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Advisor is leaving, but hasn't told me | My PhD advisor is switching schools, but hasn't told me yet. I know about it because my lab mate told me. This upcoming Fall semester is her last semester at my school.
I am wondering 1) what does this mean for my phd and 2) why she hasn't told me.
I am entering my 5th year. I am planning to propose in the Fall and defend in the Spring. I still need to finish up two smallish projects, but the vast majority of my research is completed. In terms of writing, the bulk of that is also done, but I still need to write about the things I've done over this past summer and the small projects between now and graduation. Of the other students in our group, one is entering his 2nd year, and the other is entering his 4th year. It would make sense to tell them right away (although I don't know if the 2nd year has been told) because they will likely move with her.
My main concern is - can my advisor still be my dissertation chair if she leaves the university? I am hoping that the reason my advisor has left me in the dark is because I am so close to graduation, and she knows that the obvious plan for me is to just stay at the current school, work remotely with her for the last semester, and her fly back in for my defense. I don't really know if this is possible, though, and I don't want to ask anyone. I don't want to ask because this is apparently very confidential (my lab mate assumed I knew, and when he found out I didn't know he asked me several times to "pretend to be surprised when she tells you" and to keep it confidential - not even to tell our other lab mates). If I go around asking administrative people about this, it will definitely raise some red flags depending on who knows and who doesn't know. I'm a little worried about asking our graduate school itself because it might raise a red flag. The only information about this in our catalog is:
> Dissertations are chaired by graduate faculty and are selected by agreement between the student and the faculty member. A doctoral student may select only one faculty member as chair of the committee.
Those sentences specifically say graduate *faculty*. How far can that be stretched? Could my advisor stay on as adjunct faculty and chair my committee?
I don't when this decision was made. My lab mate only told me yesterday. I was so surprised that I didn't even think to ask him how long he has known about it. It is a very big deal though because my advisor has been at the school for over 25 years, is a full professor, served as associate dean for a year, and oversees the I/UCRC at our school. The new school is definitely a move up the ladder, but I get the feeling that some department politics are also a motivation.
I have no intention of moving schools with her (it would mean moving states away), mostly because of personal life reasons. However, I've been working with her since I was an undergrad so I absolutely want her to chair my committee. It would feel so wrong to see someone's name as my advisor on my CV after all of this is done.
Does anyone have experience with this? Any thoughts, opinions, etc on what my options will be or why I haven't been told? | 17 | If you'll be less than a semester away from defending when your advisor leaves, and won't need any physical equipment which'd become unavailable to you due to her move, you should be able to finish quite normally and without moving. You'll most likely formally get a new chair of committee, but your advisor will stay on your committee and take main part in correcting your thesis, and attend your defense or follow it through videochat such as Skype, and you can keep calling her your PhD advisor in your CV and everything forever. | 31 |
ELI5: Why does color affect heat absorption? | 15 | It's not color that affect heat absorption. It's the physical propriety of material that absorb different wavelenght of light. So if a material absord all visible wavelength of light it will appear black because it doesn't reflect back light into our eyes.
Alternatively, something white is made of something that reflect all the visible light back so we see the color white.
Something that absorb more wavelength will absorb more energy from that light, which will become heat. | 18 |
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ELI5: Why do we pick scabs? | 92 | For the same reason we might mindlessly pick at some dried glue on our hand--our subconscious mind sees it as something foreign that doesn't belong on our body. Of course, scabs are part of us (at least temporarily), and they're critical for wound healing, which is why the picking stops when our conscious mind kicks in. But it isn't entirely in our heads: The presence of histamines in scabs can make them feel itchy. | 47 |
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How do you transform sound into radio waves? | If my understanding of sound is correct, the pitch is determined by the frequency of the sound.
And radio waves are determined by a certain frequency of the wave itself...
So how are we able to transform the frequency of the sound into radio frequencies, and transform it back while still getting the correct pitch? | 72 | Sound waves travel from a person's voice to a microphone. A diaphragm, attatched to a metal coil, vibrates and produces electrical signals. The sound is now an electrical signal.
Then, the electrical signal is converted into radio waves.
There are two main technologies for turning sound waves into radio waves: AM and FM.
AM, or Amplitude Modulation, works by modulating the amplitude "power" of the radio wave in response to the peaks and valleys of the sound wave.
FM, or Frequency Modulation, combines two waves: the carrier and the sideband. One wave has a constant frequency. The other wave hovers around the constant frequency, but actually changes its wavelength in response to the peaks and valleys of the sound wave.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_modulation#/image/File:Amfm3-en-de.gif A great animation.
The waves then reach your radio set, where they are converted to electrical signals, which are in turn converted into sound by the speakers. | 21 |
[Star Trek Voyager] Why is Harry Kim an ensign for so long? | Ensign Kim is considered a senior officer for meetings, he's bridge staff, and he eventually commands the night watch. So why isn't he promoted?
One reason I thought of is that they have to maintain a balance of ranks, but there were other promotions (like Tuvok) and a demotion *to* ensign (Tom Paris), which would seem to open up a lieutenant position on the bridge. | 37 | *Voyager*, though taking casualties on its journey, presumably did not lose enough crew to warrant promoting people outside their positions. With nobody to replace them from their lower ranks, Janeway would be faced with twelve Lieutenant Commanders and not enough Ensigns beneath them- let alone non-commissioned crew.
Harry did have senior ranking and was given the proper respect due to his experience, but could not be moved out of his position- the crew was already made up and sorted. Perhaps things could change as crew members were lost, but the bridge crew was mostly safe through the journey and thus did not allow for promotions very often. However, given his specific branch, it's likely that Ops simply did not have many openings and was a stagnant line. | 30 |
Why do skydivers have a greater terminal velocity when wearing lead weight belts? | My brother and I have to wear lead to keep up with heavier people. Does this agree with Galileo's findings? | 4,309 | For a quadratic drag force, your terminal velocity is proportional to the square root of your weight. If everything else is the same, an object with a higher mass will have a higher terminal velocity. | 3,416 |
CMV: The notion of changing and identifying as a different gender doesn't make sense at its core. | I believe that gender is a social construct. I also believe it is a social construct built around our sexes and not its own thing. Meaning that the initial traits each sex showed is how we began to expect them. Allowed for norms.
When one person, say a person of male sex, claims that he identifies as a girl (gender), why can he not simply be a man that acts more classically feminine. Is it not contradictory to try to fit a social construct, while simultaneously claiming that the social construct of gender is an issue?
Why not merge gender and sex, but understand both to be a 360˚ spectrum. If you have male genitals you are a man, if you have female genitals you are a woman, but that shouldn't stop either from breaking created gender norms.
I feel as though we have created too many levels and over complicated things when we could just classify to our genitals and then be whatever kind of person we want to be. Identifying gender as a social construct allows it to be a social construct.
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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!* | 342 | What you are referring to as 'gender' when you describe it as a social construct is in fact gender roles (or stereotypes). These are social constructed, yes, but they're not the same thing as gender identity (sometimes called subconscious sex), which is an innate characteristic and not socially constructed.
Trans people don't transition because we prefer one set of stereotypes over the other. We transition because it's human nature to prefer to express one's subconscious sex rather than suppress it, and having sexual characteristics that don't match what the brain expects is often a source of extreme distress. Adopting the roles/stereotyping associated with our genders is frequently necessary if we want to be taken seriously by non-trans people (and sometimes even in order to access medical care). That said, there are plenty of feminine trans guys and butch trans girls out there.
"Why not just be a feminine man/masculine woman?" looks logical at first glance, but it's a bit like saying "Why not just be a straight guy who works in theatre/straight woman who does construction instead of being gay?". Not all gay guys are femme theatre nerds; not all lesbians are butch construction workers, and even if they were, "just be straight and fulfill your identity by acting out a stereotype you don't necessarily even relate to instead of coming out" is seriously counterproductive advice to give someone who's not straight. | 83 |
ELI5: Is the gift of genius a random phenomenon? If not, what is the purpose? | 22 | Unless you're a believer that there's some sort of Grand Engineer out there that is dictating or influencing our lives and existence according to some aim, not everything has a "purpose".
Some people are mentally challenged and can't use their brains in the same way as the norm, and some people are brilliant and can use their brains in ways that exceed the norm. It's the way our genetics works, where sometimes we get over-expressed traits such as intelligence and other times they're under-expressed. And the environment the kid is raised in contributes greatly as well. So it's somewhat random, but the odds that two highly intelligent people will have a smart kid is higher than the odds that two normal-intelligent parents will.
Sometimes, as in an idiot savant, those two extremes are combined in one person. | 12 |
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ELI5: How does antivirus software get created? | With so many viruses and malware out there that can do a variety of harmful effects to your computer (up to corrupting your OS), how do antivirus companies like McAffee and Symantec track and effectively create software to combat these viruses? | 305 | > antivirus companies like **McAffee and Symantec** track and effectively create software to combat
They don't.
More seriously though... AV vendors use a handful of tricks to try to detect and combat malicious software. nothing is perfect, though, they just do their best. Some common techniques:
1. blacklists - this is the most rudimentary thing you can do and is the backbone of essentially all modern anti virus software. If you know that a piece of software is bad, you save a signature of it so that the next time you see it you know it's bad and can stop it. the companies have teams dedicated to analyzing software and creating signatures and constantly update their databases.
2. heuristics - this is more sophisticated, you have your software inspect and examine a piece of unknown software in order to automatically analyze what it does, and you make an educated guess based on it. AV usually have options to dial the heuristics up or down since more stringent heuristics detection means more hits means better protection means more false positives.
3. sometimes an AV will just let an unknown software actually run in an isolated sandbox then watch what it does to see if it does anything bad.
4. if you *really* want to be secure, you can use a whitelist system, where you only allow anything in your database. anything unknown gets blocked. this would be a huge PITA to use and is exceedingly rare, and it's not really traditionally part of an AV either.
| 121 |
[Dark Souls] If many of the bosses are undead like the PC, what makes them permanently die as opposed to just being revived at a bonfire? | 25 | Very few of the bosses you fight are actually undead. A lot of them are demons or dragons or Gods. They aren't branded with the Dark Sign and, consequently, have no connection to the bonfires. Some of the ones that actually are undead don't come back to life because you've stolen their souls or just don't have the will to go on.
There's also the possibility that they do revive, just in a different timeline. With the fading of the flame, the flow of time in Lordran becomes more convoluted as timelines intersect and separate. | 29 |
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CMV: Gender dysphoria is a mental illness | I should set clear that i really want social inclusion of all kinds of people (homosexuals, blacks, poor people, transgenders, etc), and my view doesn't necessarily mean that i am against transgenderism.
By definition gender disphoria is a mental illness and that's final. That said, it doesn't mean it actually is a mental illness, for the definition may be changed or not be accurate.
However, I don't see any other way to categorise the need to change gender other than a mental illness. If you don't feel aligned with your body, it would be wiser to at least try therapy and medication before undergoing a violent surgery / hormonal treatments (the issue could be solved before doing such intrusive intervention, and if therapy didn't work, then they could try the surgery and hormones).
It also seems to be a way to mask the real issue (identity disorders) but not treating the root cause of the problem, and that will lead to anxiety, depression, stress, confusion in some cases. | 1,272 | Are you certain gender dysphoria has *only* a psychological cause? If it were one's dysphoria were influenced by biology, would you still call it a mental illness? Because it would make sense that if gender identity is, in part, biological then gender dysphoria would also, in part, be biological. Would it not?
At the very least, if we don't know the nature of gender dysphoria then it might be reckless to just say it's "a mental illness and that's final". | 367 |
[Fictional training] What sort of training would various characters do? | I mean, how do they keep so intense? People like the Batfamily, Assassin’s Creed, various comic “peak humans” and the like. Super powered heroes and villains too. What do these people do to train? Do they? What do they even eat, if they do? When do they have time to do any of this? | 21 | General fitness and combat training for most of them. Even people with relatively busy schedules can make time for an hour or two at the gym. Cardio, strength, flexibility, and speed. You can tailor your workout to the kind of performance you need.
Full-time heroes, like the Avengers, probably train more or less all the time when they're not out saving the world. Obstacle courses, group tactics, etc. Would be similar to a military unit. | 24 |
Are there any legitimate medical conditions that make it difficult to lose weight, even on very low calorie diets? Doesn't that violate the laws of physics? | 24 | There are many, many cases when people have no idea how much they actually do eat. Or, when they do, they are not honest.
That being said, it is possible that the individual is honest. In that case, there are a number of variables:
Not everyone absorbs nutrients at the same level of efficiency. Some people absorb better than others.
Not everyone has their basal metabolism at the same level. Some people burn more calories while resting, others burn less. This remains true even for people weighing the same. It depends on the body composition, age, gender, fitness, various medical conditions, etc.
A young, muscular, lean, fit man will burn a lot of calories just sitting down. An old, fat, out of shape woman will burn much less - even though she weighs the same weight like the young male athlete.
The same young, muscular athlete will burn more or less calories while sitting down, depending on the levels of thyroid hormones in his body - this is just one example out of so many.
EDIT: The nice little charts you see online, that tell you how many calories you're supposed to burn, based on weight and age, are just guidelines. There are many, many other factors that are pretty important. | 12 |
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CMV: I believe that anyone who has left their home country for Syria should be denied re-entry. | Quite simply, I believe that if you leave for Syria, you shouldn't expect to just waltz back to your home country like nothing's happened.
Firstly, there is the very real risk that those jihadists will commit acts of domestic terrorism within their home countries. Security forces only have a finite amount of resources with which to monitor any terrorist activity, and so there is no guarantee that any and all returning jihadists can be either monitored or any jihadist activity tackled effectively.
Secondly, I believe given the actions of the jihadists in undermining the security of their home nations, the respective governments of these countries have no obligation to honour their free passage over the border. The citizenship of a country has with it certain obligations and if you do not fufill them, I cannot see why you should not see consequences.
Such a measure may also serve to provide a deterrent to potential jihadists too.
CMV!
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 22 | Unilateral views like this are too simplistic. Certainly people who join ISIS and engage in hostile conflict directly or indirectly with their home country should be detained and denied reentry, but there are many who may travel to the region for other reasons.
For example, what about Kenji Goto, who went to Syria to rescue Haruna Yukawa?
Or the epidemiologists who went to Syria to study and try to stop the resurgence of polio in children over there?
Or those who join Western-backed rebels in fighting ISIS and Assad?
Rather than a unilateral denial of reentry, doesn't it make more sense to simply determine whether they should be allowed to reenter on a case by case basis? | 18 |
CMV: Calling black Americans "African Americans" deepens racial divisions. | Full disclosure: I'm an Australian (where most black people are actually first generation immigrants from Africa), who's lived for 6 years in Canada (where black people, on the rare occasions where there's any reason to refer to their skin color at all, are simply called "black") and for 2 years in the US (where black people are called "African Americans").
First, "African American" is just inaccurate. As someone who's lived and worked in Kenya and has many African friends, none of the black-skinned people I've met in America have anything at all to do with Africa, and resemble other Americans (in all but skin color) far more than they do any Africans. They are Americans like all the white (and other skin-colored) Americans. In fact, their ancestors have often been in American far longer than the ancestors of many white Americans (who are typically just called "Americans").
Second, I have almost exclusively heard the term "African American" used as a euphemism for "someone with dark skin, excluding Indians". I've never heard someone use the term to draw attention to any connection to Africa, or even to uniquely refer to black people who are "culturally black Americans" (i.e., who can speak a variant of African American Vernacular English, were raised in a primarily black community, learned cultural traits distinct to those communities, etc.). It's usage, as I've heard it, always seems to conflate black people who've been in America for generations with recent immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean or even Brazil, despite these groups differing massively in culture, language and appearance. It also typically excludes lighter-skinned north Africans. That is, in ordianry usage "African American" just means "black American" and nothing more.
Third, using ancestral origin to refer to a group, instead of just referring to the superficial feature you're really talking about (their skin color), reinforces the idea that there are deep, ancient differences between people with different skin colors. This perpetuates racism. Simply referring to skin color, when that's what you're talking about, merely implies that different people have different colored skin, which needn't signify anything else at all.
Fourth, having a proper noun for black Americans ("African Americans") grammatically reinforces the racist idea that they are a fundamentally different kind of person. Using an adjective ("black") to qualify the more universal noun ("American"), and only doing it on those rare occasions when you actually need to refer to someone's skin color, grammatically conveys the idea that everyone is just an American, and people's skin color happens to vary just like their height or age does.
The norm of calling black people "African Americans" is inaccurate, nothing but a euphemism for "black", and conceptually and grammatically reinforces racism. It should be done away with.
Change my view.
(Don't even get me started on "Caucasian"...)
EDIT:
Thanks guys. This was my first ever CMV and I really enjoyed the discussion. In the end /u/roussell131 changed my view by making me question whether, perhaps, racism runs so deep in America that the nuances of language have no impact at all.
I look forward to contributing to other people's CMVs.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 62 | America is big on hyphenated labels - Irish-American, Asian-American, etc. The idea is to show that you can have both an ethnic origin and still be American.
The intent behind the change from "black" was several-fold. First, it's to be labeled based on something other than you skin color (especially since "black" is seldom an apt description). It had nothing to do with "conflate black people who've been in America for generations with recent immigrants from Africa".
Instead, it was very much intended to refer to as you say "culturally black Americans" - and African American seemed like a better term than "People-who-used-to-be-slaves-and-are-still-discriminated-against-even-though-many-of-them-have-more-white-ancestors-than-black-ones".
In fact, ironically, Somali immigrants are more likely to be referred to as "Somali-Americans" than "African-Americans".
It's also naive to think that removing the word will remove the concept. Whether you call them black or African-Americans, or abolish both terms, black people will still get pulled over for driving expensive cars. | 28 |
Ethics of lucid dream sex | TW: mention of sexual violence, cheating, murder, etc.
Bit of a weird one, but hear me out. I have been having lucid dreams semi regularly recently and I always seem to try to have sex in every dream. Idk why, maybe I’m just horny. I am in a relationship but it is long distance and I barely ever get to have sex with her. Recently I had sex with another woman in a dream that wasn’t my girlfriend. It’s happened a few times. In fact I feel like I have sex with others more than with my gf. Maybe it’s because I know in real life me and my gf have sex but in a lucid dream I get to have sex with anyone I want.
Also let me just say this woman was not a real person she was a random girl I invented at the time.
Now in the lucid dreams I am obviously 100% conscious and in control of my actions. I am also in control of what I want to happen in the dream. The situations also feel very much like real life to me at the time.
It lead me to think of this ethical dilemma. I cannot justify as to why this shouldn’t count as cheating. Just because the person I had sex with was not real doesn’t change anything about the actions from my side. How is it tangibly different to real life cheating? And to me it was like real life when I was in the dream.
But then again, would having sex with a sex doll count as cheating? I’m thinking no. Would fantasising about other women count as cheating? It’s obviously not ideal in a relationship but again not cheating.
This also lead to some other questions about lucid dreaming ethics. Like is it unethical to commit rape or other sexual violence in a lucid dream? What about murder?
I mean in both scenarios there is no victim. It would be no different to a fantasy. At the end of the day I think what makes rape and murder unethical is the presence of a victim. I think I have the belief that thoughts that happen inside your own head, are not backed up by actions, and that never leave your head (ie saying them OutLoud, telling people, etc.) cannot be unethical. Can thoughts be unethical if they don’t have real actions? And are actions in lucid dreams comparable to thoughts since they both happen inside your head and not in real life?
Just wondered everyone’s thoughts and if there’s any philosophical thinking that has already gone on in this area. Basically help me figure out if I cheated on my gf in a lucid dream 😭 | 109 | It seems you more or less worked this out by yourself, what happens in lucid dreams isn't real, you're just imagining shit, so nothing in there matters in of itself.
The relevant thing you should be concerned with is how the things you imagine can form dispositions towards actual actions. If you constantly fantasise about fucking other women, will this have some influence on you actually doing this? It seems plausible. So we shouldn't be concerned about how the stuff bouncing around in our head for its own sake, for the sake of us wronging dream people or whatever other nonsense, but how what we imagine can influence us in the waking world. | 110 |
[LOtR] Why didn't Sauramon keep any Uruk-hai to defend Isenguard during the battle for Helm's Deep? | 27 | He actually kept a small garrison of Orcs to keep making Uruk-hai and prevent squatters/bandits. In his arrogance though, he never expected the Ents to attack and never imagined Rohan would survive his army's onslaught at Helms Deep. So he simply sent them all to fight Theoden. | 26 |
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ELI5: How can a country like Venezuela, with more oil than Saudi Arabia be broke? | 30 | Mostly poor planning.
Venezuela's government wanted to help the poor, so they put a lot of money into social programs.
This included money that was supposed to be going to the national oil company that makes up most of their income.
When the oil company people protested, Hugo Chavez responded by firing a bunch of them, and replacing them with people loyal to himself.
So, since like 2006, the amount of oil Venezuela has been producing has been decreasing.
On top of that, the government decided to fight an economic recession by setting a price that everything must be sold at, along with how much people need to be paid.
This price was so low that it meant that companies couldn't afford to sell that much, so people with more money (from the higher pay) paid more for the stuff that was there, driving prices up. This kept occurring, and the resulting inflation broke most structure in the nation.
Since Venezuela's currency became worthless, and the amount of income in other bills dropped with the loss of oil, the government has needed to step in and keep paying for food and stuff for the poor. What this meant though is that the government has just been pushing the problem down the road, rather than solving it.
Which, after years of trying to deal with the problem in front of their face, has crashed their economy entirely. | 55 |
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ELI5: What is the closest thing we have to a 100% efficiency machine? | Apologies if this doesn't fit in the sub, first post
I know that machines can't have 100% efficiency, but what is exactly do we have that actually comes very close to a perfect machine? | 17 | The highest efficiency machine we can produce is one that produces heat, so, a space heater. Those actually are 100% efficient at their goal, because even the energy turned into other forms like sound, eventually make their way to random molecular motion, aka, heat.
As for heat engines, where we want to make motion. The efficiency of those machines is capped by the Carnot cycle. The Carnot cycle efficiency is determined by the temperature difference between the hot side, and the cold side, so theoretically, you can make it arbitrarily high, but in practice, we don't get quite that high (~60%). | 34 |
ELI5: How can human smugglers illegally ship migrants to a different country? Can any ship just dock at any harbour and unload "goods"? | 44 | A ship can deliver cargo anywhere if they have approved customs paperwork to do so. While there, they can sneak something extra off the boat, or include something extra in the container with the cargo. | 31 |
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ELI5: Why it's supposed to massage the face cream using a circular motion? ( often upward motion too) | .. it's not absorbed well if it's massaged.. let's say horizontally? | 16 | Or else it gets the hose again.
Horizontal or vertical massage is less likely to spread evenly, also the massaging itself is beneficial (potentially more beneficial than the cream, some studies have suggested its daily massage thay actually helps the skin long term not the cream at all). | 74 |
ELI5: Why does your body discard excess protein, but will cling to every last bit of fat that it consumes? | If you eat more than a certain amount of protein per hour, your body rejects whatever it cannot absorb. Why is there no "threshold" for the amount of fat you can consume in an hour? You seem to just hold on to every bit of fat you eat. Can someone set me straight on this? | 211 | You don't get fat from eating fat. You get fat from eating more calories than you expend (plus a dozen other factors). Fat is pretty calorie dense, so it does help power the body and, of course, add fat to it. But it isn't that you eat fat and it passes unchanged into your hips.
The body adds fat every chance it gets and only begrudgingly sheds it because we *used* to live in a world where you could never be sure of eating regularly, so you packed on fat in times of plenty so you'd have an extra source of energy when times were bad. | 225 |
[Harry Potter] What was the Soviet Union's wizarding community like? | It is implied the muggle governments are aware of their wizarding counterparts. However, the existence of a sub-group of humans who are born with abilities far beyond those of normal humans seems like something which would not be tolerated by communist ideology. How did the Soviet Union deal with its wizarding community? Did they hunt down wizards and witches? Or did they just leave them alone? | 19 | Official Wizard policy is that, should the risks of revealing the existence of magic be too great, then they simply will not cooperate with their Muggle counterparts.
The Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) notably does *not* cooperate with the federal government due to the founding of the Magical Congress being a direct result of the Salem Witch Trials, and prior to their using the Woolworths building in New York City, they had to abandon four other governmental headquarters due to fear of No-Majes. They also refused to outlaw alcohol when the federal government brought in Prohobition because "We have enough to deal with".
If anything, the Russian Magical Community isolated themselves after the Red October due to fear of persecution from the Communist government. | 20 |
ELI5: If a can of pop can have 9 tea spoons of sugar in it, then why would a cup of tea with 4 sugars in make me feel sick, yet I could chug a litre of pop and feel fine? | Is there something done with the sugar to stop it making you nausiated? | 27 | Carbonation. The co2 becomes carbolic acid and neutralizes the sweetness of the sugar. Soda is acid enough to damage the enamel of your teeth, and sweet enough to give you a whole host of other problems. And yet, since it's both at the same time, it's perceived as neither. Some sodas of course also use orthophosphoric acid and citric acid as part of the recipe. | 13 |
ELI5 Does a dislike of warm weather has anything to do with the person's weight? | I am overweight and I hate any weather above 25°C. I remember preferring spring, autumn and winter even when I was a child and not overweight. | 18 | It has more to do with your comfort than weight because you are likely associating warmer weather with discomforts such as: more revealing clothing, sweat, more difficulty at exerting energy. 25 degrees is a nice summer weather and for most people, unless you are on the beach, anything higher than that would be generally associated with discomfort. So yes and no. | 17 |
ELI5: What is "non negotiable bearer bonds" and what would Hans Gruber have been able to to with all those bearer bonds? | I was born in early 2000's and have not heard yet in any form or type. Also I wonder how much would it worth in today's currency? | 237 | Bearer bonds are "payable to bearer upon demand". So person A buys a $1000 bearer bond from an issuer (company, railroad, etc). Person A owes person B $1000 and gives them the bond as payment. Person B wants some guns/drugs/whatever and Person C sells them the whatever in exchange for the bond. This can go on for many transactions. In the end, Person X now has the bond and wants cash. They can take it to their bank and exchange it for cash and the bank gets the money back from the issuing company. The US government caught on to drug dealers moving large amounts of money with them in the 1980's and made bearer bonds illegal to issue to stop this. People can still cash in the existing ones, though.
TL;DR - They are a way to make cash like transactions but much harder for police to trace. They can also have values much greater than currency so money can be more easily moved across national borders untraced, by carrying them as you travel. | 209 |
Are high frequency trading careeers "cheating" and they do not create value but just "push money around"? | 92 | They add liquidity to markets, but some say they increase market volatility. From Wikipedia:
The effects of algorithmic and high-frequency trading are the subject of ongoing research. High frequency trading causes regulatory concerns as a contributor to market fragility.[52] Regulators claim these practices contributed to volatility in the May 6, 2010 Flash Crash[58] and find that risk controls are much less stringent for faster trades.[16]
Members of the financial industry generally claim high-frequency trading substantially improves market liquidity,[12] narrows bid-offer spread, lowers volatility and makes trading and investing cheaper for other market participants. | 68 |
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ELI5: How can the Task Manager in Windows or Force Quit in macOS close frozen, suspended, unresponding programs instantly. What do they do different than clicking the X button in the corner? | 45 | They forcibly stop allocating system resources to the program, instead of politely asking the program to relinquish those resources once it’s finished. It’s the difference between asking a drunk patron to leave the bar vs grabbing him by the collar and tossing him out the door. | 115 |
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CMV: Americans who view abortion as murder and strive to make abortion illegal and also supported the US War on Terror should be supportive of tax-payer funded programs that likely will reduce abortions | After the 9/11 attacks, most Americans, especially those who were conservative, supported substantial foreign military actions and new domestic security policies. US involvement in the War on Terror was quite expensive. Not only did it cost trilllions of dollars in both increased spending and reduced productivity, it also increased US governmental powers. Some terrorist attacks in America may have been avoided but overall the War on Terror was very expensive for the limited benefits it provided.
Compared to their support for the War on Terror, many anti-abortion Americans are far less supportive of tax-payer funded programs that seek to reduce the number of abortions. Considering that it costs far less money to provide people with birth control than to kill a terrorist thousands of miles away, anti-abortion people who supported the War On Terror to prevent thousands of people from potentially being murdered should also support much less expensive programs to prevent tens of millions of people from being murdered (in their view).
Change my view
EDIT:
I am arguing that there *is not a good reason* for these people to not support tax-payer funded programs that would likely reduce abortions such as subsidized birth control if they genuinely care about preventing innocent people from being hurt. I am not trying to argue that they would have to be logically inconsistent if they did not support those programs. | 29 | 1. The war on terror and abortion have nothing to do with one another.
2. People that are for/against the war on terror and for/against abortion, are not necessarily for/against either solely based on monetary issues.
3. There is not necessarily a comparison between killing terrorists, versus killing babies.
4. The definitions of when an embryo is a person, and what is a terrorist vary.
5. Contrary to popular opinion, you can hold any view or opinion you choose. That opinion is not constrained because you chose a particular political party, because of your views on other issues, because of your situation in life (wealth, gender, race, class etc), or because of you chosen media source.
6. Your comment is ignorant and attempts to place people in certain boxes based on what someone feels they have to believe based on their other beliefs. | 36 |
[Freespace]What most likely happened to Earth following the destruction of the Lucifer? | Earth has been cut off from the rest of the Galaxy due to the collapse of the Jump Node caused by the destruction of the Lucifer. Would Earth be capable of surviving with only the resources of the Sol System to maintain them? | 18 | Earth actually did fairly well after the Shivan threat.
Yes limited recourses became a bit of a problem. But in terms of the essentials earth was pretty well off. There was some limited rationing of food until several thousand industrial facilities which had suddenly become obsolete were leveled or retooled towards food production.
The only tragedy is that after it was decided that the jump point would never reopen slowboats were the only way to recolonize the rest of the galaxy. It wasn't until well after the ark ships departed that the human/vasudan made Knossos gate was activated and reestablished the subspace connection with earth. | 11 |
[X-Men] If Charles Xavier had used his powers to their full extents without any limitation, how powerful would he be? | 44 | He could wipe out all of mankind when attached to Cerebro, since he could literally tap into everyone's brain at once.
This is just a potential feat of his. Hard to say how actually powerful he is, since he's not really limiting himself he's just not actively going all out. | 47 |
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By what mechanism does borax kill ants? | 40 | Borax upsets their digestive system and causes death due to dehydration and starvation. According to Jonathan Hatch ("How to Get Rid of Argentine Ants" ), dehydration and recrystallization of the boric acic lacerates the digestive system of ants and their larvae. | 21 |
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[Roger Rabbit] alcohol makes Roger go bat shit nuts. But, we see other toons like Hank Hill and Rick Sanchez drinking all the time (in Rick’s case, absolutely smashed!). If we assumed that Rick and Homer exist in this universe, would they react the same way, or are they more immune? | 86 | They're both going for different kinds of humor. That's actually the explanation; we see a couple times that a toon's behavior is totally informed by their... for want of a better word, their routine. So some toons are the type to melt when they're embarrassed, turn completely pale when terrified, reach into pockets that weren't there before and pull out something that couldn't possibly fit in there... et cetera. And some of them aren't.
I would assume the guys you're talking about find lodgings in Cool World. | 71 |
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How do flash floods happen? | 20 | If you have ever had a potted plant that you forgot, or left unattended over vacation, and came back to it bone dry, then added water, you probably noticed the water didn't soak into the soil right away. Maybe you even had the water flow over the edge of the pot?
Its the same idea on a larger scale. Long periods of drying out will cause the soil to be hydrophobic until thoroughly wetted. If you have massive rains, the water doesn't soak into the ground fast enough and instead just runs down hill. A sufficiently hard rain will get you a flood. | 36 |
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[Star Wars] Why did Darth Maul survive being cut in half by a lightsaber but Snoke did not. | Snoke seems like a much more powerful Sth than Maul.
Edit: Thanks for all the answers guys, my knowledge of the extended universe is obviously lacking, it's just something that kind of bothered me. | 371 | Snoke isn't a Sith. He's part of a completely different tradition, and even mocks them for being petty fools.
That being said? Maul was young, and Snoke was old and feeble. The area in which they were both bisected is also different - Maul got a swift cut right at the hips, Snoke got cut higher up, where more vital organs are. | 436 |
There is an entire domain of bacteria that is separate from prokaryotes - Archaea. What makes Archaea different? Why did we need to treat them differently? | In grade school we all learned the biological classification system. Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. And we also learned the difference between prokaryotes (bacteria) and eukaryotes (multi-celled stuff). But along comes [Archaea](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea), and biologists had to come up with a new classification scheme, placing them in a completely separate bin from pro/euk organisms.
What makes Archaea different? Why did this necessitate a new classification scheme? And does their existence give us any insight into the evolutionary history of eukaryotes? | 22 | Archaea are prokaryotes (although this is almost certainly a polyphyletic term so we try to avoid it these days!) just not bacteria.
They differ from Eubacteria and Eukaryota in a bunch of key ways:
* Membrane chemistry: glycerol chirality (L-glycerol instead of D-glycerol of Euks and Bacs), ether linkage instead of ester linkage, isoprene instead of fatty acids which means they can have branching side chains, can have lipid monolayers instead of bilayers.
* Cell walls: diverse chemical compositions (pseudopeptidoglycan, S-layer etc but and no peptidogylcan)
* Flagella shares ancestry with type IV pili instead of type III secretion system
* 70S Ribosomes like Bacteria but most of the ribosomal proteins, translation factors and tRNAs of archaea are similar to euks (e.g. RNA pol II)
* Gene regulation: Post-transcriptional modification similar to simple Euk but very few intron containing genes.
To mention just a few things!
Essentially to horribly generalise and butcher: Arch are essentially like bacteria but with a lot of similar core machinery and function to euks (or rather euks have archael core machinery! :P) as well as a large number of special and unique tricks up their sleeves.
They are especially relevant to the evolution of the eukaryotes as the vast majority of large scale phylogenies of the tree of life find that Eukaryota and Archaea form a clade. Archaea are great because they give us a great insight into the evolution of basal eukaryotic cell machinery as they share a lot of this molecular framework but in a relatively simpler setting (in some ways). Interestingly archaea have 3(!) different cell division mechanisms in different groups (similar to ftsZ, similar to actin and similar to ESCRT proteins) or even combinations of those mechanisms!
One of the most fundamental reasons the archaea necessitated a new domain being declared is that despite all their diversity they still form a well supported clade distinct from both the Eukaryota and Bacteria.
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[Star Wars] Were the Jedi paid for their services? | 69 | They were paid the same way a monk is, they have funds to use, however it's not really theirs, it's more to use on whatever they are assigned to. So for example you're a jedi librarian and you're given a bit of cash, you are already provided robes food and shelter, so you don't gotta worry about that, you just use your budget to improve the library, or maybe give it to some homeless people. For the most part though, people don't like to charge the jedi, afterall the jedi are heroes and help the community alot, so the rich who already donate don't mind and the poor don't mind helping the jedi either. Other's like Ahsoka may be given some amount of money to bribe someone for buying info and may use the leftover for a small bracelet or charm or something, but that would be frowned upon. Jedi are a minimalist society, hence why they really only own their robes and lightsabre, maybe a space ship if they're important. That's why the jedi masters in hiding kinda live in shacks. Both Obi-Wan and Yoda live in some crappy shack in the middle of nowhere because they don't value money or possessions, they just get all spiritual and they're good. So long story short, you get paid spiritually and with training, but not monetarily. | 75 |
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[Captain America: Winter Soldier] Why did HYDRA try to kill Fury when he was in a SHIELD vehicle? Wouldn't they know it was bulletproof, could fly, etc.? Why not cap him in the john? | 106 | That's why they came prepared to counteract all of Fury's vehicles features. They rammed the car breaking the flight system and brought the battering ram which broke through the window, Fury barely escaped and only because he is a highly trained badass. If they try to "cap him on the john" then they would either have to try to kill him at SHIELD HQ which is a heavily secured facility, or at his house, which would most likely have a shit load of security features and maybe an escape tunnel or 2 which seems highly likely seeing how serious he took his personal security by having a heavily armored flying car. | 107 |
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CMV: Friends is NOT funny and it’s Awful | I have NEVER understood why anyone finds this show funny. I was born in the 90’s, so I recall my mom watching it at the time and even when I was toddling, I thought the show was totally asinine.
I have never witnessed such a vast array of unlikeable assholes as can be found on this show. Where to start? Rachel is selfish and annoying. Joey is misogynistic and stupider than a toddler. Chandler’s so freaking obnoxious. Where to even start with Ross??? I think Monica and Phoebe are alright, but they’re not funny enough to carry a show.
Why do people like this!? I’m pretty sure I’ve also heard they NEVER had black people on the show when they lived in NEW YORK CITY, which is so deeply messed up.
What’s the deal folks? Change my mind if possible; I’m not honestly sure it is! | 60 | 1. They wrote 6 characters who have vastly different personalities, have vast different backgrounds, and who are of equal importance to the show. They literally got paid the same amount starting from season 3.
2. They helped normalise homosexuality, as well as conversations surrounding many other social issues.
3. The fact that you hate the characters is testament to the good writing. | 18 |
[Star Wars] How often did large space battles occur? Are their tactics similar to naval tactics on earth? | In addition, are the customs of sailing (naming ships, ranks etc.) carried into the Star Wars universe? | 94 | Tactics are somewhat similar to naval tactics on earth, in that the large capital ships maneuver to line up large volleys or broadsides against the opponents. Other basic tactics remain the same as well, such as attempts to flank the opponent.
However, tactics are also significantly different in major ways. For instance, the use of hyperdrives leads to ambush attempts using short jumps of entire fleets. A major tactic is blocking the use of hyperdrives for retreating with interdictors to project gravity wells. You also have the fact that battles occur in three dimensions, where your opponents might have capital ships firing at you from above and below (as opposed to a sea-surface battle where everything is effectively on the same plane). Unlike standard naval battles (except carrier battles in WWII and later), the large capital ships send out swarms of small ships to maneuver around the enemy capital ships and use high power explosives to hit weak points of the opposing ships' shields. So really, space warfare is a mix of WWII-style carrier battles with several added quirks from shields, hyperspace, interdictors, etc.
As for the other customs of sailing, they are mostly preserved. Nearly every ship larger than an x-wing is named, including freighters and shuttles on up to super star destroyers. Ranks are preserved too: you have captains and admirals all over the place. | 66 |
Why was Post-WW2 Keynesianism so Effective at Growing the Middle Class? What as an Economic System allowed Keynesianism to Grow the Middle Class? | Hello, I question is: how and why are Keynesian economics so effective at growing the middle class?
Moreover, what was it about the post-WW2 economic system that allowed the middle class to be built up so much? Does the inherent logic of Keynesian economics lead to the growth of the middle class?
Thanks! | 19 | Keynesianism is a set of ideas about macroeconomics. It's about recessions and it suggests a set of policies that governments should enact when a recession occurs.
Keynesianism is not about the distribution of wealth. Now, J.M.Keynes himself was (at least most of the time) a proponent of a more equal distribution of wealth. But, that's not directly related to what we call Keynesianism. Some parts of Keynesianism can be interpreted as being pro-worker and others as anti-worker.
How exactly are you defining the "Middle Class"? The definition is important, especially for this question. A British historian might tell you that the middle class grew large centuries ago. Is that true? It depends on how it's defined. Is it about profession? Is it about the *level* of income of a certain group? Or is it about the *distribution* of income across everyone? | 15 |
ELI5: What is an RSS Feed, and how does it work? | Hi everyone, I manage a small business and we're trying to increase our web presence. Social media, blogging, SEO and a new website- we're pretty much revamping everything. My latest project has been setting up a blog and I keep coming across RSS Feeds. What are they, what do they do? How are they helpful? | 17 | An RSS feed is basically a way to easier send content to your audience. Let's say you have a blog you update every 2-3 days, but can occasionally be inconsistent on. If you have an RSS feed (most Wordpress-like sites have this built in), people can put the link to your feed into an RSS reader (such as Feedly) and get your content automatically at a time of their choosing. People still get your message, without simply checking your site and hoping for an update. It doesn't just have to be type-written content either...podcasts operate the exact same way.
Does that help? | 11 |
If an isolated system reach a microstate where it has a macroscopic velocity, doesn't it violate the law of conservation of energy? | I know this is very, very, very unlikely edge case, but let's say that an isolated system, with an incredible luck, reach a microstate where the direction of their microscopic speed synchronise, in such a way that the system has a macroscopic speed. This mean we have a ΔE=ΔEc (ΔU=0 and ΔEp=0 too), yet the system is isolated so it should have a ΔE=W+Q=0. I was wondering where the mistake was in my reasonning. | 1,337 | The mistake in your reasoning is in the process from going from a stationary system to your edge case. That macrostate can never happen, for fundamental (not probabilistic) reasons. Consider the macroscopic system as simply a gas of particles. For simplicity, we can just think of the case where all the particles have the same mass (but this argument can easily be extended for the different masses case by considering momentum conservation). Initially, there is 0 average velocity in this mess of randomly-moving particles. Now say your desired incredibly lucky state has all the particles moving in the +x direction. Do you see why there cannot be any series of collisions that takes you to this state? At the beginning, half the particles will have a negative x-velocity. To make one of these particles get a positive x-velocity, another particle has to collide with it and lose some of its own positive x-velocity. So we can never make all of the particles have positive x-velocity! The same is true in the other dimensions.
Here's a cute and more intuitive proof if we just considered elastic collisions: in this case, all collisions are time-symmetric. So, we can simply start with your end case of all the particles moving in the direction with the same speed. How on earth can a series of collisions go from this to a stationary system? Firstly, this idea already shows you that there must be some small variations in the speed or we could never leave the synchronized state. But even then, any time you try to make a particle go in the backward direction, you have to make another particle speed up in this forward direction.
tl;dr: It can't be done because momentum must be conserved and so the total net speed cannot change unless an external force influences the system, in which case ΔE≠W+Q anyway. | 480 |
Can water really be broken down and used as fuel? If so, why aren't we using water as fuel for everything? | 50 | We don't use water as fuel because it isn't a fuel. Hydrogen is a fuel, but you only get it by breaking water, and the energy released is necessarily less than you put in. So in this sense water/hydrogen are being used like a battery.
There are several economic reasons for restricted adoption of hydrogen storage, like the explosive risk, need to compress, metal embrittlement, and cost of fuel cells. | 43 |
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Countries that developed after political liberalization? | Are there any countries that developed after political liberalization - i.e the modern, rights-oriented democracies that we have today. China, South Korea, Russia and Singapore had either repressive dictatorships or "soft" authoritarianism. People could argue about Japan but one of the most important component of development - human capital and education- was developed prior to that. Like Germany had its infrastructure destroyed but thanks to human capital was able to spring back up. Other countries that escaped the middle income trap- Israel and Taiwan, don't fit this either because of one reason or another. Britain didn't bring much of liberal reforms (like wages/work conditions) until after significant gains from the industrial revolution and colonialism. Same can be said for USA, but I'll be looking for more recent examples preferably. What's remaining is probably countries that leveraged a scarce natural resource (OPECs, Nauru, etc), I don't know a lot about them but it doesn't seem to be the case among these either.
So, any examples? | 17 | You're going to have to clarify what you mean by bit development and liberalization; neither are binary concepts, and both seem to assume a linear path of progression for all countries.
For instance, labour laws are not the same as liberalism, and in fact are a newer form of the imposition of state power.
Colonialism and trade did create wealth in both the US and Britain prior to, say, the American Revolution, but then that was true for the ancient Phonecians and Greeks. Certainly, those societies were still mostly agrarian, and would not be developed by our standards. | 10 |
ELI5: How do two different animals produce the same venom? | For example, monitor lizards and rattlesnakes both produce Crotamine, yet they haven’t been in the same genus for millions of years. | 25 | By chance. It isn't uncommon for evolution to find similar solutions.
Consider it like this: The rules of our world are the same regardless of where you are. Chemistry works the same way, physics work the same way. So the functional solution is the same everywhere. So because these same rules affect organisms, they end up finding the same solution regardless whether they been in contact. This is convergent evolution. Similar solutions for similar problems. | 22 |
ELI5 what prevents people from using the routing and account number at the bottom of the check to steal from the account or write fraudulent checks? | 21 | There’s usually nothing stopping it but there are lots of ways to get caught. Before a check clears, banks may do additional verification of names or other details on the check which is easier than ever with today’s technology. Before accepting a check, most businesses do ask for ID. If the name on the check is wrong, it won’t go through. If the name on the check is right, it won’t match the scammer’s ID. If they have a fake ID that’s another criminal charge if/when they get caught. And it’s in business’s own interest to check IDs because they are the ones who won’t get paid if the check is bad, it’s not like shady businesses will just let a little fraud happen, they are the victims of it.
It‘s kind of like stealing a credit card or skimming numbers and using it to buy stuff. Nobody’s stopping you at first, but eventually you’ll be on camera using it somewhere, or there will be a record of goods being shipped to your address. And the merchant you paid is the one who ultimately doesn’t get their money when the transaction gets reversed, so they will happily hand any info they have over to police to track you down. | 15 |
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ELI5: How is it that shaving razors don't peel off our skin like potato peelers? | 78 | You know how no matter how hard you try you can't get your skin on your leg to make a 90 degree angle. like by pinching it. Your skin is elastic which lets it give. The razor blades can't grab onto anything because your skin is smooth and elastic. Try cutting a rubber ball by glancing it with a knife. (striking its very edge).
EDIT: Your skin being elastic also allows it to kind of hug the blade and it becomes closer. The shaving cream is for lubricating it so the dry blades dont wrinkle your skin thus being able to catch on your skin when you glide it across. | 69 |
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In what situations are Tariffs good for an economy? | I've been reading Tim Harford's The Undercover economist and he mentioned that tariffs are almost always bad for an economy. I am assuming there are situations in which they could be beneficial though - say the Govt. is trying to help a sector grow due to possible future gains.
Am I wrong? Or have I missed something? | 48 | There are two "textbook" situations where tariffs can benefit an economy:
1. If a country has a large domestic market for an imported good and the production technology for that good features increasing returns to scale (per-unit costs decrease as a firm gets larger), an import tariff could make it profitable for domestic start-ups to enter the market and grow to a level where per-unit costs are comparable to existing international firms, and would therefore be able to compete in the global market once the tariffs are lifted. The short run losses caused by the tariffs would be offset by the efficiency gains from the new domestic industry once the tariffs are lifted. Note that there is no aggregate benefit to the country if the tariffs are not eventually eliminated. Some models suggest that this outcome could also be accomplished more efficiently using quotas rather than tariffs.
2. If a country is the dominant importer of a particular good and that good is supplied inelastically (the quantity produced is not sensitive to the price), then a small tariff might increase aggregate welfare. The increase in domestic price that results from the tariff is partially offset by the decrease in the global price of the product driven by the decrease in demand (due to the tariff). This offset, combined with the government revenue from the tariff itself, could be large enough to entirely offset the "deadweight loss" associated with the tariff. Note that the tariff would have to be small and the country would need to have considerable market power for this to work.
Neither scenario is likely to occur with any regularity in the real world. | 37 |
ELI5: How are musicians able to cover a song and not pay royalties, whilst sampling music means paying through the nose? | 65 | Copyright is complicated.
In a song there will be separate copyrights in: the sound recording, the lyrics, and the music. It is entirely possible that there will be separate copyrights within those (if, for example, someone licensed some music or lyrics for their own lyrics or music).
These are often owned by different people - particularly the sound recording (owned by the record producer) v the lyrics and music (owned by the composer/lyricist).
So if a musician wants to cover a song they only need permission from the copyright owner of the lyrics and music, whereas if they use a sample they need permission from the owner of the recording copyright as well.
**Except** in the US this a bit different - due to piano rolls.
In the early 1900s the US had a problem with a company with a monopoly over the "piano roll" market. Piano rolls were sheets of paper with holes punched out, which you could feed into a modified "player piano" and it would play the music on the piano (the holes telling the piano which keys to press when). In 1908 the company won a case in the US Supreme Court, which ruled that these piano rolls were not copies of the original music as they weren't human-readable. Meaning that the piano roll company could produce and sell copies of composers' music without paying any royalties (and they did, causing concern to composers).
Congress changed the law to make it clear that piano rolls infringed copyright, so needed a licence. But as a compromise they created the idea of a "mechanical licence" - meaning that copyright owners couldn't refuse permission to use their compositions - instead third party organisations could act as "collective licensing" agency. If the piano roll company wanted to produce a piano roll for a particular piece of music, rather than having to get a licence from the copyright owner, they could just pay a fee to the agency, and the agency was responsible for paying out to the composers.
But this only covers the copyright in the music - not the actual recording. So producing a cover song is relatively simple; you just sign up to a collective licensing body and pay the appropriate fee. Whereas if you want to sample you generally do need a licence from the copyright owner directly. | 31 |
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For species with very long life spans (everything from Johnathan, the 187-year-old tortoise, or Pando, the 80,000-year-old clonal tree system), are there observable evolutionary differences between old, still-living individuals and "newborn" individuals? | 9,282 | Not really. 187 years is long compared to a human but still the blink of an eye evolutionary. Even Pando is still more or less identical to modern day aspens although mostly inconsequential mutations were used in part to estimate its age. It's possible we'd see differences in Pando if it flowered, but AFAIK it's been ten thousand years since that happened. In some ~32,000 year old seeds from the Arctic the flowers that grew from them had slightly longer petals, but that could also be a regional thing where some now extinct populations had longer petals than most of the others. | 3,563 |
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Can consciousness exist without interaction with its environment? | 19 | What do you mean by 'consciousness'? It's long been acknowledged that consciousness is something different from the physical brain, but the exact relationship between the two eludes us. One thing that is worth considering is the epihenomenal theory of consciousness, which essentially states that the consciousness is a biproduct that arises out of the workings of the brain, but does not influence it. Everything you experience is a result of physical processes in the brain, but these experiences have no effect on physical processes. Our consciousness is to our brain what a shadow is to the object that casts it!
So, then it becomes a question of what you mean by 'interaction'. Under this conception of consciousness, the consciousness doesn't really 'interact' with the environment, it's a by-product of it. | 10 |
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Why do crabs which are greyish in color turn reddish or orange when boiled or cooked? | 1,385 | When crabs and lobsters are alive, they have a protein-ligand complex called astaxanthin-crustacyanin. This appears as a blue/gray color. When they're cooked, the protein, crustacyanin, denatures and the astaxanthin becomes unbound. The unbound astaxanthin's color is the red that you see. It's also what gives salmon and shrimp their red colors. | 833 |
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How do I not get too emotionally invested in a paper I'm writing? | I have final papers coming up in addition to a writing sample for PhD applications in philosophy and I realized that a major stumbling block is that I am too emotionally invested in my paper (both the topic and the outcome of my thinking) and it is getting in the way of my ability to complete it on time.Does anyone else have this issue or any tips on how to overcome it?
Edit: By emotionally invested I mean partially that so much of me getting in to a program hinges on the writing sample being good that it interferes with my writing.
But also (and the more general question) that I am super interested in and care a lot about the topic of the paper and I want to do justice to it and be up to date on the literature and have it be the most accurate portrayal and answer of the topic that it can be, but I don't have enough time to do it justice. So I feel paralyzed between the two. | 23 | No matter the point in your academic career, you'll have to "let go" of a manuscript so that it can be reviewed by editors/peers.
No matter the excellence of your argument, no matter how much time you've focused on perfecting it, other eyes will view it in potentially different light(s). Other minds will think on it from different perspectives, backgrounds, interests.
And you'll get feedback on that. Sometimes really positive, supportive, fantastic ideas. Sometimes reviewer 2 ruins your whole week or month.
But no matter what, it has to leave your hands and go out into the world. And you have to come to terms with letting go so that it can be strengthened as a result. | 19 |
ELI5: our sun has a solar system revolving around it, but it's also moving through the universe ~140 miles/sec. So why does the asteroid belt stay relatively flat, and not get scattered "behind" the sun as it travels, like the tail of a comet? | So [here's a "side view" of our solar system](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cpWQrCusTas/VemOMyjkO3I/AAAAAAAAKXg/imM30m_MQdg/s400/solar%2Bsystem%2Bspiral%2Bvortex%2Bhelical%2Bmotion.gif) as it moves through the galaxy.
As you can see, the planets' paths are actually helixes, not ovals.
They didn't include the asteroid belt, but I'm wondering why the belt wouldn't leave behind some debris in the "wake" of the sun's path.
Like, from our perspective, [the asteroid belt is clustered around our sun's orbital plane](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=asteroid+belt+orbital+plane&t=ffab&atb=v271-1&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.britannica.com%2F92%2F95392-050-07574048%2Forbits-planets-bodies-solar-system.jpg) (like most of the planets).
Why is there not asteroid "debris" scattered across the "bottom half" of the galaxy? (the side opposite the sun's direction of travel) | 37 | The same reason the Moon is bound to the Earth, even though the Earth is moving at 30 km/s around the Sun. Gravity binds Earth and Moon together, Sun and Earth together, Sun and asteroids together, etc. Also Milky Way and the Sun together.
For any of these to escape, they'd have to be accelerated to a much higher speed -- relative to the body they're orbiting around. | 30 |
ELI5: if the exact rotation of earth takes 23 hrs 56 mins 4.09secs why hasn’t it messed up our digital & analog clocks yet? | 15 | Because Earth also revolves around the Sun.
23 hours and 56 minutes is the time is takes the Earth to make a exact 360 degree rotation around its axis. If the Earth was standing in place, then this would be enough for the Earth to make a single rotation relative to the Sun.
However, during that time, Earth has also revolved a little less than 1 degree around the Sun. In order to catch up, Earth needs to rotate that extra degree so that it would face the Sun in the same direction again. This extra degree takes about 4 minutes, which makes the day 24 hours long. | 36 |
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ELI5: Why don't moons ever have moons? | 61 | You can have a small thing (moon) orbit around a big thing (planet). If the small thing is *really* far away from the big thing, you can have a tiny thing orbit around the small thing, and it'll be pretty stable. But if the small thing is closer to the big thing, then the gravity of the big thing will mess with the orbit of the tiny thing, and it'll probably get thrown out of orbit and fly off into space.
Example: stars are orbited by planets, and planets can be orbited by moons, and that's stable (because the planets are a long way away from the star), but you generally don't see a moon with another body orbiting it.
We can put satellites in orbit around a moon of a planet, but they generally have thrusters to correct for problems, and once the thruster fuel runs out they'll fall out of orbit eventually. | 42 |
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Why is it that light with short wavelengths (x-rays) can penetrate objects, but so can light with long wavelengths (radio waves) yes visible light can't? | 44 | Different materials are capable of absorbing only certain wavelengths of light. The visible spectrum is the range of the spectrum that tends to undergo a lot of interaction with common materials--this is why it was relatively easy to evolve sensitivity to it, and it is also particularly useful for perceiving the world around us.
Both higher and lower energy photons (shorter and longer wavelengths) lie outside of the typical energy ranges that electrons in atoms interact with. Therefore they tend to pass through materials without interacting as readily. | 54 |
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CMV: MDMA/ecstasy is as, if not more, damaging than cocaine and should be treated with the same level of caution. | Often, discussions of drug safety are polarized between people incredibly biased against drugs and people who believe they are much less dangerous than they actually are. Usually, I take the most issue with propagandists who are overly anti-drug since they're more prevalent than the latter category but underplaying the extreme harm that many drugs can do can be just as harmful. One drug I see as being touted as safe that really isn't is MDMA.
Oftentimes people put MDMA in a similar category as psychedelics in terms of its place in society. It is seen as a "harder" drug than weed but doesn't carry the same stigma as drugs like meth or cocaine. I'm not saying that any drug should be stigmatized but I see no reason why MDMA gets a free pass when it has side-effects I'd argue are on par with cocaine's in terms of severity.
Long term use of MDMA is known to cause long lasting memory deficits and other permanent changes in the brain. While MDMA itself likely isn't neurotoxic, when MDMA is ingested some of it is metabolized into MDA, which is neurotoxic. MDMA hasn't been popular for long enough to say whether long-term abuse of it shortens lives but due to the load it places on the heart I don't think it's a stretch to say it's a possibility. While this isn't a common side-effect the possibility of long lasting visual distortions after MDMA use is very real. While MDMA likely doesn't cause long-term changes to serotonin levels, during a period of active use the drug can lead to severely decreased mood which sometimes results in suicide. Acutely, MDMA use sometimes leads to fatal hyperthermia, often exasperated by dehydration. Finally, the compulsive teeth grinding that MDMA often causes can lead to dental problems.
Let's compare that to cocaine. While the biggest concerns with MDMA come from mental changes, cocaine is mostly bad for the body. The acute risk of death from cocaine usually comes from a heart attack, often after many years of use. Binging cocaine can lead to paranoia and even full-blown psychosis, though both of those symptoms rarely last longer than the drug use. Snorting cocaine can lead to many complications in the nose. Smoking cocaine takes all the above issues and exasperates them since users in a binge redose much more frequently if they smoke than if they snort.
Neither of those side-effect profiles are especially desirable but I would probably say that the MDMA set is worse. While cocaine may well shorten your life more, MDMA can cause very serious and permanent changes to the brain which I would personally find difficult to live with. While which is worse is of course entirely personal I think my memory is bad enough as it is and it getting worse would not be fun in the slightest. Still, I think it can be agreed that both of these are bad outcomes and both drugs ought to, if they're done at all, be done infrequently and with reasonable dosages.
I'll try and get ahead of a few comments I think people will jump to first.
**1. But MDMA isn't addictive while cocaine is!**
Neither MDMA nor cocaine have significant physical withdrawl symptoms unlike opioids or benzodiazapines. Both of them, however, change the reward structure of the brain to encourage further use. The only way in which cocaine is more addictive than MDMA is how snorting and smoking come on faster than oral consumption and are therefore more addictive. This point is somewhat valid but I think is offset by the fact that MDMA can also be taken intranasally. MDMA addiction is very real.
**2. Just take MDMA once every 3 months and you'll be fine.**
For one, this recommendation is not based in science and there is no proof that using at this frequency won't still cause issues. It is probably an okay frequency but shouldn't be taken as gospel and use should still be minimized further in my opinion. Secondly, there's no reason why this advice couldn't be given to cocaine users as well. In fact, using cocaine once every 3 months may come with fewer complications than MDMA at that frequency. Some people are able to use MDMA and cocaine every once and awhile and are fine. Some people get addicted and it ruins their lives. Both drugs are more than capable of doing this.
**3. The people in those studies of MDMA addicts may have been taking other drugs that were simply sold as MDMA.**
This is very true. However, it is also true of studies about people taking cocaine. Both MDMA and cocaine are very frequently cut with other drugs so I would say that both get an equal level of danger in that regard. Also, animal studies where we know the animals were given pure MDMA often show similar cognitive damage to the human MDMA addicts. Animal studies aren't perfect but I think they illustrate that the dangers of MDMA use don't end once you know you have pure stuff.
The throughline is that I believe the evidence shows that MDMA is as, if not more, harmful than cocaine. That doesn't mean I don't think anyone should ever do it or that it can't be used safely, but it should be treated with a great deal of caution. Anyone who parades around MDMA like it's this harmless, non-addictive party drug is being wildly irresponsible and possibly putting lives at risk. | 25 | I think cocaine is just abused more frequently, thus it is a bigger concern. It’s very rare to have a friend with a MDMA problem, and It is very common to have a friend with a coke problem. There is plenty of stuff more dangerous than coke, but that doesn’t mean it needs more social awareness than coke | 19 |
ELI5: Why is there such an uproar about welfare but not about corporate subsidies (welfare) | 220 | You've started with a false premise. There are actually plenty of highly publicized criticisms of corporate subsidies. For instance, farm subsidies routinely come under fire, especially recently when Congress passed on a food stamps bill. Government support for sports stadiums is also often criticized, and John Oliver discussed this on a recent episode of his HBO show.
So, allow me to reframe the question: Why do some people vehemently oppose government benefits for the poor while supporting government benefits for corporations?
The standard conservative theory is that people tend to do more of whatever they're incentivized to do. If being poor doesn't suck, then you're less likely to take a job that does suck just to get a little more money. The benefit of extra money from working might not outweight the suckiness of work. So, the less being poor sucks, the more willing people are to be poor.
On the other hand, they see benefits to businesses as helping those businesses grow and be successful, which in turn helps the economy, puts more people to work, etc. | 86 |
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[Man of Steel] Had Superman not been there, could the members of the League on earth have still dealt with Zod? | I know Zod arrived DUE to Superman's presence, but lets just say Clark was not for some reason and Zod tracked down the ship and arrived on earth anyways, could the heroes on earth have protected Metropolis?
We know the members of the league had their respective powers while the events of MoS were unfolding, so would they have intervened? They may not have been a team back then, but surely they gave a shit? | 32 | Given how easily resurrected Supes manhandles the entire league, I’d say that the entire DCEU would be kneeling before Zod, and Steppenwolf would have gotten his ass kicked by an army of Kryptonians the second he set forth on Zodworld (formerly Earth). | 59 |
[GoT] Ser Jorah Mormont doesn’t develop feelings for Daenerys and allows her to be assassinated and returns home to Westeros. What happens next? | 419 | When Robb Stark calls his banners, Jorah Mormont responds. Robb is uncomfortable accepting the service of a man his father exiled, but a royal pardon is a royal pardon, and he can ill afford to refuse experienced men.
And Ser Jorah is at this point possibly the most experienced soldier in the Seven Kingdoms. While Westeros has enjoyed nine years of peace since the Greyjoy Rebellion, Jorah has been fighting his way across Essos as a sellsword in the Disputed Lands. He's been everywhere and fought everyone, and there's pretty much nothing he doesn't know about war. If Robb is smart, he'll listen to his advice and use him as a field commander.
Wild speculation, but Ser Jorah's presence could drastically alter the course of the War of the Five Kings.
If he had been in charge of Robb's forces in the Riverlands, instead of Edmure Tully, he would have had a better grasp on their strategy, and would have allowed Tywin to retreat west, preventing him from marching to King's Landing. Stannis would have taken the city and put Joffrey and Cersei to death, and the Lannister faction would be effectively defanged. The war could have been over within a few months, Tywin forced to sue for peace and Stannis reluctantly accepting a fragile detente with the King in the North. | 321 |
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Does the size of the star have an effect on how many planets form around it, and what size they are? | Pretty much what it says on the tin. Would the planets that form around a K type star be different in size/distance/composition to the planets that form around an A or B type star? | 2,908 | Not directly.
The size of the star and its orbiting planets depends on the mass and distribution of the dust and gas from which it formed.
Since the size of the star as well as the size/number of its orbiting planets both depend on the same metrics, they're related, but one doesn't affect the other directly | 900 |
Why do cats love to sit in boxes? No, seriously. Why? | We're all aware of the phenomenon. Place an open box in the middle of the room. Or even something flat like a newspaper. And sooner or later your cat will sit on it like a watchtower.
So why is this? It's not particularly warm, soft, or high up. Is there some natural behavior that domesticated cats are mimicking when they do this?
(I know this isn't as intellectual as the usual questions on this sub, but I am genuinely curious about it. And I could use a break from mind-bending quantum physics)
**edit:** While I appreciate all the responses, the general consensus seems to be "nobody really knows for sure". So until proven wrong, I state that they use the boxes as transmogrifiers when we're not looking. This explains why they stare at us while sitting in them. | 305 | Boxes allow at least partial concealment. Cats may enjoy that because they're both ambush predators and small animals that need to watch out for predators.
I don't think cats have such a strong preference for flat objects like newspapers. Maybe it is just memorable when a cat sits on an object but not memorable when a cat sits on the normal floor. It could also be that the flat objects your cat sits on smell like you from you handling them and the cat likes that. Finally, if cats do indeed prefer to sit on flat objects instead of the floor, it may stem from their desire to be clean. Cats are ambush predators and smell could give away their position to prey. Maybe cats hope to keep themselves clean by sitting on a clean object rather than the "ground." | 155 |
ELI5: Why does apple juice not have to be refrigerated before opening, but orange juice does? | 18 | If your juice needs refrigerated it was not pasteurized. If it is shelf stable it was pasteurized. Pasteurization can affect taste so perhaps pure orange juice is generally not pasteurized, but Sunny D is (tbf Sunny D has very little juice in it). | 21 |
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ELI5:Why did Sparta train their males at the ages of six years old, when other Greek states waited at least until late teens? | 19 | The entire society of Sparta was focused on creating the perfect soldier. Spartan men did not have trades, they did not plant crops, they did not really craft anything either. Those things were done by the slaves they took in battle. Spartan training started early because it was what Spartan life was about. You trained and fought until you either died or were physically unable to do so anymore and then as an old man you switched to supervising the younger men and children in their training. | 20 |
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ELI5: What is actually happening when, after a day in the ocean or riding rollercoasters, the body will almost simulate the feelings when you're staying still? | 22 | There's a few reasons why this happens, and it's actually been a source of contention for centuries now. This is part of where the term "Sea Legs" comes from.
When you are on a boat, or a roller coaster or other similar behaviours, your brain, vestibulocochlear system (The tubes of fluid in your ears that help maintain balance) and muscles all grow accustomed to that environment.
What you're actually experiencing after coming back from such things is actually almost the opposite of what you were feeling; your body is so used to that swaying motion of a boat that the complete steadiness of dry land temporarily "Confuses" it.
Have you ever been on a trampoline for a moderate length of time? That's a very similar scenario; after coming off the trampoline your legs feel heavy and your muscles seem weak because you've become used to the "Springy" terrain.
It's a similar situation here; You're used to the movement, and in its absence your brain is preemptively simulating movement that is no longer there, making you feel like you're moving even when you're sitting still. | 27 |
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ELI5: Why were there so many recorded serial killers in the 60s, 70s and 80s as opposed to the present day? | 189 | There's a lot of theories I've heard.
First violent crime rates in general were much higher back then.
There's a theory that lead based gas in the 40's-50's lead to more cases where children would get lead poisoning and be more violent in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.
Gay sex was much more of a taboo and lead to some violent gay serial killers who didn't have an outlet. John Wayne Gacy and Jeffry Dahmer may have managed a normal life if being gay was more accepted, probably not, but it may have contributed to them becoming killers.
In general it was easier to get away with several murders before you got caught. A lot of serial killer stories you can read about how much the police botch their investigation into these guys. Also it was hard for different law enforcement agencies to communicate, so traveling from state to state killing people made it easy to get away with it.
People were more trusting, hitch hiking was considered a normal form of travel for many years, and often a way serial killers got their victims. Other times serial killers would ask for help moving furniture or something and trap people. Ted Bundy would pretend to have a broken arm and ask women for help moving things. Ed Kemper practiced picking up hitch hikers for months before he actually killed anyone.
There's probably even more factors than that. | 241 |
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Why was Wittgenstein concerned about meaning and language at all? Why is it even a philosophical problem? | Sounds straightforward to me? | 22 | Language, or rather misuse of it, isn't just a philosophical problem for Wittgenstein but the root of all philosophical problems. Philosophical problems, by his view, are pseudo-problems which are dissolved when we straighten out our use of language. | 27 |
ELI5: Why hasn't a North Korean attempted to assassinate Kim Jong Un yet? | Not many people know what is going on in North Korea but I can't understand how they trust their leader | 19 | Whoever carries out the assassination of Kim Jong Un has this to look forward to:
- A death sentence.
- A death sentence being placed on several generations of their family, and *possibly* other relations (such as known friends or their entire hometown).
- No certainty that it would change anything at all.
| 27 |
Does the body all die at once if the brain dies first? Or do things shut down at different times? | 37 | There is both a scientific and an ethical/practical answer to this question. As far as brain death goes, multiple parts of the “higher brain centers” that carry out cerebral functions may often cease functioning before the brain stem does. The most important function being carried out in a “brain dead” person is the respiration reflex, which is initiated by the brain stem and is sometimes the last thing to go. Therefore, complete brain death can only be confirmed if there is a loss of neurological activity in both the cerebral and brainstem areas. After complete brain death, the heart may actually be able to continue beating for a short period of time due to its own intrinsic electrical system. However, without using a ventilator to keep artificially circulating blood and oxygen, this would soon die out. Additionally, following the removal of mechanical ventilators and during tests for apnea (one of the tests run to confirm brain death in which external breathing assistance is removed to check for the body’s own respiration abilities), there may be spontaneous limb movements and even muscular reactions to touch. This is because many of our muscular reflex arcs loop through the spinal cord without ascending to the brain. In fact, with a loss of input from the brain to these reflex arcs, the reflexes are usually exaggerated because the brain functions to inhibit these reflexes.
For a physician, complete brain death (both cerebral and brainstem) is equivalent to the death of the person. While the body may be kept “alive” for some while with mechanical ventilation, hormone treatments, artificial heating/cooling systems, etc, at that point you are only treating the body. Without the brain and without the respiration reflexes of the brainstem, bodily function is not possible | 28 |
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ELI5: Does darkness of tan determine sun damage? | For example, take two people with the exact same skin complexion. Person 1 wears no sunscreen but stays out in the sun for a shorter period of time than person 2, who wears sunscreen but stays out in the sun for a longer period. Let's assume person 2 applies sunscreen effectively and reapplies the recommended amount of times. If person 1 and 2 obtain the same level of "tanness," have they both equally increased their risk of skin cancer? | 22 | No. There are two main types of UV radiation you get from the sun, UV-A and UV-B, the latter being responsible for sun burns. When you apply sunscreen you are blocking a high percentage of UV-B rays and preventing the damage on the middle and upper layers of skins. UV-A on the other hand penetrates the skin much deeper and isn’t blocked by traditional sunscreen. You still do damage, which presents as tanning, but because this happens at lower levels in your skin it often takes longer for someone to see a tan. Think of it as the color has to work it’s way up as you shed upper layers.
So the person who wears no sunscreen has absorbed UV-A AND UV-B rays while the sun screen wearer of similar tanness has blocked half of the damaging waves from the sun. | 15 |
CMV: When it becomes widely available, a diet consisting primarily of 'lab-grown meat', would be more ethical than vegetarian or vegan diets. | A little bit of background: I consume meat on a fairly regular basis, however. my girlfriend is a committed vegetarian and has been since she was very young. Recently, we both read an article on recent advances in the commercialization of lab-grown meat (more on this later) and its potential benefits. At the time, I asked her whether she would consider adding lab-grown meat to her diet if it becomes commercially viable and widely available, to which she replied with something along the lines of “probably not”.
While that was basically the end of the discussion, it got me thinking about people who are vegetarian or vegan primarily due to their opposition to the killing of animals, or as a result of environmental concerns (such as clearing of rainforests/wilderness for cattle ranching, greenhouse gas emissions, etc.), and the effect that lab-grown meat would have upon them. With this in mind, I'd like to put forward the following view:
1) Not explicitly killing an animal to consume its flesh does not mean that no animals were harmed in the harvesting and production of non-meat products. It is clear that there will be some inadvertent deaths that result from any kind of farming; in the case of non-meat farming, for example, animals may be caught up in combine harvesters or other machinery, or else their habitats may be destroyed when the farmland is cleared during the harvesting process, or even when the land is to make room for the farmland in the first place. In light of this, it would seem that the realistic aims of vegetarians/vegans are to **minimize** animal suffering and environmental impact.
1) There is currently an effort to develop meat that is grown in the laboratory through the culturing of animal cells (see [this article](http://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Memphis-Meats-introduces-lab-cultured-chicken-and-11003907.php) and [this article](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23576143), for illustrative examples). It is believed that these products could be commercially available as early as 2020.
3) As far as I can tell, at no point is an animal killed in order to produce this lab grown meat. It would also seem that the inadvertent killing of animals would be minimized through the consumption of lab-grown meat.
Taking these points into account, it seems to me that if you are vegetarian/vegan, and the reasoning behind your diet is to minimise animal suffering and/or environmental impact, **and** if lab-grown meat (as exemplified in the articles above) becomes widely available and affordable, then it is both logical and ethically correct to switch to a diet consisting primarily of lab-grown meat.
I look forward to having my opinion picked apart :)
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 29 | To really evaluate this claim, we'd need to know more about where the raw materials to manufacture lab grown meat came from. Cells can't just grow without some input. It's likely that whatever chemical input is used to grow the meat (aka a nutrient broth) is likely derived from plant materials, so you haven't avoided the farming issues of habitat destruction or combine harvesting you laid out in (1)
| 15 |
[Star Wars/ Star Trek/ General] On Planets with high space traffic such as Coruscant, or Earth, are there any negative consequences to the constant departure and re-entry of spacecraft? | 22 | Generally spaceports and traffic paths are far enough away from residential areas that this isn't a problem.
With Coruscant, it's not like you can freaking hear it over the sound of a planetwide city anyways. | 19 |
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ELI5: Ireland, the IRA, and overall what the fuck happened... | Also why bombs and terrorist tactics. I've looked up this subject before but was confused was not really able to grasp the why? | 63 | Ireland fell under English control in the 1500's, and remained so despite frequent revolts, until the early 1900's.
Religion was a large factor, as England was Anglican, while Ireland was Catholic. To try to gain better control, in the 1600 and 1700's, English citizen were encourage to colonize Ireland, particularly in the north. The hope was that an English population in Ireland would dilute the Irish influence and make it easier to control.
It didn't really work out that way, it just put Anglican English and Catholic Irish closer together so it was easier to fight. After World War I, England (now the UK) finally decided to let Ireland become an independent country. But because there were a lot of English living in the north, they divided it, with the south becoming its own nation, and the north remaining part of the UK.
*This* is what everyone is fighting over. Over the centuries, there were lots of English and Irish living in Northern Ireland, all mixed together. The Irish think it should be part of Ireland proper, while the English think it should remain with England.
The IRA is the organization that wants Ireland to be unified, and the Ulster Unionist want to stay with England. Both group have resorted to illegal violence in the past. | 29 |
ELI5: Why is it that a wet tissue or piece of cardboard or paper tear more easily? How does water affect the structural integrity of paper products? | 8,346 | Paper products are made from wood fibers that are basically matted together in random orientations like felt. As the paper dries, little hairs and random kinks in the fibers cause them to link up like tangled hair. Pressing/rolling operations enhance this effect.
Paper fiber is very hydrophilic, meaning it can soak up water easily and will soak up far more than its own weight in water. As the water wets the paper, capillary action pulls the water into the spaces between fibers and forces them apart. At the same same time, the fibers themselves absorb water, swelling up.
Between the swelling and the capillary action, the fibers are simply not as able to cling together. | 6,284 |
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Does the gravity of everything have an infinite range? | This may seem like a dumb question but I'll go for it. I was taught a while ago that gravity is kind of like dropping a rock on a trampoline and creating a curvature in space (with the trampoline net being space).
So, if I place a black hole in the middle of the universe, is the fabric of space effected on the edges of the universe even if it is unnoticeable/incredibly minuscule?
EDIT: Okay what if I put a Hydrogen atom in the middle of the universe? Does it still have an infinite range? | 3,667 | In theory, yes. Gravity has an infinite range. However, it also takes some time to propagate - information about local changes in the gravitational field will propagate at the speed of light. So if a supernova goes off and creates a black hole, we won't feel the gravitational disturbance until we see the light from the supernova.
Additionally, since the universe is expanding there are distances such that we will never receive information from. Anything that happens beyond that horizon will not be able to effect us. | 2,739 |
Does human experimentation result in a higher utility than animal experimentation? | Animal experimentation causes suffering, since it is based on, for example, deliberately causing illnesses such as cancer in the subjects. If its results outweigh the suffering caused by conducting such research, then it means it would be even better to use humans as subjects since the trials' results would be significantly more accurate (animals often react differently to various substances and stimuli than humans do). Higher accuracy of the research means fewer experiments would be necessary, and the resulting new methods of treatment would be more effective. Is there any argument against this reasoning?
Obviously, I'm not actually arguing for human experimentation. It is an ad absurdum against animal experimentation. | 24 | You know, this is an empirical, not a philosophical question. Generally speaking, animal and human experiments are tightly regulated, with the goal of balancing the necessary suffering, the rights of humans and the expected utility.
> then it means it would be even better to use humans as subjects since the trials' results would be significantly more accurate (animals often react differently to various substances and stimuli than humans do).
Yes and no - again, this is an empirical question. Not all animal experiments are the same. Figuring out the LD50 of a given drug in mice is highly valuable information before going for human experiments. Knowing how a molecule in a cell reacts to a drug is equally important. Etc, etc.
But anyway, it seems to me that you are arguing from an armchair here without understanding what animal experiments are, what they are for, etc. | 11 |
[Star Wars] If there were other "Jedi" or people with the potential to become force users, why did Yoda and Ben think Luke was the only one left? | "That boy is our last hope."
EDIT: I actually forgot that Yoda knew about Leia being Force sensitive, either way my question is the same.
EDIT 2: I think my question is getting *sort* of confused. Besides Luke, and somewhat Kanan were there any other fully trained Jedi still alive that could have helped Luke with training besides Ben. | 155 | The Force was probably sending out very strong "don't screw this up" signals to both Obi-Wan and Yoda with regards to Luke and his training.
After all, Luke *was* the best option for clearing out the taint of the Dark Side from the galaxy, because - ultimately - it was his relationship with his father that had the greatest effect, and not his relationship with the Force. | 204 |
ELI5: Why do all remote controls have squishy rubber buttons instead of proper hard keys like a keyboard? | 365 | While hard keys like keyboard keys get produced one by one, the rubber keys of remote controlls are all made in one step. those rubber buttons are on one big pad per remote control so they are produced pretty fast and they are cheap. old cellphones do have the same kind of buttons. the drawback of those rubber buttons is that you cannot type as fast as with keyboard keys, but because u dont need to be as fast as that it is no problem. also the stupid humans would never recognize that they get fucking cheap remote controlls instead of high quality products | 199 |
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ELI5: How do people in countries with 20%+ unemployment feed themselves and live normally? | in places like Spain and Greece, unemployment is super high. i don't make a ton of money and i still have a hard time keeping it straight... i was just wondering what it's like for people who are even worse off. how do you buy groceries? where do you live? how is life generally? | 30 | Not there, but same way people who are unemployed survive here.
20% uneployment is a lot. but that means that 4/5 people who want jobs still have them.
So you live with family, maybe do odd jobs, eat way cheaper, live off charity, and if your country still has a welfare program use that. | 15 |
[Warhammer 40k] Would a ritual sacrifice of every psyker humanity has allow for the birth of a psyker as powerful as the God Emperor? | 48 | Short answer: No
Long answer: Maybe?
The original shamans of Terra were very potent psykers who had attained a form of immortality by preserving their spirits in the warp after death in order to be reborn into new bodies. As the warp became increasingly chaotic with the formation of the Chaos gods the shamans found to their horror that less and less of their number were coming back; their spirits were being consumed by the new malevolent entities of the Warp.
Their ritual suicide is probably one of the greatest forms of sorcery in the 40k universe. They took advantage of the fact that the Chaos gods were still nascent and killed themselves.
This wouldn't work in the current timeline because the ritual suicide that led to the birth of the God-Emperor occurred before the Warp was fully corrupted. The Warp of today is an abyss and the souls of psykers are considered a delicacy to the malevolent entities within it.
In addition the original Terran shamans were incredibly powerful psykers, the same can't be said of every psyker in the Imperium in terms of strength of ability or character.
If, however, you figured out a ritual that would allow the souls of the deceased psykers to coalesce in the Warp without being picked apart there is a chance that you would create an infant Chaos god.
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[Legends of Zelda: BotW] How does the Fang and Bone make money - what is Kilton's business model? | Or, if it's not money he's after, what the hell is he up to, setting up a floating monster part shop at night in hostile territory? | 20 | He doesn't. Kilton pays Link for monster parts with mon, a currency he invented, that only has value to him. In theory he could sell those monster parts to other traders for rupees, but there's no real evidence he's doing so.
As for why he does any of it, well, he's simply obsessed with monsters. His clothes make monsters passive to Link, so the territory probably isn't actually all that hostile to him. | 28 |
ELI5: Why do SSDs have a read/write limit? What causes them to stop functioning after a certain number of read/write cycles? | 71 | SSDs can be read as many times as you want, but they have a limited number of write/erase cycles
SSDs are made using Flash memory which is constructed using floating gate transistors. On a normal FET transistor there is a channel with a thin insulator on top and a gate on top of that, the behavior of the transistor is controlled by the gate. On floating gate transistors there is the channel with a thin insulator, a gate, *another* thin insulator, and *another* gate. The gate in the middle isn't wired to anything and is electrically "floating"
The bits are stored by charging and discharging this "floating" gate, but it has insulators on both sides of it. The only way to get charges on or off of the floating gate is to blast them through the insulators. This harms the insulator and it breaks down a bit, but you can do this for a few thousand cycles before it breaks down enough to start misbehaving
To read the memory, you turn on the correct non-floating gates and can see if a line is pulled low or not, that gives you the status of each bit. This doesn't involve blasting charges through insulators so you can do this as many times as you want, it is also generally a fair bit quicker than writing | 39 |
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[Cabin in the Woods] How did the monsters/Ghosts/Demons/ect. get into the facility? Were they created or caught by the people running the whole thing? | They show them being stored in glass cubes. How did they get there? | 104 | I don't think there's direct evidence. Our best evidence would suggest that they were either created -- holistically or as experiments on wild creatures. Of note, not all of them are strictly 'monsters' just vicious creatures.
The Ancient Ones demanded a ritual sacrifice and while it seems like there are clear cut rules about it, these rules seem to have been established a bit more through experimentation rather than tradition. As noted, there are several labs around the world that conducted experiments in satisfying the Ancient Ones -- some had better records of success than others, but an aggregation of the data can help to hone down on what works. It's likely that the different labs may have experimented with various creatures (or lucked into some of their results) to see if it satisfied the Ancient Ones. Redundancies in labs helped to reduce the risk that they *all* would fail and allow for experimentation.
It's notable that many of the ritualistic aspects were manipulated -- moonlight, lust, personalities. The subjects themselves didn't fit the needs of the rituals perfectly, so they had to be adjusted. It stands to reason that the monsters themselves were as well. | 55 |
ELI5: If you have 2 of the same item, one heated to 100deg and one cooled to -100deg. Will their temperatures depreciate at the same rate or is one faster than the other? | 514 | You are missing one component that makes it impossible to know, actually a couple. But mainly, how warm is the room they are in. If the room is at 70 degrees, the 100 degree item will cool slower than the -100 degree item heats up. Because the 70 degree air won't be able to dissipate the heat as fast as lets say 30 degree air, or -20 degree air.
There is still other factors too. For example, not all materials transfer heat and cooling at the same rate. So depending on what material the item was made out of, it might shed heat a lot faster than heat up. | 349 |
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[The Road] What weapon could possibly cause all life in Earth to die except humans? | 17 | While there are no birds, the man never mentions any other animals to the boy. And with the supply of ash it may not even be a weapon, potentially a volcano rather than nuclear because in the early days of the post- apocalypse we saw people covering themselves, but not covering now in the later post apocalypse. | 20 |
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For anybody on an M1 Mac - what are you doing about package managers? | So I know that macports is supported on M1, and brew isn't yet, but you can use it through Rosetta 2. But how does that actually work? Like if I install a package through brew/Rosetta, will the x86 version be installed, or can I install the ARM native version? | 40 | You basically set up a new terminal that uses Rosetta, and it installs the package as x86. You can only use the Rosetta terminal to use brew but the files are stored as normal but must be run using the Rosetta terminal. | 10 |
[Cyberpunk] Ok, so we've seen CyberPUNK, but what does CyberFUNK look like? | 54 | Daz didn't usually go this far down 24th, but Mikeal just couldn't shut up about the new club. Neither could anyone else who'd been. Word around town was *Fun Key* was a bit more than drinks and dance floors. Club's a club, though, right?
Not much to look at on the outside, basic brick in uninspired 00's cubic chunks. Painted all black as if to say "we really don't care about this architecture". Daz wasn't even sure it was the right place until he stepped inside.
Everything the club was from the outside, it certainly wasn't on the inside. It took a couple seconds for his eyes to make sense of the dazzling lights. Before he could quite come to question why the floors all seemed to be missing, a staff member tapped his shoulders.
"Put these on" she said, holding out a pair of headwrap V-goggles. Daz was no lo tech fool, so he hooked them on, booted, and turned on pass through. The club started to make a bit more sense.
The floors he'd started to ponder before took on a groovy glow around the edges, but we're otherwise totally transparent. They formed a sort of stepped pyramid going up to a small VIP floor at the top. But each level was its own whole dance floor. The same pattern was inverted below, with concentric steps dropping towards another small VIP floor at the bottom. From his position on the central floor, the effect was mesmerizing. Cats were busting moves above and below, all over, kinda like a dance party in space.
The staff member stepped in to view. "It's pretty simple, more energy at the top, more chill down below. Your audio will sync to the floor you're on, and the Vir timewarps the dancers on other floors to keep them moving to the same beat you hear. Don't forget to dress yourself!"
Daz pulled up his favorite neo-retro vir-suit, a bright yellow deal with fractal curve flares. Foxes loved fractals. Deciding to see what was up, he found a stairway and claimed a few levels. Once his headset adjusted, he saw quite the kicking party. Everyone had a color changing motion trail following them. When someone clapped, it sent fireworks off around their fingers. It was pumping, energetic, and everyone was getting down.
A while later, Daz sunk to one of the lower floors to relax. The Vir down here swayed like everything was underwater, and the sound was high-passed to sell the illusion. People groovin to the tunes made bubbles and waves that slowly worked their way across the floor. He chuckled to himself when he realized he could literally float on someone's vibe. He was feeling the deep bass riffs like a massage for his soul, and everything was copesetic.
Daz understood why everyone was raving about this place. He already knew he was coming back, so he did future Daz a solid and left the other floors for another night. At least, he tried to. Curiosity got the better of him a couple times while he found his way out. Little peaks showed a floor with golden v-mirrors that maped someone else's dancing to a model of your body, and vice versa. Another seemed to be strobing time, the world would pulse between frozen and moving in time with the beat, like a typical strobe room but without the headache inducing flashing lights. And one last one near the exit that he really had to pull himself away from. He didn't quite understand it, but somehow everyone there was playing an instrument, and the couple seconds he heard sounded fresh as mom's garden.
Yeah, future Daz was in for a treat. | 35 |
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[WH40k] Does ork equipment grow with them? | Orks like to collect all sorts of loot, especially warbosses, flash gitz and mega nobz. These are also the largest orks with the best chance to grow even larger. With gestalt field being what it is, does this equipment grow larger with them? Or is it just easier to find some new junk? | 24 | Usually if an Ork wants a bigger gun he just bolts another one onto his current one. That said, no, Ork stuff is what it is and has to be remade or modified to the new standards. There are an entire group of Orks, called Mekboys, who are basically specialist Ork mechanics that work on this sort of thing. | 34 |
[Batman/DC] Is it clear to the general public that Batman does NOT have superpowers? | Given his reputation, incredible competence, and his A-lister status, do most people assume Batman has powers?
I imagine some know he does not (perhaps some in Gotham PD) but what about most people living in Gotham, or even his enemies? | 26 | No, and he works real hard to keep it that way. He can only be a symbol of fear to criminals if they think he could do anything to them, and that they aren't safe anywhere.
Hell, he's actively tried to get shot multiple times, just so he can make it look like he can come back to life at will. | 44 |
Can anyone help me understand Peter Singer's argument in favor of vegetarianism? | I am trying to view vegetarianism from a philosophical standpoint and have heard Peter Singer makes a very sound argument for why we should not kill animals for food. I believe the crux of his argument is in [this essay](http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm). I've seen it written that Singer believes we should extend the same rights of consideration to animals, but I need help ironing out what exactly that means. Can anyone familiar with Singer or the text linked shed some light on this for me? | 18 | In its most basic, Singer's view on animals flow from utilitarianism. Animals can feel pain and pleasure because they are (at least many of them are) sentient; if we abide by utilitarianism and think we ought maximise pleasure and minimise pain, we should consider the consequence of our actions on the pain and pleasure of animals just as well. There is nothing inherently different in their pleasure and pain, aside from degree.
Treatment of animals on animal farms and slaughterhouses is objectionable on utilitarian grounds since it prevents pleasure in animals, and increases their pain. On the other hand, vegetarianism is a perfectly good way to live, and reduces our happiness much less than it creates pain in the animals we eat. From there on, it's pretty clear that we should be vegetarians for Singer. | 15 |
CMV: punishments that simply punish the criminal while not rehabilitating them or making reparations for the crime committed are pointless. | So basically what I’m saying as a TL;DR is: punishments that just punish the criminal, like throw them in jail or something, are pointless if they don’t rehabilitate them or somehow make reparations for the crime committed. (Ex: locking up a thief in prison for fifteen years and not ever trying to rehabilitate them)
In-depth.
So to establish an argument we first have to establish what I mean when I say things like crime and punishment. This is basically half of an essay on my beliefs on what crime and punishment is.
So why do we punish crimes? Why are they even established as morally reprehensible in the first place? Well there are several reasons. One is religious beliefs obviously, and another (and my most important one) is the maintain of social order. Why do we punish murder, rape, or stealing? One is moral grounds but a big one is to maintain order. After all you can’t just have people going around murdering or raping or stealing from others as they please. If they could then society would collapse. That is one of the reasons that we have laws at all, for the sake of societies existence.
So then what is the purpose of punishment? As with crimes there are several reasons. Punishment is often used to make an example of people so that others might not get any funny ideas. If you see one guy get executed for stealing money then you might think twice about doing it yourself. Another reason is make sure that society gets repaired for the damage done by the crime. If someone steals then you catch them and confiscate the stolen goods as best you can to make sure everything in society is in its right place, so that everyone’s happy. Another is also rehabilitation; we rehabilitate criminals do that they do not commit the same crimes again, this is often done through punishment as its most effective. If you spank a child then they’ll not go against your word again.
So now that we have established one of the big reasons why we punish criminals for crimes and why we have law in the first place, let’s get on to the main point.
WHAT IS MY POINT?
My thesis is that if a crime is punished, but not in such a way that it makes reparations for the damage it caused or rehabilitates criminals, then it’s pointless and shouldn’t be done.
An example would be this: death penalty for first degree murder. In this situation the criminal is of course being punished in such a way that does not rehabilitate them. After all you can’t change as a person if your dead. And you can’t make reparations as you can’t bring back the dead. So from that all I say that such a punishment is pointless as it does nothing for society and does nothing to repair what happened.
Another examples would be.... well the general prison system In many countries. In many countries rehabilitation is almost never the top priority and all it does is lock away what was most likely a petty criminal for an excessive amount of time for anything ranging from grand theft auto to aggravated assault. They make no attempts to help better society and just lock away the problem pretending like it doesn’t exist.
Now there are a few counter arguments I can think of but I’ll deal with them if they ever comes from you guys. So go ahead.... CMV. | 50 | >They make no attempts to help better society and just lock away the problem pretending like it doesn’t exist.
You can disagree with how prison systems in various countries are set up, but locking people away still serves a purpose; incapacitation. A violent criminal who is in jail does not pose a threat to the general public. | 19 |
If I'm incredibly drunk and a mosquito bites me, will my high BAC effect the insect in any way? Can insects get "drunk?" | 212 | When nectar ferments on the flower, it turns into alcohol. Bees that visit said flower will absorbe some of the alcohol thorough their bodies. This will cause them to get drunk. The interesting part is that when they make it back to the hive, the other bees know that they are drunk and will block the drunk bee from entering until it is sober. They will even go as far as to kill it to protect the safety if the hive. | 72 |
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ELI5: Why does it take up to 30 seconds to process and authenticate a credit card transaction using a chip but under a second with the mag swipe? | 33 | It takes just as long with a mag swipe. However with the swipe and the pin the terminal have all the information necessary to conduct the transaction and can do so in the background. However if you use a chip the transaction is conducted by the chip and not the terminal so you have to wait for the transaction to complete before you can remove your card. | 28 |
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Why is the Higgs Boson listed separately from the other Gauge Bosons in the Standard Model? | 481 | Because the Higgs boson is not a gauge boson.
Gauge bosons are spin 1 particles that are needed to ensure that a local symmetry holds.
The Higgs boson is a spin 0 particle and it does not serve to ensure the existence of a local symmetry.
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[BioShock Infinite] Why did they try to execute Elizabeth in the trailer? | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31-NAkq8YEY
I mean people trying to hang Elizabeth here aren't Vox Populi but Founders.
Assuming this was a parallel universe, what do you think happened? | 16 | Alternate timeline where she broke out and hooked up with Daisy and the rabble, presumably. Or a coup by the more hardline crazies in the Founders against the prophet because he wasn't being hateful enough. Could be anything. Alternate universes are a fucking nightmare to figure out. | 17 |
[Inside Out]Why do Riley's emotion not Look like her? | In the film it was shown that all the Inner emotions looked like versions of real life the people they inhabit
Also why does Riley have Male and Female Emotions | 69 | Because she's still trying to find herself and identify what she sees herself as. Puberty will likely be a very difficult time for her, but as she grows older and experiences the milestones of modern childhood, her emotions will slowly morph into looking more and more like her | 111 |
ELI5:How is it that a season of a show like Game of Thrones can be produced in a year, but a 90 minute movie takes multiple years to film? | 29 | A few things.
First, a movie doesn't take multiple years to film. Principal photography is usually done in a couple of months. The many months after that is editing, CG, composing, etc.
Game of Thrones has incredible production value for a TV show. But it's still not "Blockbuster movie" production value. Until this latest season, large battles were usually skipped for the most part (remember Rob Stark's battle where they just cut to his Mom and then he walked up saying they won?)
The vast majority of Game of Thrones is simply the characters walking through an environment talking each other in an intense manner. Literally 90% of the show. That stuff isn't too expensive or time-consuming.
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[Star Wars] How long did it take Anakin to adjust his fighting style after the fight with Obi Wan on Mustafar? | I've just finished watching the Clone Wars series and can only think of this super speedy triple back flip-ing chosen one, who becomes the slow, menacing, powerhouse that is Darth Vader.
How long did it take him to adjust how he fought or is the only difference that he no longer back flips with his robot body and everything else is the same? | 63 | If you mean "When does Darth Vader get as good with a lightsaber as Anakin Skywalker was before the armor?" he never did.
Even against Luke Skywalker, Vader sometimes used slow, clumsy downward strikes powered by bending at the waist because he couldn't raise his elbows into a high guard.
He's still effective because he's a precognitive telekinetic who has super strength and mostly fights people who don't have those abilities, but it's kind of like swatting flies. The power gap is so huge that almost no one can hurt Anakin, even though he's much slower than they are. People who try to run from Vader instead of standing and fighting mostly succeed.
The few times Vader fought people who actually knew how to use a lightsaber it didn't go well for him. Ahsoka cut into his helmet and came close to killing him. Obi-Wan threw the fight so that Luke would leave, but was holding Vader off fairly well before that. | 55 |
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