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ELI5: How companies (Arizona, Santitas) can regulate the price that every retailer charges for their product | I am curious about how this works because no end retailer or anywhere in between can only charge one price since it is labeled directly on the product. | 49 | I think that's why they label it like that. If you want to sell their product your only going to be able to charge the price on the can or look bad to your customers. If they don't want to sell for that price carry a competing product. | 17 |
Why does light not bend when it hits perpendicular to a new medium? | 26 | Here's a symmetry argument: Which way would the beam get re-directed? There is no preferred direction, so it wouldn't be consistent for the light to be deflected one way or another.
More precisely: If the situation is rotationally symmetric along the axis along which the incoming light travels, the behavior of the outgoing light must be unchanged under rotations about that axis. Consequently, the beam of light going into the new medium has to go along the same direction as the incident light was traveling in the situation you describe. | 37 |
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Why does my shower curtain blow inwards while water is running? | All I want to do is have a shower without the curtain constantly sticking to various body parts. | 34 | Prof. David Schmidt, who did computational fluid dynamics modeling of this phenomenon and won a 2001 Ignoble Prize for the work, has a shower curtain across his office door at UMass-Amherst.
The spray of water causes a vortex of air to form (a sideways tornado), and the low pressure region in the middle of the vortex pulls the curtain inward. This is why it also happens with cold water. Thermal buoyancy effects aren't enough to move the curtain
Solution - use an air permeable shower curtain made of polyester fabric.
Source: Was one of his students. | 20 |
eli5: Why are video file sizes so small? | A normal image stored on a phone is around 5 mb, if you calculate that way, a 1080p 60 fps video should be 60 frames X 5 mb X 600 seconds = 180000 MB= 180GB. But if you check a file size of an actual 10 minute video, it is only around 1GB. How can it be so small? | 1,116 | Video compression. The video file doesn’t store every frame, it just stores what changes between frames.
Periodically there will be a full frame, called a “key frame”, just to reset everything but most of the “frames” in the file are just a small list of changes from the prior frame. Unless there’s a jump cut, there is usually very little difference between adjacent frames.
Basically, the video file isn’t the video, it’s instructions to the software on how to recreate the video in real time. | 1,859 |
ELI5: Why is Mexico so poor compared to the US and Canada? | They all were settled at similar times. Is it due to the Spanish taking out all of the gold? Does it stem from their loss in the Mexican-American War? Is there a more recent cause? | 45 | Canada and the USA were settled by parceling out land and by bringing excess labor from abroad (Europe, Africa, etc. Mainly Europe though) to develop the land. So this lower population density allows for a more equitable distribution of land. This also affects the way the colonists are treated by the governments that were set up.
Mexico and South America had the larger native populations and the system for settling was not to develop and make life better for colonists, but instead to extract wealth and labor to Spain. The majority of the labor was done by natives and when they died off Africans were brought in massive numbers. This method of colonization also set up governments that were more oppressive for the people of Mexico since Spain didn't view Creoles as highly as England saw USA and Canadian colonies.
Another important aspect is the environment. Jungles, deserts and mountains are a lot harder to develop. Those are the main habitats in Mexico and the rest of the Americas.
These reasons are more of roots, but there's plenty more reasons that require more reading and can't he Eli as easily. | 26 |
Can you inheirt trauma via your genes? | Someone sent me this article, but I don't have the educational background to judge it.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/parents-emotional-trauma-may-change-their-children-s-biology-studies-mice-show-how | 18 | This hypothesis is based on epigenetics (these are messages on top of the DNA, so the environment in these situations doesn't change the sequence of the DNA, but the special signals on top of the DNA which tells it when to be expressed). This can be passed down the generations. They have found this with grandmother's who experienced a famine when they were young and this impacted their grandkids. There is a great documentary on this which explains it in an easy to understand why for the public called 'Ghost in your genome' produced by PBS and is available on YouTube. | 35 |
[Star Wars] What was Darth Sidious' plan if Luke had turned to the dark side in ROTJ since the DS-2 was going to to be destroyed? | The thought came to me recently and I tried finding the answer, but I could not find one sufficient enough to put my curiosity down. Say Darth Vader was slain by Luke in the throne room, and knelt in front of Sidious then rose a Lord of the Sith. What was the next step? Lando Calrissian and Wedge Antilles were going to destroy the Death Star 2 anyway making the Sith, at least Darth Bane's line, extinct. Did Sidious even plan that far because having the top two of your empire in one place while being attacked by insurrectionists does not seem like a good idea making this appear as a desperate scheme to resolve the issues that plagued the Galactic Empire in recent years.
I've read that Palpatine used his force abilities to influence his troops to make better decisions and to fight more efficiently long ago, but, even then, his attention was on the battle between Vader and Luke in front of him. Thus, this, probably no longer canon ability, to influence his military is highly likely defunct.
I'd just like to know y'all's opinions or even in-lore facts as to what Sidious could have done now that he has his new apprentice only to lose his life in the destruction of the DS-2. | 15 | Assuming that the DS2 still gets destroyed if Palpatine lives there's no reason they couldn't have escaped the same way Luke and Vader do. Id be very surprised if the Emperor didn't have some secret escape pod or shuttle close to his throne room | 31 |
[Truman Show] Does the main cast ever get down time to live some kind of life outside the show? If not, aren't they just as much prisoners as Truman? | I'm thinking especially Truman's wife Meryl. She has been with him since high school. She lives with him, sleeps with him (and has sex with him). She can't really leave him for any long period of time so does she even have friends in the real world anymore? She crossed her fingers when they got married but what was the point? If you end up living with someone for 10 years and having their baby you're functionally in a monogamous relationship anyway, even if you're only doing it for your career.
EDIT: clarified what I meant by "sleep with" | 761 | Truman's at work all day and sleeping at night. There's plenty of down time for everybody, even his wife. She may leave the dome while he's working and go to Los Angeles to run errands, go shopping, and have lunch with her friends. Or she could just go to her house in Beverly Hills, lounge in her pool, and crash for a few hours.
Regulars could have it in their contract that their real-life families get a house in Seahaven. There's a hell of a lot of space to fill, so using family as extras kind of makes budgetary sense.
They probably even get annual vacation. They have to travel to "visit a sick mother" or something. | 648 |
At what size does a wire mesh stop acting as a Faraday cage? | Wire meshes can often be used as Faraday cages to shield the inside from exterior electromagnetic waves. At some point, the mesh should stop being a Faraday cage if the holes keep getting bigger. So at what size of mesh does the mesh stop being effective at screening incoming waves? | 114 | Faraday cages stop being effective as the mesh size approaches the wavelength of light. For microwaves, notice that the protective wire mesh has mm-sized holes in it. If they were cm-sized, it wouldn't screen the microwaves as effectively. | 44 |
What causes the film on hot milk? | I've noticed that when I heat up milk or another liquid that is mostly dairy it forms a thin film on the surface if it gets hot enough. What causes this and is there a way to prevent it? | 45 | Milk contains proteins, for example lactoglobulins. When you heat it up, they denature, that is, they lose their structure, stick together and form that surface film. There's really no way to avoid that except for constant vigorous stirring to prevent the coagulation. | 63 |
ELI5 how the body has developed to not have an upper limit of the fat it can or wants to store | The question came up when thinking about phones stopping to charge when the reaching 100% battery. It appears the body keeps accumulating fat even when it's excessive. | 18 | Because, historically, it hasn't been a problem. Evolution doesn't have a goal or an end state it is after - it simply 'rewards' traits that grant increased reproductive fitness.
Up until the last ~50 years or so, having _too much_ food has not been a problem, so it was rare for people to get so fat that it caused health issues. Since it wasn't a common problem, we never evolved to avoid it. | 43 |
Advice on how to include or document code into a dissertation | Hi, the core of my dissertation is not coding. However to do all the studies I had to write a series of scripts to handle the data for either visualizations or any sort of analysis. For the niche group of researchers in this topic, we consider these pieces of code could be useful. So, besides including a github repository with mys scripts, could anyone share tips on how to include this type of work? Is it an appendix the best alternative? Or is this worth a chapter? | 17 | Apart from the appendix, which is a good idea, you can also create project for your dissertation on Open science foundation or Zonedo and link your GitHub repo, to make it more visible for researchers. | 15 |
Why is String Theory considered to be "un-testable"? | 25 | To test quantum gravity theories, you need a situation in which both quantum and gravitational effects are significant. We only know of two such scenarios: black holes and the big bang. All the black holes are too far away and too big to yield useful information about quantum gravitational effects. We can only see back to about 400,000 years after the big bang, so any of the initial quantum gravitational effects are currently unaccessible, although there may be clues in the cosmic microwave background soectrum, as well as any primordial neutrinos or gravitational waves if we are able to detect them.
There is the other issue that string theory is not yet complete to the point where it can make unique predictions, but that can be said about any quantum gravity theory. | 25 |
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What exactly happens when fruit becomes ripe? Why was it once sour and now sweet? Where did the sourness go, and where did the sweetness come from? Also, what explains the change of color in something like a banana? | 316 | When a fruit ripens, it converts complex carbohydrates, basically starch, into simpler sugars, glucose, fructose, sucrose etc. For bananas, and many other fruits, the signal to start converting the starch to simple sugars is ethylene gas. This is why "one bad apple can ruin the bunch" as an over ripe fruit is oozing ethylene which induces rapid ripening of the surrounding fruit. Fruit is often picked very under ripe because it is firmer and less likely to be damaged during transport, then, once it gets to its destination it is treated with ethylene to induce ripening. | 99 |
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By guessing the rate of the Expansion of the universe, do we know how big the unobservable universe is? | So we are closer in size to the observable universe than the plank lentgh, but what about the unobservable universe. | 5,191 | We measure the size of the unobservable universe by measuring the curvature of the local universe. If it has zero curvature, the universe is flat and infinite. If it has negative curvature, it has a hyperbolic shape, and is also infinite. If it has positive curvature, it has a hyperspherical shape (like a sphere but in more dimensions), and we can use the curvature to work out the size of the universe.
Currently it really looks like the universe is very very flat, so it looks like it's infinite. Unfortunately, all measurements must have an uncertainty, which means that it's technically possible that the universe is finite in size - it's just that the curvature is so small that we can't actually see it.
Edit: For a flat universe, Ω=1. For a spherical universe, Ω>1. We have Ω=1.00±0.02. For Ω=0.98, the radius of curvature of the universe would be about 30 gigaparsecs, which is on the scale of the total size of the observable universe - although we've only observed galaxies up to about 4 Gpc, and only with tricky lensing techniques. | 2,309 |
Why is high barometric pressure indicative of good weather and low indicative of rainy weather? | Isn't an atmostphere with more water vapor within it more dense than the one without? | 150 | Actually its quite the opposite! You may be thinking that water vapor is "added" to dry air which would increase the mass of a particular parcel of air but instead you should think of it as displacing the dry air instead. As it turns out, Water Vapor is actually less dense than a parcel of completely dry air. So the more water vapor you add to a parcel, the more buoyant it becomes. If you think about the components of dry air and water this becomes a bit more evident. A molecule of water is made up of 2 hydrogen atoms and a single oxygen atom. Dry air is basically (not including trace components here and doing some slight rounding) made up 80% of Nitrogen (molecules of 2 Nitrogen atoms) and 20% Oxygen (molecules of 2 Oxygen atoms). Both Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules weigh far more than a water molecule due to the very low atomic weight of hydrogen. The molar mass of water vapor is ~.8g/mol while the molar mass of dry air is ~1.25g/mol. So when that water vapor replaces other molecules in dry air, its easy to see why the density drops.
As a parcel of air rises, the water vapor will condense out due to the lower pressures and dropping air temperature. However, condensation of water releases energy into the atmosphere which means the temperature of a more saturated parcel of air will drop more slowly as it rises and allows it to rise farther and faster.
So that addresses how air with a higher water vapor content rises but it doesn't really address your initial question about barometric pressure. Areas of high pressure are generally associated with air that is sinking while the opposite is true for areas of low pressure. Because rising air is necessary to form clouds and in turn form precipitation, areas of low pressure have a higher incidence of rainy weather.
That being said, low pressure isn't going to produce rainy weather if no water vapor is present, so the barometric guidelines are just used in a general sense. | 50 |
ELI5: Why does one get a weird and somewhat unusual feeling when coming back to their home after a long trip ? | Do you all know what I am talking about? When you go on vacation or a trip away from your home for about a month or more and then you return back to your home, you get an unusual or a sort of "weird" feeling. Your house smells different when you walk through the door and it seems kind of unfamiliar. This weird and unusual feeling usually goes away after a day, but what is going on here? Why do we feel this way? | 20 | I don't know for sure, yet it seems rather obvious to me. Normally, when you are not on vacation, you wake up in the same bed, in the same house, and that is the place that you spend most of your time in. When you've been on vacation for a while, your brains have adjusted to living in a different environment, and they have sort of "forgotten" about your home. When you return home and see it again, the memories of your home flood back. It smells and look different from the place that you have been having a vacation at for the past days. That's why it feels kind of outplaced, different. | 13 |
ELI5: How do linguists research pre-written languages like Proto-Indo European without any evidence? | 38 | tl;dr: It's a (very carefully-thought-out) educated guess.
A little background first:
Languages change over time, usually very slowly and in subtle ways. For example, some sounds are so similar that when someone is talking fast, you might not hear the difference and learn the "wrong" version. If enough people hear the other thing and teach their kids, the word changes *in that village*. Twenty miles away, they're still saying that word the way they always have, but they've changed some other word that your village didn't.
Stick some wolves in the forest so no one travels that way, and eventually, with the two village never talking to each other, they start talking differently. The teenagers make up cool new slang. They start hearing an "accent" when they meet someone from the other village. The accent gets stronger as they keep changing without each other. Then, one day, their kids can't understand each other. They speak different languages.
Now, to answer your question:
Let's say they all start writing at the same time. So you know how they talk at that point. It hasn't been that long since village A and B were talking the same, but you can see some differences. If they both have the same word for something, they probably had the same word when they were together. If the word is different, but it's still pretty close, then you do have to guess at what it used to be.
BUT we can make pretty good guesses. It's fairly likely that only one of them changed. Say village A says the word "fifth" and village B has the easier-to-say word "fith". Do you think village A added an extra sound to "fith" to make it harder to say? Or that village B simplified the word over time? Both are possible, but one answer makes a lot more sense, and matches what we see modern languages doing.
Researchers do this with grammar too, not just words, and they have a lot more than just two languages/dialects to work with, all at different stages of "time spent apart". | 30 |
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[The Flash] What were the ethics around the The Pipeline prison? It's basically indefinite solitary confinement. | *edit: Thanks for all the responses and discussion. You might notice I haven't added much to the conversation, and that's entirely because I have no idea what the ethical implications would be in this case; it may be better for me to just listen than spout off on something I know very little about.* | 391 | Fascist dictatorships generally occur when people with power decide to start exercising it against those who don't. The Flash, a being of nearly infinite power (time travel, c'mon), and his then-mentor the Anti-Flash (by all accounts a major dick) decided that it was better to exercise his power over his captured foes by imprisoning them forever and "worrying about it later", rather than facing the present-day ethical issue of either killing these people, finding a cure for their super-powered mutations, or rehabilitating them psychologically.
So basically, the ethics are "it's easier to not think about it". Also, who knows if they're being fed or not, that gas guy is probably gonna leak out of any airlock designed to allow food in. | 335 |
[MCU] Did Thanos exclude himself from the snap? Or was he not sure whether he'd be in the 50% that survived? | 753 | He 100% excluded himself from the snap, even if he would never admit it out loud. And perhaps never admit it to himself.
Thanos was never interested in actually saving the universe. His entire goal was to prove that his insane genocidal plan was the correct one, and it would have saved his home if they just listened to him. He wanted to be right, not heroic.
Thanos would never have accepted being killed by his own snap, without seeing the universe finally show the gratitude he thought he was owed. Even if he got everything he wanted and spent the rest of his life on a farm in the middle of nowhere, he would have basked in the self-centered pleasure of proving everyone wrong. | 1,135 |
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ELI5: If we are our brains, where am "I" (the voice in my head) inside of all that mass of neurons and connective tissues? | Mainly curious about the voice in my head when you think about things. Where am "I"? | 74 | That's the problem of consciousness: we just don't know.
There are some who think that consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon: get enough neurons in one place arranged correctly and poof! conscious person.
Some believe that it's not physical, or that we don't know the physical properties that make it up yet.
Of course, it's also possible that you're the only conscious individual in existence, and everyone else is just a construct of your mind. In that case, consciousness is a property of the universe, and you are the universe. | 91 |
For mosquito bites, does the whole "Draw an X into your skin with your fingertips" have any basis in science, or is it just an old wives' tale? | I've come across this many time, including on Reddit, the idea is that if you press your fingernails into a mosquito bite twice (to make the shape of an X or cross), it will release the toxins, or spread them out over a larger part of the skin to reduce the itch, or some such thing. Does this idea have any scientific basis, or is it mainly a placebo (or replacing itchiness with pain :P)?
Also, some of the posts mentioned adding something (I've seen salt, butter, hot water, and other stuff) on the crossed-out area, not sure for what purpose really. Again, any merit to these? I'm a bit skeptical to be honest.
Thanks :) | 38 | I don't think it has the scientific basis that you explained. From what i remember, some sensations on our skin are stronger than others. Itching being one of the strongest. So the reason why we scratch something that itches is because the pain from scratching is stronger than the sensation of itching, there by relieving yourself of the itch. Marking an X does the same thing as scratching. There's no basis to believe that marking an X would release "toxins" that would relieve the itch. | 16 |
CMV: Using the word 'creepy' the way it is used makes no sense | The reason to post it in CMV is that I actually think chances are I'm not properly informed and you can inform me of my misconceptions
Its about the word creepy, my main language isnt english and I dont live in the USA or even nearby so at first (I learned english by reading online boards) I didnt even know what it mean, but after seeing the context in which it was used I found out what it means in america, and i was disgusted to be honest
It is extremely disrespectful and also very dumb to say because it makes no sense to call someone creepy unless they seem like an actual threat, it also reveals that the one saying it is infantile as fuck
And for what i have seen its often used by girls that disrespect boys they dont like, as if to justify their behavior or blame them, so you could say someone using that word is a coward too
I will downvote no comments by the way so dont hesitate, Im not one to censor anyones opinion. If the way I put it offends you tell me and I will edit and apologize
**EDIT: look at the bottom (or sort by new) to see my latest response, someone tried to censor it and its at the bottom with 0 points ._.**
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[Doctor Who] What happened to Jenny (The Doctor's Daughter)? | By the end of the episode [The Doctor's Daughter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doctor's_Daughter), Jenny is flying off in an escape shuttle about to start her own adventures and it seemed from the way the end was written that they would bring her back into the series at some point.
But as of now this hasn't happened so I'm wondering whether or not in some additional material they have addressed what happened to Jenny after she flew off in the shuttle. | 24 | Space and time are both really, really big, and Jenny doesn't necessarily have the same fascination with Earth that the Doctor does, so they may not cross paths for a while. And when they do, at least one of them won't be in the same body.
Add to that the fact that Jenny hasn't looked into the Untempered Schism so may not have all the full powers of a Time Lord, and who knows if they'll even recognize each other? | 17 |
ELI5: How can phones have 8gb ram in such a small formfactor and pc needs these huge 4gb ram stick? | 11,701 | This has to do with industry standards. The RAM slots on PC's are almost always the same size. A 64GB RAM stick is the same size as early 256MB RAM sticks. The size does not really represent the power/storage anymore. It's just a matter of standardization.
Addition: RAM chips in phones are often integrated and can't be swapped. Cell phone RAM is also a lot slower. It consumes less power, which means it doesn't reach the same temperatures as the far more powerful equivalents in desktop computers. In larger chips, it is easier to distribute heat than in smaller chips, so a larger stick is beneficial for desktop RAM. And well... Desktops simply have the room for it.
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ELI5 Why do hatches and SUVs have rear windscreen wipers when Sedans rarely if ever do | What's the downside of having rear wipers on Sedan/why don't they have them? | 373 | The aerodynamics of all cars creates a bubble of air behind them causing a loop affect when it rains. This loop effect causes rain to splash back on to the rear of the vehicle. In an SUV or other trunk less car, this means it splashes onto the rear windows. In a normal coupe or sedan, the rear is the trunk which gets hit the most.
So essentially it just not a necessary expense to add to sedan like cars. | 230 |
ELI5: How is it not criminally negligent to not vaccinate your children? Especially since they have been proven to reduce if not eradicate disease? | 52 | As bad as it is, legally you cannot force someone to have an injection when their life is not in danger, just as you cannot force their parents to make them have the injections when the child is too young to consent, or the parents have the decision to make. If the kid was dying, then you could go a court and get them to sign off as taking the medical decisions of the child away from the parents, however that is when active medical treatment is needed, vaccines are passive, and that's the key difference.
I wish it was something that we could force everyone to do (it kinda is now in that you cannot have your kid in public school if they are not vaccinated), but it sets a dangerous precedent to allow any government to be able to force inject something into a child. | 30 |
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ELI5: If you would throw an electrical device into the ocean , how big would the area where you can get electrocuted be? | 39 | If you threw an electrical device (either 110v or 220v) into the ocean it would simply short out. The area that one could be electrocuted would be minuscule as the current would travel straight down to the nearest part of ocean floor. Unless your at the exact spot where you dropped something like a toaster in you’d feel nothing.
Also if you tried just putting a cable in to the ocean hooked up a generator the same thing would happen. The generator would just short out stopping any current from transferring to the ocean water. | 23 |
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Why after all the money printed, USD keep getting stronger compared to GBP or EUR? Wouldn't that mean that it will keep getting stronger and suddenly crash soon? | Hi all,
So I have been observing GBP, EUR and USD and dollar and euro are now 1 to 1 which didn't happen for a long time (Probably to Russia/Ukraine things going on) but I don't get why GBP soon will be 1 to 1 to the dollar as well?
I am no expert in economics but from my understanding, it is quite worrying as such things didn't happen for more than 20 years.
Would that mean that currencies/markets will crash soon? or if not what could be the major change in the economy since GBP/EURO/USD will be all 1 to 1? | 104 | 1) The ECB and BoE were also running fairly loose monetary policy
2) The Fed is tightening monetary policy more aggressively than BoE and ECB
3) The UK and EU are highly dependent on oil & gas imports, whereas the US is a net exporter of gas and more balanced in oil, so the Ukraine war has dealt a more severe terms of trade shock to the UK and EU than to the US | 208 |
ELI5: How are transgender individuals different from other dissociative identity disorders? | I need your help on this one Reddit.
I really can't quite process the whole gender identity thing.
A common idea that we constantly tell people is to "just be yourself"
However transgender individuals take drugs (hormones), have surgical procedures to actually alter themselves.
This really doesn't make any sense from an acceptance stand point, because aren't they not actually accepting themselves?
It really is confusing to me and doesn't seem different from any of the other dissociative identity disorders like multiple personality disorder.
Or even that of eating disorders where individuals physically alter themselves (through starvation/purging) to achieve a perceived self image?
The more I think about it. The more it makes zero logical sense.
Please explain.
| 2,986 | The most important comparison to the disorders you mentioned is their inherent harmfulness. People suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder are not always fully aware of their actions. People with Body Dismorphic Disorder do not have an accurate gauge on their body image, leading to self-harm through starvation and purging behaviors.
Transgendered individuals are very different. They are fully conscious of their desires and intentions. Any negative outcomes are more likely the result of that individual's culture, friends, and family. Historically, their treatment has been very poor.
The decision to undergo hormone treatment and/or surgery (which not all wish to do) is made carefully ~~and after at least a year living as their desired gender~~ (Edit: thank you for the timeline correction) and with deliberation. When transgendered people make changes to their lives, they are very much "being themselves", but it is harder for them than buying new clothes or losing weight or learning to relax around other people.
For transgendered people, "being themselves" requires a great deal of introspection and self-awareness. They recognize that they feel different from others who have the same assigned gender, sometimes as early as their toddler or primary school years. They must somehow come out to themselves, accept it, and (if possible) articulate that understanding to others in a world and/or culture that is not well designed for them. Truly, the ability to successfully make a transition represents a great deal of mental fortitude and well being. Cis-gendered individuals should learn to be understanding to those with different life experiences. | 1,269 |
ELI5: why do teeth “hurt” when eating extremely sweet foods? | 27 | Note that this isn't normal. It's generally a symptom of mild or moderate gum disease and excessive plaque, resulting in recession of the gum tissue. This is usually a result of a lack of flossing and/or poor brushing routine, but pain in this instance can also be caused by cavities.
Either way if you have frequent tooth sensitivity to cold or certain foods, its a good time to see the dentist.
When gums are unhealthy and receded, it exposes living tooth tissue, known as Dentin, in the teeth root area beneath the layer of dead enamel on the exposed tooth surface. Often this happens in the space between teeth due to plaque trapped there. Normally the enamel is the only exposed part of the teeth and the gums cover the dentin. However bacterial overgrowth can weaken the connection between the dentin and the gum tissue causing gumline recession.
Sweets often contain citric acid as a flavoring agent. Bacteria in the mouth also are able to quickly break down sugars into lactic acid. These acids cause inflammation and irritation of living cells in the dentin. These send chemical signals in response to the central nerve in the tooth resulting in pain. | 21 |
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[Marvel] How does Spider-Man's spider sense work as a spider-based power? Spiders aren't psychic. | As Spidey shows in the first Amazing Spider-Man, spiders can sense movement on webs. However, that's not how it works. Spider-Man seems to have precognition. Spiders don't have precognition, even radioactive or genetically engineered ones. So, what's up? How does spider sense work? | 75 | Spider-Man's powers aren't due to his body becoming more spider-like. For instance, a spider can climb on walls because it is lightweight and has many tiny, rough contact points that allow it to grip onto the imperfections in a surface. Spider-Man can climb walls because he can control the attraction between his molecules and those of whatever he touches, essentially bonding to them on an atomic level. (this has an interesting side effect-- no force on earth can make him let go of something if he doesn't want to, his arms will tear out of their sockets or the surface itself will break before his grip does.)
In short, it's probably just lucky coincidence (or the will of the spider-totem) that he got the powers he did and that they generally resemble abilities a spider has. | 84 |
ELI5: Why can't we repopulate lands and deserts with trees with all the technologies we have available these days? | We always hear about deforestation and how there are so much barren wastelands everywhere. With the ability to transport water and other necessary things and technology, isn't it possible to repopulate a dessert or land that has been harvested? | 55 | We can, but it is expensive and would have a lot of other effects that we don't want. For example, sand blowing across the ocean from the Sahara is responsible for replenishing the soil of the Amazon. So, even if we can, it might not be a good idea. | 24 |
ELI5: In quantum mechanics, what does it mean for something to be "observed"? | [This post](http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1krtbt/so_thats_how_usb_plugs_work/) made me wonder — what does it mean for something to be "observed"?
I tried Googling around for it and ended up more confused than when I started, so hopefully somebody here can help shed some light. Thanks! | 91 | The word observed is used because typically we're measuring a property of something very tiny, which tells us about it. We "observe" its existence by measuring it's velocity or position.
The trouble is, to get that information, to measure it, we have to interact with it in some way. Since the world of quantum mechanics is so tiny, we don't know of any ways to interact with it in a way that we get meaningful information without disturbing it's state.
Think of small particles as very shy. If you observe them, they'll notice and change what they're doing because you're watching them. Whereas if you observe a cat, it won't care and will continue about its business.
That's the main difference between normal observation and observing things in the world of quantum mechanics. Hopefully that helps clear up your confusion.
TL;DR - Observing in the quantum sense means disturbing something in a way that you get information. | 19 |
[Dresden Files] In the Dresden files does one have to be born with magic to be a wizard, or can one simply learn to be one? | I know that is theoretically possible to open the sight with things other than magic, but does that really make them a wizard? | 21 | Wizards are born, and then made.
The short answer to your question is - you have to be born with it. Magic use is a talent for humans, one that not everybody has access too or has in sufficient quantity to make use of.
However, a moderate talent can gain a great deal of power and ability through training and use and an exceptional talent can wither and fade if not exercised. So a wizard like Mr. Dresden is a combination of those two things. He is a massive talent, potentially the strongest in raw power in his generation, that has spent literally decades honing and refining. | 29 |
ELI5: what makes quartz crystals so useful? | As far as I understand they are being used in clocks and computer technology - what makes them so special? | 22 | One major aspect of quartz is that it is piezoelectric. This is when a material will produce a tiny amount of electricity when deformed by physical force. Such a behavior is very useful in things like sensors for microphones, guitar pickups, and ultrasound sensors for medical imaging.
Another major use is that the piezoelectric behavior works in reverse where the crystals will slightly deform when electricity is applied to them. A sort of "tuning fork" can then be constructed that will resonate at a specific frequency and kept resonating by applying a small electric charge. That resonance then can be used to keep time with high accuracy, hence the concept of a "quartz watch". There are other obvious uses for timekeeping in electronic devices. | 36 |
ELI5: If it is said that the gravitational pull of Black Holes is so strong that it attracts light, then wouldn't that require light to have mass? | 2,021 | Light always travels in a straight line relative to space-time. Since a black hole creates a massive curvature in space-time, the light follows the curve of space-time (but is still going straight). From an outside observe, it appears that light bends towards the black hole; in reality, light's not bending - space-time is. | 2,331 |
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Is Australia the most problematically in-debt nation in the world? | I'm a total amateur but trying to understand why debt is a big deal. It looks like a countries debt isn't as meaningful as its debt to GDP ratio. Better yet is it's external debt to GDP ratio, because countries with extraordinarily high debt like Japan don't seem to collapse cause it's mainly owned by Japanese citizens who don't want to collapse their government.
Better still is 'international investment position', which is basically the debts we owe other countries, minus the debts they owe us.
Australia has the one of the world's worst net international investment positions per capita of any debtor nation, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Yet, I never see this talked about? Wouldn't Australia or another country in that situation need to urgently real in it's foreign debt to underwrite it's economic security and the well-being of future Australians from unprecedented financial crises? I sure don't wanna gamble with my entire country's economic system.
| 19 | Australia currently inspire high confidence in their ability to repay debt (AAA rating), got much lower debt to GDP ratio than other developped country, and got self limiting borrowing power through the loan council, used to have a debt ceiling and don't guarantee 100% of the citizen deposits anymore.
Also owning someone debt doesn't mean you can collapse its governement. Debt is just a contract "I give you W and you repay me in X years with Y% of interest payed each Z periods".
The potential problem with foreign debt is when you borrow money in a currency that isn't yours, because change rate will move and maybe fuck you up.
(Also if your debt is owned by your own citizen, there may be capital revenues taxes, income tax, VAT and corporate tax on companies where your citizen spend their money so it is cheap debt). | 15 |
CMV: Women 18-60 should be required to stay and fight in Ukraine if men are. | It’s really been bothering me that this rule exists and is separating families. I feel like I’m missing something since everyone else seems so okay and normal about it. It’s heartbreaking. And while I don’t think conscription should exist at all, I think it should be equal if it does. It’s unfair that an 18 year old girl gets to leave while an 18 year old boy has to go die.
Who should care for the children? This can be decided on non-sex related factors.
This is coming from a completely non-political position. Change my mind because this is eating at me. | 758 | Ok if it's truely coming from a non political position let us be frank
Life is not fair.
Men are biologically stronger than women.
Women and children are far more likely to be targeted with rape war crime.
Someone has to look after kids, women do that more than men generally.
Biologically speaking, to ensure your groups and cultures survival you need more women than men left at the end of war.
The only reason we can speak of equality is because our ancestors did all the hard work for us.
In a world of war or before societal development and human rights, equality does not exist. When society is attacked, things fall into a more natural state of chaos and instinct.
This is one of the only scenarios forced conscription could be tolerated politically and morally in this dat and age. Ukraine would be loosing if their men were not willing to step up to defend their homeland..and their women to feed them and care for their injuries or children in safety etc. Natural order of things and everyone plays a role.. | 1,949 |
[DC] What would happen if Eradicator!Lois (from Tales of the Dark Multiverse) met Injustice!Superman? | By the end of ToDM, Lois has gone insane with grief. Meanwhile, Superman has also gone insane, in a similar manner. What if they met? Would they try to kill each other? Would it be enough to snap Superman out of his current mindset? | 17 | Power Couple!
Genuinely, both of them are consumed by the loss of the other, and by others who reuse to acknowledge that their ways are the best.
Meeting another version of their idealized lost love would prevent them immediately attacking, and realizing this counterpart agrees that we need to use brutal power to take out the scum of the earth?
It would be very sweet if it didn't involve the brutal conquest of the multiverse. | 16 |
CMV: Buying a burger is essentially renting a cook for 5min | I had a silly 45m circular argument with friends today which started by me suggesting that calling a car from uber is a short term rental, and them saying that it's not a rental because you don't posses the car during the drive, that it's a service instead.
This went on far too long but other examples that I threw out were that if a ferry has 50 seats on it and 50 tickets for sale and you buy them all, you're effectively renting the entire ferry for the duration of the trip. This comes with an agreement on how it can be used and it comes with a fee, much in the same way that my rental agreement for my apt notes that I'm not allowed to paint the walls, I also have an agreement with the ferry that they are leaving at a certain time which i cannot change or negotiate.
We were all a bit fed up by the time I suggested that buying a hamburger is effectively renting the cook who is making your burger for that short amount of time it takes for him to fulfill my order. Again, they suggested that I'm paying for a service/product not a rental and that if i want the cook to make me a lobster instead of a hamburger he'll tell me i can't, where if i actually rented a cook they would make whatever I wanted. However I see this as a detail of the rental agreement.
In my mind, my friends aren't necessarily wrong, but I feel they aren't grasping referential transparency in this matter.
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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!* | 16 | The difference is in liability. When you rent something, you take on responsibility for the thing. In particular, you are liable to the owner if the thing is damaged.
None of the situations you describe have this property. If you call an Uber, and it crashes, you aren't responsible for the damages to the car. If you buy all the seats in the ferry, and the ferry sinks, you aren't responsible for the damages to the ferry. If you buy a hamburger from someone, and the cook is injured while making the burger, you aren't responsible for the damages.
On the other hand, if you rent a car, and crash it, you are responsible for damages. If you rent a ferry, and sink it, you are responsible for damages. If you hire a cook, and he is injured on the job, you are responsible for damages.
That's the difference. | 29 |
ELI5: Why does FM radio sound better than AM radio? | 37 | AM (Amplitude Modulation) only uses 10 kilo Hertz of band width to get the sound across. On FM, they use 100 Kilo Hertz of band width. That allows for alot more fidelity of sound. The reason is how much of the spectrum is alloted for each band. AM band is .5 Megahertz to 1.7 Megahertz. But FM band is 88 Megahertz to 108 Megahertz. | 46 |
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[Batman] Given his vast wealth, resources, and intellect, shouldn't Batman be able to create a super-suit/powered armor that doesn't reduce his mobility or stealth? | * I know that a question like this has been asked before, and the most common answer is that a suit of powered armor would restrict his mobility and prevent him from being able to use his trademark stealth. While I agree that this would be the case if the suit were like his [Hellbat Armor](https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Hellbat) or something similar, this is not what I am talking about.
* What I am picturing is a modern-day version of the [Batman Beyond Suit](https://dcau.fandom.com/wiki/Terry_McGinnis%27s_Batsuit). This suit doesn't have to give Batman high superhuman levels of strength or weapons as his Hellbat Armor does, and given that the Batman Beyond Suit is from the future, I don't even expect it to be at that level. Rather, I think that its functions should revolve around and be at the level of the following-
1. Enhanced Physical Abilities-Since Batman is already [strong enough to bench 2000 pounds](https://imgur.com/xJYwyry) and [faster than a speeding police car](https://imgur.com/a/lAh7LCU), even if his suit was only able to enhance his physical abilities by a factor of 5-10x, this would still put him at the 5-10 ton strength range, far surpassing Bane's [Venom enhanced strength level](https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Bane_(New_Earth)#Powers_and_Abilities). Given that Bane is generally considered to be Batman's physically strongest foe, it is likely that Batman would not have to worry about being physically overpowered by any of Gotham's villains ever again.
2. Increased Durability-While his normal Batsuit has shown to be extremely [bullet](https://imgur.com/a/fVSzmOn) [resistant](https://imgur.com/a/QkZQo), getting shot still [hurts](https://imgur.com/a/OMwXc). I imagine that he could further upgrade his armor's durability to make him completely bulletproof without making any significant sacrifices to his mobility.
3. Enhanced Stealth Capabilities-Even if the suit wasn't able to make Batman completely invisible or muffle his sound, when you take into consideration Batman's [already insane stealth skills](https://www.reddit.com/r/BatmanMegaRT/comments/859fna/stealthdisguise/), even just a little bit of improvement would probably make him practically undetectable.
4. Advanced A.I. and HUD Abilities-In regard to the suit's technological abilities, I am picturing something like a combination of Iron Man's [J.A.R.V.I.S.](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/J.A.R.V.I.S). and Batman Arkham's [Detective Mode](https://arkhamcity.fandom.com/wiki/Detective_Mode). While his normal [Batsuit](https://www.reddit.com/r/BatmanMegaRT/comments/859g51/batsuit/) already has advanced HUD and scanning abilities, I am betting that they could still be improved further.
* Not only is Batman one of the richest and smartest men on the planet with a seemingly endless supply of resources, but he is also allied with other incredibly smart and resourceful people such as [Cyborg](https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Victor_Stone_(Prime_Earth)) and [Mister Terrific](https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Holt_(New_Earth)), so I highly doubt that Batman couldn't build a Batsuit like the one I described if he really tried to. | 30 | Batman doesn’t like to require on highly advanced/powerful equipment and weaponry. He has access to a form of Kryptonite that would give him Superman’s powers permanently but he refuses to use it. There’s also the issue that Batman’s enemies would escalate in kind if he started using advanced armor. | 23 |
CMV:Brexit was a mistake and the UK will crawl their way back to the EU | we're seeing the meltdown not only of the uk goverment and the conservative party, but also of the pound and general uk economy, policies like the minibudget would never have happened if the UK was still in the EU
The UK had an insane amount of privileges and unique status in the EU afforded to no other country, they kept their own currency, were able to have different standards to immigration and more, still they wanted more
as a small island nation, with little to no room for large scale farming and industrial production they profited greatly from trade and the trade agreements and freedom of movement that the EU granted them, what madness made the general public really believe that isolating the country and making trade more expensive and difficult would lead to prosperity? and the large number of companies and business that simply left the UK, the uk is no capable of alone to generate the level of production and wealth necessary for their population number
they will become like italy, a political chaos with no party or politician able to stay long enough and with a stable enough goverment, which will further increase the chaos and bring down the economy
and after one decade or so, they will begin the shameful crawl to re-join the EU, with none of the benefits they had before.
edit:typo | 42 | That's also assuming the EU accepts them. There's no reason they have to.
Brexit burned a lot of bridges and no one wants to adopt a sick dog. After a decade, if the UK's economic position continues to slip, the EU may come to realize that including the UK in the EU might actually be net negative.
On the other hand, they might be willing to allow them back in but terms might be a lot less favorable, so much so that the UK might decide to stay out until they are less onerous. | 38 |
Why finding academic jobs is more difficult today compared to how it used to be? | This might be a very stupid question, in which case sorry.
But I’m ignorant. Why finding jobs in academia today, becoming professors and etc is more difficult than it was in the past ? | 137 | Many things, as other already mentioned. The management is also interested in having temporary/adjunct staff because they can be controlled much easier. Firing a tenured professor is difficult, with an adjunct, you simply don't extend the contract. Problem is that many incompetent people got tenure back in the day and they are still running the show. | 152 |
[WH40K] What exactly is the scale of human armies? On important battles could one make out the regiments from orbit? | 31 | Regiments and individual movement of formations, unlikely. Disturbed terrain caused by the movement of millions of vehicles, and thousands of kilometers of fortifications? Absolutely.
A time-lapse of an Imperial war effort would leave very noticeable changes on the surface of a planet, even if you were unable to make out exactly what was causing it. | 35 |
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[dragonball] how do planets like vegeta where most people can control their ki, stop things like bar fights or children's' tantrums destroying entire cities? | 42 | Mutually assured destruction? On a world like that, the strongest ones are probably in charge. Also, destroying businesses and citizens is generally frowned upon anywhere you go. Even under oppressive regimes. | 31 |
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ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses? | 9,657 | A leaky boaty still floats, but that doesn't mean you have to wait until it is sinking to fix it.
In a healthy, expanding, inflationary economy, earnings should grow a little bit each year. If they shrink, that can be a sign something is going wrong, something you want to try to fix before the company actually starts to lose money.
Also, most companies are investing profits into growth, opening new stores, increasing production, expanding to new product lines, thing than usually lose money for the first few years. This is always a balancing act between growing fast enough to keep up with the competition and not growing so fast you become overextended. Often reduced profits means they misjudged their growth strategy or the economy can no longer support it, and the way to correct that is scaling back the growth. | 5,680 |
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ELI5: Why can't you boil milk in a kettle? | I've burnt out my kettle attempting this. My thinking was that milk is just thicker water. I thought it would jusy take longer to boil.
I'm in hot water (pun intended) with the wife. | 105 | Milk contains proteins. And just like eggs and flour which also contain a lot of protein, milk coagulates into a solid if you heat it up too much. The problem with heating milk in a kettle is that a kettle gets very hot on the bottom. This is no problem for water as it can easily handle the heat and will just distribute it throughout the water. However if you have milk in the kettle the milk in the bottom will coagulate due to the heat and stick to the bottom.
If you want to heat up milk you have to make sure to heat it up evenly either by turning down the heat, use something to distribute the heat better then the milk or make sure you constantly stir the milk. A microwave is optimal for this because it uses the liquid itself as a heating element but it is possible to heat up milk using almost any heat source if you are careful enough. | 147 |
ELI5: Why do so many graffiti artists vandalize public property rather than direct their energies and talents towards constructive and marketable pursuits? | 53 | This certainly doesn't apply to all graffiti artists, but some adopt a philosophy that the streets are the medium and that the marketing of art should be opposed on principle. Graffiti artist who commercialize their work may be viewed as having compromised their artistic integrity for profit. | 39 |
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If we replace bone at a cellular level every 7 years why do we have evidence of fractures 7 years after the injury? | 69 | A fractured bone is usually repaired by a process where a callus is formed (formation of cartilage). Regular bone tissue then replaces that cartilage. Callus formation is not perfect and forms a 'scar' just like scar tissue is formed over skin, for example.
Since the cells are gradually replaced, the 'scar' still remains at the point of fracture as new cells only replace the existing cells. | 18 |
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Is alcohol equally efficient in killing all types of viruses? | Is any type of virus more resistant than the others to alcohol, even if still vulnerable? | 15 | There exist two types of viruses, enveloped and non enveloped
Enveloped viruses have a lipid envelope surrounding thier nucleocapsid ( which houses their genetic material) , which is acted upon by detergents and alcohol based sanitizers.
And this destruction of the envelope leads to loss of structural proteins/enzymes and the virus is unable to infect or is killed
Non enveloped viruses are more hardy entities that may require higher concentrations, longer time or may be entirely resistant.
Enveloped Viruses:
Herpesviruses
Poxviruses
Hepadnaviruses
Asfarviridae
Flavivirus
Alphavirus
Togavirus
Coronavirus
Hepatitis D
Orthomyxovirus
Paramyxovirus
Rhabdovirus
Bunyavirus
Filovirus
Retroviruses
Retroviruses
Non enveloped viruses:
Adenoviridae
Papillomaviridae
Picornaviridae
Caliciviridae | 28 |
ELI5: Why there's a sense of motion even if you're lying still when you're drunk. | Like when you hit the bed and it seems like it's moving around. | 33 | The spins happen because of an odd effect alcohol has on your ears -- specifically, on three tiny, fluid-filled structures called the semicircular canals. Inside each of these canals is a fluid called endolymph.
As you move around, the movement of the endolymph lags behind the more solid cupula, distorting and bending it -- and those little hairs. When the hairs bend, the electrical signal they send to your brain is altered, helping you to make sense of the rotations your head experiences on each of the three planes the canals sets.
LPT: Looking at a fixed object and keeping your feet planted on the ground can help lessen the effect. | 18 |
ELI5:Why are some capital and lower case letters of the alphabet just different sizes of the same letter, while others are completely different letters? | Some letters like A/a, Q/q, R/r, G/g, are completely different from their lower counterparts.
Some are just different sizes like O/o, P/p, C/c, or V/v.
While other capital letters have "softer" versions of themselves in the lower case, like F/f, I/i, and T/t.
| 550 | Uppercase letters are traditional Roman Latin font. Lowercase letters are based on Carolingian minuscule. This is a font developed under Charlemagne as a more efficient, semi-cursive font. The Carolingian minuscule tried to use a form that was as close to the original as it could and still be efficient and distinct. Some required more modification than others. | 222 |
[MCU] Why did Black Widow switch sides in the middle of Civil War? | 147 | She knew that they needed to stop Cap, but she also believes Cap when he says that 5 Soviet super soldiers may be released very soon. Black Widow made a choice that would serve the greater good [THE GREATER GOOD]. Besides, she is a spy. Playing both sides kinda comes second nature to her. | 271 |
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Why are they going to have to bring the ISS crashing back down to Earth? Why can't they leave it in orbit? It's history! | 20 | The options to keep it intact are to constantly refuel it in orbit to stop the orbit from decaying or to boost it into higher orbit with less drag. Both options end up with a large piece of space junk that can break into smaller parts making the situation worse. | 22 |
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CMV: Vegan food is overwhelmingly 'meh' and is mostly a second-rate copy of foods containing animal products. | Vegan food overwhelmingly sucks. When you stumble onto vegan food that is somewhat decent, you might say it's "good" but what you really mean is "for vegan food, this is pretty good." The fact that a majority of the foods that are framed as "vegan foods" are attempts at duplicating non-vegan dietary fundamentals (i.e. meat, cheese, eggs, milk) tells you that even vegans don't want to live without non-vegan foods. Moreover, vegan foods are overwhelmingly processed and are not optimum for human health.
EDIT: I am talking about foods which are specifically characterized as "vegan" whether in a restaurant, at the grocery, store, or elsewhere. I am not referring to foods which everyone consumes that could also incidentally be considered vegan because they don't incorporate animal products of any kind. If the seller describes it as "vegan" it always sucks in comparison to a non-vegan alternative.
EDIT 2: I realize that I lumped all "vegan" foods together. What I had in mind was the crappy wannabe meats, cheeses, milks, etc., that just suck. Deltas awarded because lots of folks really pointed out the distinction and all the foods that are truly "vegan" and don't suck. I think that counts as a CMV. I am probably going to head over to /r/vegan to try to get some more food ideas. | 70 | It's not the fault of veganism that you're eating the crappy vegan food. If you look for stuff that was intended to copy non-vegan food, then yeah, of course it's going to fall short. But most vegan food isn't meant to emulate animal products. It's just vegan because it uses vegan ingredients, not because it used something fake.
A salad made of spinach, cranberries, walnuts, edamame, and raspberry vinaigrette is 100% vegan, and delicious.
Spaghetti with marinara sauce is 100% vegan, and delicious.
Falafel is typically 100% vegan. And delicious.
If what you're eating is "vegan chicken" then yes, of course it's going to suck. You eat a lot of vegan food all the time that you love, but you're not thinking of those because they're not marketed as vegan food. | 65 |
AskScience AMA Series: I am tvw and the structure of the Milky Way. Ask Me Anything! | I am a graduate student at the University of Virginia and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory studying the structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Specifically, I use some of the largest telescopes in the world (the Green Bank Telescope (WV, USA), the Arecibo Telescope (Puerto Rico), and the Very Large Array (NM, USA)) to study giant clouds of ionized gas surrounding newly-formed stars, known as HII Regions. The locations and physical characteristics of these clouds can probe the morphological structure and variations in the elemental abundances throughout the Galaxy. This research can answer questions like: How many spiral arms does the Milky Way have? Where are the spiral arms? How did the Milky Way form and evolve into what we see today? Is the Sun located in a "special" part of the Galaxy? Is the Milky Way unique in any way?
One of the projects I work on is the HII Region Discovery Survey [(HRDS)](http://go.nrao.edu/hrds) which used the Green Bank Telescope and Arecibo Telescope to discover hundreds of previous unknown HII Regions in the Milky Way, almost doubling the number of known HII Regions visible in the Northern Hemisphere! This Summer we're going to the Southern Hemisphere to use the Australia Telescope Compact Array to complete our survey by discovering hundreds or thousands more HII Regions in the poorly-explored regions of the Galaxy. Within the next year we may be able to finally produce an complete and accurate map of the Galaxy!
I'll be on around 1 PM EDT (17 UTC) to answer questions.
EDIT: The title should have an "I study"!
| 58 | Do we know yet what causes a spiral galaxy to form versus a bar galaxy? Is one part of the other's life cycle? What about elliptical galaxies?
What will happen to a galaxy like the Milky Way as it ages, sans collisions? | 11 |
Can you listen to anything while you work? | Hey all.
Recently I got a new job working in Ruby. Before this I only worked in the front-end in React and CSS. I could listen to any music I wanted to, and sometimes even podcasts.
Now that I am working with Ruby, and doing a lot of backend stuff, I can’t even listen to classical music or soundtracks. Any noise makes it harder to figure out what I am doing and I need complete silence.
Ruby is a *relatively* new language for me, but its weird how I can’t focus with even classical music.
Anyone else who works in backend who has a similar experience? | 28 | Music serves the same purpose as fidget toys. It adds cognitive load, which is a good thing when you're doing something too simple to keep you challenged.
But when you're in a very new environment with new tech; your cognitive load is already maxed out. | 38 |
ELI5: What happened to THQ? | I understand they went bankrupt and just sold all their licenses, properties, assets, etc. But how did a successful studio like THQ that was actively making games end up dissolving? | 710 | A while back THQ invested heavily in a peripheral device called the uDraw tablet. They threw money at it to develop it for some casual games, and it flopped. Hard. They where unable to recoup the lost money and have been on a slope downward every since. | 480 |
ELI5: Why do we find accents attractive? | 36 | There is a genetic predisposition to seek out the exotic. In social terms, this is expressed very easily through finding folks that look similar enough but sound different enough to demonstrate that they are from a different genetic pool. This is one of the many remnants of our evolution that keeps us from inbreeding. | 45 |
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ELI5: Why is that near identical movies are often released at the same time (The Illusionist/Prestige, Armageddon/Deep Impact, Wyatt Earp/Tombstone, Ed TV/Truman Show) | 216 | The same reason that Home Depot and Lowe's always pop up near each other. One guy gets a whiff of another studio doing a movie and they go, "WE'LL MAKE THAT SAME MOVIE BUT BETTER AND STEAL ALL THEIR MONIES!" This makes no sense, but movie people are extraordinarily stupid, so it makes sense to them. | 93 |
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[LOTR/Hobbit] Were the dwarves going extinct by the time of the fellowship? | I recently watched the first 2 Hobbit movies, and there was a lot of dwarves losing battles going on - All those that died in Erebor to Smaug, and the ones that died in the battle for Moria. Later during the fellowship meeting only Gimli and Gloin show up - none from other kingdoms, and no other dwarves are seen in the 3 movies.
In Two Towers Gimli makes a joke about how people assume there are no female dwarves - maybe it wasn't really a joke, and females were uncommon enough that the species was dying out? | 124 | The dwarves were never all that numerous, but there were more still around that it seems. All named dwarves in The Hobbit and LotR are from a single dwarf clan (the Longbeards, also known as Durin's Folk). There were originally seven clans, though at the end of the First Age two of them were nearly destroyed in the War of Wrath and later merged with Durin's Folk. The other four clans remained in the far east for most of history, so they're not seen much. They did send armies west to help wage war against the orcs of the Misty Mountains, but these dwarves returned soon after the Battle of Azanulbizar where the orcs of Moria were defeated and Azog was slain.
> In Two Towers Gimli makes a joke about how people assume there are no female dwarves - maybe it wasn't really a joke, and females were uncommon enough that the species was dying out?
The gender ratio for dwarves is actually skewed, with only about a third of the population being female. Combined with dwarvish tendencies to marry late (if at all) and have few children, it's not surprising they were far less numerous than elves, men, and orcs. | 102 |
CMV: The logic behind getting rid of the electoral college would apply equally to getting rid of the senate. | The argument that I hear for why the electoral college is bad is that it allows for situations where the president wins despite losing the popular vote. The argument tends to be that we are a democracy where each person should have equal voting power and equal representation but as it currently stands some people's votes count for more than others based on where they live.
Keeping aside whether or not I agree with the stance for eliminating the electoral college, I do think it's weirdly misplaced. The issue isn't the electoral college but is the fact that there's rounding errors in the House of Representatives and, far more importantly, that each state gets 2 senators regardless of their population. The rounding errors are minor and something I think everyone would be willing to live with, if only to _not_ bloat the House to obscene levels, but the senate is an egregious example of some people having more federal power than others based entirely on where they live.
Wyoming is the least populous state. California is the most populous state. When it comes to the electoral college Wyoming gets 3 votes for 577k people or 1 vote per 192k people. California gets 55 votes for 39.56 million people or 1 vote per 719k people. This is the extreme version of what people seem to argue about in regards to the electoral college. However it's so much worse when you look at the Senate. Wyoming gets 2 senate votes for 577k people, or 1 vote per 288k people. California gets 2 senate votes for 39.56 million people, or 1 vote per 19.78 million people.
The views I have that I want contested are the following:
1. The logic is the same between the two institutions.
2. Excluding potentially partisan reasons, such as your political party being more likely to win the popular vote vs the electoral college, this perceived unfairness is the only reason the majority people want to eliminate the electoral college.
3. People who want to eliminate the electoral college but state they do not want to eliminate the senate are hypocrites or ignorant.
4. Any argument that the average informed citizen would recognize as a decent argument for keeping the senate would equally apply to keeping the electoral college.
Edit 1: I've conceded the point that people might view it an issue if they do not look at it institution by institution but instead look at the federal government as a whole to everyone during my first pass at replies. Since my view on that particular notion has already been changed, further comments will not be getting a delta if it relies on that! Thanks so much for the discussion so far!
Edit 2: I've probably burned a decent chunk of my "be unproductive at work" time so far. I'll be back at lunch or after work and keep answering things as I can! I love the discussion so far guys. After that I'll be periodically checking in here! | 28 | While the logic may be the same between the institutions - smaller states need to have a say in Federal matters - one can make an argument as to _how much_ say they should be allowed to have. One can agree with putting their "thumb on the scale" and still feel that one should only be allowed "so many thumbs"
- The Senate is obviously weighted towards smaller states by design.
- The Reapportionment Act of 1929 capped the House at 435 members and guaranteed each state at least one House member to each state. This _again_ favored smaller states, as small states like Wyoming or Montana would get a higher amount of representation, as you can't have less than one House rep regardless of population.
- The Electoral College, being simply the sum of the Senate and House reps, reinforces the smaller state advantage inherent in both the Senate and House.
So, in the three areas where we have Federal elections - Presidency, House and Senate - we give an advantage to smaller states in _each one_. We put three "thumbs on the scale" and have no representative body that is truly decided by popular vote.
It is logical for someone to say, "Small states should have an advantage in _some_ institutions, but they shouldn't have an advantage in _every_ institution." Eliminating the Electoral College and going with a straight popular vote would leave the advantage inherent in both chambers of Congress, yet eliminate the advantage in the Presidency, which some may feel is an acceptable re-balancing of power between state's rights and the popular will. | 27 |
If I was in intergalactic space such that a nearby galaxy filled up my entire field of view, would I be able to see it clearly? Or would it still be as dim as the milky way is in the sky here on earth? | I got the idea when I was looking at andromeda the other night through my telescope. Despite its relative size in the sky, it's barely visible because of how far away it is. hell, the milky way is barely visible and we're inside of it!
So what would it look like to be "in the middle". Not super far away like andromeda is, but also not inside the galaxy. What would it look like to be in empty space staring right at a whole galaxy? I know you'd be hundreds of thousands of light years away, but I don't know how that would affect how it'd look. | 43 | **It would look about just as bright.** This is why you need about the same darkness of sky to see both the Andromeda Galaxy as well as the Milky Way.
As you approach an object, the brightness of an object increases as the distance squared, but the total amount of area in your field of view will *also* increases as the distance squared. The result is that while you get a lot more photons, it's spread over a lot more area, and the total amount of "surface brightness" - brightness per square degree - remains constant.
Note that this only works for resolved objects like galaxies and nebulae, when the entire object is already large enough to resolve as more than a point. For point objects like distant stars, it actually will get brighter; if you get twice as close to a distant star you'll get 4 times as many photons but it will still appear as a point, and thus appear brighter.
For nearby stars such as the Sun, though, this constant surface brightness *does* work. The total sky area the Sun takes up is about twice as large at Venus, so you'd get a total of about twice as many photons as we do here on Earth. However, if you cut a 1/4 degree x 1/4 degree hole in a black piece of paper and held it up to the Sun in both places, that tiny patch would be just as bright. | 26 |
[Ben 10] Could Ben just continuously add animals from Earth to the ominitrix? | As I recall, the omnitrix registers any alien species that makes contact with it in its database. So what's stopping Ben from taking a trip to the zoo and grabbing DNA from lions, rhinos, elephants, etc? | 25 | He probably could, but Earth animals are underpowered compared to the aliens he's already got, most of which have more to offer than raw strength or speed. He's got an alien that throws fireballs, an alien that makes spikes erupt out of the ground, an alien that's basically living Lego, and so on. They're more than just animals: they're practically superheroes. | 37 |
If you stacked an infinite line of standard dominoes .5 inches apart and pushed one end knocking them over. Would the whole line fall, or would the energy eventually run out? | I was in bed last night wondering if the whole line would fall over, but I do not not think it would. If they do eventually lose the energy and teh dominoes stop falling, how many would fall before it stopped? | 148 | With dominoes, the energy supplied by the push is negligible. The real source of energy in the sequence of falling dominoes is the potential energy from gravity that each of the dominoes is storing. When you tip one, you allow that energy to be released and the domino settles in a lower-energy state. | 165 |
CMV: "non-binary" is a meaningless identity that reinforces harmful sex stereotypes | To claim that because you enjoy things that fall outside of the typical expectations of your sex makes you 'neither male nor female' is ridiculous. It is the opposite of progressive to promote the idea that not conforming to your gender role means you must not have a gender. It asserts a new binary of cis/trans where "cis" people are assumed to be perfectly fine with all of the things expected of them based on their sex. No one is perfectly masculine and perfectly feminine and we should allow people to express that freely without assigning it a new label. Young kids are now clinging onto this label as a way to address confusion and frustration they feel about growing up. It is normal for men and women to feel uncomfortable with our sex roles and want to be free of them. It doesn't make you "non-binary." Also, saying that people must use they/them pronouns for you rather than the one they would naturally use for you is narcissistic. | 21 | >To claim that because you enjoy things that fall outside of the typical expectations of your sex makes you 'neither male nor female' is ridiculous.
Can you find me a *single example* of a nonbinary person claiming that they're nonbinary *because* they enjoy things that fall outside of the typical expectations of their sex? | 12 |
ELI5: I was eating a clementine today. Some of the segments were extremely sweet, some were very watery and almost tasteless. What's going on here? | 80 | * Clementines are citrus fruits and can be classified as a hesperidium berry.
* Fruits are pretty much mature plant ovaries, divided into carpels.
The segments of hesperidium berries come from the carpels of the flower. When fertilized, the ovary matures and develops layers. These layers are the exocarp, or flavedo, the mesocarp, or albedo, and the endocarp.
Flavedo is the outer colored rind of a citrus fruit. Albedo is the whitish inner peel. The endocarp is the juicy part and is divided into segments in citrus fruits. In the endocarp are huge cells called pulp cells, which are really juice vesicles contain all the goodness of your clementine. Pulp cells are made out of multicellular hairs, which are called trichomes. The hairs fill up with water and that is a pulp cell.
The fructose(sugar) that is stored inside the pulp cell can be easily evenly distributed through its membrane to other pulp cells, inside the same segment. This is not so easy for distribution to other segments. The covering over a clementine segment is made of the same substance making up the mesocarp. Albedo is made up of cellulose, and fructose can not easily diffuse through cellulose; it is the same sturdy substance used to create the protective plant cell wall.
Although this is not the case many times, the concentration of fructose in citrus fruits can vary segment to segment, in your case it was enough for you to notice. This doesn't explain why there may be fructose imbalance, but why a fructose imbalance can stay imbalanced. It could be caused by many things, such as the pulp cells bursting in some segments.
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[Star Wars] How advanced are security technologies at a Spaceport in comparison with todays airports? | 80 | It really depends on the spaceport, coruscant is fairly rigorous if you aren't part of the senate, Jedi or military. But just about every system has their own security and plenty of them have very little security. But the general rule of thumb is that security is tightest in the core systems and gets more relaxed the more you head towards the rim. For example Tatooine in the Outer Rim has no security, actually it's more apt to say it has negative balance of security. | 64 |
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Can a microwave oven interfere with my wifi? | Just noticed an anecdotal relationship between running my microwave and a slowdown in my streaming on Google play. Possible or coincidence?
EDIT: Thanks all for the intersting answers. Looks like I'll be investing in a dual frequency router | 2,205 | Yes, it actually can. Standard wireless routers and microwave ovens both operate on similar frequencies (around 2.4 GHz), so microwave ovens can and do interfere with routers.
You can potentially get a dual-band router (one which operates both at ~2.4 GHz and ~5 GHz) and configure it to rely on the 5 GHz channel, but this is probably not worth it unless your microwave is on a *lot* of the time. | 1,284 |
ELI5: How do you pronounce the music effect flanging and how does it work? | 30 | Hard to do an ELI5 for this but I'll do an ELI10...
Flanging and many other audio FX like it such as phaser, chorus, delay & reverb, are achieved by manipulating time.
In the case of flanging it is achieved by doubling the original signal, delaying the duplicate signal by a small amount (10ms-20ms for example) and then combing the duplicate signal back with the original. This creates a phase difference between the two signals and causes some frequencies to combine and subtract, just like it would with any two waves arriving at different times. At some places the waves will get bigger, and at other places the waves will be less, or cancel each other out completely. This time difference is variable and changes fast to create the effect which we hear as flanging.
It is pronounced with a soft 'g', like the word 'changing'. | 17 |
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Do amputees produce less blood than the rest of us? Or do veins/arteries "stretch" to fit the extra volume? | 17 | They produce less blood. The body doesn’t have a set quota for blood cell production that it tries to meet - your bone marrow isn’t permanently set to produce 5 blood per day or whatever.
Instead your body reacts to the state of your circulation, as detected by stretch receptors and other signaling pathways throughout your body. Not enough oxygen reaching outlying tissues? Produce more red cells. Blood pressure’s too low? Retain more water and try to create more plasma. Homeostasis works based on target conditions, not target outputs.
Removing a limb removes the space that blood needs to fill and removes the sensors asking for more blood, so the body will adjust its output accordingly. | 28 |
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ELI5: What is preventing Google from spreading Google Fiber to major cities across the US? | title | 19 | So here is a very peculiar business practice that Google has. The point of Google fiber is not to make money, but to influence the market. The hope is that by making the service available that the consumers will pressure existing ISP's to become more competitive by offering faster speeds at prices that are accessible to more people.
They've used a similar tactic with the Nexus line of phones/tablets which are subsidized by Google, meaning they're making little to no money off they're sales.
TL;DR don;t expect more many more Google fiber cities any time soon. | 18 |
ELI5 Why does splitting an atom have such a devastating effect | 37 | The atom is made out of smaller subatomic particles, protons and neutrons. When you spit the atom they go flying off, like shrapnel from a grenade. Send enough of them out and they’ll hit other atoms, splitting them in turn, causing a chain reaction.
It’s not always a devastating effect though. Nuclear reactors utilize controlled fission reactions to heat water into steam and spin turbines, which is used to create electricity without any carbon emissions. | 40 |
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ELI5: If a Nuclear Powered Submarine were to be destroyed, what protective measures are in place to protect the reactor? | Just thought about this after watching Crimson Tide. If a torpedo or a depth charge were to destroy a nuclear powered submarine, what is installed to stop a runaway nuclear reaction? Assuming the coolant is somewhat disabled due to the explosion.
| 123 | We've actually already lost two nuclear vessels at sea, the scorpion and the thresher. The cores are designed to be failsafe. Also, supposing the vessel was totally destroyed, you just gained a wonderfully effective heat sink; the ocean. | 95 |
What would have happened to the Euro, had Greece defaulted in 2012 | Saw a graph during a class that showed that Greece had an interest rate of about 30% in 2012 during the financial crisis . This combined with a debt to GDP ratio of 170% they had to pay about 50% of their GDP in pure interest payments.
Fortunately, the interest rate fell, partly because the ECB took action and said they would do "whatever it takes to save the Euro" (Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB2CM2ngpQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB2CM2ngpQg) )
This had me thinking why were the ECB and other member states so interested in Greece not defaulting? What would have happened had they defaulted? | 51 | In some ways Greece *did* default. Bondholders were given a "haircut". That means they were only paid back a fraction of the amount originally stated on the bond.
I think that's default. Though some say that it's only default if the government fails to pay anything at all.
The Greece situation had lots of negative effects. It threatened the status of the Euro as a safe-haven currency. It was also a political threat to the EU. That's why there was so much interest in dealing with it. | 18 |
If I suspended two large masses in space sufficiently far apart such that they were not moving relative to one another, could I tether them and use the expansion of space between the objects to generate energy? | If two large objects were tethered to one another and a generator were attached to a string in the middle could you accelerate the two objects towards one another as space expands in between them and use this acceleration to generate energy from the work done? Where does this energy come from and is it dark energy? How much energy could you make with say, 1000kg objects 1 light-year apart? 1000 light-years? (I'm not sure at what scale the expansion of space starts beating the gravitational pull) | 29 | Yes, there would be a tension in the rope. If the rope is approximated as a spring with spring constant *k* and the current distance between the two rope-tethered galaxies is χ, then the tension in the rope is just F(t) = kχa(t). The number a(t) is the so-called scale factor which describes how proper distances increase over time. The potential energy of the rope due its displacement from equilibrium is simply due to the expansion of space, not necessarily dark energy. (This tension would be there even with zero cosmological constant.) Yes, this energy can be extracted to do work.
There is a bit of a caveat here though. This tension would not be uniform throughout the rope. Any signals within the rope travel at the speed of sound, so the central part of the rope doesn't really "know" it's being stretched until the sound wave has propagated from the ends of the rope and reached the center. In reality, the rope will break closer to the ends long before the central part of the rope ever begins to stretch. | 16 |
[Watchmen] Why did the comedian kill JFK? | 26 | Nixon had him do it. JFK beat Nixon in 1960 and he wanted a clear pathway to the presidency in 1964. It's also heavily implied that Nixon had the Comedian off Woodward and Berstien who were the reporters that exposed Watergate. | 42 |
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ELI5: How is honey made? | 19 | Bees suck up nectar from flowers.
Inside the bees’ stomachs, excess water is removed to concentrate the nectar, and hydrogen peroxide and antimicrobial enzymes are added to it.
The bees then vomit the concentrated nectar into cells of honeycomb.
The bees then fan the concentrated nectar with their wings to further evaporate excess moisture, turning the nectar into honey.
Finally, the bees seal the cells of the honeycomb with wax caps for storage.
🍯🐝 | 50 |
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How does half life work for individual atoms? | So I do know what half life means on a macroscopic scale. If you have an unstable substance with a half life of, say, a minute. It would mean that every minute, half of the atoms of that substance would decay in some other substance.
So when you start witb 120 unstable atoms with a half life of 60 seconds. Probably no more than a second after you start measuring there would already be one atom that has decayed. A minute later roughly 60 atoms will have decayed. The decay of the last atom, however, will probably be some minutes later.
Given that the decay of a single atom can be really close to t=0 and could also be really distant t=0 depending on the amount of atoms you start with. Why can some atoms ‘hold on’ longer than others. And why even more so when you start with more of those atoms.
Note: While typing this I realized that it is possible that every atom has the same probability of decaying at any given time and more atoms will decay when you have more rather than less. So half life is basically just the average rate of decay for individual atoms of that substance. This would translate into a macroscopic observation of halving every half life. Is this a correct way of seeing it? | 17 | >So half life is basically just the average rate of decay for individual atoms of that substance. This would translate into a macroscopic observation of halving every half life. Is this a correct way of seeing it?
Yes. Each individual decaying particle has its own independent probability distribution for survival as a function of time. Each one is parametrized by the half-life (and the half-life is the same for all particles of the same type).
Macroscopically, with a huge sample size, this translates into half of the particles decaying with each half-life, on average. | 15 |
Why can people lift so much on a leg press? | I know people that can leg press like 600 lbs but can only squat about a quarter of that.
So I was wondering what the differences were? I was able to determine, using high school physics, that because the weight rests on the sled at about a 45° angle, only about 71% of the weight is effectively being lifted in the direction the sled travels.
However, this didn't satisfy me because a 600 lb leg press does not mean a 424 lb squat. So what else factors into this?? | 46 | A few more things to consider, besides the lower force required to move the mass, would be a shorter range of motion and musculature involved.
Most leg press machines don't allow the range of motion that a barbell squat does, effectivly cutting the amount of work being done.
Most people's squat is not being held back by lack of leg strength, but by their ability to support the weight with their core musculature (abs, lats, spinal erectors, etc). You're not required to support the weight on your shoulders in the leg press and are therefore not limited by core strength. The solid back support does the work so your muscles don't have to. | 37 |
ELI5: Why do we have nightmares? | 29 | One interesting thing is that children are much more likely to have nightmares about monsters chasing them. As we grow up we start to substitute that fear to things in our world. But maybe we have nightmares to prepare ourselves for terrifying situations, so that when you're being chased by lion you've had a couple practice runs. | 19 |
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[General] Pros and Cons of strapping your sword on your back vs on your hip. | 132 | Pros of having sword on back:
- Look badass as fuck
- Easier to carry larger swords
- better balance if only weapon
Cons:
- Potentially harder to draw
- Back movement slightly limited
- Unable to wear badass, wind-flowing cape
- MUCH harder to draw in tighter spaces. | 147 |
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CMV: Minimum wage jobs shouldn't pay enough to have you support anyone besides yourself. | If you need to support a family you should aquire a skill that pays more than minimum wage. Welding, construction, factory work, the post office, anything really. There are a staggering amount of skills that take very little to learn that can help you make quite a bit more money. Fast food style jobs should be reserved for teenagers or single people who only need to worry about themselves. I've worked minimum wage jobs before but some of them even felt like I was getting paid too much. If you have a kid before you have developed a single skill that is worth more than minimum wage your main focus should be learning something to help you support the child. My grandpa had a kid at 17 and started at a factory to support his family. Walmart or McDonald's isn't a place that should pay you enough to support a family.
TL;DR: Minimum wage for minimum skills. Want more money, aquire more skills.
Edit: In many cases around the US right now the wage is too low to support one person and I am in favor of increasing it in those cases. My main point is that you shouldn't rely on minimum wage to support more than just yourself. It should, by itself, support you though.
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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!* | 22 | Minimum wage jobs do not do that now. For most of the country that self supporting rate would be around $9 an hour, and or cities like NYC and LA you are looking at $15 or more.
As to your assertion that it should not be use to support a family. When minimum wage was started by FDR it was set to meet the cost of living of a family of 4 in rural America at the minimal standards of living (which were low at the time). As such its original intent was to be able to support a family. It was not intended to be a "first job" or an "entry job" only type thing. The problem is that inflation, and more importantly standards of living have gone up faster than minimum wage is and now it lags behind even single person cost of living.
Edit: Also, factory work is minimum wage grunt labor. It is the exact kind of job that you are saying people should not expect to be able to support a family with and yet that is exactly what your grandfather did. Factory jobs are mostly gone now, replaced with robots who have a few highly skilled operators. Now that level of "grunt" work is in the fields of customer service so it is jobs like waiter, cashier, stocker, etc. | 35 |
What happens if you are given the wrong blood type? | 69 | In an acute reaction, the patients antibodies attack and kill large numbers of the donated red blood cells. The hemoglobin released into your blood stream from the destroyed red blood cells can then cause kidney damage. Occasionally, you might also face disseminated intravascular coagulation (spontaneous clotting of blood cells that can block small vessels and cause organ failure. These reactions are medical emergencies but most of the time are not fatal. | 79 |
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ELI5: Why are companies allowed to buy and sell their customer's loans without their permission, and what is the purpose of it? | 331 | You're referring to 'the customer' as the person who owes money. That's not really accurate. The loan doesn't belong to the person who owes money. The loan belongs to the company that gave them the money. The debtor is the *asset*.
If a bank gave you $50,000 dollars, with the understanding that you'll pay it back plus 4% interest, the thing of value in this transaction is *your promise to pay it back plus interest*. The bank owns that promise. It is their asset. That's why they can sell it to someone else. You chose to make your promise an asset for someone in exchange for money. That asset doesn't belong to you. You were paid for it.
Why do they do it? Because some companies aren't interested in loaning money out long term. It takes a long time to recover the investment. So instead they get very good at setting loans up, and then sell them to banks who can afford to wait a long time for the payout.
If a bank stands to earn $10,000 over 10 years on the interest in your loan it is worth it to them to buy that loan from someone else for $2,000. They'll see $8,000 in profit, eventually.
The person who set the loan up could keep it and make the full 10k over 10 years, but their business model wants that 2k NOW, as opposed to 1k every year.
Why? Well imagine a bank that has 100 loans out, each one for 100k. They need to have $10M in funds to cover that. No problem for a big bank.
But a small fund might only have enough money for 5 loans at a time. They don't want to start 5 loans and then sit and wait patiently for them to pay off over the next several years. They want to sell those loans for a profit so they can make another one to sell for a profit. If they can set up and sell 10 loans a year, selling each one for 2k, they'll make 20k that year with less money to back it all up. | 162 |
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[Marvel] How is Earth able to keep up with all the alien civilizations around it? | Clearly, the Marvel Universe's version of Earth takes place in the present, but it is surrounded by all sorts of interstellar races. You'd expect the planet to be as significant as a speck of dust. Instead, it's able to fight off any alien invaders. And that's not counting all the superhumans and mutants that live on it.
How is this even possible? Shouldn't this be like a primitive tribe going up against the Army? I imagine aliens in the Marvel Universe having tech way more advanced than the stuff guys like Iron Man has. | 88 | > Shouldn't this be like a primitive tribe going up against the Army?
Sort of. Now imagine that primitive tribe has a number of shamans who can summon dragons, call down lightning on their enemies and read the minds of the enemy generals. And imagine that their tribal god is a real, corporeal entity who takes the field during battle and he can take out tanks and fighter jets all on his own. And imagine that a few of those tribesmen, despite still being at the bow-and-arrow stage of technology, are smart enough to meaningfully understand and analyze the army's modern technology with only a couple of days of study. Oh, and the tribe doesn't need to completely defeat the army. They just need to make it too costly to justify the invasion. That's Earth in the Marvel Universe. Any alien with good sense is scared to death of that place.
When the Skrulls invaded the Earthlings sent a hit team to *murder their gods*. Gladiator of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard can conquer planets on his lunch break and Earth's heroes use him as as punching bag. I've lost track of the number of times Earth has beaten down Galactus. Some rando human made Ultron and that thing became a galactic threat. Almost everyone who's held the Infinity Gauntlet was from Earth or one of its colonies. They pretty much trip over Cosmic Cubes. Earth isn't even the underdog anymore. | 139 |
[WH40K] Would the Emperor accept a slave race purely devoted to its master? | Lets say that the Emperor finds a slave race that had been idle after they lost thier masters. They became fanatically devoted to Humans after they find them and would take all the abuse even at the risk of death just so they can serve. The way they serve conforms to the ideal servant for Humanity and have proven themselves to be quite devoted.
Would this appeal to the ideal of the Emperor of a Xeno race thats not a threat to humanity or would the Emperor feel be a threatend by their devotedness? | 84 | Absolutely not.
That basically screams trap and goes counter to the idea that humans only need humans to survive.
We would never turn over any modicum of power to a xeno no matter how small or trivial.
Only possible scenario is to use them as canon fodder until they are extinct. Even then there would have to be extenuating circumstances to even entertain that idea.
| 109 |
Can anyone explain the most recent XKCD to me? | Here's the link
http://xkcd.com/1132/
It looks like one of those XKCD's where it's hilarious if you understand the subject... but I don't. Help a brutha out? | 55 | The difference between the two schools of thought is that a frequentist will assign probabilities only based on what has happened, whereas a Bayesian will assign a "prior" probability to the initial state and then use what happened to calculate the new probability.
So a frequentist might say that the only observation in the experiment was a YES from the machine. That means with probability 1/36, the statement was a lie and the sun has not exploded, and with probability 35/36, the statement was true, so the sun has exploded. Therefore, it's more likely that the sun has exploded.
A bayesian might say that initially, there is a 1 in a million chance that the sun has exploded. This is called a prior. Seeing the outcome from the machine, the bayesian can now calculate the new probability that the sun has exploded. The result will be slightly higher than 1 in a million, but it will still be overwhelmingly likely that the sun has not exploded. | 74 |
ELI5: What exactly makes certain things feel satisfying? (Like popping zits, things geometrically arranged, etc) Is there a term for this? | 16 | I think your question is "Why are some random things still satisfying to us?"
The answer is evolution. Lets deal with the 2 different topics you have here: OCD and Bodily Cleansing. The zit popping first.
This one is odd. Popping zits is almost fun. Often painful, its still satisfying when it finally pops. And over the next few days, picking off the little hard drop of plasma is also satisfying. So is picking a scab, cleaning your ears, picking/blowing your nose etc. They are satisfying because they are related to things that in the past would have aided our survival.
When you pick a scab, for example, even if you bleed, it feels satisfying. They usually itch a little, and they catch on things, and eventually you are just there going pick pick pick. Well scabs, although helpful for keeping germs out of open wounds, are also dead skin and plasma, and are easily infected. Picking them encourages fresh bleeding to cleanse the area of the wound, encourages fresh skin growth and removes necrotic tissue. Useless but satisfying for a skinned knee. Super important for a wound sustained from a wild animal. Similarly zits are a build up of puss. Its probably a survival trait to remove infection, no matter how minor, so we are hard wired to enjoy it.
As for OCD, again, its survival. But it seems to be an expression of excess survival instincts. The brain likes to find patterns. In the wild, these patterns were "That man from our tribe. That man not from our tribe. That mark on tree mean bear." etc etc etc. Now we have fewer stimuli so some people thing OCD is an expression of these traits. It could also be as simple as geometric patterns are easy to create and its easy to spot when something is displaced. It may have been an early anti theft device, placing your personal items in a grid. Or laying sticks in a formation that was visually pleasing outside of an animal den to see if it is still being used, the sticks having been displaced during the night.
All of this is conjecture. But the chances are the reason these things all feel satisfying is because they are left over survival instincts, and the release of endorphins (those chemicals in the brain that make us feel better) is because our brain once needed us to keep doing them to survive.
Hope this helps! | 11 |
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ELI5: Why does a punch to the chin knock one out but a punch to the head might not? | 22 | It’s about getting the skull to snap back. You get knocked out when you brain smashes against the inside of your skull, and a punch straight to the head probably won’t generate enough rotation to do that, but a punch to the chin will rock your skull backwards and your brain will hit the back of your head. | 19 |
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ELI5 why we get a "second wind" if we go too long without sleep. | 145 | Long time without a sleep is a stress for your body. If this stress reaches certain threshold, your body treats such situation as danger and starts producing adrenaline which prevents you from falling asleep quickly | 194 |
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Why fire is so bright? Where does the light come from? | I guess, it may by a silly question, but why fire (I mean flame) is bright? From chemistry point of view, of course, burning is oxidizing (acetification?). And burning gives both heat and light. Assuming light is nothing but photons, where do all the photons come from? Right now I'm holding a match in my fingers, and all it does is just reflecting light. But how does it start to emit photons as soon as I strike it?
The same question can be applied to light bulbs. In this case electricity is converted to photons, is it? If so, how is it so? :) | 30 | In typical red-orange flames, the light emitted is due to the incandescence of soot particles. Little particles of half-burnt fuel get so hot from the reaction that they glow and emit light due to their temperature, just like in an incandescent light bulb. The energy that makes the soot particles so hot comes from chemical potential energy that is released when chemical bonds are formed. If you want to know why hot objects glow, the words to look up are "incandescence" and "thermal radiation". Basically, the hotter an object, the faster and more violently its molecules move around. Since molecules contain electric charge, the more violent motion of the electric charges creates higher-energy electromagnetic waves, i.e. emitted light that gets enough energy per photon that it can enter the region of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to humans.
Note that your match is always glowing and emitting light. When unlit, it is emitting lower-energy light (infrared) that humans have not evolved to be able to see. When you strike the match, you ignite a chemical reaction with releases energy which causes the soot particles to heat up enough that they glow in the visible light spectrum as well as the infrared. | 26 |
[Encanto/Tangled] Can Isabella grow the flower that gave Rapunzel her hair? | Assuming this is all in the same linear Universe, of course. | 54 | Given that the flower is not unique, and can be seen also growing on the island of Motunui (Moana) as a result of the nature god/power returning. It would be reasonable to assume that another source of magic/nature could allow it to grow.
The only drawback may be that (currently) Isabella does not appear to have such a fine level of direct control over her power, and creates flora mostly based on feelings/mood. So would need to refine her power to do it on demand, or would need to see or 'know' the flower first to grow it. | 34 |
ELI5: Why do American electric plugs have a "fatter" side? What is the danger of plugging in opposite? | 27 | For electrical appliances to be safe it is important that the power comes through a fuse or circuit breaker, into the wall outlet, then the plug must take that same wire to the on/off switch of the appliance. This way, when the appliance is turned off, there is no power coming to the appliance. Put the plug into the wall backwards, and the appliance switch stops the electricity after it has gone through the whole appliance. If any wire is shorted out to the casing of the appliance, it will always be hot, even if the switch is off. That accounts for that fuzzy feeling in some lamps for example. If you touch this "hot" appliance and a sink faucet, even with the switch off, you could still get a shock. That is one of the basic reasons we have polarized plugs -- one fat and one thin. When you change a plug on the end of the cord, you have to make sure that the thin prong takes electricity directly to the on/off switch of the appliance -- and when wiring outlets you always have to make sure that the "hot" wire from the fuse goes to the "gold" screw on the thin side. The wide prong on the plug goes to the silver screws, and the white return wire. | 24 |
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[General] Any examples of villains that have a no-kill rule? | 36 | From what I've been told, the Flash's rogues have a no kill rule. Barry does *not* have a no kill rule and will readily if reluctantly kill a villain that is a threat to civilians. And, being the fastest man alive there's not much any of them could do about it. So they have an understanding: they don't kill civilians and when they're caught, they go willingly. In return, Flash doesn't stop them permanently. | 55 |
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ELI5: Transistors, what they do, how they work, how they're used. | 21 | Think of them as a valve. You have a flow through them, which you can turn on or off with another, much smaller flow.
Now, how can we do so much with this:
Well, there are two cases: analog and digital.
**Analog:**
You don't have to open or close the valve all the way. This means that you can use a small flow (a weak signal) to regulate a much larger flow (a strong signal). This, basically, is an amplifier. You use a weak audio signal to control a much larger current through the transistor, driving a set of loudspeakers. Of course, an audio amplifier is just an example, they are very useful in other applications as well.
**Digital:**
In this case, we only use the valve as an on or off. So, basically, we have a tiny, tine swithc which is operated by an electric signal.
Now, you think, "What's the use of that?". Well, almost nothing. However, you can connect this with other switches. many of them, billions of them, creating a network (not network as in "computer network") of switches that can actually do things. By arranging them cleverly, you can set groups of them up as memory cells, you can add numbers in memory cells, you can move stuff between memory cells and so on. Do this cleverly enough, and you've got a computer. That's pretty useful. | 20 |
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[Harry Potter] I'm a devout Christian from the Bible Belt yet I received an invitation to study at Hogwarts. If I'm born with the Magic gene am I damned to Hell? | The bible explicitly states that you shall not suffer a Witch to live. But apparently I can't help it! I have the Magic gene and I'm told that I've been invited to study the craft at a school called Hogwarts. What do I do? Can God make exceptions for me since I was born a Witch? Do I get a free pass? Can I be a Christian in good standing while also being a Witch? | 92 | The original term is closer to the word "sorceress" than "witch". And it refers to someone who derives their magic from supernatural sources ie: making deals with devils.
As a natural witch, you're fine. Lots of witches and wizards were Christian. | 105 |
Why does Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason draw the distinction between analytic/synthetic and a priori/ a posreriori? | 20 | It's all about the historical debate between empiricists and rationalists. Hume was one of the former, Kant one of the latter. Hume (according to Kant) basically showed that all that could be known about the world had to be known empirically through the senses, or that it had to be synthetic and *a posteriori*.
Kant's *CoPR* attempts to demonstrate that there can, in fact, be synthetic *a priori* judgments: that is, we can make judgments about this world that are must be true in every case. These synthetic a priori judgments tie the world that we live in to the realm of reason, allowing Kant to reject Hume's empiricism.
So, to summarize, Kant made the distinction so he could dismantle the Empiricism of Hume and argue for a world governed by rational principles. | 11 |
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