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What does increasing "contrast" on a TV or computer screen actually do? | [
"Everyone's pretty much covered it, it adjusts the difference between lights and darks, but [here is a nice picture illustrating it](_URL_0_). Notice how much \"flatter\" the left image looks than the right, whereas the right one the dark areas are much more pronounced and the light areas even lighter. TVs and mon... | [
"Software can optimize images and fonts to render well with your monitor. See [hinting](_URL_0_) and [anti-aliasing](_URL_1_) for details. With macs, the software is more standardized, which makes this easier to accomplish. For other systems, a bit of tweaking may be required, but the same effect can be achieved. ... |
what would be the effects on your body if you wore ankle weights and wrist weights all day, every day, for a year? | [
"You'd quickly build up enough muscle that the weights don't bother you."
] | [
"If the acceleration of the car is zero, i.e. it is moving at a constant velocity, you might as well imagine it as being stationary. Think of an airplane cruising at 400 mph, people aren't being flung to the back of it, you can walk around, go to the bathroom, and function as if the plane isn't even moving at all. ... |
Why did wallpaper become popular in the US? | [
"Personally I don't think there were a surge in popularity in the 20th century. Wallpaper has been around since the Renaissance as an alternative to tapestry and a good number of homes have them as they are the cheapest way to decorate a house. According to books such as *Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Do... | [
"Nostalgia, too ~ a lot of older guys that now have lots of money are reliving their youth - they either had one when they were young & want another, or wanted one when they were young and can now afford to pay the big bucks to get one."
] |
How a group like Lizard Squad could take down such a large money filled network | [
"They didn't hack it. They DDosed it. A 5 year old can DDos."
] | [
"YouTube changed how they pay youtubers to be based on how frequently they upload and the length of their videos. Let's plays, and other game play videos can be very long and don't take much time to make. Not saying they're bad, but these videos are so perfect in the eyes of YouTube they get paid more than basicall... |
How does Random Access Memory work? | [
"Imagine you're writing a research paper. You go to the library, and there are three books that will help you, but they are in all different shelves. You can read one, put it back, and then go to the next one, but this will make you tired. So you grab them and scatter your stuff on an empty table. Now you can read ... | [
"I could try to explain it to you, but this video is all you really need: _URL_9_"
] |
difference between a virus, a bacteria and a parasite | [
"A bacteria is a living organism with basic structures and can reproduce on its own and carry out functions as either a single unit or a group of cells. A virus is a nonliving cell that's essentially a mass of DNA surrounded by what is called a capsid--Basically their only function is to hijack a cell and make copi... | [
"Can someone explain the difference between Dementia and Alzheimer's, please?"
] |
what would happen to an overworked individual (e.g., a student close to exams period) if they didn't get sufficient sleep? | [
"I have a mid term tomorrow along with work and the current time is 4:15, someone please hurry and awnser this question."
] | [
"Type 1 diabetic here, that much sugar in your blood is very hard on your organs. Imagine pipes with flowing water. Now pour as much sugar possible until it becomes a slosh :-P I mean, your blood isn't a slosh, but it's too saturated and organs like your kidneys that help filter blood have to work extra hard, hence... |
Is there a difference between a bee sting and a wasp sting? | [
"Slightly off topic, but why is it that bees die when they sting? Does it serve any purpose?"
] | [
"From our standpoint as users, nothing at all. From Reddit's standpoint, one of them means the backend computers told them \"sorry too busy\" and the other means that the backend didn't respond at all."
] |
Were there any non European or American nations that used African slave labor during the slave trade era? | [
"Many of the African Kingdoms kept prisoners of war as slaves. They would sell the excess to the Europeans. Robert Harms book [The Diligent](_URL_0_) is a bit of a slow read, but contains an extensive discussion of the topic."
] | [
"I can give an answer for Australia. The short answer is that it was possible if not likely to occur. In order to be accepted you basically had to assimilate as quickly as possible. The most well known example in Australia was a man known as Quong Tart who in the late 1800s s was a highlight of the social scene in ... |
Can a photon at λ=0 exist, despite the infinite energy required by E=hc/λ? | [
"No. You can't have a wavelength of zero. If there's zero distance from one peak to the next, and half that distance from peak to valley, then the peak and valley are going to have to be in the same place, so it has to have both the maximum and minimum electromagnetic field. That makes no sense."
] | [
"The equations of motion for the EM field, Maxwell's equations, are linear. This means that if you sum sources (charge distributions) you get the sum of the fields (superposition principle). However, if you allow the charge themselves to be moved by the EM field (according to the Lorentz force equation), the couple... |
Friday Free-for-All | April 03, 2015 | [
"So I'm translating a section of Persius' *Satires* (the first one) into Dr. Seuss styled poetry. I never knew it would be so much fun. The problem is now I try to read every single bit of text I see in Anapestic Tetrameter: Anapestic tertrameter's funny, you know 'Cause the name, by itself, its own meter will sho... | [
"Hi there, I've approved this question but you may want to reword it so the question is actually in the title. Most of our flaired users have alerts set up that search titles for keywords, that one isn't going to get you anywhere unfortunately :-)."
] |
What happens to my plastic bottle after I throw it in the recycling bin? | [
"To piggyback on this. I've always wondered if it all goes through some type of decontamination process of some sort....?"
] | [
"The Earth recycles itself over time through geologic activity. Although since we still are getting hit by meteors, then the Earth is getting more massive on a day-to-day basis."
] |
Some words change their meanings over time based on popular usage (e.g. literally/figuratively). Does this happen often? Does it happen in languages other than English? | [
"Yes to both your questions, [semantic drift](_URL_0_) is one of the main ways in which language change occurs. It's the main reason why the word *gay* has changed its meaning so drastically in the last 50 years, and also why the word *starve* means to die specifically of hunger and not just generally 'to die' as i... | [
"Sorry, we don't allow [\"example seeking\" questions](_URL_0_). It's not that your question was bad; it's that these kinds of questions tend to produce threads that are collections of disjointed, partial, inadequate responses. If you have a question about a specific historical event, period, or person, feel free t... |
How does the printer know what to print? | [
"If you have a dot matrix printer, it's pretty simple. First you click \"print\" on your computer. The computer then creates an image representation of your file. It picks a resolution, then goes over every inch of the page and records how much red, green, and blue (or yellow, cyan, and magenta, will verify later)... | [
"They pretty much don't. However website owners have the option to tell Google \"hey, I have a site here, check it out!\" When pages don't link to each other, website owners have the option to host a special file, named *sitemap*, that does list all content that should be searched for."
] |
How did the Roman people handle military defeats? | [
"How would we know what an \"average citizen\" thought? Every text we have is produced by the elite class. Whether people lost friends or family is impossible to know in the specifics. We do know that military disaster did not affect the political careers of the generals involved. Rosenstein in *Imperatores Victi* ... | [
"Typically they would pillage food from the areas around them. Local farmers didn't appreciate it!"
] |
What does AskScience think of abiotic oil - the idea that oil is not limited and does not come from "dinosaurs"? | [
"Biotic oil is *not* thought to have come from dinosaurs. [It's thought to come from marine algae](_URL_0_). Lo and behold, we find chemical traces of things like chlorophyll in it too; essentially we do find the dinosaur bones floating about in the oil, it's just not dinosaurs, it's chemical traces of marine flora... | [
"I recommend this book [The Ends of the World](_URL_0_) TL;DR since the fossil record is incomplete, you have to extrapolate from areas where samples are available before and after extinctions and support that data with modern populations and genetic information."
] |
I sometimes see mention that ancient people had a different idea of the 'self' or the 'individual' than modern people. What does that mean? | [
"You are most likely referring to [Bicameralism](_URL_1_), first postulated and popularized by [Julian Jaynes](_URL_0_). There are a lot of problems with this theory, but for me the main one is how western-centric it is. Jaynes proposes that around 1000BCE (the time of The Iliad and the Old Testament) people consid... | [
"Sorry, we don't allow [\"trivia seeking\" questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of disjointed, partial responses, and not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about an historical event, period, or person, please feel... |
Why do we pay the same price for movies which had very different budgets? | [
"The cost of a movie is usually tied to the expected number of people who see it. Godzilla's makers can afford to spend millions of dollars because millions of people will see it. Generally (though not always), much cheaper movies are made cheaply because only a small number of people will see them. Having both mea... | [
"There are a lot more steps involved than you see. From your perspective as a customer, you see the the money leave your account immediately when you make a purchase; but in reality there's a lot of processing that goes on and banks talking to each other and checking with each other before passing the money over. J... |
Why are the subreddits /r/news and /r/worldnews so widely hated amongst redditors? | [
"Because they are typically either a) wrong b) misleading or c) some combination of the two. There is no incentive to be truthful or analytic in those forums. The only incentive is karma. The truth may set you free, but it sure as hell doesn't get you reddit gold...."
] | [
"Adding to other comments on weather modelling and data, it depends on where the raw data comes from. In Australia, the government weather bureau is not used by most popular weather apps - e.g. Apple weather, Yahoo weather and Android's default weather app. They use a service called Weather Underground, which crowd... |
Could I live on a diet of protein shakes and vitamin supplements alone? Why not? | [
"Without any fibers your #2's are **NOT** going to be pleasant. Trust me."
] | [
"Different programs create different incentives. The problem with welfare is as soon as someone gets a minimum wage job they lose benefits. Since it's rare for someone to start out at a high wage, people can get trapped in welfare programs. If all families had a guaranteed $900 a month income, people are free to ge... |
What makes us able to see in our dreams places and things we've never seen before? Why does it take a conscious effort to picture something in your head when awake, but when asleep you can fully experience and continually create new, active, unique events? | [
"I'm not sure that we do see places and things in our dreams that we've never seen before. We just don't always realize everything we see. Walking through a book store you may see pictures of a thousand different things. Our conscious mind doesn't pick up on it all but it's all stored away in the subconscious. Our ... | [
"Your reflexes are still active when you are asleep. If, while rolling over, you feel the edge of your bed, the reflexes that keep you from falling force you to move away from the edge. However, if you are, say, very drunk, this reflex may not kick in, and you could fall off the bed."
] |
Is it better to just sleep until you wake up or adhere to some sleep schedule? | [
"Had this exact conversation with a neurobiology professor around 5 years ago. Conclusion was you should definitely keep on the same schedule- even through the weekend. It was not my major and I do not remember specifics [but this was a top google result.](_URL_0_)"
] | [
"Two social psychological concepts come to mind here. State dependent memory encoding and Erickson Arousal theory of learning. State dependent learning states that what ever state of mind you are in during encoding is the state of mind where recall would be optimal. Erickson arousal theory states that learning is m... |
Why doesn't the universe have a 1:1 matter to antimatter ratio? | [
"This is one of the major open questions in fundamental physics. You might be interested to learn more at the [wikipedia article](_URL_0_) on this subject."
] | [
"You get the full year's worth of radiation. From an outside point of view, we see that time is dilated and the astronaut is moving very slowly inside their spaceship. But we see the spaceship take a full year to reach its destination, and gets hit by all this radiation along the way. From the astronaut's point of ... |
Why does everyone agree that north is up? | [
"This is a fun question. And it mostly has to do with cartographers and how they built /drew maps. Plus a little bit of British imperialism. Most of the early cartographers were employed by the rich Northern European countries to make maps of their country and the new world. So they put their native/home country fr... | [
"This CGP Grey video does a really good job of explaining it all. _URL_3_"
] |
Does the pocket of air displaced around a fast moving vehicle affect the sound we hear via the Doppler effect? | [
"Short answer: yes. Long answer: only matters if you're a mathematician or searching for perfection. The compression of air for objects below about 370km/h (103m/s, 240mph, 0.3 Mach) is less than 5%, so the predominate cause of the frequency shift will be the Doppler Effect. _URL_0_ Edit: source"
] | [
"There's no hole being made. Think of it as the same thing as a swimmer in a pool of water. The closest thing you can do to \"making a hole\" in the water is, like, belly-flopping into the water...but the cavity made by the body entering the fluid only exists for a tiny amount of time. To even call it a \"temporary... |
Today is the Day the Music Died, how did the plane crash of Feb. 3, 1959 affect the development of American popular music? | [
"It wasn't just Buddy Holly, Elvis joined the army, Eddie Cochran died in a car crash, Gene Vincent was seriously injured in the same crash, Chuck Berry was arrested on morals charges, Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin and Little Richard found religion. By '60 almost all of the founding fathers were out of commiss... | [
"'And the band played on' by Randy Shilts is an absolute must for reading on the AIDS crisis. It covers the politics of the Reagan Administration and the Evangelical side of the Republic Party, and their attitudes towards LGBT people at the time. Most notable Is the difference in compassion to those who contracted ... |
Why can't phone service providers offer spam filtering in the same fashion that email service providers do? | [
"Because the phone companies wouldn't make money. They buy and sell on a per minute basis of a connected call. Filter out a spam call? That's a few minutes of profit not earned. Email providers don't charge per email, just a flat rate (or ad-supported fee), so they don't care if they deliver a spam message or not."... | [
"Country specific ones follow the laws of that country. You can search for Tibet freedom on _URL_0_. but not _URL_1_ or Google.can Google was given a choice by Chinese gov. Either you make the search engine follow our rules, or you don't do business in China at all and China blocks _URL_2_ entirely"
] |
Why is building a fence/wall at the U.S. border considered foolish? | [
"Because the border is fucking HUGE. Seriously the border of the US and Mexico is almost 2,000 miles; for a comparison the entire border of France is ~1800 miles. Also it is just a fence and people can easily jump it like they do now where fences are in place. And it will cost a shit ton, not only to build but to ... | [
"While clevemire and jedrekk covered the gist of it, one thing I'd like to add is the scale of this sort of thing. If you go mow a lawn or shovel a sidewalk and get paid $20, you don't really need to worry about it. However, if your full time job is under the table, eventually the government will probably become aw... |
Why are we all disgusted by some specific odors (feces,urine, puke ecc..) but others (es. perfumes) are entirely subjective ? | [
"Feces, urine, and puke are likely to make us sick if we eat them. Perfume may or may not make us sick. It makes sense for evolution to make us repulsed by the things that might make us sick."
] | [
"commercialism. if you were happy with your old stuff, you wouldn't need to buy new stuff. all the designers and manufacturers come out with new looking stuff and market the old stuff as ugly and new stuff as pretty in order to make money. our tastes are hugely influenced by others."
] |
Why does animated movies (Like Frozen, Tangled etc) Have so high budgets? | [
"Those movies require: * highly skilled animators * highly skilled modelers * highly skilled texture artists * massive, powerful rendering farms * years of work Frozen also wrote a physics program to simulate the snow. That was costly too."
] | [
"I'll give you a simple example: \\- **Cartel**: McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's all get together and decide that they will offer a burger for no less than $10, fries for no lo less than $5, and a soda for no less than $3. If you don't want to pay these prices, than you don't get to eat at these restaurants. S... |
With regards to the news about Bradley/Chelsea Manning, why isn't transexuality a form of body dysmorphic disorder like anorexia, otherkin, or cutting off a limb because "it felt like a foreign attachment to my true body". | [
"Clean it up, guys. If you aren't responding directly to the OP by giving an explanation, don't post. No debating, no \"me too\" posts."
] | [
"The CIA and the Armed Forces both fall under the IC, or Intelligence Community. Who better to run an org than a guy who commanded thousands in the military? The skillset directly translates. The CIA's mission is espionage/counter where the DIA is more all-source warfighter support."
] |
Is it true that in colonial American rum and beer were considered more healthful than water? | [
"well, both were distilled which is what killed the germs that were often found in water. however, knowledge of said germs was not the reason why. so the author, when I read the piece, is inserting modern knowledge to colonial thought (red flag). he also goes over several decades with some sweeping observations. af... | [
"We've known about cancers for a very long time. [The oldest known description is Case 45 from this Egyptian papyrus from 1600 BC](_URL_2_), though I don't think it theorized about the cause. There's a great article about old Greco-Roman treatments [here](_URL_0_). According to the article, the oldest known theory ... |
How the Large Hadron Collider works | [
"Have you ever wondered what's inside your bouncy ball? Imagine it was too small to cut but you really, really wanted to know. What you might want to try is throwing it into something so hard that it breaks and you can see the smaller parts. Of course, if you only have another bouncy ball because that's the only th... | [
"[Richard Feynman](_URL_1_) ELI5's it pretty well in about 2 mins. Alan Alda had a contest and this [8 min video](_URL_0_) won."
] |
How can native populations who hunt with poison darts eat the animals without poisoning themselves? | [
"The poison used in blowdarts is the paralytic d-tubocurarine, it cannot be absorbed through the digestive system and must be directly injected into the blood to take effect."
] | [
"They wore furs and kept fires burning. Fires were the main key to surviving and it was common practice for the hearth of a home to never fully go out, but rather reuse embers in the morning. Clothing was thick and used fur and sheepskin, the rich used MORE fur and could also wear spun wool."
] |
How did LBJ get away with such outrageous behavior and was he scandalized for them? | [
"LBJ had many affairs. One in particular was with Helen Gahagan Douglas, a congresswoman. Now this affair took place in the 40's and early fifties, but I think it is instructive of the media and political environment of that era. This affair went on for years, and was an open secret. They would hold hands in public... | [
"This is kind of a vague question, maybe if you could narrow it down to a specific place and year or decade? Mannerisms and culture change within society on a very quick turnaround (think about the differences in culture between now and 1990 alone) so it would help if you could specify"
] |
If I shoot a bullet straight up in the air and it returns to earth at my feet, at what point was the bullet at its highest velocity? | [
"The highest velocity is when the bullet just leaves the gun. From then on the air friction and gravity slow it down. If the gun is above the ground you could argue it falls further that it ascended. However, one would have to take the terminal velocity into account. That would be a complicated calculation."
] | [
"Take a look at [Maxwell's equations](_URL_0_) in vacuum. The rate of change of B is related to the curl of E and the rate of change of E is related to the curl of B. The rate of change of a sine wave is greatest when it crosses the axis, and so is the curl (the direction of the field is opposite on either side of ... |
Why do girls have such big butts and thighs, while guys don’t? | [
"Men and women have different primary fat storage sites. Women tend to store fat on their thighs, hips, and butt first while men will store fat on their midsection first."
] | [
"It is down to the combination of the genes you get half the genes from your mother and half from your father but those genes are an almost random selection of those genes which go to make up each so can be combined in trillions of different ways. Like saying you get half a pack of cards from one parent and half fr... |
Why do some surfaces retain fingertips better than others? | [
"Our skin contains sebaceous glands that produces oil naturally. And the surfaces which are smooth enough for the oils in the ridges of our fingers i.e., fingerprint to transfer onto, then the surface would retain fingerprints better. For instance, a phone with a glass back retains more fingerprints than that with ... | [
"rub eraser on paper. friction roughens the paper fibres and creates heat. Heat makes rubber sticky. Sticky the rubber picks up the graphite"
] |
AMD vs Intel. What's the difference? Why do gamers prefer Intel if it's the same GHz. | [
"clock rate doesn't give the full picture of the performance think of it like the gas mileage of a car. Intel makes cars(processors) with higher mileage or in other words they are more efficient then AMD processors. You can have an Intel processor that's clocked lower than an equivalent AMD processor and still have... | [
"Google is faster, because Google has already done all the searching ahead of time, and built an index. Imagine you have a thousand page book, and I ask you to tell me every page with the word \"cat\" on it. The way your computer does the search is by flipping through each page one by one looking for the word \"cat... |
Why some 'based on true events' movies change the name of those involved? | [
"* sometimes they just want cooler sounding names * many characters are actually composite characters, based on more than one real person * if the movie depicts someone doing something bad, the could face libel or slander issues, especially if it was exaggerated for dramatic effect"
] | [
"It looks like it's different editions of the same book. The first book you linked is the [US paperback edition](_URL_1_), the second book is the [UK ebook edition](_URL_3_). There's also an [UK paperback edition](_URL_0_) and a [US ebook edition](_URL_2_). It is not unusual for there to be a slight delay between e... |
Would Nelson's tactics in the Battle of Trafalgar have worked against a more competent enemy? Were his tactics adopted by other navies afterwards? | [
"In a word, maybe. In the documentary battleships, Naval Historian [Eric Grove](_URL_0_) makes the point that the combined French and Spanish fleet was not nearly as skilled and competent as Nelson's and that allowed him to exploit their poor gunnery and seamanship. What Nelson did was very unorthodox and if used a... | [
"You should definitely start with 'The Norman Conquest: A Very Short Introduction', by George Garnett. If you don't know about the 'A very Short Introduction' series, they are little 100-or-so page books written by lecturers and tutors of top British universities, and the majority are at Oxford (as they are printed... |
Do we permanently blind deep sea creatures when we point spotlights at them in their natural habitat? | [
"The opsins (light sensitive proteins) in the rods and cones of the eye are continuously used and refreshed by the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), so all animals have this renewal mechanism in place. When the retina gets a big burst of light, the opsins' retinal will get isomerized en masse and have to be regener... | [
"A few things to realize before trying to draw conclusions like this: * Science is an evolving process that doesn't end with a single study. One study's results could be refined or contradicted by other studies, and it takes multiple iterations to suss out the truth. * Science journalism is terrible. University PR ... |
How could American families in the early-mid 1900s be supported by just one working parent? Why isn't this practical anymore? What happened? | [
"Since I'm talking to a child, I'll be brief.: Wages, in terms of what a person may buy with them, have not risen in many years, while the prices of things a person has to buy, has."
] | [
"Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almo... |
How can I be dreaming almost immediately after falling asleep when you are supposed to dream in REM which occurs later in your sleep cycle? | [
"Although dreaming is traditionally associated with REM sleep, dreams can happen in any stage."
] | [
"Two social psychological concepts come to mind here. State dependent memory encoding and Erickson Arousal theory of learning. State dependent learning states that what ever state of mind you are in during encoding is the state of mind where recall would be optimal. Erickson arousal theory states that learning is m... |
Difference between reboot and remake | [
"I think it would make a little more sense if we tossed in the concept of a \"sequel\" as well. And, of course, with more batman. Sequels - Think of these like the christopher nolan trilogy. Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises. Three stories, following a specific instance of Batman. Same batma... | [
"Hi, not to discourage further discussion of this topic but you might find [this thread](_URL_0_) useful, where I and u/kieslowskifan discuss a similar question."
] |
How does beta decay transform a proton into a neutron and other particles? Aren't neutrons more massive? | [
"In a beta-plus decay, it's not a single neutron which is decaying into a proton, it's an *entire nucleus* decaying into a new species. While a free proton can't decay into a neutron, beta particle, and neutrino due to energy conservation, an entire nucleus can decay to a species of lower mass by converting one of ... | [
"Engineering new chaperone proteins is probably a ways off. There are potentially easier ways to treat prion diseases, anyway. Essentially, susceptible protein must \"nucleate\", or turn into an aggregate of the prion form. This process is sufficiently slow as to be negligible in vivo, though; nucleated prion prote... |
If an object with a net force experiences a constant acceleration, why can’t it exceed the speed of light in a vacuum? | [
"If the object has a constant proper acceleration, it will asymptotically approach c without ever reaching it. It's worked out in Section 6.7 [here](_URL_0_)."
] | [
"Water tends to want to \"stick\" to glass, and other surfaces. This is called adhesion. This is one of the forces acting to turn the water as it pours. The faster you pour, the more force that is required to turn the liquid to keep it attached to the glass. At some point, the water is moving too fast for the adhes... |
In the event of mankind being wiped out (nuclear, asteroid, virus, zombies etc) what do the people aboard the ISS (and any manned spacecraft in orbit) do? | [
"Die. Nothing else for it, it'll come sooner or later when they run out of the relevant resources needed to live. There wouldn't be any specific plans for the crew to follow, and even if there were everybody on board would know it doesn't matter anymore if there's nothing else to do but choose how they die. There'... | [
"_URL_0_ there is a list of experiments conducted on the iss."
] |
How can the gap in two canidates narrow after a recount starts but newcasters still stick by original result? | [
"To start with anytime you are counting individual anythings in the millions there are going to be differences when you count them again. But the differences are really small. According to [538](_URL_0_) the average change in a statewide recount is only 282 votes, with the largest change from a recount being 1247. ... | [
"I'm pasting a comment I wrote a few days ago: > Ethics is a big consideration, because we're talking about changing something fundamental to a person, before they're even born. > We're also a very long way from knowing everything we need to know about human genes. I mean, yeast has only ~6000 genes, and they're ... |
Why do so few adult white males have blond hair? | [
"Also, one thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the 'blonde' women you see on a day-to-day basis aren't natural blondes. This could be what skews the ratio in your mind."
] | [
"Horse meat isn't rare at all. You can get it in many parts of europe. Tastes ok too. Anyway, that's culture. The same reason we think that bacon and eggs is a breakfast food, and don't eat grasshoppers."
] |
Why is Russian threatening war with the US? | [
"This does not happen in real life, only in your tabloids. Russia did not threaten nuclear war and does not put its personnel/citizens through radiation preparedness training for possible imminent war. Simple as that."
] | [
"Dick waving contest. Despite being overly brusque, this is pretty much it. Plus, if *this* time proves to be different, you're ready."
] |
Do antibiotics kill your white blood cells as well as the bacteria? | [
"Antibiotics usually [act on some function vital to a bacteria's survival](_URL_0_). For example, by disrupting RNA synthesis by binding to specific subunits of ribosomes - subunits that only prokaryotes have. Another common mechanism is disrupting cell wall production - again, this is specific to bacteria. So they... | [
"Your brain is what tells you something hurts. Your body has millions of little feelers (nerve endings) all over that talk to the brain, and can tell it if something hurts. When something does hurt, the feelers will tell the brain where the hurt is coming from. What painkillers do is stop the feelers from being abl... |
A good chunk of people are "vegetarian", but what would happen to the human body if we became carnivore? | [
"We'd have to start eating a wider variety of meat parts. Some vitamins are most easily found in plant matter. Like you can get a ton of vitamin C from an orange, so if you cut that out, you have to find an animal source. Liver is high in vitamin c, and also iron. Nowadays people mostly eat the muscles and fat of a... | [
"The pitch if or voice is dependent on the length of or vocal chords. So our voices would be higher pitched. Additionally our range of hearing is based on the dimensions of various biomechanical stuff in our ears, so chances are our audible range will shift toward higher frequencies. It might maintain aspect ratio,... |
Why was the quality of art so poor in the Middle Ages, while architecture was so advanced? | [
"Not everyone cared enough about art to be a patron for artists it was extremely difficult to eke out a living as an artist. It's one of the reason Di Vinci made so many war machines. Where as the rich/oligarchy/nobility/the church funded architecture. Edit:to clarify my point. you had to be special in order to be ... | [
"My guess? When you're dealing with a lot of makeup, prosthesis, special effects its easier to hide flaws. You can see acne under makeup in high def, you couldn't really see that back in the day. Just a guess."
] |
What data does Windows 10 actually send to Microsoft? Is it really anything bad? | [
"It actually sends every keystroke you type. Now Microsoft says this is to help improve it's spelling corrections, but with a warrant the FBI could use it for other things. It's not stored for a long time, by default, but that doesn't mean they couldn't be ordered to keep records for longer. Cortana sends every sou... | [
"The IRS doesn't know exactly how much money you will make this year based on a single paycheck, you might have a second job or a rental property or you might get a raise. They also don't know what deductions you qualify for or are going to take when they issue your pay cheque."
] |
What is an antioxidant and what makes them so special? | [
"Antioxidants are those compounds which react with oxidants. Oxidants remove electrons from compounds. When these oxidants reach high concentrations in our body, they can react with important things like DNA, which can lead to mutations and have various amounts of side-effects. So antioxidants work by reacting with... | [
"This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question."
] |
I don't understand how link karma is calculated. Posted multiple links, have just 1 karma? ELI5 | [
"Self posts, like this one, earn no karma. The automatic 1 upvote you give yourself on everything you submit earns no karma. Looking at your history, you have no submitted links (not self posts) that have more than 1 upvote without the same or greater number of downvotes. Basically, if you want karma, you have to l... | [
"If you ask for 1 pen, it costs you two dollars. If you ask for 100 000 pens, they will only cost you one dollar each. I prefer selling you 100 000 pens at half price, than selling you 1 at full price and have 99 999 sitting around doing nothing. In a similar way, if you ask for a small amount of money, you pay a b... |
Will a room covered in mirrors and a with a lightbulb, just keep getting brighter and brighter because the light is just being reflected and the bulb keeps putting out more photons? | [
"No, because there's no such thing as a perfect mirror. The lightbulb will also absorb some photons. In time order, either: a) The situation reaches equilibrium, with the rate of photon absorption by the mirrors/fixtures matching the input from the bulb. b) If that doesn't happen, then the light will eventually be ... | [
"When a photon hits your atom it doesn't go _through_ it. It doesn't pass between the electron and the nucleus. So it doesn't matter what's inside that _shell_ if it can't get through it. It instead interacts with the electron and bumps up its energy level to be later emitted in a random direction. But if the elect... |
Can someone explain what quantum suicide and quantum immortality are? | [
"Some people think that when something happens, new versions of reality are made, one for each possible outcome of the thing happening. For example, you flip a coin. In one universe, the coin comes up heads. In another universe it comes up tails. Now say you decide to kill yourself. You get a gun and point it at yo... | [
"A heaping load of pseudo-philosophical BS designed to keep viewers tuning in in the hopes that they might actually get some resolution to the mysteries the writers put in the show."
] |
Could you separate an electron completely from an atom? | [
"Certainly. If you excite the atom enough, an electron flies off. If you pump enough electrons into metal they bunch up on the surface and start to fly off. This is the principle of the electron gun inside the cathode ray tube (that's a \"TV screen\", back in the day) - at one end of the tube is the gun, which fire... | [
"Yes, [and it has been done](_URL_0_). It's not a matter of \"capturing\" them though, they are produced in pulses with a particle accelerator. The message was encoded in binary ASCII as the pulses or lack thereof. It took 142 minutes to send the message \"neutrino\". Practically though, it is extremely expensive a... |
Has a nation's translator ever skewed an important translation? Have any major events been avoided or created this way? | [
"Nikita Khrushchev is commonly quoted as saying \"We will bury you!\" to the West. This is technically accurate, but the connotation is different - the Russian sense is something like \"we will leave you in the dust\" (surpass your obsolete capitalist ways) not \"we will kill you and bury your body.\""
] | [
"This question is getting a lot of traffic after being [tweeted by @reddit](_URL_5_), so I thought I'd welcome those of you that haven't visited /r/AskHistorians before to the subreddit. Please do bear in mind that in order to keep the quality of answers here high we have [strict rules on comments](/r/AskHistorians... |
Why is it more difficult to run for long periods of time when exercises like biking are just as strenuous? | [
"It's all about practice. You use different muscle groups for different kinds of exercise. Running is *really* hard on your body. You're obviously using your leg muscles, but you're using a whole bunch of other muscles that you may not be aware of. Abs, arms, back, neck, they all play into it with running. Bicycl... | [
"Processing power. Your IPhone may be good and a marvel of miniaturization, but it isn't nearly as powerful as your laptop. The laptop can process all of the complex images and ads far faster than your phone can because your laptop processes *everything* faster."
] |
Why is beer full of carbs and empty calories? | [
"Because beer is made from cereal grains, water, and usually hops. So basically carbs, water, and more carbs."
] | [
"The tobacco industry spent decades lying to the American public about the dangers of smoking. The outright claimed it was good for you and faked scientific studies to say it didn't cause cancer. They got sued for a bunch of money over this. One of the terms of the settlement was that they needed to fund anti-smok... |
What is "development hell"? | [
"> \"Development hell or development limbo is media industry jargon for a state during which a film or other project remains in development without progressing to production. A film, video game, television program, screenplay, computer program, concept, or idea stranded in development hell.\" TL;DR When a game/fil... | [
"Same reason you don't keep turning the ignition key for hours in your car when it won't start -- there's no point in doing it, it won't get better."
] |
Why I will suddenly be struck with the most vivid memory at a seemingly random moment. | [
"Memory works largely by association, so in most cases, something is detected by one of your senses, and your brain associates a particular memory with it. This is especially true if there are strong emotional connections with the memory. For example, maybe you grew up with your mother baking your favorite type of ... | [
"I found this article about it: _URL_0_ Here's the tl;dr of it: Atoms emit photons occasionally. Our retinas occasionally pick these photons up, even if the source is inside your own body. Plus, photons can sometimes stimulate other nerves directly."
] |
Why does local anaesthetic have adrenaline in it? | [
"Adrenaline (aka epinephrine) has the effect of constricting blood vessels in the skin and superficial tissues. Notably it has the opposite effect in other tissues like heart tissue or muscles. Epinephrine causes the \"fight or flight\" response - get the body ready to run or fight. To do this, your body needs to d... | [
"[Rogue](_URL_1_), but seriously there are several studies on this. [Here](_URL_2_) is a news article. [This](_URL_0_) is a scientific article that relates epinephrine to loss of pigment. Epinephrine is linked to flight-or-fight response system. Hypothetically stress, or a \"shocking experience\" indirectly would ... |
The purpose for putting seats upright, opening the window blind, and putting away the tray when taxing and landing on a plane. | [
"It's all about safety, in case there is an accident. You know, accidents do happen even to planes taxiing (notice the two i's in taxiing). Blinds up so there is more light inside the plane, and make it possible for resque workers to look inside the plane from the outside. Seat up to give more room to get out for t... | [
"The initial price is generally based on the exit value required by the investors. Depending on when you put your money in and what level of risk you assumed, you'll want a certain payout. You set the amount and price of the stock to get that payout. However, selling stock is really no different than selling anythi... |
Could quantum entanglement be used for communication if the two ends were synchronized? | [
"It won't work. It just...doesn't work. You can't use entangled states to send a message. Quantum entanglement doesn't mean that actions performed on one state will spontaneously appear in the matching entangled state. All it means is that the two states were rendered so as to have a certain collective property, an... | [
"You and some of your friends are at your house playing a game. In this game you are all in different rooms, one in the bedroom, one in the kitchen and so on - the only rule is you can't leave the room you're in. You play the game by shouting messages from one room to the other, and it's all fun. But there's a prob... |
Can any of you historians help me identify these coins my grandfather has been keeping for the last 20 years? | [
"Coins are hard to identify from pictures but here's a start (I offer no comment on whether or not these are authentic or reproductions, only which type they are). * Coin 1 - Don't even dare to guess. * Coin 2 - Athenian tetradrachm? AOE is the greek legend for Athens, the reverse is the godess Athena. Appears cas... | [
"Just a heads up: archaeologists study people, not dinosaurs. You want a palaeontologist. You might want to change the flair on your post."
] |
Why, when your exhausted, do you find some things to be funny when normally it wouldnt be? | [
"Well that's probably because when you reach a fatigue impaired state you are basically drunk. Being sleep deprived is comparable to the effects of alcohol impairment. There has been multiple studies on this."
] | [
"Two social psychological concepts come to mind here. State dependent memory encoding and Erickson Arousal theory of learning. State dependent learning states that what ever state of mind you are in during encoding is the state of mind where recall would be optimal. Erickson arousal theory states that learning is m... |
Why do we get a tetanus shot AFTER we get injured? | [
"You CAN get a tetanus shot before injury and it should be good for a decade or so; however, many people don't and, therefore, need a tetanus shot after getting cut by dirty or rusty metal -- but that only works to prevent the disease if you get one immediately."
] | [
"Because you will still remember the name and probably the jingle used, and above all that is what they want. Sure Coke benefits by trying to make you thirsty, but think about the number of businesses who don't necessarily expect you to drop in straight away. The idea is if you decide you need a service they offer,... |
Double slit experiment with electrons using detectors | [
"If you detect which slit the electron goes through, you collapse the wavefunction so that its position is defined at that point, so no wavefunction 'goes through' the other slit and there's nothing to interfere with. Instead, you see a simple ballistic pattern, without interference. To say that another way, measur... | [
"You seem to be describing a variant of the [ladder paradox](_URL_0_), just using a train and tunnel instead of a ladder and a garage, he he. > What does the outside observer see? The outside observer sees the front guillotine make a cut, then later after the train has passed further through the tunnel, the back g... |
What is reverse racism and how does/doesn't it exist? | [
"\"Reverse racism\" doesn't exist because it is just normal racism. Some people have tried to define racism as only applying to those who have the power to enforce it upon others, but that is more an attempt to justify their own racial prejudice."
] | [
"It depends if the reflecting surface is convex (curved out towards you) or concave (curved out away from you). Look at your face reflecting in both sides of a spoon for another example. You can imagine that light traveling from the top of your car is reflected downwards, in the concave case, and will be perceived ... |
What is 'fracking' and what are the dangers involved? | [
"Cornell University professor Anthony Ingraffea spoke at Luzerne County Community College in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania late in 2010. Ingraffea speaks from the viewpoint of scientific, technological and engineering fact. This is an excellent overview of the drilling and fracking process from a very well respected prof... | [
"Think of a game - or any computer program - like a recipe. Do this, do that, do this other thing. At some point in a copy-protected game, it'll do some check to see if it's allowed to install or run; maybe check a serial number or make sure the right disk is in the drive or (and this is old school) ask for the 4t... |
[Meta] /r/answers should be our new best friend. | [
"It's already in the sidebar, attitude in the sub needs to change (or the mods need kicking arses and taking names). As for the answering of questions simply, there's one helluva lot of whinging and buthurt when anyone explains something vaguely complex in scientific/technical/appropriate terms, queue the inevitabl... | [
"hi! just a heads up that this sub is inundated with April Fools content right now, so if your post gets lost in the shuffle and is left unanswered, do resubmit when normal service has been resumed in a couple of days."
] |
What benefits do fossil fuels have in the environment or are they only useful to humans? | [
"Fossil fuels have no benefit to the environment. They are somewhat useful to humans because they are used as energy. But their use has negative effects on the environment, like creating greenhouse gases and accelerating climate change."
] | [
"Here's what a kit contains: 1.A higher pressure fuel pump to supply injectors. 2.One or more fuel injectors, of course. _URL_0_ Engine Control Unit (computer) to control the injectors. 4.Sensors for the ECU to tell it what the airflow, temperature, speed, throttle position, crankshaft position, and exhaust oxyg... |
Why is Netflix calling Better Call Saul a 'Netflix original' in Europe while it isn't made by them but rather by AMC networks? | [
"Netflix calls anything that they broadcast exclusively as \"Netflix Original\", as in \"This was is originally broadcast on Netflix in this country\". They can of course call it whatever they want."
] | [
"A lot of companies use a bullshit markdown tactic. You have seen it originally $120 now $25. They planned at selling it at $25 the whole time. If it isn't \"marked down\" odds are you are really getting screwed. Take a coat a recently bought for example. I'm in the Midwest USA. Yes we have had a mild winter but th... |
Why do Americans have to file their own taxes if they already pay tax on items they buy and money they earn? | [
"The Taxes tanken from our checks are estimates. Sometime people pay too much or too little. When doing our taxes we figure out how much we really owed. Some payed too much and get a refund. Some paid too little and need to make up the difference"
] | [
"Several things. On an installation level, each program you install adds 'weight' to the operating system by giving it more tasks. These aren't always removed cleanly when you uninstall, which makes it important to reimage your computer about every year. Additionally, if you use a standard hard disk drive, the driv... |
What are the pros and cons of net neutrality? | [
"People who are against net neutrality say internet providers could make arrangements with websites and services to provide better access, but at a cost. People who support net neutrality think this will most likely be abused to hell and they will basically blackmail services so they pay the ISPs, or else they wil... | [
"This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question."
] |
In the movie the Downfall we see a young girl fighting with a group of volkssturm, did the Nazis arm any women or girls during the Battle for Berlin? | [
"_URL_0_ /u/georgy_k_zhukov answered this kind of question here"
] | [
"Any soldiers who served in both Vietnam and WWII would have been field grade or higher officers, or senior NCOs. As far as I'm aware, there are no available numbers for men who served in both wars, but the army has kept track of three-time Combat Infantryman Badge awardees, almost all of whom saw combat in WWII, K... |
What did Racoons do before becoming city dwellers, how did they adapt so well and learn so much? | [
"> They'd be breaking most instinct. They're acting *completely* in line with their instincts. Racoons are smart, versatile omnivores (they'll eat meat, plants, bugs, whatever). Before people were around they'd hunt bugs, worms, sometimes birds, or rats, and eat nuts and fruit. They steal eggs out of nests and most... | [
"How do you know a year has passed without looking at a calendar? I imagine they sense the temperature/climate changes like anything else."
] |
Why is there still so much negative sentiment towards Japan in Asia as compared to Germany in Europe. | [
"If I may ask a follow up question, why is it commonly stated that Japan has never apologized? The government has made dozens of formal statements apologizing over the years. It seems that every new Prime Minister has to make a new apology."
] | [
"Fukushima is literally not even a drop in the ocean. The ocean is massive, and incredibly deep. It would take a LONG time before it accumulated."
] |
Why did banks need a bailout? | [
"The problem is that our economy relies on banks trading money with each other. Once significant numbers of banks start collapsing, nobody will be willing to do this; you won't lend money to a bank that might not be there tomorrow. And some companies rely on this kind of thing to pay their workers. So if too many b... | [
"The business cycle. This is just how capitalism works--it goes from boom to bust and back. Actual hard answers are complicated bits of economics that are beyond an ELI5."
] |
Why can gas stations charge a different price if you pay using cash or a credit card? | [
"Because it's legal and within the policies of the credit card companies to do so. So long as it is a \"cash discount\" and not a \"credit fee\", ~~the latter of which is against the policies of Mastercard/Visa in general.~~ According to the link from /u/JoeJoePotatoes below there has been a recent change in this a... | [
"There is an episode of This American Life that explains it really well: _URL_0_ They say that the real money is made of incentives from the manufacturer to sell the cars - they just need to move a set number of cars, it really doesn't matter how much they sell them for. And then they get big payouts from the manuf... |
Is there a triple-point with plasma? Normally it is with solid, liquid, and gas, but is there one with, say, liquid, gas, and plasma? | [
"/u/simkhovich mentioned a good example of dusty plasmas where solids, gases, and plasmas coexist but there's an important distinction when you're dealing with plasmas: most plasmas aren't at thermal equilibrium. At its triple point, water is a solid, liquid, and gas at the same temperature and pressure. In a plasm... | [
"The cup is most likely [polystyrene](_URL_0_), while the bottle is probably [polypropylene](_URL_2_) or [high density polyethylene](_URL_1_). Essentially it boils down to the fact that acetone is a \"polar\" molecule. Meaning that we can assign one end of it being negative and one end being positive. Think of it ... |
Are there any benefits if the USA defaults on it's debt? | [
"There are no benefits to defaulting on our debt. The US is one of a very short list of countries that have *never* defaulted. That gives us the highest possible credit rating and gives us virtually unlimited borrowing power. Obama can't default the country, he doesn't even begin to have that kind of power. Congres... | [
"Let's say some French guy wants to buy a case of Velveeta cheese product because he's tired of fine French cheese. At $5 for a 1 lb. package, a 10-pack case would cost the French guy 41.90 Euro -- because $1 is currently worth 0.84 Euro. If the dollar fell to where it was only worth 0.75 Euro, then that case of Ve... |
How were words decided as masculine or feminine during the creation of languages? | [
"This classification of words as masculine or feminine (or neuter) is at least 8000 years old. At first it was two genders, and eventually a third gender was ''developed''. I think none really knows the answer to this, but there are some theories. It's possible that these evolved out of genuine religious belief tha... | [
"In evolution, there is something called the Baldwin effect. It’s basically the idea that people that learn a behavior quickly are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing down their genes. So the couple that figured out the birds and bees pretty quickly had babies and lots of them. The guys that stared at the... |
Why hasn't the current administration been able to appoint the 9th supreme court justice? | [
"The Senate refuses to confirm the nominee Obama has put out there because they want the next president to do it. That's really it."
] | [
"I am not sure this question is quite a fit for this sub. The first part certainly is, but generally /r/askhistorians isn't where an analysis of modern politics, even in relation to historical politics, is made. /r/AskSocialScience might be a better place to try! That said, at least in regards to the political atmo... |
Why does my shaver slow down as the battery depletes - instead of just cutting out once it's empty? | [
"Because it is running off a battery. A battery only has a certain amount of charge (current) that it can supply, usually measured in mA-h (milliAmpere-hours). But as it runs out, the voltage that the battery can output (kind of like the \"pressure\" of the electricity) declines, too. That declining voltage means t... | [
"It's the speed of the rotation vs the framerate of the camera. As the camera captures one frame, the blade might be at the 12 o'clock position. By the time the next frame is captured the blade might have made 3.1 rotations. All you'll see though is that .1 rotation. A really weird effect is when the camera framera... |
If I move something, e.g a metal rod, does the other end move near instantaneously? | [
"You are right, the other end cannot move instantaneously since this would violate special relativity. The reason this does not happen is easy to see if you think of the problem microscopically. When you press on the rod, your hand only comes into contact with the atoms making up its surface. Those atoms in turn wi... | [
"From the question I can only think you are reasonably young, as it's lightspeed quick to me, an old fart. The vendor has a computer that has to connect down a phone line/ internet connection to a bank computer that has to verify the details line up with you, the customer, and that you have the funds, and then tran... |
Why is HIV considered largely a gay pandemic, when anyone can contract it regardless of their sexual orientation. | [
"Gay men are less likely to use condoms than straight men because there isn't a risk of an unwanted pregnancy. HIV is transmitted much more easily through the rectum than the vagina: _URL_0_ There's also a big social factor. Consider that when HIV was discovered, it only seemed to infect homosexuals. This was at a ... | [
"Every one I've ever seen has been either: A) a slight nuance to add to something in the book (it isn't perfect of course) B) an argument that is actually addressed in the book itself, indicating that the person making the argument probably didn't read GGandS very closely C) poorly researched bs meant to get attent... |
How would a space elevator tether actually be put in place? | [
"I think this is probably one of the (many) problems that currently makes space elevators impractical. My thought is to start by launching a rocket into geosync orbit carrying a spool of small cable and then using a projectile of some sort to launch the end of the cable back to Earth. Once it's back on Earth, you c... | [
"The same way they do now: using satellite and microwave transmissions. Using the internet is kind of sketchy, because of a lack of control of the bandwidth that can cause the connection quality to drop, which is why other technologies are preferred when feasible."
] |
Why are the Dutch and other Western Europeans so much taller than everyone else? | [
"Being able to travel long distances quickly and easily is a rather new technology for us humans. For millennia, people stayed roughly in the same geographical area and bred with the other people there. This led to homogeneous genetic areas, and traits that had common genes in that local gene pool got amplified ove... | [
"I recall learning something about how the intervertebral disc tissue loses moisture as it ages and this has a compressing effect which can actually shorten ppl by an inch or so. Healthy discs = firm and plump Old/diseased disc = dried up, shrunken. Counteracting it? Stay hydrated and take joint and cartilage hea... |
How do things like "bad" bacteria in the stomach/intestine actually cause us to throw up? How does our body know there are "bad bacteria" there, and how does it know to vomit? | [
"Most bacteria don't cause us to vomit. The ones that do, usually produce exotoxins that irritate the lining of the stomach. Interestingly, the bad bacteria that cause vomiting usually have pre\\-formed their exotoxin \\(like by sitting around in old potato salad\\) before you eat them. The toxin then irritates the... | [
"Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: When we feel drowsy, why do our eyes lose focus first before any other senses? ](_URL_2_) (702 comments!) 1. [ELI5: Why/how do our eyes \"lose focus\" and get blurry? What's happening? ](_URL_1_) 1. [ELI5: What happens when your mind drifts, and... |
Can an object moving fast enough in a vacuum produce a visible shockwave similar to a sonic boom for advanced jet fighters? | [
"Not in a vacuum, no. To create a \"light boom\" you have to be going faster than the speed of light. Since in a vacuum nothing can go faster than light, you can't have a light boom. BUT, light can be slowed down by making it pass through something! For example, light moves more slowly through water than through a ... | [
"Imagine you grew up flying in a plane. The ground looks like different colors. There's a green area over here, and a brown area over there. When you land for the first time, you're surprised that the green area is actually made up of large trees, and the brown area is made of rocks and shrubs. There are thousands ... |
why does blood coagulate without nitric oxide and TPA? | [
"Blood coagulation is indeed a complex process but nitric oxide does not play a role (NO does cause vasodilation but there are conflicting studies on its effects on coagulation; it appears not to have a significant impact). TPA (if you mean tissue plasminogen activator) is actually an protein to break up blood clot... | [
"Those meal in a box meals contain a mixture of cooked and dehydrated, raw and dehydrated, and dry ingredients. You add water to rehydrate the stuff that needs making back into food, to activate the stuff that's there to stick *that* stuff together. Then you bake it to cook the raw stuff, and activate the binders, ... |
Why is rain associated with sadness / depression ? | [
"Mind associates the color grey with sadness. The way the sky turns and how the streets go empty. Birds stop flying and the horizon disappears."
] | [
"Linguistics is plagued by errors in translations. As a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, I have all my life the notion that \"saudades\" is an difficult term to translate. But the \"I miss it\" seems to carry the idea pretty well. And the pair of concepts darkness/lightness don't have any correlated pair so obv... |
What purpose did inventing a new language fulfil? | [
"Almost never does someone deliberately invent a new language. Language change slowly over time, and isolation allows them to diverge to the point where they are no longer mutually comprehensible. Sort of like speciation in biology. Bear in mind that until quite recently, almost nobody travelled. If a town 50 km a... | [
"Imagine you're solving a crossword and you don't know an answer for a certain question about some wild herb that grows in South America. You call your friend who is great at biology, but he only speaks Chinese. So you *translate the question* to Chinese, he thinks a little and gives you the answer in Chinese. Then... |
Is there a way to "kick-start" amicable environment on Mars, just like how Earth would've started? | [
"Not with any technology we're likely to have for a long, LONG time. Centuries, at least. There are two major problems here: low gravity and no magnetic field. Low gravity means the planet won't hold an earthlike atmosphere. No magnetic field means that even if you solved the atmosphere problem, you're still gettin... | [
"The electronics are not the problem, it's the batteries (although even electronics have a lower temperature limit). The rover I assume you're asking about, Opportunity, is powered by solar panels, not RTGs, and thus needs sunlight to continuously recharge its batteries. The current dust storm is blocking over 99 &... |
what causes the paranoia from smoking weed? | [
"As a former heavy smoker, i'm gonna say the THC as a hallucinogenic makes you feel 'unsure' of thoughts you experience, (how much, of what you think, is you or just the weed) and when you constantly subject yourself to that tedious way of thinking, you get used to questioning reality while being unsure of what is ... | [
"The word is that the Denver Colorado dispensary was funded by money received from Mexican drug cartels. The DEA got word through an informant and shut it down. Tldr: local$$= ok Cartel $$= fed jail"
] |
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