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Is there a way to establish a network? | Hi, I would like to know how do you start to establish a network with other researchers. I'm actually an Assistant professor at a top-3 university in Brazil, so I'm already in academia.
However, I'm having too much difficulty in establishing a research group/network or any type of contact with other researchers to work together. I have a researchgate and academia.edu profile but I don't interact a lot there.
Unfortunately, my colleagues from my department that share some common research interests with me are at another moment in life, with little focus to work and more to family.
So, how do you started your research network? | 15 | A good place for me has been by attending conferences for professional associations and organizations. Those provide a good place to meet and talk with like-minded individuals and begin to build relationships that can turn into research collaborators and co-authors. | 12 |
[Hansel and Gretel] Were the Witch and the Stepmother the same person? | 36 | First edition of the story: No.
Later editions of the story: Maybe.
The original story has about a million variations that have popped up over the centuries. Some versions of the story do have an association with the (step)mother and the witch, who is sometimes Baba Yaga.
There is unfortunately no fully watsonian answer for this but I'd recommend looking into the wikipedia article if you've got the time. | 33 |
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ELI5 How does Google know that this exact tiny restaurant on the 4th floor of a building full of other restaurants and cafes is "usually busy at 8pm on Wednesday"? | 78 | Because people tell it.
It often gives you the option to say how busy somewhere is after you've been there.
It also uses the data of people who used google maps to navigate there specifically rather than to one of the other restaurants | 141 |
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[Predator] At what point would a potential prey be so overpowered that a Yautja would just nope out? | I'm sure that Wolverine, a jedi knight, or any other number of heroes or villains would make desirable trophies for a hunter. But the Hulk? Thor? Thanos? What would a Yautja have to see a new potential prey do in order to decide that it was just out of the hunter's skill or level to even try? | 33 | Well the Yautia would go ahead and attempt to kill any kind of potential prey overpowered or not.
They absolutely love to hunt extremely dangerous prey.
An excellent example would be a Xenomorph Queen.
If a yautja killed a Queen it would be like getting a Nobel prize.
In the event of it losing they are expected to commit ritual suicide to regain their honor they lost in them losing a battle.
If they refuse to commit suicide than other yautja are expected to assist the loser in committing suicide. | 58 |
[Star Trek] Why does it seem all space ships are piloted with a keyboard and not a joystick? | This has to be among the least optimal ways to pilot any vessel. Especially in a combat setting you want as quick a response as you can get to move your ship into and out of position and danger and your typing skills shouldn't be the main factor of life and death in a space battle. But man every time they need to move any ship in Star Trek all of a sudden there is a small symphony of beeps and boops from the control panel being used to pilot the ship as the helmsman lays in a course that sounds like they are typing an angry reddit rant, but how is that system at all better than just a basic joystick or steering wheel like literally every single vehicle has?
Who the hell came up with that piloting system the descendant of the guy who invented the QWERTY keyboard layout? | 36 | Because the ships are dealing with potentially hundreds of Gs of acceleration, faster-than-light maneuvers etc. The ship isn't a fightercraft in world war 1 making lazy strafes with fixed machine-guns, the pilot is half-piloting and half-programming the ship to go through various maneuvers coordinating with the shields and weapons, which are all constantly being adjusted, re-tuned, re-calibrated and having frequencies shifted and power routed around.
They're not necessarily directly controlling every action of the ship, so much as they are herding/directing various AIs and algorithms that optimize the ship's performance faster and better than any human or humanoid could. | 86 |
CMV: Republicans and Democrats need to figure out how to get along or our nation will fall apart. We need moral leadership and a resurgence of rational debate. | As a Libertarian in college, I know what it’s like to feel like my voice isn’t heard. To feel like my values and issues aren’t being taken seriously or heard at all. I know what it’s like to feel silenced or misunderstood by people who disagree with me politically. I’ve felt the frustration of our party (Libertarians) not being allowed on the debate stage, or being told our ideas don’t need to be considered because it doesn’t fit within the left-right paradigm.
But I’ve never felt like I hated the “other side”. We’re all Americans. Our ship rises or sinks together. That doesn’t mean we don’t fight for our values. But it does mean we present reasoned and rational arguments, with a willingness to change our minds.
My ideas that I hold are mine, and mine alone. When I go into the grave my ideas will go with me. That’s why I don’t get overly attached to them being the sole correct position of how the world should operate. I believe in my values. But I believe in the rights of others to have values that differ from mine. I also enjoy learning about other people’s opinions on issues. I think criticizing my own ideas sharpens my mind and makes me more knowledgeable about the issues. If someone has a differing opinion, they got their by seeing something I must not have seen. It doesn’t mean I’ll agree. But I assume they’re presenting a legitimate argument based on something they’ve experienced or felt.
The Democrats and Republicans to me seem to be so obsessed with being correct. They never entertain the idea that they might be wrong. This seems like a dangerous trajectory to be taking. A trajectory that necessarily makes peace impossible.
I’m not saying Libertarians aren’t guilty of these things, we are. But I think because we’re not in a position to actually grasp the wheel of power we can see with more objectivity what this desire to wield power has done to both parties. It’s gone from a genuine belief in debate and rational argumentation. To a hatred of those who disagree.
It saddens me to see us in this state as a country, and as a union. Part of being a member of a bigger system is understanding the value of compromise. It can’t turn into a battle for the soul of the United States every election cycle. It’s not sustainable, and more importantly it’s not morally right that those who attain power feel the need to “get back” at those who currently don’t have power.
We’ve been through dark times as a country and as a union. I have faith that the two sides will work it out. I just don’t want to see a situation where we become so morally bankrupt that we would wish failure on each other.
As a Libertarian (who might run for office one day, once I get more experience and knowledge) I want my philosophy to be one of self reflection and admission of fault. We can’t strengthen ourselves if we become overly resentful of any criticism.
In a larger sense I question the ends to these means I’ve seen by the Democrats and Republicans. Would ruling over the ashes of the world mean my side somehow “won”? Even if we defeated everyone who disagreed with us, we would be on a planet with a singular point of view. What would be the point in that? Who would we confide in for greater perspective?
Idk of any of this makes sense. It’s just sad where we are now. | 258 | The GOP refused to admit that Biden won his election. Which he did.
Millions of Trump voters still believe the lie that the election was stolen.
You can't negotiate with people if those people aren't acting in good faith. This isn't a both sides issue. | 190 |
[General] How strong are reanimated skeletons? | Without any muscle tissue, what's the base strength of a skeleton? Assuming it's animated due to black magic, is there a limit for it? Like the strength of the
skeleton is based on the strength of the magic, or is there a physical limitation to it? | 40 | It depends on how much milk they drink.
In Oblivion skeletons were rather tough.
Meanwhile in Skyrim skeletons are pathetic.
Why the difference in the exact same universe?
Well Milk-Drinker is an insult in the land of Skyrim but not in Cyrodiil. So in Skyrim there is less milk being drunk resulting in weaker bones. Weaker bones result in weaker skeletons. | 102 |
[Star Wars] Where does the Tantive IV entrance connect to in Rogue One? (Asked before) | I already asked this before but only a few people answered it and some of them had answers that I debunked. Anyways, my question is where the entrance of the Tantive IV connects to. Heres a couple of things we know:
* The Tantive IV have entrances at the left and right side.
* The door that Vader leaves is where the rocket nozzles are facing, not the left or right side.
* People might say that the ship might've turned before leaving but it doesnt look like it. http://imgur.com/WniBy6z
* People might also say that Vader might have walked around the Profundity and for some reason went through another door to go out side and just make that badass pose. The problem with this is that since the Tantive IV is large ship, that would mean the space around it would have to be large as well to fit the ship inside, and having Vader walk throughout the movie makes it unlikely for him to reach there in time and look at the Tantive IV leaving in the distance.
My crappy-but-good-enough-to-understand drawing of the situation (Note: Obviously not in scale): http://imgur.com/a/s8laZ
This question is very hard to explain but I hope some people can understand what I am trying to ask. | 17 | The docking arm from the *Profundity* leads to one of the side air-locks of the *Tantive IV*.
When the (emergency) launch lever is activated in the Tantive IV, the entire Profundity docking arm *pivots* 90 degrees forwards, away from the departing ship. It pivots rather than retracts since there may well be people in the docking arm in those circumstances (as in this case Vader is), and retracting would leave them being compressed together. Inertial dampers would be more than capable of dealing with any effects of this rapid rotation without it being noticeable to anyone within.
Once it has pivoted, it is then left running parallel to the side of the docking bay, with the front looking in the direction that the Tantive IV is now going, and this is the area onto which Vader strides. | 20 |
ELI5: Why do text messages have character limits, and why is it measured as 145/1 until I use it up and it becomes 145/2? | Also, why is it that sometimes it stops me at 145/1 and doesn't go to 145/2? | 30 | The number after the / isn't related to characters, it's the number of SMS messages which will be used to send the text written. If your phone stops you at the 145 limit, it is doing the behaviour of older phones which only allowed a single text to be sent at a time. | 14 |
[IT] What if I have a fear of heights | I have a fear of heights and I was curious how Pennywise would show to me? How would he manifest himself? | 15 | He manifests as a giant eagle with the face of a clown, snatches you off the ground with it's talons, and flies straight up into the sky, giggling while you scream. Once at a good height, there's a few rounds of letting you "accidentally" slip and fall, letting you plummet a few seconds before diving after you and snatching you before you hit the ground. | 11 |
[Star Wars] Would Anakin have been more powerful in his prime as a Jedi or Sith? | I'm aware this could come down to a debate between the light side and the dark side, but is there any way to determine if the full power of the chosen one would have been more powerful as a Jedi or a Sith? | 80 | It's two different kinds of power. Prime Anakin as a Sith would have had a terrifying amount of destructive power at his fingertips (George outright said Anakin had the potential to be twice as Palpatine), but a theoretical Prime Anakin would be a match for Sith!Anakin in containing that destruction.
The other thing is that dark siders gain a lot of power in the short term but without self-control they'll basically burn themselves out and not achieve much. A light sider on the other hand will take longer to reach their theoretical peaks, but won't burn themselves out by raging against everything they see as against them and their goals. | 95 |
ELI5: How do medial professionals decide treatment for a comatose person w/o family? | Say someone (in the U.S.) without any family at all winds up at a hospital and goes comatose, needing to be on life support. Would they be on life support indefinitely or would anyone have the authority to ‘pull the plug’ so to speak? Sorry it’s kind of a dark question but these are the kinds of things keeping me up at night haha. | 206 | Hospitals have a medical ethics committee that would come in and make that decision. Pulling the plug, essentially removing the patient from a mechanical ventilator, is often seen as essentially allowing someone to pass away. Going a bit further, oftentimes it also means removal of life sustaining drugs for supporting adequate blood pressure and/or basic bodily functions (i.e., nutrition, electrolytes, blood products). I’ve seen patients die almost immediately, and I’ve seen patients linger for days once the ventilator is pulled. It’s always a weird situation for all bedside attendees, but the medical ethics committee essentially steps in when there is 0.00 quality or chance of life once care is removed. | 164 |
ELI5: If a glass is clear and water is clear, why can you see water in a glass? | I mean, it's not like there are shades of clear. Why can't we see air either? | 16 | You can see water in a glass because the two materials have different refractive indecies. RI is a measure of how light moves in a given material compared to in a vacuum. The refractive index of glass is about 1.46 and the refractive index of water is about 1.333. This difference makes light travel differently so they appear as two different objects. (RI is also why a straw appears "bent" in a glass of water).
You can't generally see air because you're surrounded by it. However, if the layer of air is thick enough you can see it. If you look up you'll see that the sky is blue. This is due to the atoms in the atmosphere scattering incoming sunlight.
| 12 |
[General]How are traditional spells discovered? | 21 | Of course they won't be the same for all cultures. But, often, they were the result of a magician wanting a specific effect, with the words and spell components only there to help focus it.
Let's take the legendary Bigby's Hand Spell, for example. The mage, Bigby, wanted a spell that let him manipulate things at a distance. Not through some invisible servant, but as his own hands. So he experimented with the magical forces that wizards can tap until he got the right results and later added the items needed, the vocal components, and the gestures required as a way to make it easier to cast.
This experimentation could have granted nothing, it could have had wild effects. This is, of course, why wizarding towers are so strange and dangerous to be around. It's not that there's some kind of magical buildup or some nonsense (though, admittedly, this can be possible. Take the Unseen University of Discworld, for example.), it's that when they're trying to invent/master new spells and abilities, the side-effects can be unpredictable. | 12 |
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ElI5: How do hackers use brute force attacks like dictionary attacks if I get locked out of my account after 3 failed attempts? | 36 | Usually they do this either on systems that don't have such lockouts (to prevent just those kinds of attacks) or they steal an encrypted database and can try those attacks on them at their own leasure. | 33 |
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"If our message does hit another planet then, almost certainly, it will be so far away that if those people up there had a telescope looking back at us, then what they would be seeing is not us at all, but the dinosaurs that were here 65 millions years ago": How true is this? | I just heard Richard Dawkins say it. I hope somebody could explain how that would be possible. | 19 | That's not quite right, no. If our message, traveling at *c*, hits another planet then anyone looking back from that planet would see the Earth as it was when the message left Earth. If they see a message we sent 80 years ago, they'll see the Earth as it was when the message was sent.
What's more, the timescale of 65 million years is absolutely wrong. 65 million light years is far, far outside of our galaxy and well beyond what's generally thought of as our "local group". A more likely distance is tens to hundreds of light years, which is our solar neighborhood. Some of the "habitable zone" planets the Kepler mission has found are in that range.
EDIT: Accidentally a word | 38 |
[General] What is a greater feat of destruction destroying a star or destroying a black hole | I think destroying a black hole is greater feat but I’m not sure if black hole destruction is greater feat then what is better black hole destruction or galaxy destruction | 25 | In reality we know much, much less about black holes and how they actually work than we do stars. That being said, if we had the materials and technology necessary then destroying a star would be like cutting a piece of bread compared to destroying a black hole. Also, stars eventually destroy themselves on their own. | 36 |
ELI5: Why are so many people afraid of clowns? | It is such a common fear that many movies have profited off of this fear. Whenever I see an evil clown in a movie, I just laugh because it is such a cheap, overused trope. | 21 | It's a distortion of a familiar figure to a young child. You take a basic human shape, give it long feet, baggy clothes that give it less physical form, and the face is heavily exaggerated with makeup and bizarre wigs.
Some children respond to it with delight at what's essentially a caricature, usually when old enough to realise that, but many younger ones respond in something sort of like the old uncanny valley effect: It looks like it should be human but enough about it is wrong to make it distressing. Once that latter idea is in a child's head, it can quickly end up developing into a phobia. And since clowns are supposed to be "kids" entertainers... | 20 |
ELI5 Why is it that it can rain heavily for days on end yet it seems like the rain clouds don’t get smaller? | 43 | There are a few reasons. One is that you only see the bottom of the rain clouds, particularly if they're nimbostratus ones. They may be getting smaller in ways you can't see. Another is you might also be seeing many huge rain clouds crossing the sky if they're traveling along a front, and not just one. There are also occasions where you will be directly under where the rain clouds are forming due to how the air masses are mixing overhead in a stationary front. | 40 |
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ELI5: Why are there different accepted measuring systems for weight, speed, distance etc. but only one for time? | Have there been any others? How did we all land on this one across cultural and geographic lines? | 89 | Much of time wasn't formalized until far later than languages. Years, months and days are natural phenomenon (earth's orbit around the sun, the moon's orbit around the earth, and the earth's rotation), but beyond that there was quite a few different formats that most people didn't really care about. Hours were flexible units of time, minutes and seconds even moreso. Most people worked by morning, night, afternoon, etc.
Things like hours, minutes, and seconds weren't formalized until tools were made to measure such things accurately. At which time there was already nearly worldwide contact. | 150 |
[LOTR Movies] Before they got to Rivendell did Frodo ever tell Pippin and Merry what the ring was, who Sauron is, and why they were leaving the Shire? | even in the extended cut? is there any scene where frodo pulls pippin and merry aside and say’look, see this?...’
or did all they know is...scary guys on horses are chasing us keep running? | 18 | No. Contrary to popular belief, Pippin and Merry weren't idiots, at least not when it came to understanding Hobbits. They could simply tell from Frodo's behavior and demeanor that this was something serious that needed their support, no questions asked. | 39 |
[General time travel] You're sent back in time into your own body 15 years ago, retaining all knowledge you have today. How much can you use that knowledge to change your life, or change the world, before the changes you make affect the timeline enough to render your future knowledge useless. | 70 | Read "Replay" by Ken Grimwood. It's about a man, who at the age of 48 "dies" and is transported through time into his 18 year old body. He successfully makes a very large fortune using only his knowledge of the future. It talks about how even with his fortune, his ability to push events is limited. It is a very good book. | 61 |
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[MCU] In Iron Man 1, does the second arc reactor house an electromagnet inside itself? | Watching Iron Man 1, and noticed during the scene where Pepper helps Tony replace the arc reactor, that she pulls out the entire electromagnet as he’s warning her not to. Tony then tells her not to put it back in, and has her throw the second reactor in without replacing it.
Maybe I’m missing something, but it is my understanding that the electromagnet is the only thing keeping the shrapnel from reaching his heart, and the arc reactor acts solely as a power source. If this is the case, how does Tony not suffer from cardiac arrest (as he mentioned he was when the magnet was removed) and die after the second reactor is inserted? Is the electromagnet housed in the reactor itself from the second version on? | 29 | I think based on context, the magnet he had first was literally a rare Earth magnet, with a copper wire wrapped around it, boosted by the arc reactor, whereas the replacement was an electromagnet he built and powered, if that makes sense. | 25 |
[Marvel] Why can’t Professor X just use his powers so that no one hated mutants? | 22 | Apart from the fact that giving someone a personalityectomy is usually a strictly temporary measure...
It's morally wrong to deprive people of their free will like that. Xavier would never go for it. | 34 |
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Are there any cases of other animal species displaying symptoms analogous to human mental conditions (such as schizophrenia, depression etc.)? | I was wondering if there are any examples where other animal species have been described as having a metal disorder especially with symptoms that are analogous to human conditions. | 209 | Jane Goodall made an old documentary about the chimps in Gombe called "People of the Forest". A large portion of the documentary focuses on "Flint", a young male chimp who remained so dependent and attached to his aging mother that he continued acting like an infant long after he should have asserted some independence and started following the adult males around. He was emotionally trapped in infancy. At one point Flint even seems celebratory when his infant brother dies, and his weak mother can't prevent Flint from continuing to nurse off her.
When Flint was 8 years old (normal chimps are just reaching sexual maturity at this age), his mother died and Flint fell into a deep depression. He refused to leave the area and instead he created a nest above her body in the trees. He stayed there for three weeks, eventually starving himself to death.
The documentary is fascinating, but the part that focuses on Flint is bizarre. It's also somewhat unique in the fact that Jane Goodall got a lot of shit for "anthropomorphizing" her animal subjects. Even when mental disorder seems to be the most obvious cause, most zoologists (particularly back then) would be laughed out of the public eye for making those assertions. | 100 |
CMV: Artificial general intelligence will probably not be invented. | From [Artificial general intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence#Artificial_general_intelligence_research) on Wikipedia:
> Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the intelligence of a hypothetical machine that could successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can.
From the same Wikipedia article:
> most AI researchers believe that strong AI can be achieved in the future
Many public figures seem to take the development of AGI for granted in the next 10, 20, 50, or 100 years and tend to use words like *when* instead of *if* while talking about it. People are studying how to mitigate bad outcomes if AGI is developed, and while I agree this is probably wise I also think that the possibility receives far too much attention. Maybe all the science-fiction movies are to blame, but to me it feels a bit like worrying about a 'Jurassic Park' scenario when we have more realistic issues such as global warming. Of course, AGI may be possible and concerns are valid - I just think it is very over-hyped.
So... why am I so sceptical? It might just be my contrarian nature but I think it just sounds too good to be true. Efforts to understand the brain and intelligence have been going for a long time but the workings of both are still fundamentally mysterious. Maybe it is not a *theoretical* impossibility but a *practical* one - maybe our brains just need more memory and a faster processor? For example, I could imagine a day when theoretical physics becomes so deep and complex that the time required to understand current theories leaves little to no time to progress them. Maybe that is just because I am so useless at physics myself.
However for some reason I am drawn to the idea from a more theoretical point of view. I do think that there is probably some underlying model for intelligence, that is, I do think the question of *what is intelligence and how does it work* is a fair one. I just can't shake the suspicion that such a model would preclude the possibility of it understanding itself. That is, the model would be incapable of representing itself *within its own framework*. A model of intelligence might be able to represent a simpler model and hence understand it - for example, maybe it would be possible for a human-level intelligence to model the intelligence of a dog. For whatever reason, I just get the feeling that a human-level intelligence would be unable to internally represent its own model within itself and therefore would be unable to understand itself. I realise I am probably making a *number* of assumptions here, in particular that understanding necessitates an internal model - but like I say, it is just a suspicion. Hence the key word in the title: *probably*. I am definitely open to any arguments in the other direction.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 219 | > That is, the model would be incapable of representing itself within its own framework.
Assume all intelligence happens in the brain.
The brain has in the range of 10^26 molecules. It has 100 billion neurons. With an MRI (maybe an improved one from the current state) we can get a snapshot of an entire working human brain. At most, an AI that is a general simulation of a brain just has to model this. (Its "at most" because the human brain has things we don't care about e.g. "I like the flavor of chocolate"). So we don't have to understand anything about intelligence, we just have to reverse engineering what we already have.
| 136 |
[Marvel/Preacher] Would Kilgrave of Jesse Custers power work against someone who doesn't speak english? | And has anyone ever misinterpreted or misunderstood what was said by either of them? | 17 | Jesse Custer's power only works on English speakers.
He can be misunderstood, but mostly only because the hearer is compelled to follow the exact words. You can't get away from the Word by finding some eye-rollingly technical language quibble. | 13 |
CMV: art critics are full of shit | Don’t get me wrong, I love art. I’m an artist myself. However, every time I hear art critics talk about a piece and how it “invokes feelings of _____” or how “the artist was expressing ______”, I think they are full of it and making that stuff up. Yes, obviously art can have deeper meanings, however for most art (which is someone trying to copy something they see or abstract), they are reading into something that isn’t there. The prime example being abstract art. You can’t look at a Jackson Pollock splatter painting and tell how the artist was feeling, he just threw paint at the paper. And better yet, every “expert” will have a different opinion on his emotion, but claim theirs is factually correct. Likewise, you can’t pull deeper meaning from a portrait because it’s just a portrait of a person. So in summary, I think art critics are full of shit for trying to pull meaning from splattered paint that is no different from if a 3 year old did it, and likewise full of shit for trying to pull deeper meaning from other forms of art that are simply a natural representation of what the artist sees. | 56 | Art critics aren’t making grand objective statements about what a particular piece is factually conveying or what the artist was expressing. It’s to provide, well, a critical look at the art and try and get the ball rolling on a conversation about it.
All art has deeper meaning, even if the artist didn’t intend on that meaning. Critical analysis is what makes art important and interesting, at least to a lot of people. | 20 |
[vampires/catholicism]Can a Vampire survive on the blood of christ? | so according to the miracle of transubstantiation wine blessed by a priest turns into the blood of christ upon consumption. Vampires need blood to eat, does this work for them? | 95 | Gonna go with a no on this one. Blessed wine is still blessed, so it's going to be like drinking holy water. If it transubstantiated to the Blood of Christ, that's straight holy man juju right there. Not healthy for a hungry vampire. | 125 |
ELI5: What is dandruff and why does it only appear on my head? | 606 | People often confuse little white flakes on the shoulder as dandruff. Thats not. Thats just dry skin. Dry skin falls off of all of your body. Your head and shoulders are visible and your shoulders provide a nice landing spot to show case some dead skin cells.
Dandruff is a totally different animal. Large yellow greasy flakes fall off. The hair is greasier than normal.
Shampoo likes to play off normal skin flakes as dandruff to sell product. | 829 |
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[Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire] Does the Wizarding World have no way to stop Rita Skeeter telling lies? Could Harry have gotten her banned from Hogwarts during the tournament? | 91 | The only institutions with that authority would be the Ministry of Magic, or the Daily Prophet, neither of which have any political incentive to 'restrict' Rita Skeeter.
The Ministry of Magic uses the Daily Prophet to syndicate pro-government propaganda, and organize (dis)information campaigns. As such, the Ministry of Magic isn't about to politically damage one of its most important allies.
The Daily Prophet itself, also has no incentive to censure Rita Skeeter. Despite her damage to social discourse, there is no doubt that she is *popular*. If the Daily Prophet censured/fired her, that would upset a non-trivial portion of their readership, for no gain. What's worse, she might join a competitive newspaper, and take her readership with her.
**Tl:DR;**
They could, but nobody really wants to. | 67 |
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ELI5: Why are you at risk of slipping into a coma after a serious concussion if you sleep for to many consecutive hours? | A friend of mine has to wake up every two hours during the night or he's at risk of slipping into a coma after a serious concussion. | 15 | If you suffer from a concussion, you are at risk for a slow bleed inside your skull that will eventually build up pressure and cause a coma (and/or death.) Most people who have had an injury just want to lay down and rest, but a sleeping person with a worsening brain injury doesn't look or act any different from a sleeping person without: they just look asleep! You wake up the patient every two hours to check their mental status. If the patient is getting harder to wake up or experiencing confusion or other symptoms, they may need surgical intervention...basically a small hole drilled in the skull to relieve the pressure.
Tl;dr: You are waking them up to check for brain damage, not to keep it from happening.
| 43 |
How can there be enough photons released from distant objects e.g. stars and galaxies to form a constant image for an observer on Earth? Does wave-particle duality explain it? | Say you are looking at a star in the night sky, and you keep your eye focused on it while you step 1 metre to the left.
While you move, the star would remain constant in your vision, surely meaning a stream of photons from that star was impacting your retina the entire time in every position while your head moved.
Wouldn’t this would mean there are a near-infinite amount of photons being released at all times from all sources of light in order for them to impact every position in space like this? Is that possible?
Or is this explained by the fact light acts as both a wave and a particle?
I feel I must be massively misunderstanding how light works/travels. | 20 | Consider the star Sirius. It is 25 times as luminous as the sun, has 1.7 times the diameter, 8.6 lightyears from Earth, and has its peak emission around the blue spectrum at around 300 nm. If we just make a simplified assumption that it is constantly emitting photons at that wavelength and spewing them out in all directions, we can calculate how many should reach a given area of Earth in a given second. That calculation is (Luminosity / (Planck's constant x speed of light/ wavelength) x (1 square meter/4pi x distance to Earth^2 )=about 170 billion photons per square meter per second. That is so many as to be essentially continuous. However, if we consider a part of the spectrum that is not at its peak, or a source that is much farther away, or not nearly as bright as Sirius, then the photon flux will be much less, to the point where only a few are detected every once in a while. That for example is the reality of most gamma ray astronomy, just collecting the occasional blip. | 44 |
If light is a constantly shifting electric/magnetic field, why does it not interact with other external electromagnetic fields? | I understand that photons themselves lack charge, and light interacts with things like other photons and electrons etc. but why don't the electric and magnetic field interact with, say the magnetic field around a magnet? | 17 | Maxwell's equations are linear, which means that EM fields obey the superposition principle. If you bring together two sources of electromagnetic fields, the net field at any point in space is simply the sum of the two individual fields. | 13 |
ELI5: What happens to your stuff when you die if you don't have a will? | To cover all the bases:
1. If you have a spouse? If you have no spouse? (What is the order? If your parents are alive, do they trump your siblings? What if you only have one distant cousin, etc. is an effort made to find them? By whom?)
2. If you have a mortgage? If you have other debts?
3. If you have wholly-owned property? Partially-owned (i.e. there are other co-owners) property?
4. What happens to your bank accounts?
5. Who is in charge of doling everything out if you haven't declared anyone? The government?
6. Are there taxes involved? | 40 | >If you have a spouse? If you have no spouse? (What is the order? If your parents are alive, do they trump your siblings? What if you only have one distant cousin, etc. is an effort made to find them? By whom?)
It depends on jurisdiction. Since 16 states have adopted the Uniform Probate Code, let's look at that.
Under the UPC:
1. If no parent or descendant (child or grandchild) of the dead guy survives, the spouse gets the whole thing.
2. If the only surviving relatives are children of the dead guy and the spouse, the spouse gets the whole thing *if the spouse has no kids who aren't from the dead guy*
3. If a parent of the dead guy is alive (and no kids), the spouse gets the first $200,000, and 75% of whatever's left over.
4. If the dead guy has no parents or kids alive, but the spouse *does* have kids alive not from the dead guy, the spouse gets the first $150,000 an 50% of the remainder
5. If the dead guy has surviving kids who are not from the spouse, the spouse gets $100,000 and 50% of the remainder.
For the part the spouse doesn't get (or the entire thing if there is no spouse), it goes:
1. To the kids of the dead guy.
2. If there are no kids, equally to his parents (if they're both alive), or all to the surviving one
3. If no surviving parents or kids, then to brothers or sisters (including half-brothers and sisters) in equal share
4. If no parents, kids, or brothers or sisters: half to the paternal grandparents, half to the maternal grandparents. If no grandparents on one side, it goes fully to the other. If no grandparents either, then to the grandparent's descendants.
>If you have a mortgage? If you have other debts?
Debts are always paid out of the estate before it goes to the heirs, even if you have a will.
>If you have wholly-owned property? Partially-owned (i.e. there are other co-owners) property?
That depends on how the property is owned (joint tenancy versus tenancy in common versus tenancy by the entirety). Here's the short version:
1. Tenancy in common: if you die, your share becomes part of your estate.
2. Joint Tenancy: If you die, your share goes to the other owners (note that joint tenancy doesn't happen often). This is called the right of survivorship
3. Tenancy by the entirety. It's only for marriages. There's a right of survivorship, it goes to the spouse.
>What happens to your bank accounts?
They become part of the estate.
>Who is in charge of doling everything out if you haven't declared anyone? The government?
The state will appoint an administrator (called in some jurisdictions, including Colorado, a Personal Representative) whose job it is to sort this stuff out. It's a gigantic mess, and plenty of probate lawyers make their entire living working on these kinds of cases.
>Are there taxes involved?
It depends on the size of the estate. But, AFAIK there are no more taxes than if you had a will.
And if you have literally no one who can inherit it, it may go to the state. | 39 |
I don't think smoke breaks should be allowed at work, CMV | I am a smoker myself, but I never smoke on the clock. Hell, I don't even bring my cigarettes to work. I don't think it's fair that people who don't smoke have to work while people who do smoke (an addiction brought on by themselves) get to leave work for the 5 minutes it takes to go smoke a cigarette a few times during their shift. Three of co-workers take smoke breaks at least 4 or 5 times during a shift and I continue to work. I can't really take a break myself because I don't really have a reason to take a short break (because I don't bring my cigs to work).
Smoke breaks have been a very common thing amongst most of the jobs I've had. So I figured there might be a good legitimate reason behind it, so I'd like to have a discussion about it. CMV.
EDIT: [This reply](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1q01e8/i_dont_think_smoke_breaks_should_be_allowed_at/cd7t14x) changed my view. If someone feels the need to smoke, they'll get frustrated when they don't smoke and become less productive. To keep them productive and happy workers, they'll let them smoke to keep everything going smoothly. | 613 | It makes sense to me to simply declare how much break time is permitted, and allow people to use that break time as they see fit.
Anyone who is taking time above that for smoking should be curtailed, and anyone who doesn't smoke is able to use that breaktime for whatever else they want. | 356 |
The USPS is struggling financially and therefore eliminating Saturday deliveries, while UPS and FEDEX are doing just fine. Why doesn't the USPS try and model itself after them? | 1,213 | Got it backwards, kind of. UPS, Fedex and other carriers were modeled after the USPS.
As for why the USPS is struggling, the answer is that the USPS has an albatross around its neck that nobody else has: In 2006, the Congress — *God* knows why — passed a law requiring the USPS to shovel *vast* sums of money into a fund set aside for paying retirement benefits to workers who haven't yet retired. This is the *only* reason why the USPS is losing money. If it weren't required by law to stuff all this cash under its mattress — a requirement no other enterprise *on the planet* has, and which no sane person would ever choose to do — the USPS would be back to operating close to break-even, as is appropriate for a publicly owned enterprise. | 1,367 |
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ELI5: What is my microwave doing differently when I set it to defrost mode instead of regular heating? | Just occurred to me today I've been using the defrost button for 20-something years to quickly thaw meats, but have absolutely no idea how it makes a difference. | 668 | Depends on the microwave, but most of them basically turn the microwave on and off, more off time than on time, to reduce the amount of heating taking place over time. The intent is to allow the item your cooking to warm up more slowly, otherwise you'd end up with a burnt exterior with a frozen center. The outside of whatever you're thawing is where the microwave has its greatest effect while the center doesn't get much direct heat and instead relies on heat to be conducted through the food. So it zaps the outside just enough for it to be warm, takes a break which allows that heat to pass on to the colder parts of the food and then zaps it again and repeats this pattern.
Some higher end microwaves instead decrease the intensity of the radiation used; Panasonic "Inverter" microwaves are an example. | 427 |
why don't wages just increase with inflation? | If prices double because we printed 2x as much money why don't don't wages double with it so everything is the same? Like if money is just a representation of value. If a table cost 100$ but now there is 2x as much money so the money is half as valuable but the table still has the same value as before the money just became less valuable so now it's 200$. Why don't wages do the same thing? | 66 | You are asking the important question. They do but they do often more slowly than prices, which is one of the main sources of pain during inflationary periods. Wages are said to be “sticky” relative to prices. “Wage stickiness” has been proven in multiple contexts beyond inflation. | 93 |
I believe it is hypocritical to be pro-life, but not a vegetarian. CMV | My main argument is that it makes no sense to be appalled by the death of an early term fetus, which is not viable or sentient, and yet be perfectly okay with killing and eating fully grown animals that are sentient and have emotions just like humans. For the record, I am both pro-choice and a vegan, and I often bring this argument up when people tell me they are pro-life. I have yet to hear a good reason why killing a non-sentient fetus is morally worse than killing full grown animals. Unless for some reason you absolutely have to eat meat to live, I don't see why someone who is pro-life shouldn't include animals on their list of things that deserve a chance at life.
EDIT: I'm going to go into a little more detail on my abortion stance for clarity. I certainly do not think it is desirable and it should be avoided if at all possible. However, until the fetus is viable, a woman's right to have control over her body should trump the rights of the fetus, because in a way, it is merely an extension of her body until then. You never know what reasons a woman might have for getting one, so the choice should be up to her.
EDIT 2: I've had a lot of great discussions with you guys. I can see how it isn't necessarily hypocritical, since you all have given me a variety of reasons for both being against abortion and justifying killing/eating animals. But I still think it's a good point to bring up, if only to make people critically examine their ethical views. | 41 | I think many who are pro-life believe there is a special quality of humans, which begins at conception, which makes them "sacred" (special, seat apart) in one way or another. Many of these political/social views are tied to religious views concerning the "sanctity of [human] life".
Such people could potentially use your logic against you, and say that anyone who is pro-choice believes human beings are no more significant than animals. If humans can be killed in utero, they might say, humans might as well be killed after they are born, or at any stage of life. Morality goes out the window, so to speak. | 31 |
Thoughts on cheating students | I'm an instructor who works in a department of a university that will remain nameless. Essentially I have caught two students cheating and I feel my department is not handling the situation in the right way. I caught the two students looking at each others papers and talking prior to both of them turning in their exams. I relayed what had occurred in my class to my supervisor, but he/she has decided that nothing can be done, won't take my word for it, would like to sweep it under the rug, and has decided that I should be fired for bringing the matter forward.
I would like your thoughts on the matter. | 20 | Document everything and go to the chair of the department. The cheating students aren't as big of a concern now that your job itself is on the line. If the chair doesn't quietly resolve the situation, go to the Human Resources department. At this stage, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. | 21 |
[DC Comics] How do I get connected to the Speed Force? | The Speed Force sounds like the most amazing power source for a superhero, ever. It laughs in the face of all laws of physics and all I have to do to use it, is some innovative thinking and believe I can do it!
So how do I get connected to it? Just drench myself in heavy water and wait for a lighting storm? | 39 | You can't really force a connection with the SpeedForce, at least not on your own.
The SpeedForce itself is sometimes said to be sentient, and deliberately chooses people to become speedsters. Whether or not this is true, the fact of the matter is that overwhelmingly, people either discover or access it by accident or through the involvement of somebody already granted access to the SpeedForce.
That said, there are a few exceptions. It is shown that, with the combined efforts of several speedsters, one can be "pushed into" the SpeedForce, though this can cause people involved to vanish for a time and even damage the SpeedForce itself, and there is no guarantee the person entering the SpeedForce will be able to use its power in any way.
Another counter-example is that Eobard Thawne and a few others have been able to artificially create connections to the SpeedForce in the past, though these various method tend to have severe consequences, still require the involvement of an existing speedster, and are generally not recommended. While replicating the "struck by lightning" incident worked for Wally West, there's no guarantee that it'll do anything for you except put you in a hospital. | 24 |
CMV: The death penalty is *never* okay. | If we look to the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The very first right is Life. We have been given a life to live, and taking it away for an illegal act is unjustified. The government wrote that to oppose Britain. Why are we now doing it to ourselves? It's hypocritical that we put Life as the first and more important, but we're legally allowed to convict one of our fellow men, with the same rights as us, to death. | 15 | After a conviction you lose many of your rights. Your right to vote, right to bare arms & the right against certain searches ( depending on the conviction).
Those who have shown the utmost disregard to human life and have undoubtedly committed the most heinous crimes should not draw breath any longer.
So should a person who committed an armed robbery be able to buy a gun again? It is a right! | 16 |
[Wizard of Oz] Is the Lollipop Guild some kind of Munchkin organized crime group? What were they up to in the sewers? | 49 | The Lollipop Guild is an entirely legal, law abiding, noncriminal fraternal order of confectionery professionals. Rumors and urban legends about "The Sugar Scalding" as a form of retribution or the use of molten chocolate for the disposal of corpses is a form of height bigotry and highly offensive.
And you *don't* wanna offend the Guild. | 49 |
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[Potterverse] Does the wizarding world have instantaneous/light-speed communications? | The Weazleys have a clock-like object which tells you where people are at any time. Does it update instantaneously or at least at the speed of light?
At some points it seems they need to wait for newspapers to find out what was going on, but at other times it seems they have a form of radio. Also speaking to people through fireplaces is a form of real-time communication.
TL;DR: I'm confused. | 24 | Yes.
Wizards do have radio (although only a few stations, and it seems like there's more music than news on). IIRC we never see wizarding radios in Hogwarts itself - perhaps the ambient magic messes them up, just like mundane radio? Radio-based news was important post-Voldemort takeover, because it's harder to censor than print, and there's a spell that "password-protects" radio broadcasts so you can only tune in if you know the code word.
The floo network is used much like a phone in addition to the full-body teleport, by sending only your head through to talk to someone.
Portraits are also used as a form of communication in the series, primarily the portrait of Phineus Nigellus in the Black house and an unnamed portrait in the Muggle Prime Minister's office that arranges meetings with the Minister for Magic with him (and watches him.) This isn't *quite* instant, since you talk to the portrait and then they talk to the recipient, but it's fairly quick.
Paired objects that can be used for instant communication - magic mirrors and coins with coded numbers worked into the design are the only ones we see, but presumably others are possible. These require difficult spellwork to make, though not *that* hard, Hermione and Draco both do it.
There are also several rarer methods shown:
* The Dark Mark, although it can only send one "message" as far as we see - a summons to (or from) the Dark Lord.
* Patronuses can teleport to anyone's location and deliver (verbal) messages, although it's not their primary function. Of course, most people can't cast the spell. The Order of the Phoenix used this, most notably to spread word of Voldemort's coup before the Death Eaters arrived.
* We see Dumbledore send letters and signal instantly using Fawkes, although obviously pet phoenixes are incredibly rare.
EDIT:
>At some points it seems they need to wait for newspapers to find out what was going on
What they *don't* have is an equivalent of the Internet. If they want to read the day's headlines all in one place, rather than hope a relevant story comes on the radio or hope someone they know personally heard a story and tells them about it, then they have to use newspapers and magazines. | 17 |
ELI5: In MLB baseball they have technology to show if the ball was inside or outside the strike zone, so why do they still have home plate umpires making subjective calls? | 20 | Tradition, and what people like. A ref's judgment is part of the game. Consulting a replay or computer to see if a ball was in or out of the strike zone every time there's a dispute changes the flow of the game. | 21 |
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ELI5: Can someone explain to me why they don’t recommend putting car jumper cables on the working battery black terminal to the dead battery black terminal but rather to an unpainted metal surface on the donor car? | Also, how does electricity flow from one car to the other if there isn’t a loop? | 51 | Non-perfectly sealed car batteries will slowly leak flammable gas, and an active spark would light it on fire. So the proper procedure has you connecting the last time (which is most likely to produce sparks) far away from this potential fire source.
Cars are wired so that 'ground' connects to the negative terminal, and 'ground' is basically the metal chassis of the car. So connecting to the metal frame of the car *will* connect the batteries in a loop. | 94 |
ELI5: "Scratch a pessimist and you find often a defender of privilege. -William Beveridge" | 63 | A pessimist is someone who has a gloomy outlook on what will happen in the future. People who are societally hopeful hope for good things for those in need, but a pessimist doesn't share that hope.
You say to the pessimist: "Hey, let's do this thing to make society better!" and the pessimist says "No, let's not do it, it won't work." Then the status quo is kept as it is and everyone keeps their privilege. | 46 |
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[Spider-man] How is the relationship between the Green Goblin and Norman Osborn? | Green goblin, is his sole purpose in life to keep Norman safe or he only cares about him because they have to share the same body?
If he could get rid of Norman like, deleting his mind forever or jump into a new body just for himself and then kill him, would he do it?
Harry is what Norman loves most, would the Green Goblin allow Norman to sacrifice himself to save Harry? | 22 | Green Goblin isn't Two Face. The dual sides of his personality aren't at war with each other. Goblin is Norman's id and they generally want the same things. Goblin is just ruthless and rigorous in his pursuit of goals, whereas Norman is broken and dysfunctional. | 19 |
ELI5: Why is it that TV shows which make profit require release forms, whereas news broadcasts do not; yet they also make profit? | It bothers me a little bit. | 56 | The two things you describe are Commercial and Editorial.
Commercial works require a release from the person on the screen. These can be works of fiction. Their main goal is to provide entertainment in a fictional manner.
Editorial works do not require a release and are generally for telling the "facts", like reporting the news. | 13 |
[Lord of the Rings films] Could Saruman have shot fireballs down at all the Ents that were invading Isengard? | 260 | Yes, he could have. He didn't follow the rules the Istari were supposed to follow, particularly on not using the full might of his powers unless the situation absolutely demanded it (e.g. Gandalf battling Durin's Bane). Perhaps the fireball was an extremely powerful spell and he couldn't spam it.
Edit: Typo. | 155 |
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[DoctorWho] Did the Time Lords have off world colonies? | If they did, what happened to them? | 19 | The reason is a secret that they never let the "lesser" races in on, but the fact is there for all the galaxy to see. *They never made colonies.* No one knows exactly why. Maybe they wanted to stay close to the Untempered Schism. Maybe their population was so efficiently managed already they felt no need to expand outwards, and in their arrogance they had no fear of a threat that might destroy their one solitary planet.
Their influence could be felt across a thousand universes, but Gallifrey was the only Time Lord planet that ever was. A single monument to the might and pride of a race that viewed the universe not as a wonder to explore, but as a trophy to be held upon a shelf and never touched. | 39 |
CMV: Fast food joints should be completely automated | Work in fast food places is one of the most mundane and monotonous. It could and should be totally or nearly totally automated. Let's start with cooking, no one will notice if robots will start flipping burgers. Next step should be cashiers. Ideally every fast food place should have 1 on duty operator, that will just oversee things and do stuff that can't be done by robots.
Reasons I think this is good idea is that it would make fast food even more affordable and it will push economies even closer to state of post scarcity.
Also it would promote and popularize wide automation to end consumer. | 87 | >it would make fast food even more affordable
Do you think that McDonald's (etc) isn't ruthlessly profit focused enough to think of that? The reason they use workers is because it is cheaper than using automation. | 114 |
ELI5: Why does paper yellow with age? | I was originally going to post something to the cooking subreddit about old recipes on old, yellowed notecards.
But.. I don't know how old they are and assumed they where old because of their yellowed, stiff feeling. Then I realized I didn't know why paper yellows at all.
Is it like wood aging? | 133 | There are two main components to wood. Cellulose structures which make up the cells, which is what most paper makers are after, and lignin which is what makes trees rigid. Lignin basically glues the tree's cells together. Some paper is made by just grinding up trees and bleaching everything. Other types of processes use chemicals to dissolve the lignin to keep only cellulose as the final product.
Anyways, lignin is prone to oxidation, and especially with paper grades like newspapers, yellow over time. | 52 |
ELI5: bread and cookies | How/why does putting a piece of bread in the bag with your cookies keep the cookies from getting dry? How does just the bread get hard but not the cookies? I’m befuddled. | 27 | It's the sugar in the cookies. It's hygroscopic (has a great affinity for water and will suck it out of the surrounding air) due to the amount of sugar in the cookie - bread has much less sugar and more moisture. Cookies suck up moisture and poor bread gets gross and hard. Cut the bread into 4ths and replace every other day to keep them nice. And keep the bag sealed! You need a closed environment for this to work | 15 |
[Star Wars Remastered Editions] On Endor, why does Anakin's force ghost look like his young Clone Wars self when Obi Wan's force ghost looks like his old Post Clone Wars Self? | 25 | Obi-Wan: Your father was seduced by the dark side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed.
There's an argument to be made that while Anakin was redeemed in his final moments of life, his connection to the Force was strongest in his younger days, during the Clone Wars, and that self-image is what the Force ghost is represented as. Obi-wan's connection to the Force remained constant, and strong until he was slain by Vader on the Death Star, so his Force ghost's self image reflects his last physical image. | 52 |
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What does Camus mean by this | from the myth of sisyphus
If I judge that a thing is true, I must preserve it. If I attempt to solve a problem, at least I must not by that very solution conjure away one of the terms of the problem. For me the sole datyr.
is the absurd.
The first and, after all, the only condition
Of my in-
quiry is to preserve the very thing that crushes me, consequently to respect what I consider essential in it. I have just defined it as a confrontation and an unceasing struggle.
Help | 27 | He deems the absurdity of life to be true. He is attempting to solve the problem of absurdity and human existence. The absurd "crushes" him, makes him feel existential dread.
Therefore the thing that crushes him, by his own logic, must be preserved and respected. He must not conjure away any part of the problem of the absurd (through false belief, philosophical suicide, etc.). Instead, he chooses to treat his problem (the absurd) as a confrontation and unceasing struggle.
"Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them." - The Myth of Sisyphus
"Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world." - The Myth of Sisyphus
"Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that's what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity." - The Stranger | 35 |
ELI5:If someone 'Objects' during a wedding ceremony, what happens next? | I've always wanted to know this, and Google is throwing up mixed answers. | 57 | Everyone gasps at the shocking breach of decorum, and the objector is not invited to future weddings.
There is no legal consequence, and the priest/judge/rabbi has no requirement to listen to the disruptor. A wedding can proceed after any objection or other outburst, provided that the bride and groom and officiator still want the marriage to proceed. If one of them changes their mind as a result of the objection, obviously it is not going to happen that day. | 90 |
[Marvel's Defenders] (Spoilers) What would have happened if Davos had become the Iron Fist instead of Danny? | K'un Lun wouldn't have been left unguarded, that's for sure. Probably Danny would have still come back to the US to take his company back. The Hand would still have come looking for "The Substance," but Danny wouldn't be able to unlock the door. The Defenders wouldn't have an Iron Fist (although Danny is still an expert martial artist, so maybe he joins them anyway).
How would things have played out? | 41 | Danny leaving K'un Lun fucked up a bunch of things, but you've already pointed out the big two: the Hand wouldn't have been able to open the dragon's tomb, and K'un Lun wouldn't have been left unguarded when ... whatever happened, happened.
Without access to the tomb, the Hand slowly dies off. They'd still be an important political power for decades, maybe longer, but the five founding members would all succumb to mortality eventually, and the cult's devotion to them would end. They'd also run out of undead ninja zombies.
The Hand as a criminal organization is probably large enough to sustain itself without the founders, but they become more like any other cartel. Their leaders would be on the same level as Fisk, more or less.
We don't know what happened in K'un Lun, so we can't really say how having the Iron Fist there would have changed things. We do know, however, that Davos is a tiny bit unhinged, and his perception of what is right and good can be used against him. It isn't hard to imagine that whoever invaded K'un Lun would use his moral weaknesses to turn Davos against his masters. That might lead them to a supply of the Substance, and would also give an evil power access to the Iron Fist.
That would probably become an Avengers-level threat quickly enough. | 22 |
ELI5: Why does a movie like Suicide Squad have the trailer out now, but a release date in over a year from now? | What happens between now until release? | 37 | > What happens between now until release?
Did you see how many of the scenes had special effects? A lot of them, right? Adding special effects to raw film takes awhile. The raw, effects free, filming has been done. What they're doing now is adding effects, composing and adding music, etc.
Basically, they're turning it from green screen to final film. | 26 |
ELI5: How is it sanitary for doctors and nurses to wear scrubs on their commute to and from work? | 1,346 | There is *some* evidence that shows that the bioburden (amount of bacteria) on uniforms is higher on scrubs that have been home laundered versus those laundered by a hospital facility. This is a topic that has been going round and round with Infection Control, the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Nurses Association (ANA) and Association of peri-Operative Registered Nurses (AORN) for years.
Scrubs get contaminated at work. They get contaminated on the way home from work. They get contaminated on the way into work by sitting in the car in which you drove home from work the day before in your contaminated scrubs.
Wearing them out and about after work can *potentially* spread bacteria/fungi picked up at the hospital.
Patients in the hospital are there because they're already sick. Getting infected by a hospital acquired "bug" is a huge issue and leads to significant morbidity and mortality. In the interest of decreasing *risk*, it's been recommended by Infection Control, the AMA, the ANA, and the AORN to change into clean, hospital laundered scrubs on arrival to the hospital (usually this is done in the OR suites--restricted and semi-restricted areas) and to leave the dirties behind before you exit the facility.
This does nothing to account for the staff who wear their own uniforms in other areas of the hospital to work and back home. They home launder their uniforms and are commonly seen out and about running errands in their personal scrubs.
One study found that the hospital's laundering facility was spreading a nasty fungus because the equipment was dirty. So, there's another place where contaminants need to be monitored.
The evidence that is available shows that it's probably better to not wear them outside of the hospital.
| 470 |
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CMV: Cigarettes should be sold without a filter to eliminate environmental pollution. | Cigarette butts are the number one most littered object in the world. This year alone, an excess of 950,000,000 kg of cigarette waste will be produced. A single ingested used cigarette filter is toxic enough to kill small freshwater fish. British Columbia, Canada has started a recycling program where they pay people $0.01 for each butt that they recycle. I feel like this will provide an incentive for smoking and the scope of these types of programs will have very little impact on a world-wide problem.
Therefore, I think that the only way to solve this environmental crisis is to stop producing cigarette filters.
Edit: I just found this article on the history and effectiveness of cigarette filters. It is actually quite interesting and if you have time you should skim through it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3088411/ | 26 | Intensive for smoking? A pack of smokes costs between 5 to 10 bucks. Some places even more. At a penny per filter you would make 20 cents on a investment of much more than that.
That's a crappy return. But that one penny now turns a value less product into something with value. Homeless people could collect butts to have enough money to have a meal. This sounds like a great idea. | 12 |
[The Matrix] How different was The Matrix from the real world? | So, there seems to be an implication that the Matrix program was designed to be similar to the real world, there seems to be some implication that a decent bit of their replication of 1998 was changed to better suit their purposes.
The Zion might be seen as suggesting that the Real World had a lot better technology at that point in time. Additionally, The Oracle said *"Every time you've heard someone say they saw a ghost, or an angel. Every story you've ever heard about vampires, werewolves, or aliens, is the system assimilating some program that's doing something they're not supposed to be doing.", which could mean
A) The Real World didn't have stories of vampires, ghosts, etc.; these were all invented by programs in the Matrix
B) The real world did have these stories, but they never made it into The Matrix
C) The Matrix either took inspiration from Ghost stories or independently made similar programs entirely by coincidence
I personally find the last option to be the least likely, imitation seems uncharacteristic and it seems unlikely that the Matrix would independently create the same creature.
We also get a few other suggestions, like when Mouse Asked if anyone could know whether the sensations in the Matrix were like real life or simply guessed at by the machines. | 17 | The Architect used things from the human pyche when he made ghosts and vampires and such. It was part of the effort to force the mind to accept the simlulation to include uncomfortable but familiar things. | 12 |
[Matrix] Why are all the Zion residents (Zionites?) black? | I noticed that the only white people in that movie were people who were pulled from the matrix. Whats up with that? | 153 | They most likely aren't.
We only see them as being black because of American cultural perception (this goes back to miscegenation laws and something called the one drop rule).
This is similar to how president Barack Obama is considered to be black in America even though his mother is white, and strictly speaking he's as much white as he is black.
However, in America only people who are 100% white are considered white. This means that even if zion started out with a low percentage of black people, within a few generations they would all be black according to the American view. | 164 |
ELI5: What do those massive shoulder mounted TV cameras do that a nice handheld video camera cannot? | 75 | As an operator of one of those big cameras, here's what's going on.
**Enormous lenses and sensors designed to let in a lot of light, plus a mechanical aperture.** This gives the camera the ability to operate in a wide range of lighting conditions. That lens assembly usually extends back into the "body" of the camera quite a ways. Glass is heavy, too.
**Motor-driven and by-hand zoom, focus, aperture etc** - You can twist rings on the outside of the assembly to adjust all of the above by hand, which is sometimes preferable and looks "more natural." But they're also motorized, enabling you to adjust all of those settings by the controls near your hand on the back, by a remote control, or by the onboard computer.
**Onboard computing hardware to process uncompressed video, and to make smart decisions if set to auto**. Most consumer cameras take video and immediately compress it to something like MPEG-4 with very little flexibility in options for that. These bad boys store and process *uncompressed* video, which can hit like a gig a minute. They also have better capability for a wider "palette" of colors to work with than consumer cameras. This footage can hit like a gig a minute easy. And then if you want to leave some or all of the camera's decisions for aperture/color balance/etc up to the hardware itself, there's an enormous expectation that a camera that expensive will have a better auto than a sony HandyCam.
**Large properly shaped microphones and connectors for pro level external mics**. Consumer cameras usually have little mics, and they're often omnidirectional and pick up *everything*, which is often a bad thing. Larger "shotgun" style mics pick up in a conical pattern (think about what a shotgun blast would hit, to paint a dark metaphor) which is preferable to get just your subject. Additionally, the camera has XLR hookups and onboard 48v power for pro-level external mics so you can use both built-in and external. XLR plugs are like the size of your thumb and there's no mini version.
edit: **oh, and the battery is often enormous and goddamn heavy** - with so much more stuff onboard than your average camera, If this thing had a relatively light battery you'd get like an hour tops. So the battery is usually pretty beefy so you can film all day. Sitting it on your shoulder is the most comfortable way to hold that weight. Oh, and **metal frame**, consumer cameras are plastic but these guys are usually significantly metal for durability. Not that you should be throwing a 10k camera, but just in case. | 153 |
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CMV: It is not possible for a large media company to be unbiased, and this is detrimental to the education of the people. | Allow me to start off by saying that this is not a stance that I hold proudly, but one that I really would like to see a solution to.
It has become increasingly more evident to me that there is certain trend with the growth of media companies. As a media company begins to make profits, the likelihood that they will take on investors to make even more profits increases. The company then has a decision to make: either continue to profit through common methods like running advertisements, or take on a willing investor to ensure easier funds. From the perspective of a businessperson who is interested in maximizing profits, the correct choice would be to take on the investor, increasing security for the company. If they were to have a greater interest in maintaining the unbiasedness of their media, they would reject the investor, but at the cost of ensured security and growth of the business.
It may seem that the more common choice would be to take on the investor, but the likely distribution for that one decision is very likely close to 50/50. The reason it may seem the other way is because the top 1% of media companies account for about half of the entire industry.
As a media company takes on it’s first investor, the factor of bias begins to amplify. Typically, the strategy of an investor in a media company is to have that company promote the personal narrative of the investor, instead of them only receiving money from advertisements. This maximizes the exposure of the investor in a good light, increasing the chances of them gaining customers, and the probability that they will reinvest, making the media company more money as well. However, this investor now has influence on who the next investor can be, making it likely that the next one will be beneficial to their narrative. This is the cycle that continues for media companies in their growth and adoption of a biased narrative.
It is because of these facts that I believe large media constricts the consumer to a certain view, limiting them to other possibilities which not only keeps them from finding solutions to divided problems, but divides people and societies as a whole. All arguments are welcomed, as it is crucial we find a way to educate the people fairly. | 38 | I think people have it in their minds that there was a period of history during which media was not biased to some degree. This is not the case; from destroyed oil paintings and altered texts, revisionist history and yellow journalism, capital ‘O’ objectivity is a moving target because like other concepts such as fairness, what constitutes objectivity isn’t objective.
If your premise is that we need to find a way to produce news media that isn’t biased, that’s a pipe dream; anything produced by humans, anything produced in a collective society, will be coloured by the personal and social views of the writer/presenter. This is unavoidable even with good journalists who work to get as much bias out of their articles as possible. What is needed is better education so that people understand that the truth is found between many sources; we need to teach things like Hegelian dialectics so that people understand the importance of comparing and contrasting multiple sources on any given topic | 14 |
[serenity/firefly] A question about reavers. | How are reavers so organised? If they were that aggressive wouldn't they have turned on each other while floating in space. Not forming a fleet, maintaining space craft and sending out raiders. Also why is no one doing anything about them. | 41 | So, reavers only go full aggro in the presence of outsiders. They're violent assholes in general, but the pure LETS KILL EVERYTHING only comes to surface when they are dealing with non-reavers.
As for why no one is dealing with them, it was believed that they would just die out after a generation or so, and thus the problem would solve itself. | 45 |
ELI5: How did wearing caps and gowns at graduations become a thing? | 306 | Originally, the cap and gown was a practical uniform for medieval university students, much like monk's robes and nun's habits. The design was meant to be practical and warm while distinguishing scholars and teachers. There are many traditions of rank and specialty which are actually remeniscent of military uniforms.
Of course people don't wear the cap and gown every day anymore, but it has retained a tradition on formal educational occasions.
| 161 |
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ELI5: How come we grow large lumps on our heads if we hit it instead of the skin bruising? | 19 | It's still bruising. Bruising is when broken capillaries cause blood to pool under the skin. In the case of the scalp the skin is so thin that when the blood wells up it bulges the skin out since there's nowhere for it to pool. | 20 |
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ELI5: How are commercial airplanes supplied with electricity? | To power screens, Air conditioning and lights etc, do they use alternators on the engines or generators inside the plane? | 81 | They have two sources of power, and there is a third (ground-power) when on the ground. The primary source is the engines, through an internal power take-off (PTO) shaft. When the engines aren't running, the auxiliary power unit (APU) provides starting air and electricity. The APU is restartable in the air, to recover from loss of engines. | 41 |
[Gundam franchise] What is the most cost-effective strategy the major powers choose when it comes to fighting wars with mobile suits? Do you spend your budget on 100 "meh" pilots flying mass production mobile suits, or train 10 aces piloting very powerful Gundams? | 15 | 10 Aces every time.
Always go for high quality highly trained group of hardened soldiers.
100 meh pilots are just cannon fodder.
The problem is at least 3 of those Ace pilots are going to turn coat and become the main villain. | 23 |
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ELI5: Why does the value of art change by orders of magnitude depending on who created it? | Something I've often wondered, and [this BBC article](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21712209) reminded me about it: how come the painting is worth £3,000-5,000 if one guy did it, but up to £1m now it turns out to be a different guy? | 27 | It's similar to why some kinds of comic books are really expensive.
there is the value of the comic book itself to a casual comic book buyer (for reading, enjoying etc) and the value of saying "it's in mint condition" which is what the collector markets want.
As a painting, it might only be worth $3k. It's pretty, it's large, and it would look good in the lobby. there might be a pretty good pool of people who would pay $3k for a pretty, large painting (regardless of who it's by or what it is) but there are plenty of those kinds of paintings. Plenty of people even copy famous paintings, because they're so popular.
But then there are some other people who are collectors. They want the *original* one. there is only *one* or sometimes a couple. And they will pay a lot more to get their hands on the original purely because there aren't as many. | 18 |
[LotR] Do the Silmarillion and other books exist in the canon of the universe? | The hobbit and the Lord of the Rings were more or less written by Bilbo and Frodo respectively. Do the other books in the Tolkien universe have canonical authors too? | 35 | Bilbo also wrote The Silmarillion.
Tolkien toyed with other explanations, such as having a 10th century Anglo-Saxon mariner (and descendant of Eärendil) named Ælfwine set sail and wind up on the beaches of Tol Eressëa where he learned all the tales in The Silmarillion from the Elves there. He eventually returns to England and translates the stories to Old English. These other ideas were never finalized and Tolkien never officially made Bilbo the author of The Silmarillion, but his son has commented that he believes his father intended that the tales were written by Bilbo.
The in-universe title given by Bilbo is "Translations from the Elvish" and they are included in the Red Book of Westmarch together with "There and Back Again. And What Happened After." (The Hobbit) and "The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King" (The Lord of the Rings). | 34 |
ELI5: How does tobacco cause cancer? | 15 | Several ways. Nicotine speeds up cell growth, and decreases tumour suppressant chemicals in the body. Then you have all the other stuff they add to the tobacco to control burn rate and so on, like acetone, formaldehyde, lead, arsenic, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, and carbon monoxide, none of which are good. | 19 |
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[star wars] Is being a Jedi(Force sensitive) inheritance only? (SPOILERS FOR TFA) | So after seeing TFA, me and my friend were talking about who Rey could be. He basically said she had to be Luke's daughter, because you have to he the child or related to a Jedi to be force sensitive. He claimed mitochondrians were inherited and such. Can anyone help me sort this out? | 30 | Name any other Jedi, other than Luke, who had a parent who was Force sensitive. They all talk about being taken to the Jedi Temple as kids. But if their parents were Force-sensitive, wouldn't they have been Jedi, and not allowed to have kids? | 55 |
How to read complex papers faster | I'm starting a PhD in the fall and I have a problem: I'm a slow reader, and when the material gets even a little complicated, I become *really* slow.
Since my PhD is in physics, this hasn't been a serious handicap so far, but I assume that I will eventually have to start reading a large amount of papers to keep up in my field, and I want to make sure I don't fall behind.
Does anyone here have tips on how to read faster while retaining information? Should I just take basic "speed reading" classes you can find online? Any help would be appreciated. | 33 | it is very simple.
1. read the conclusion first, because introductions usually suck
2. read the first and last paragraph of each section
3. read the full sections that apply to your work or interests
4. read the abstract.
5. skip the rest.
| 42 |
[ELI5] When you cut a picture into pieces, each piece has only part of the picture. But when you cut a hologram into pieces, each piece has the WHOLE picture in it. How? ELI5! | I've read [this](http://science.howstuffworks.com/hologram.htm) a few times but I still don't get it. Help? | 101 | That's slightly misleading. It's not so much that you see the entire image in each piece, but rather you are able to see the image from the perspective of each piece.
Think of a hologram as a window. Anywhere you look through a window, you see what's on the other side. If you were to paint the window black and scratch a hole in the paint on the left side of that window just big enough to look through, you would see everything on the other side of the window, like looking through a peephole. If you then scratch another peephole somewhere on the right side of the window, you still can see through, but from a different perspective. This is the same effect that each broken piece of a hologram would display.
Just remember that if you have two broken pieces taken from opposite sides of the hologram, and you are looking at an object that looks differently from each side, one piece may let you see just one of those sides while the other piece will let you view the other side. So, you might say that each piece of a hologram stores information about the whole image, but from its own viewing angle. No two pieces will give you a view that is exactly the same. | 117 |
Validity of the Coase theorem? | I am an econ undergrad and just did a unit on the Coase theorem in an environmental econ class that I'm taking. At the end of the unit the professor noted that in order for the Coase theorem to hold, *all* of the following must be true:
* Perfect information.
* Consumers and producers are price takers.
* There is a costless court system for enforcing agreements.
* Profits and utility maximized.
* No income or wealth effects.
* No transactions costs.
Considering that not all of these requirements actually hold true, how valid is the Coase theorem? | 29 | Like all economics, you have to break a few eggs (make some assumptions) to make an omelette (theorem). You will see this a lot over the course of your education - don't get too hung up on it! The aid to understanding a situation that comes from a neat theory can be worth much more than the mind-gunk that comes from iffy assumptions.
The takeaways from learning about coase should be:
*what externalities are
*if we lived in a magical world then markets would lead to efficient outcomes
*we don't live in a magical world - there are transaction costs, there are coordination costs, sometimes property rights are historically mis-assigned, etc
*therefore, there is a place for regulation and the assignation of status quo property rights in order to minimise externalities
Hope that helps - let me know if you have any more specific questions.
| 13 |
why high-speed wind feels colder? | why high-speed wind feels colder? | 5,157 | There are two potential reasons. One requires the wind to be cooler than the object, which we will assume is you from now on. The second requires some moisture on the object.
First, the rate of heat loss is what makes you feel cold. This rate increases with wind because the wind reduces the temperature gradient between your skin and the air. In still air, a thicker layer of warmer air stays near your skin and heat is lost more slowly. Fun fact, the hair on your body stands up a bit "goosebumps" to help trap that insulating layer when you are cold.
Second, any moisture on your skin will evaporate faster as the vapor is blown away by the wind, making you cooler . Fun fact, the reason the wind-chill is less when it is humid is because the more moisture is in the air the less quickly it will evaporate from your skin.
edit: as others have rightly pointed out, neither of the points above capture the increased convective heat loss wind creates. That is, physically moving the warm air near your skin away from you. | 3,134 |
[Sonic the Hedgehog] How come Sonic can't dodge a tranquilizer gun but can dodge tons of missiles? | 23 | It could be something akin to how different comics Flash is to CW Flash. Comics Flash has the Speed force active at all times, so he lives in slow motion. CW Flash (from what I've seen) has to initiate it himself, that's why he could move so fast time stops in one scene, but is able to get nailed by an enemies superpower in another moment. His reflexes aren't always active. Just a theory | 30 |
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[The Matrix] What would happen if some too powerful, important and influential to just ignore and cover up takes the red pill and is unplugged from The Matrix, Say for example the POTUS? | 93 | Not everyone in The Matrix is represented by an actual person in a pod.
People of political power would most assuredly just be part of the program. "Real" people lead boring mundane lives inside The Matrix. | 148 |
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Why is the sun composed of just hydrogen and helium while the rest of the solar system is made predominantly of heavier elements? | If we (and the planets) are indeed made of stardust from exploded stars, why then isn't also our sun? | 27 | In terms of mass, most of the mass of the planets is also hydrogen and helium. It's just most of that is in Jupiter and Saturn, not Earth. The reason the inner planets lack hydrogen and helium is that their gravity is unable to hold those lighter elements, with the temperatures of the inner planets, they simply escape into space, and get blown away by the solar wind. The colder outer planets have a high enough gravity and low enough temperatures that this doesn't happen. | 51 |
[MCU] Endgame implications | Time travel makes whole new timelines, in some of which thanos is still around in a presumably gets the stones and does the snap.
This is where things can get confusing...
If the avengers in those timelines go back in time to get the stones will they find our avengers already there taking them? (as that what happened in their past?)
Would this keep happening, spawning more and more timelines with more and more avengers all trying to get the stones? | 20 | The way the film presents it, when you go back in-time you create a different timeline from your own. So any Avengers in alternate timelines going back in time, will just spawn a new timeline *based* on their own.
So going by the movies rules, taking Captain America as an example. If CA#2 from alternate timeline went back in time to get time stone, to that exact point he fought CA#1 he would spawn a new timeline. This new timeline would now have CA#1, CA#2 and CA#2 from the future.
If CA#2 from that timeline went back in time to that moment, there would now be 4 (including himself). And so on and so forth. So there really could be an alternate universe now where there are dozens of Captain Americas, at that point in time, fighting for the same (but not same) time stone. | 14 |
What is the probability of an agent attempting to find one thing hidden in 1 of 100 boxes with 50 tries? | So, my friend told me a statistical riddle, involving 100 boxes hiding unique and randomly ordered numbers 1-100, and an several agents with 50 attempts to find a specific number.
If you are curious about the riddle it's presented [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eivGlBKlK6M). I ended up working out the riddle, but there is a question sort of tangential to the solution that I am still confused about and interested in.
The person who posited the riddle to me told me that selecting randomly with all 50 tries would give you a 50% chance of finding what you were looking for.
However, I am sort of confused on this point. The first attempt is 1/100 chance of finding your objective, but even if you picked again randomly, it seems sensible to exclude the box you already checked, say you just leave it open and don't bother with it again.
Wouldn't then the next trial give you a 1/99 chance of finding your objective?
My understanding is, with multiple trials you can find the expected value with a summation of the probabilities for each trial, so that means your chance of finding your objective would be [this summation.](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F100+%2B+1%2F99+%2B+...+1%2F51)
69% chance of finding it? With 50 tries?
This number seems too high to me, so I feel like I might have made a mistake. If somebody could explain why this is correct or incorrect I would appreciate it.
If that is correct, it seems to introduce a sort of paradox, which I am also confused about.
Imagine you know the boxes are already shuffled, so it might seem reasonable to think you would effectively get a random box simply by walking to the next box if they are all in a row.
However, if you select a whole range of boxes all at once like this, it seems impossible to me that your chance could be greater than 50% of finding your objective, because the object is simply in that half you selected with a single stroke or it isn't.
What is happening there? Is the shuffle getting stale in some way? What exactly is happening when a shuffle gets stale, and why does randomly re-considering the unopened boxes between trials increase increase the probability so much? | 38 | Here is the fallacy. (I am just rewording what others have said).
You argue as follows: You look in the first box. Your odds are 1/100 of winning. If it's not there, you look in the second box. Your odds are then 1/99 of winning. Etc.
The second sentence is true, but it started with a conditional, "if it's not there." The probability of that is 99/100, so you actually get a (1/99)(99/100) = (1/100) probability.
| 48 |
[DragonBall] If I die, then get brought back, can I still collect my life insurance? | 16 | I would say yes for a couple reasons:
* Resurrection doesn't appear to be common enough on Earth to cause major legal turmoil for enough people to warrant legal changes
* Being declared dead causes a lot of issues for an individual who has been brought back. Taxes, employment, contracts, loans, etc... will all need to be sorted out, if they even can be.
* The Insurance company would likely take note of your new situation and deny you coverage in the future. They've already paid out once, but you won't get that same perk a second time. | 22 |
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Is it possible that, in our universe, there are entire galaxies made out of anti-matter? | Most, if not all, universe documentaries that I have seen consistently say that we are the remnants of this great battle between matter and anti-matter. But, isn't it possible that there is still quite a bit left, and it could have formed into an entire galaxy? | 15 | The space between the stars in a galaxy is filled with a very thin gas - the "interstellar medium". Even between galaxies there is the "intergalactic medium" too. This means stars and galaxies aren't completely isolated in space - there's gas everywhere. This means you'll have matter and antimatter annihilating each other in the "border regions" between antimatter and matter galaxies. This would produce a constant stream of ~~\~2~~~1 GeV gamma rays in these border regions, which we'd be able to detect with our gamma ray telescopes. However, we don't see this. | 10 |
[MCU](Endgame spoilers) Two questions... | - When Thanos is searching Nebula’s memories for mentions of Infinity Stones, why isn’t their encounter on Titan included? That could have thrown an immediate wrench into his plan or at least his relationship with Gamora with the reveal that he killed her for the Soul Stone.
- What’s the state of the Sokovia Accords and how did they get there? Even before the five year span they seem to be largely ignored. | 21 | 1. They wouldn't have had the time to fully go through a full four years worth of recorded memories -- they likely just searched for data involving the Infinity Stones and glanced over them, with particular emphasis on how his campaign eventually ended up and whether or not he succeeded or not.
2. Before Decimation they were in full effect -- Steve Rogers and his crew were in hiding due to them. They only decided to bring them on when Iron Man ended up being taken into space and they needed all the help they could get against Thanos.
The Accords were, however, definitely modified or even outright ignored in the wake of Decimation -- Romanoff mentions that world governments were in tatters following the catastrophe, and both she and Rogers seemed to be fully active in helping keep things running five years later. | 35 |
[General] What would happen if two zombies from separate infections met. | Something along the lines of a horde of left 4 dead zombies bump into a horde of world war z zombies. | 47 | "Living" zombies, those who are merely infected with some sort of disease, would probably ignore dead zombies. They might be attracted by the motion, but once they got within range they'd smell the death and then move on.
Dead zombies, those who are of supernatural origin, may attack living zombies if they still considered them human and not brain-dead animals. A living zombie would probably rise again as a dead zombie, assuming the zombie plague didn't completely destroy the brain.
The zombies who go after souls, like the *Demons* zombies, would probably still try to possess living zombie bodies. | 47 |
[Fantasy] On the natural magic resistance of dwarves. | How do you explain the common dwarf's natural resistance to magic?
Is it the very stone that the first dwarves were carved from their respective deity that bestowed the resistance to magic on them, passed down to their breaded descendants? Can they use magic despite the magic resistance? | 17 | > breaded descendants
I prefer batter-fried dwarves, honestly.
You could explain the magic resistance a few ways:
- The dwarven deity provides magic resistance.
- Dwarves create enchanted armor and wear some all the time.
- Magical beings are magic-resistant. Dwarves are magical beings and stubborn jerks besides.
- Magic tends to flow into the ground. Dwarves, being closer to the ground, aren't able to stay enchanted as long as other races.
- They're drunk. | 33 |
I want to create a webapp that takes the ingredients you have in your fridge, and comes up with recipes. Need a bit of guidance. | I understand there's plenty of websites that do this. I'm writing it as an exercise.
​
I'm currently going through Colt Steele's "Web Developer Boot Camp" on Udemy so I can get the fundamentals of web dev down. My question is: How can I get the app to "browse" the web and return links to recipes that include those ingredients? Is this the job of a web crawler? Can I use googles API to return results? What would be the most appropriate/efficient way of achieving this feature? Am I even asking the right question?
​
​ | 20 | Your questions are quite broad, so I'll throw one back at you; How do you want it to work?
You could crawl a subset of websites for recipes, parse them into some standard format and display them in your app. A lot of work, but gives the best user experience.
You could use Google, as you suggest, to find recipes with the specified ingredients. In this case, you would rely on google to do the web crawling for you, and you just pull the recipe out of google when requested - this is harder than it sounds, as you need to parse almost any web layout, and if the layout changes then your app is screwed.
Third, you could use either of the above 2 methods, but instead of parsing the destination page and displaying it in a consistent manner, you could push the user to the remote page. You would be acting as an index for other websites to drive traffic to good websites. However, this is a user experience nightmare and is best avoided (unless, of course, you're just playing around with ideas).
You could create 'user authored' recipes, and start from scratch. Maybe input some of your own, pass the app to friends/family and grow the recipes naturally. This is a tough ask, as it needs an existing user base, even before the app exists... chicken and egg and all that.
Finally, you could do a hybrid of these. Create a basic web app that can create and display recipes. Then write a scraper for a specific website/recipe source and bring in a handful of recipes. Then extend to Google searches to find recipes on the fly and parse them into the app. Then finally, try and write the holy grail of web parsers to bring in ANY recipe from ANY website.
That last one is a big project, but if you babystep it by only implementing one small feature at a time, it would be fairly trivial.
Once you choose how you want it to work, that should begin to answer some of your questions. Post back if you have any more specific questions. | 12 |
If I wake up from sleep, and try to go back to sleep, does my "sleep cycle" reset, or pick up where it left off? | Does it matter what point of the sleep cycle I was in when I woke up, or how long I was asleep to begin with? Does it matter how long it takes me to fall back asleep? | 516 | The interesting thing is that our natural sleep cycle includes a period of wakefulness. Before the advent of electricity and the lightbulb, it was very much natural for people to have a split sleep cycle, called bimodal or segmented sleep. They would sleep for several hours once the sun went down, wake up in the middle of the night to visit, eat, work, (have sex), and then return to sleep in the pre-dawn hours. Only with the invention of the lightbulb do we see the push for a "healthy" eight hour sleep pattern, which is actually quite unnatural and may be the cause of many sleep disorders in modern society. For more on the subject see At Day's Close: Nights in Times Past by Roger Ekirch - it's a very interesting read. | 164 |
ELI5: How does higher quality microphones filter out most of the background noises? | 16 | There are a few things that you should probably look at. Some microphones have different recording patterns. You can choose an optimal recording pattern depending on the setting. Cardioid mode records what is directly in front of the receiver versus say an omni\-directional mic that will pick up in a 360 degree pattern.
You can also apply what is called a pop filter. Pop filters work by reducing air flow towards the mic which effectively removes the popping and white noises often heard. | 10 |
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[Star Trek Into Darkness] What would have happened to the crew that were sucked out of the ship during warp? | What are some of the physiological consequences of a human body? | 38 | The second those people leave the Enterprise's subspace field, they decelerate instantly to a fraction of C without the inertial dampeners to compensate. They are most likely liquified.
Starfleet produces man portable inertial dampeners for the case of an abandon-ship action at warp, but it was unlikely that the crew in this scenario had them equipped. | 48 |
CMV: If I amass considerable wealth during my lifetime, I don't believe in leaving anything to my descendants. | I realized this was a controversial view yesterday while driving with my family to Thanksgiving dinner. My sister was speaking about leaving her money to her kids after her passing, and I casually mentioned how I don't believe I'd leave any. This was met with much more vitriol from both my mom and sister than I expected. Since my sister only seems to argue by using mindless platitudes (she just kept saying "you take care of your own" over and over) and my mother just kept telling me "that is wrong" without explaining why, I'd like to have a discussion on it here to see if I really am mislead in my views. Consider the following scenario:
I have amassed a large fortune and have grown to be about 80. I had my kids in my 30s, and so they are now in their 40s. My assumption would be that during the first 20 or so years, I have taken care of their educational costs, provided for their basic needs, and hopefully shown them the value of a dollar while still allowing them a life not bound by severe monetary constraints. After their 20s, when they have begun providing for themselves, I will be there as a back-up should something truly catastrophic and unforeseen happen, but they would be largely left to their own devices. After 20 or so years of that, when I die, I would plan on leaving all my wealth to charities of my choice. I don't even think I'd leave anything for the grandkids' education as I believe that falls under the responsibility of the parents or even the children to properly finance and plan.
The reasoning:
Statistics: 60% of the second-generation blow all the inheritance money during their lifetime. That statistic climbs to 90% when you move into the third-generation. To me, this indicates that leaving a large inheritance to children who did not work for the money leads them to invest it poorly and blow it on frivolous spending (I'm not saying this happens in all cases, as I know medical bills and a billion other situations could arise that would necessitate the costs, but I'm saying it is the most common reason).
Ethics: I don't believe that people should benefit simply by being born into a beneficial situation. Being born to wealthy parents shouldn't be like winning the lottery for your entire life. As I mentioned, these kids would not feel the claws of poverty during their entire childhood; why should they be guaranteed these "lottery winnings" well into adult life, when they are supposed to be responsible for themselves? Moreover, leaving this wealth to the children will actually negatively affect their lives, as it will foster laziness and lack of ambition. Nearly every tycoon, from Carnegie to Buffett to Gates has noted that leaving anything more than a small sum of money to their children would be terrible for their ambition and their motivation to make something of their lives.
Some final comments: I understand that this is putting the cart WAY before the horse. I don't have considerable wealth. I don't even have kids. This is just how I believe I'd behave in this scenario given my current mindset. Furthermore, I really don't want to come off as miserly, but if I do, please tell me. Anyway, beyond that, please try and change my view!
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 33 | You make it seem like checks are cut right after your funeral. There's alot more you are missing.
When you pass away, someone has to become responsible for your financial world. This person has to file your estate with the courts, set up a bank account for any outstanding bills, file all the paperwork with the government, and handle all the day to day upkeep of your house.
Inheritance is not a lottery ticket. Every debt you owe, every tax you qualify for, every non-liquid asset you own (property, investments, contracts), all get resolved first.
Is this responsibility something you would trust with a stranger? Do you think they would have your best interest in mind vs. a member of your own family? Think about that, and then decide if they should still get a little compensation at the end of the process. | 19 |
If you could look through a telescope at the edge of the observable universe in real time would you see new features appear seemingly out of nowhere as “new light” reaches us for the first time? | Edit: Thank you everyone for your comments so far! Although I am more confused now than when I came in it is only because you have all turned me on to elements of this problem that I was not aware of before and for that I am grateful.
I can never quite believe how utterly fascinating our universe is. | 142 | Things at the edge of the observable universe are actually disappearing due to the metric expansion of space, but the general concept of "look into a telescope and see things that happened a really long time ago" is accurate. | 27 |
[Doctor Strange / Marvel] Relations between dimensions and planes of existence | So, in the Doctor Strange movie, we are taught of three dimensions: the astral plane, dark dimension, and mirror dimension. Does the dark dimension have its own mirror dimension or astral plane?
Similarly, as I know the different realms are, in fact, realms, in the comics, is there an astral plane for Asgard?
Essentially- what is the hierarchy for these things? | 44 | The Asgardians use the term "realm" in the same way as old kings; it means an area under a sovereign's rule. When Odin conquered the "nine realms," it just means he took over nine planets: Asgard itself, Earth, Jotunheim, and a few others.
All of these realms exist within the same universe. You could get to Asgard for Saakar or Earth, it would just take a long time without the Bifrost or some other shortcut.
Each universe has multiple dimensions. A dimension is like a "layer" of the universe. The Mirror, Dark, and Quantum Dimensions are all in the same universe that the Guardians of the Galaxy are flying around in, but you can't get to them via spaceship. Travel between dimensions generally requires magic.
There are multiple universes. There's the MCU, the comic book universe, the animated movie universe, the Fox X-Men universe, the Fox Fantastic Four universes, and so on. This is called a "multiverse", a collection of universes.
Then there's the omniverse, which is a collection of all the multiverses. You have the Marvel multiverse, the DC multiverse, the Sherlock Holmes Multiverse, and 101 Dalmations multiverse, and on and on.
So, you have:
* Omniverse
* Multiverse
* Universe
* Realm / World
* Dimension | 25 |
ELI5: Why does sunburnt skin feel warm to the touch? | 279 | Your body opens up capillaries in the burn area and flushes blood there as part of the healing process. Redness and warmth to the touch of sunburnt skin is caused by there just being more blood than usual in the area. | 205 |
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Are humans closer in relative size to the planck length or the entire observable universe? | 15,373 | Definitely the latter; the comoving radius of the observable Universe is on the order of 10^(26) m, while the Planck length sits at about 10^(-35) m. The metre is closer to the cosmological scale than the Planck scale. | 8,106 |
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CMV: If there were a Hell, not even Stalin would deserve it, nor would it be logical to send him there. (Nobody deserves Hell) | First off, I consider myself somewhat agnostic atheist. But when it comes to scripture, I am not that agnostic about it, since it's too selfevidently flawed.
Obviously, this is not only about Stalin.
Yes it's partly about Stalin, but more as an example of how far I'm going with this. It's about nobody deserving it, not even the worst of the worst.
**The main opinion is in the brackets.**
Not only do I think that the concept of "Hell" is inherently flawed and just fearmongering, but even Stalin would not deserve hell. And I always see people rooting for non-believers to rot in hell. Or rooting for God with 100 and/or "100" emojis. I came to think that these are just kids.
And every religious person out there should humble themselves. A LOT.
You don't know what is true and what is not. More importantly, you are not "God". You don't know who deserves what, not in the least. So if anyone reading this ever said someone will go to hell, deserves hell, or tries to speak for something which they're obviously not, stop. It's time to stop and more importantly to humble yourself.
Back to the main point:
Since I don't buy Stalin deserving hell, really no one deserves hell. I guess there are worse people than Stalin, but I figured to take a famous one.
I guess some folks will take incredible offense to that, but let me explain.
No amount of suffering inflicted does equal to eternal torture.
No amount of non-believing or denying does equal to eternal torture.
No amount of murder or torture does equal to eternal torture.
That really sums up my point. It's math, folks.
And If you ask me what should be done with Stalin, I don't know. Since we don't know with 100% certainty if free will even exists, even though the evidence is hardly proving it's existence.
It seems moreso that it doesn't exist. Atleast that's what the evidence suggests.
But since religion inherently states a free will, I would still stand by my statement. It's still basic math. One murder does not equal to eternal torture. Mass murder somehow does equal to heaven, if said murderer accepts Jesus and asks for forgiveness 5 seconds before he dies, amirite?
But if there were free will, I don't know what a man like Stalin would deserve. But in my view, not eternal torture. And even less so, since there is most likely no free will. And if there is, it's not even close to unlimited. Since we have enough cases of brain-tumors literally making people extremely violent and leading to murder. So yeah. The game is rigged, religious.
God gives you a brain tumor, which leads to you murdering you family and yourself, which are both sins, and continues to send you to hell for his action. What a goof.
And on top of that, Stalin didn't cause all the suffering himself. So what's with the people executing his will? How do you divide it up? To what amount does it go on Stalin's bank of caused suffering? How much is it the fault of the people executing his will? We could try to be precise about this, but it's obvious that it doesn't matter for my point too much. Because either way, it will never equal eternity. Never.
If there were a single being that deserves hell, it would be the god of scripture.
And just to clarify my first statement. I am an agnostic atheist. But if there were a god, it would be far off from the god presented in scripture. That's why I'm a agnostic atheist when it comes to a creator, or higher being, but not agnostic when it comes to scripture.
| 15 | You're simply putting words in god's mouth. You - absolutely, beyond a doubt - do not get to decide what someone "deserves". The seriousness of a sin and whether you are forgiven or not is the determination of god, not you.
To accept the envelope for your argument that is god's existence, but then reject the information that sits right next to the source of one's ideas of gods doesn't make much sense. You're not supposed to _agree_ with god, you're supposed to accept him and what he tells you. In this context, you DO deserve hell if you commit sin and don't repent _because that is what god says_. Can't take one without the other.
| 10 |
[War of the Worlds] Did the Martians land anywhere but England? | Supposedly so, but I don't think it's mentioned anywhere; How do you think the rest of the world would have dealt with a Victorian era invasion of the Martians from HG wells book? | 83 | I believe that in the original book it was an issue localized to England; there's a comic book out there about the British Government using their newfound monopoly on scavenged Martian tech from the invasion to redouble their grip on the empire. | 78 |
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