when commenting in this subreddit.
3. **Updated wiki**: certain parts of the [Popular Topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics) desperately needed some updating, so we updated it. In particular, the Social Justice section has been totally updated and is essentially complete.
4. **CMV Post of the day**: consider this one to be an experiment, unlike the other 3 additions above. Recently, the [reddit admins implemented a much needed sticky feature](http://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1jr429/moderators_you_can_now_sticky_a_selfpost_to_the/) that allows the moderators to sticky one self-post to the top of the subreddit (full details can be found in the linked thread). Using this new feature, we want to try out something new rather than just pinning the rules up top: **featuring a CMV thread.**
The posts we are looking to feature should have **unique, thought-provoking discussions** and will probably not be found in the Popular Topics wiki. We want to give those posts that are super awesome but end up getting stuck in the new queue a chance at getting the attention they deserve. So far, there's no criteria for how we will pick these threads, but I think once things start going we'll figure one out. If an OP of a thread doesn't want their post stickied, we will of course respect that decision.
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That's all for now.
Regards, the moderators of /r/changemyview. | 49 | Its important to realize that rule D's addition is a failsafe. We don't want people making throwaways with the specific purpose of coming to this sub and preaching, which is something we see often. Also, trolls often use throwaways to make ridiculous threads in which they defend a ridiculuosly controversial viewpoint. We'd expect that requiring mod permission would discourage trolls, and increase posts made by a throaway for the right reasons.
But if the rule doesnt work it can always be revoked. No big. | 11 |
There should be height classes in basketball that work similarly to weight classes in some of the other sports. CMV! | For example, have a division for players that are 6'8" and taller to play with each other, then a division for 6'2" to 6'7", and a division for 6'1" and shorter.
Sports such as weightlifting, powerlifting, MMA, etc have weight classes so that body weight, which is an obvious advantage in strength, can be accounted for in judging more objectively the athletes' skill levels. It seems that since being taller is an advantage in basketball, height classes could work too. And seeing how height is much harder to change than weight, it makes sense. This would enable players who may have the dribbling skills, the shots, and so on but just lack the height. This isn't an exercise in political correctness, this is a measure to leave no talent go unrecognized.
Maybe I'm just ignorant about how basketball works. Maybe people watch NBA not for the players' dexterity with the balls, but because they like to see gigantic motherfuckers running around kind of like a circus. But I think such a measure would be interesting to see, and not too impractical. If you disagree, change my view! | 32 | Because basketball is a team sport, there is a division of labor among players of different heights on the court. Basketball is interesting because different players on the team all have something to contribute *despite* their height. Very tall players are able to block shots and rebound effectively, but may not have the quickness necessary to drive to the hoop, nor the agility and coordination to maintain extreme control while dribbling the ball or shoot with finesse. Smaller players use their speed and dexterity to dynamically move around on offense and defense and distribute the ball around the floor - they are also generally the better shooters. You need both in order to have a basketball team with a complete skill set.
Height isn't the same sort of inherent advantage in basketball that it is in those that are more closely aligned to strength - speed, court vision, agility, dexterity, shot selection, and shooting touch all play a major role in what a basketball player can contribute.
If you want, you can think of it as height classes that *already exist* in terms of the roles people fulfill. PG is 6'4 and under, SG is 6'3-6'7, SF is 6'6-6'9, PF is 6'8-6'11, and C is 6'10+ (I know this is a generalization, and there are some players that play those positions that don't fall in that height range, but it should be about right). | 38 |
ELI5: Does more volume from a speaker use more energy? | For example, when you're listening to music in the car. If the volume is fairly low in the car, will it use less of the car's battery as opposed to having the music blasted? | 26 | Yes. Every 3dB increase in sound pressure level corresponds to a doubling of output power. For a speaker with an 89 dB reference efficiency, this means that 1 Watt produces 89 dB, 92 dB requires 2 Watts, 95 dB 4 Watts, 98 dB 8 Watts, 101 dB 16 Watts, and so forth. | 16 |
Why do we still use Rockets to get into Space? | I know that seems like a very stupid question but hear me out first.
When it comes to getting to space the main thing we use is rocket power. Basically we just create a controlled explosion in order to lift us off into space. Now my question is wouldn't it be cheaper to bring the shuttle to higher orbit and THEN send it into space?
If any of you have seen the Superman movie (the most recent one) you know what I am getting at. In the film a space shuttle hitched a ride on the back of a large airliner which brought the shuttle to a very high altitude. (see image below)
[Superman_Space_Shuttle](http://mag.awn.com/issue11.04/11.04images/super07_SupermanReturns-FX-.jpg)
Now think about the logic behind this. There would no longer be a need to worry about getting the shuttle of the ground. Rather than having to create rockets with enough force to blast it out into space we would only need to take the shuttle up and then give it enough of a jump to break out of the atmosphere.
This not only seems like a cost effective way but a smarter way to go about this. So why aren't we doing it?
| 28 | "Up" is not the issue. "Fast" is the issue.
A typical airplane cruises at or below about five hundred miles an hour. In order to get into low-Earth orbit, you have to accelerate to *seventeen thousand* miles an hour.
That takes propellant. A lot of it. A space shuttle on the launching pad weighs four and a half million pounds. That's the same as six fully-loaded 747s. | 77 |
ELI5:The truce between Nazi Germany and the Japanese | I just finished watching the first few episodes of The Man in the High Castle (A great show by the way) but it lead me to thinking. How did the truce between Japan and the Nazis take place? Why didn't the Nazis turn on the Japanese instead the Russians? It would seem to me that the Japanese were much less 'Aryan' then the Russians. Was Hitler only interested in conquering Europe or was he eventually looking for world domination? | 215 | It was an alliance of convenience, more than anything. Japan and Germany were far enough apart that there wasn't any real threat of direct competition. However, Japan could keep Pacific countries busy, namely the US navy, and keep those resources otherwise occupied. However, if they had succeeded, they probably would have come to blows eventually. | 107 |
If I stand 5ft away from a mirror and look at my reflection, do my eyes focus on an object that is 5th away, or 10ft away? | Obviously the mirror is 5ft away, but does the illusion of depth cause one's eyes to focus on their own reflection as if it is twice the distance that they are from the mirror? | 224 | 10 feet. Your perception of depth is just how the light hits your eyes. You can draw a line from your foot to the mirror to your eyes, and then follow the line from your eye to the mirror and keep going to behind the mirror. The light didn’t actually come from behind the mirror, but it is as if it did, and you perceive it as if it did. I’m glossing over details of how you actually perceive depth, but that’s the basic idea. | 141 |
Why is a hollow tube more stable than a solid tube? | 142 | If you're talking about the bending strength of a hollow vs. solid rod there are really two answers.
For a constant outside diameter the solid rod is much stronger. There is a lot more material to take the force.
However, for a given weight or amount of material the hollow rod is much stronger. A hollow rod that weighs the same as a solid rod will be much wider so the force will be spread over a much larger area.
Bending strength in this case is proportional to the moment of inertia which for a constant mass is higher if the mass is distributed further away from the center.
In a situation where weight or material cost is a concern you're better off using the largest diameter hollow rod you can. If weight or cost is not a problem than the biggest solid rod will be the strongest thing you can use.
I should note that there is a practical limitation to this. If you make the tube wall thin enough and apply the force over a small enough area the tube will "dimple" forming a small depression around where the force is applied. As soon as the tube loses its nice round shape its strength dramatically decreases and failure becomes much more likely. | 165 |
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[Firefly] How does the Hands of Blue 'sonic weapon' work, and why would covert operatives use such a device over other weapons? | 22 | I think it uses sound waves to burst all the blood vessels in the brain.
As for why they would use such weapons? Well in a universe where great secrets can be stolen directly from someone's brain we better make sure the entire thing is turned to to soup. It's better safe than sorry. | 34 |
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If I accelerate and collect some particles produced by Unruh radiation in a jar. If I go to a friend who didn't accelerate and open the jar, what will we see? | Let me elaborate on this thought experiment.
So, I have a friend in an inertial frame of reference watching my every move with cameras and telescopes.
I accellerate till I notice Unruh radiation, let's say I accelerate hard enough to see electrons and positrons. I open up a jar and collect some electrons in it. In the meantime, my friend has seen every action, but sees no Unruh radiation. He just sees me waving around with my jar in the vacuum.
But then I slow down and head back to him in his inertial frame of reference and show him the jar.
He knows the jar is empty, because he has seen me put nothing but a vacuum in them. I know there are electrons in the jar, because I've put them in myself.
What would we see if we open the jar? Is it empty? or not?
If there are electrons, how did they emerge in my friends point of view?
If there are no electrons, where are they now?
And what about conservation of charge? | 104 | Very good question. The answer is that the presence/absence of particles is observer dependent, in particular it depends on your definition of vacuum (in case you have a strong background in physics this is related to the existence of a timelike Killing vector, that provides a preferred notion of time and hence a definition of positive frequency modes that we can associate with particles).
There is nevertheless no inconsistency or paradox, 2 observers in a curved spacetime won't agree on the particle content but will agree on the Energy-Momentum tensor and they know also how to calculate what each other sees.
In the particular example you provide, the jar will be empty for both observers once you go back to an inertial reference frame. | 13 |
What are the pros and cons of container technology? | What are the pros and cons of using containers for development projects (e.g. docker)? We're developing a way that easily allows you to dockerize your projects and set up your development environment and would love the community's input on the pros and cons of containers | 32 | Containers are relatively lightweight, meaning each developer can run the whole stack on their laptop and work in an isolated environment, even if a VM-based solution like Vagrant might crash the same machine.
Dockerfiles or compose files can become a maintenance burden all their own.
You can't assume that your container environment will be identical to your production environment, unless your production environment itself is containerized.
Easy and safe access to the running app can drastically speed up code-test-iterate cycles.
With decent tooling, managing the containers can be painless. The trade-off is that setting up the tooling is an up-front pain in the ass. `docker-compose` and `make` are your best friends. | 35 |
ELI5: Why and how does water get trapped in your ear and why is it sometimes difficult to get the water out? | 4,000 | Water is sticky. It sticks to itself and other things. This allows it form thin films in enclosed spaces. The tiny hairs in your ears can support the film making it stand up against gravity. So in the right conditions water will essentially form a "bubble" trapped in your ear, supported by the tiny hairs in there. | 2,821 |
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What would be the economic consequences of making it law for enterprises to share x amount of their profits equally with workers? | Minimum wage laws are bad because they needlessly raise the value if labour above market prices and hurt profits.
Of removing minimum wage laws would increase profits, then how would Enterprises respond to a law forcing them to share, say, 50% of their profits equally among all workers?
It seems like a good compromise,because workers would only get compensated as long as the business is making a profit. | 17 | The issue with this proposal is it's very easy to change the amount of profit by reinvesting into the business, either through capital or labor. There's no guarantee that such reinvestment would benefit the lower wage workers of the business. | 15 |
ELI5: Why does college cost so much in the U.S.A? | Being from the UK and worrying about loans scraping £10k and getting a shock when I realised there are people with well over a hundred grand's worth of debt for further education in the States. Why? What is actually being paid for that we don't get here?
Edit: Woah, this really blew up while I was sleeping. | 2,477 | Because student loans are very easy to get and impossible to get rid of (our bankrupcy laws don't forgive student loan debt) so colleges can keep raising the price and 18 year olds don't know enough to care about debt. | 2,790 |
ELI5: Images taken from Space | I love looking at the pictures we capture from space (r/spaceporn is a great sub-reddit!), I just don't really understand how they are taken. Are the colors in the photographs the "actual" colors of the astronomical events, or are they super-imposed? I have a bunch of questions, but don't want to sound like an idiot, so if someone could just give an overview of what these images actually show and the process behind them, I would be very appreciative. | 26 | Space is dark and boring as clouds of gas and dust block most of the light we could otherwise see. We have to use technology like x-rays, infrared, radio, etc. which can see through all the dust and gas to reveal what the universe is made up of. We then assign colors to the elements such as blue for hydrogen, green for oxygen, etc. and the glorious pictures you see over at r/spaceporn are born. They look absolutely nothing like what you would see in real life as they are false color images, but they sure are pretty. | 20 |
[Loki] Does the Varient’s plan make sense? | In episode 2, it seems that >!Sylvie’s!< plan is to >!bomb the sacred timeline!<, and although it isn’t explicitly stated why (unless I’m missing something), it seems like >!she!< is ultimately trying to >!distract the TVA so that she can reach the Time Keepers and kill them!<.
But this week, it showed us that >!she can restore the minute men’s memories by enchanting them!<, so that got me thinking. Instead of >!luring a bunch of minute men into traps to kill them and take their reset charges for some elaborate plot to bomb the timeline!<, wouldn’t it make more sense to just >!lure them into those same traps and restore their memories!< instead? That way, >!she could just raise up an army to overthrow the Time Keepers!<. | 19 | An army can be tracked a lot easier than one variant. You also saw the mental condition of the first agent we see her enchant; absolute shambles. Not everyone is ready to face that level of truth and then go on to fight back against the TVA. Sylvie's plan relies on no other factors besides Sylvie herself, which seems to fit her character.
Killing them is faster, has less variables, and as you saw she did not require an army to face the Time Keepers. If MCU Variant Loki hadn't interfered, she most likely would have succeeded. | 32 |
[The Matrix] Who is the blind man in the apartment lobby? | When he first brings Neo to meet the Oracle, Morpheus nods silently in greeting to a blind man sitting alone in the building's lobby. Who is this man? A guardian like Seraph? Seraph himself in a previous incarnation? | 38 | He is, for lack of a better term, a logic gate. When they approach, the program essentially "scans" them to see if they had been requested by the Oracle; if they *had* been then the door would lead to her apartment, if not then the door would open to an empty room. The man is blind because he *feels* instead of sees. He is not a "guardian" because he would be entirely unable to defend himself, let alone anyone or anything else.
He is sort of a gatekeeper. | 71 |
How does a computer know what adding is? | 24 | Computer doesn’t know or understand the concept of what adding is. Its just bunch of circuits that turns on or off. You put bunch of these circuits together in a specific way and it will be able to add binary numbers together and even be able to store it in a memory. If you want to know more you should look into computer architecture and learn about logic gates, ALU, CPU. | 56 |
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ELI5 how does skin hold moisture , and what causes dry skin? | 54 | Water and oil don't like to mix together. You've probably noticed this when cooking, as oil will float on top of the water. Well our bodies, being clever and all, secrete oil onto our skin. This layer of oil traps moisture from escaping, as water doesn't like oil and won't want to cross this barrier. Dry skin is what happens when this oil barrier is removed and moisture is allowed to leave. | 39 |
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CMV: The United States should officially replace "Columbus Day" with Indigenous Peoples Day, as many city governments have been doing in the last couple of years | Columbus Day marks its 80th anniversary as an official U.S. holiday this year, and I think it's a good round number to call it a day for this outdated, offensive holiday.
The holiday was originally perpetuated by what was then an oppressed minority, Italian Roman Catholics, so that they could be celebrated in the official U.S. culture and therefore become part of the fabric of America. Now of course they are wholly considered as part of White America, which enjoys the utmost privilege and freedom of any group in America, so it's about time for the next, *truly* oppressed minority to get its shot.
Indigenous people (Native Americans) have never truly been celebrated in America or been part of the national cultural fabric. The biggest presence in our culture I can think of in the last 30 years is [an anti-littering commercial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_America_Beautiful) (where, ironically, an Italian played the Native American), and a Saved by the Bell special where Zack Morris celebrates his heritage. Yet these people were the original human beings to call the American continent home.
It goes without saying that Columbus was a reprehensible human being. It's one thing to colonize a new land and spread disease unintentionally, but to *intentionally* rape, pillage and decimate is another thing altogether. That's what Columbus did. No reputable historian or student of history denies this reality. Yet, out of a mere 10 national federal holidays America chooses to honor, we give **this guy** one?
So I can't think of any reasonable argument for keeping Columbus Day, and since there is a large growing movement to usurp it with Indigenous Peoples Day, that is the replacement we should go with. You could argue all day about what title might be "better to go with", but the trend already exists for Indigenous Peoples Day and I believe it is most fitting anyhow; it's about time the most invisible oppressed minority in this country gets a shot at recognition.
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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!* | 494 | Holidays aren't about playing little violins for oppressed minorities. They're about keeping certain traditions alive, celebrating important historical events and signifying certain human themes(like death this month!), and adjusting to seasonal changes to a lesser extent. An indigenous peoples day would be widely mocked, partly because the name is just too much, and of course because it's a super pretentious way to pretend to care about the difficulties of American Indians but do nothing significant about it. It would also cause completely unnecessary controversy and upset by replacing another holiday. The day would basically become not a holiday, but a day of political grandstanding. Might as well call it National Asshat Day. | 160 |
Are there any particles that don't interact with eachother at all? | The phrase 'particle x _interacts_ with particly y' is often used, and that got me thinking.. Do some combination of particles never interact with one another? | 193 | If by nothing else, all particles must interact with one another via gravity.
But forgetting about that, you can find specific combinations of particles in the standard model which do not directly couple to one another. For example neutrinos do not couple to photons. | 94 |
ELI5: How do specially shaped (hearts, smiley faces, etc) fireworks work? | Happy 4th! | 38 | so as you know when something explodes it explodes out in a sphere if you have something to serve as a resist you can shape the charge but that's not what's going on here.
so picture a ball and all along that ball's perimeter put little dots. as the ball expands (explodes) the balls along the perimeter are pushed out, each one of them have a wick and when they have been pushed a certain distance they will light up, or explode, or crackle depending on what the charge is. that's how you get a basic circle, a smiley face is just like that but inside you have a few more dots. these dots are actually fireworks in their own right, sitting inside another firework.
most the shapes you will see have some radial symmetry...this is because they are easier.
so, you might ask, how do they know how to make the wick so it goes off at just the right time? mostly...math...and some very, very, very precise packing and wick usage. fireworks can't have very large variances in the yield of the explosive it must be uniform and it must explode at the right speed. so given the speed of the explosion they set the wicks on the secondary explosive which must also be precise. variation from wick to wick will make a very weird looking smiley face...so they must be precise and accurate.
the amount of engineering that goes into fireworks is frankly astounding. | 10 |
[World War Z - the book] Wouldn't it have made more sense to have tanks drive around running over zombies en-masse at Yonkers rather than having troops make difficult headshots? | Seriously, get your troops away from whatever death zone you are planning just outside of Yonkers, make sure it is mostly flat and open, then holler like bedickens for the zombies to come. Then run them over in your tank. | 114 | Yonkers was the first fight against the dead. Noone knew what they were doing, needed to do, or what they were up against yet. It was going to be a show of force. Plus, tanks may not have been the best choice as they could have been immobilized by the body piles, jammed treads, and the fact that, believe it or not that hoard stretched back to times sqaure and was more or less a pushing force that could have pushed against a tank well enough to stop it. The dead were uncountable there... | 97 |
[DOOM] Two questions about Hell | First: While in Hell, we see a number of dead bodies. Human bodies. If someone dies in Hell, where do they go?
Second: Hell has a moon, or possibly a second planet, orbiting it. Do we know what's on it? | 19 | I don't necessarily think that this Hell dimension is the kind of hell people who die with unresolved issues or "sins" are sent to.
This hell is the sort of place that sometimes leaked into our world, inspiring the stories that led to our tales of "hell" as it's written in various religious traditions.
We don't know what's on the Hellmoon. Hopefully, we'll find out soon when Doomguy breaks free and punches his way to fleet-commander.
I bet that moon has huge guts, the kind that would be delightful to rip. and to tear. | 38 |
Why is it impossible to determine the position and momentum of a quantum particle at the same time? | 16 | There's a close musical analogy: the position of a particle is analogous to the timing of a note, and the momentum is analogous to the note's pitch.
In order for a note's pitch to be determinate, it has to last long enough that we can see a few waveforms, but then the note must be 'smeared' over an interval of time. Conversely, if a sound is incredibly precise in time then it won't be long enough to have a well-defined pitch - it'll just be a 'click'. | 23 |
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ELI5: How does Internet/bandwidth "cost" an ISP money? | I love analogies... So please use those! I understand when you stop at a gas station and fill your tank, you are taking their resources. But what 'resources' are you taking from an ISP? Aren't they basically the messenger? | 31 | You are paying for:
* The cost of building and maintaining all the wires in your area
* The cost of running and maintaining the servers that process and pass along your messages tot eh right places
* Smaller ISPs "rent" their wires and infrastructure from larger ISPs, who in turn "rent" it from even larger ISPs and organizations. This also costs money.
* The cost of improving everything in the system, and expanding internet access to new areas.
* Paying salaries and profit for the ISP. | 20 |
Why might a programmer decide to use a third-party package ? | as part of their program/application? | 22 | Pick one or more:
* Can't be bothered to write their own
* Straight-up **can't** write their own
* Don't have the time to write their own
* Found really nice documentation that makes their problem easier
* Used the library previously and don't want to re-learn a new one
Third-party packages / libraries range everything from "pad this string to a certain size" to "do 3D electromagnetic simulation at 60GHz". It's hard to talk about the whole thing as one set without being extremely vague. | 42 |
Do skin grafts include nerves, and if so do they retain the sensitivity of thier original location? | 2,680 | No. The nerve terminals within the grafted tissue are dead.
Nerve fibers project to the skin from their cell bodies next to the spine. The underlying nerve fibers underneath the graft will slowly grow into the grafted skin, and sensation/function will return. | 1,878 |
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ELI5: Project MKUltra | 162 | In the 1950's the US government was really scared of communism. The newly-created CIA at that time was tasked with making sure their country stayed good and capitalist, while also researching ways to repel communism overseas.
A lot of research was put into mind control ("brainwashing") to try and undertand a few things more fully, among them the possibility that someone could be turned into a double agent without knowing it. This idea was investigated as a way to both identify communists operating here in the US and also as a possible method to infiltrate the Soviet Union with homeland spies, people born and raised as soviets but secretly (and possibly unknowingly) working for the USA.
This program, namex MK Ultra, used a lot of questionable techniques as forms of "research," including dosing unwilling subjects with hallucinogenic drugs, forcing them into unnatural and dangerous social settings to gauge their reactions, subjecting them to sensory deprivation and isolation, as well as things we now recognize as flat-out torture.
Seeing as how the CIA was a new organization operating in secrecy, and that communism was seen as such a huge threat during the Red Scare, many of these programs and experiements went on unreported and unchecked for years. As the truth started coming to light in the 1970's the government tried to keep things quiet, both to save face and also to keep the progressive liberal movement from knowing just how far the government was willing to go in the name of national security.
Edit: spellung | 57 |
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CMV: People who use the traditional arguments to support Gay marriage should also support every other form of forbidden marriage. | Let me first explain what I mean by "traditional arguments for Gay marriage", it's mainly these two:
* Freedom of choice: The state should not interfere with an individual's choice of who they want to be with.
* Equality: Denying marriage for a certain group of people is clear discrimination against those people.
As for other forms of normally forbidden marriages/relationships: Mainly Polygamy and Incest. You could argue that these forms of forbidden marriage have their own reasons for not being acceptable by the law, but the arguments that stand for gay marriage also stand for these. And just like forbidding gay marriage is against freedom and equality, so is forbidding these particular two.
Other forms of forbidden marriage such as pedophilia or bestiality are not between two consenting adults and it's easier to dismiss them, so I won't bring them in to the discussion. But the arguments against both incest and polygamy- such as gene problems, rivalry between wives/husbands- can all be dealt with by adults, and regular marriages go through very similar problems.
From my perspective, it's extremely contradictory and hypocritical to argue passionately for gay marriage but recoil in disgust when incest or polygamy is even mentioned. Yet that is by far the mainstream response. To my understanding, people who consider these kinds of relationships immoral/illegal have the same main reason for denying them as people who are anti-gay marriage: It's gross, it's not normal, it's weird, God forbids it etc.
Change my view!
Edit: When talking about incest I am not talking about cousin marriages, since that's relatively legal in most of the world, but about other forms of incest, mainly sibling incest, which is almost globally unacceptable
| 178 | You are correct for the comparison of gay marriage to polygamous marriage.
Both are contract between two or more consenting adults that presumably have a plan in place.
The problem with incestuous marriage is that they have a problem that gay and polygamous marriages do not.
Incest causes birth defects. While minor at first, over several generations these can become more pronounced. To fully legalize it could create marriages resulting in noticeable spikes in birth defects.
Most states that explicitly allow incestuous marriage do so under some sort of stipulation; such as no sibling marriages, one or more of the pair have to be sterile, etc. | 134 |
I know that girls have hormonal fluctuations based on the menstrual cycle. Do guys' hormones fluctuate regularly as well? | 88 | Not on a monthly basis. Testosterone (T) is released in pulses, but these are usually on the hourly to daily timescale. There's some slight fluctuation over the course of a year, but nothing major. The amount of T also decreases with age, which some call andropause (or colloquially known as manopause). T will also decrease after a male becomes a father. Male hormonal release is known as tonic release instead of the female cyclical release. | 35 |
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ELI5: How did the World Health Organization come to determine that eating processed and red meat causes cancer. | I've read some articles, but how exactly did the study gather and use the data to find the correlation between eating processed and red meats and colorectal, pancreas, stomach and prostate cancer? In statistics, I've always been taught that correlation never shows cause. Furthermore, what do they mean when they classified red meat as "probably carcinogenic to humans"? | 37 | >correlation never shows cause
I think "proves" is a better word than "shows". Correlation won't prove anything, but it can show a link. Red meat was already thought of as something that could potentially increase the risk for cancer, so the correlation was more an additional argument rather than the entire basis.
This has long been under investigation because of the potential risk of nitrites, a class of salts commonly used to cure red meats, as being carcinogens. Many decades ago, nitrites were used in much bigger quantities to help cure meat. As technology got better, meat industries were able to use only a fraction of the curing agents to reach a similar level of protection. Going inline with the whole correlation idea, the incident rate of the associated cancers also started to go down.
So, while not necessarily proven, this definitely gives a strong warning flag for red meat as it's *very* closely tied with the statistics. However, even if red meat is actually the cause, the incident rate is quoted as being between 5-18% higher. Since the original incident rate is already fairly low, this slightly higher chance is not necessarily significant enough to warrant never eating red meat again (conversely as where the incident rate of cancer with smokers is a good sign you never want to smoke). | 20 |
ELI5: Why all the hubbub about Hurricane Sandy when all the weather sites say its not going to be more than a category 1 hurricane? | I believe that it is dangerous, but the news doesn't jibe with what I thought I knew about the categorization system. | 215 | First its the largest hurricane in history on the Atlantic, spread over a 1000 miles 's. Next, it's going to strengthen rather than weaken as it changes to a cold storm and become a nor'easter, which typically creates blizzards over the us. It's also occurring during a full moon which makes the flood and wave effects more pronounced. Lastly the path of the storm, coupled with an off shore high pressure area will make it a slow moving cold cat-2 storm, unlike the typical hurricane which comes quickly and dissipates, this hurricane is going to take almost a week with sustained winds, rains , and waves to pass through. | 281 |
ELI5: Why doesn’t grass grow to be as tall as something like a tree? | I know that when a lawn is left uncut the grass can grow plenty taller than what it’s typically kept at, and there’s plenty of “tall grass” in the wild, but why does it stop growing before getting to much bigger heights; like that of trees? | 277 | The grass most English speakers think of are growing horizontally, along the ground. The upwards parts are just leaves. They’re pretty long, but not the same biomass as a tree. And, as others have mentioned, bamboo. | 199 |
ELI5: If Batman has a hard time stopping the Joker and other non-powered humans, why is he so confident to fight Superman? | 39 | As /u/superguardian has already mentioned, there's the thing that Superman won't kill him. But there's also one thing you're not quite understanding about Batman.
In most incarnations, at least- the Nolan one subverted expectations a little- Batman is known for being prepared for _everything._ He has plans for when each member of the Justice League goes rogue. He has plans for when _every_ member of the Justice League goes rogue. He has plans for if someone gets access to everything he owns. He just plans for _everything._
But the problem is...Joker knows this. And the problem here is, Joker is insane. Not just your regular insane, like Batman himself and most of Batman's enemies. Joker is full batshit(heh) crazy. The shit that he does? You can't plan for that. Not even Batman can plan for all of the shit he does. And that's when Batman gets into serious trouble.
I just wanted to explain here, why it is that Joker is such a great enemy for Batman, and why he could be more confident against Superman. Because he has a _plan._ It might be the hugest stretch...but it's a plan. But Joker? You can't plan for him. | 62 |
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ELI5: Why does cooking things using different sources of heat (i.e. pan seared, grilled, smoked, oven roasted, etc.) produce different tastes? | I've noticed that people always say the food tastes better, or at least different when cooked (grilled) outside or when camping (over an open flame), and I agree, but I don't why it that's true. Does it have to do with what is being burned to create heat, radiated vs conducted heat, temperature, or something else entirely? | 389 | There are two classes of reason. In the first case, of which smoking meat is the best example, *material from the heat source winds up in the food.* Barbecue contains smoke-stuff, and that smoke-stuff has a distinctive taste.
In the other, it all comes down to just how hot the food gets, and how long it stays that hot. Food cooked right on top of charcoal, will have parts that get *really, really hot,* at least where it was right up against the coal. Food cooked in a 400-degree oven, though, won't have any parts that got hotter than 400°.
Naturally, there are combinations of this; fried food has a distinctive flavor that comes from the oil, but also a particular pattern of how it took on heat from the oil. And different kinds of charcoal- some people swear- give different flavors to the meat they cook. | 120 |
Why is the job of an Economist considered a high stress job with long hours, tight deadlines and multiple projects at once? | Everywhere I read, it says that the job of an Economist is stressful especially in the private sector. It involves long hours, tight deadlines, working on multiple projects at once. It also requires extensive contacts and relationship building, something a lot of people cannot do and many find it stressful given the extensive office politics at play.
Can someone explain why the job of an Economist is stressful? | 38 | Private sector economists tend to be employed in finance or litigation consulting, both of which involve long hours and high stress. It's stressful because you're in a relatively high-stress industry. | 39 |
[Monster Survival Guides] The Zombie Survival Guide has good info on surviving and defending against the walking dead; what information would be contained in the following guides? | 1. The Vampire Survival Guide
2. The Werewolf Survival Guide
3. The Demonic Possession/Infestation Survival Guide ( a la The Evil Dead )
Any tips and tricks for dealing with one or all of the aforementioned supernatural threats, on a large scale, for the average person, would be much appreciated. | 19 | The vampire one might have a lot of info regarding being tricked into inviting vampires into your home - watch your language type of thing.
While the zombies had that revolutionary shovel-axe thing, vampires would be effectively countered by wood-core ammo, which would easily deliver silver-infused wood chips straight into their undead chests | 12 |
[TMNT] How would the TMNT Do in the UFC? | Obviously they'd be at a slight disadvantage because their are no weapons allowed. So hypothetically how good could the TMNT be at hand to hand combat?
Also how well suited is Turtle Physiology for hand to hand combat?
Good? Bad? Equal to human? Or what?
| 16 | well first off body blows are off the table unless you think hurting your hand will give you a strategic advantage, but limb manipulation is still in play so a grappler is your best bet to get a victory on a turtle.
the jaws of a mutant turtle may also be significantly different, meaning you might not be able to knock one out with a punch to the jaw like you can a human, or at least you may need to aim differently. another disadvantage for a human striker.
the turtles, as we can see in their many incarnations, are incredibly fit and skilled. These mutants have at least human equivalent strength for their size and olympian agility.
i'm tempted to say any of the turtles could be counted on to take a UFC belt, but i would throw some bucks on a good human grappler for the long odd payout. | 10 |
[Marvel] If the Punisher had to choose between letting a criminal escape and saving an innocent person, what would he pick? | 67 | He'd *probably* save the innocent, depending on who the criminal is. If the bad guy gets away that's not a big deal, the Punisher isn't going to let him have a second of peace. He will hunt him down like the dog he is. | 91 |
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