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|---|---|---|
How is Linux more "stable" than other OS's? | [
"Imagine you have 3 bags of treats. One is Oreos (Apple OSX), the other is Skittles (Windows), and finally Nutella (Linux). All of these treats are absolutely delicious. With Oreos, it is what you get. Simple and clean, what you see is what you eat. With Skittles they come in different colors, but ultimately are th... | [
"In my experience, professors chose books because 1) They wrote the book 2) Their friend wrote the book 3) It's the BEST book, in their opinion or 4) It's the BEST book, in their opinion, under a certain price. Open source doesn't always mean better or higher quality. Iin the case of things like Algebra (why are yo... |
Why do some people put slashes in their 7's & Z's? | [
"They are both European variations. The slash through the 7 comes from copperplate calligraphy, and the slash through the z is found in a few European countries. The slash through the 7 helps differentiate it from the numeral 1, although many writers are careful enough that the slash is not required and is just an ... | [
"In general when planning new communities, they leave gaps in the numbers if there is a possibility of new houses being constructed between existing houses later on. If you have 100 right next to 102, and there are a few acres for new development between them, then you have to add 100a, 100b, and so on, which is me... |
What causes bad morning breath? | [
"Bacteria have had all night to multiply in your mouth without any water or food to wash away/dislodge them. Your mouth also dries out, especially if you breathe through your mouth, which further worsens it."
] | [
"Were you eating them after brushing your teeth? That tastes awful!"
] |
How do nightmares work? | [
"All i know about dreams ia that they make 0 sense. Today i dreamed me and snoop dogg were sellers of trash in thailand. We sold plastic trash that glew in the dark. In the dream, nothing was weird about the situation."
] | [
"They are nocturnal and evolved to navigate by the light of the moon. But this smaller brighter moon is much much closer and messes with their internal compass."
] |
Why is defacing currency illegal, but creating elongated coins legal? | [
"The law against defacing coins forbids doing so in order to commit fraud. [18 USC § 331](_URL_0_). This law dates back to when coins were made of gold and silver and and, by shaving a bit off of a coin, one could cheat others out of the full value of a coin while holding back some of the value for oneself. That i... | [
"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... |
What is this character: ¬ and why on earth does it deserve its own key? | [
"It means \"not\" in math. You stick it at the beginning of a sentence to mean the opposite. For example, \"¬0=1\" means that it's not true that zero equals one. [Here's the wikipedia page.](_URL_0_)"
] | [
"The Oxford version uses the [International Phonetic Alphabet](_URL_0_) which, while more complicated, is also more precise. For example, in the more 'layman friendly' _URL_1_ version, how is _per_ pronounced? Does it rhyme with _fur_, or _air_? The IPA symbol ə tells us precisely that it's a schwa, the kind of rel... |
How did four become the general standard number of tines for a fork? | [
"I'm not sure if this is too vague for you, but Henry Petroski talks about it in his [book](_URL_0_) (google books excerpt). It kind of boils down to efficiency in picking up food without being too large or broad for the mouth, again, but it does relate to the changing function of forks (from serving meat to indivi... | [
"Nobody knows. Seriously. That paper size has been traditional (not just in the US, either) for so long nobody has the foggiest idea where it originated or why it was adopted. So the best possible answer is \"It is because it is.\" People who make paper make it in that size because people who make paper make it in ... |
When was the last slave ship out of Africa? | [
"The last slave ship was almost certainly a departure from East Africa, but the records aren't extant. The slave market in Zanzibar operated virtually until British protectorate in 1890; the slaves' destinations, from Zanzibar's secondary empire under Tippu Tip, was a series of spice plantations in the Indian Ocean... | [
"Hi there! This is a reminder to potential respondents to this question that we have the [no current event rule](_URL_0_) in effect that in order to discourage off-topic discussions of current events confines questions, answers and all other comments to events that happened 20 years ago or more, inclusively (e.g. 1... |
How does glow-in-the-dark work? | [
"Particles like to be in their lowest energy state possible. If they're on the side of a hill, they're gonna roll down the hill and get rid of as much of their potential energy as possible until they're stable at the bottom of the hill. Glow in the dark materials work the same way. Sunlight (or regular light) hits ... | [
"a way this is used is when some kinds of elements which are radioactive like some kinds of uranium releases radiation. This radiation comes in 3 forms. Well only talk about one form that is gamma radiation. When uranium radiates gamma radiation, this gamma radiation has no mass but it was observed that the uranium... |
Best digital collections of historic materials? | [
"[The Fordham Internet History Sourcebooks](_URL_1_) are pretty much go-to in terms of finding major/commonly-assigned primary documents in simple text format. The faculty in my department use Fordham docs a ton in assigning readings. I use the [Public Records Office of Northern Ireland](_URL_0_) online selection, ... | [
"Meta question : Bearing in mind, this is comparatively contemporary topic and a bit more pop culture than a lot of the subjects covered in this sub, what kind of sources would be considered acceptable?"
] |
How can something like Ready Player One exist without being sued for copyright by basically everyone? | [
"They got permission from the property holders to use those properties in the movie. Wether they paid to use them or if they were just given permission though. Who knows?"
] | [
"This video created by Vsauce 3 (Jake Roper) does a very good job explaining this: _URL_1_ I hope this answers your question. He also did another video on a simmilar line of - could you survive: _URL_0_"
] |
Have animals been observed using facial expressions to communicate among themselves? | [
"Well, not pretty sure but: Dogs are so willable to detect your expressions because its one of their main ways to communicate with themselfs, mainly with their ears but you can also see the 'disgust' expression in a dog face just before the attack"
] | [
"Sort of. As you can see in Jurassic park 3, they can find out the shape of the voice box and get an idea of the nature of their vocals. They probably couldn't work it out exactly, and a lot of Jurassic Park is sort of filled in gaps."
] |
Why do lights seem to twinkle from a distance? | [
"When the atmosphere between you and the light source is heating up or cooling down it will create some \"swirls\" (Hot roads in summer). When the light is far enough away those disturbances can cause all of the light to be reflected off and you cant see it."
] | [
"4 Years old post, but it is due to refraction and differences in air density apparently _URL_0_"
] |
How is it that some molecules can reflect light so well (mirrors) and some just don’t reflect them at all (matte black/vanta black) if they’re all still made of atoms? | [
"Just to add to the explaination already here, saying somethings \"made of atoms\" is a broader concept than I think you understand. An atom isn't a single unit like a brick or something. There are a lot of different kinds of atoms. Suggesting that because something is made of atoms therefore shouldn't they be the ... | [
"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 ... |
what is the mediocrity argument? | [
"The mediocrity principle works as follows: * Let's say we have a bag with 80 green balls, 15 red balls, and 5 yellow balls. * We draw a random ball from the bag. * Obviously the ball is far more likely to be green than red or yellow. Applied to the concept of extraterrestrial life, it works like this: * We are a r... | [
"There is a site, _URL_9_, that does an ELI5 for each xkcd strip. This particular strip is explained here: _URL_9_/wiki/index.php/1545:_Strengths_and_Weaknesses Your question isn't answered directly in the Wiki, but it does contain a link to the MCA (Most Common Ancestor) wiki article, here: _URL_11_"
] |
how does a propane refrigerator work? | [
"Ammonia is very soluble in cold water, but not very soluble in hot water. So heating the water (by burning the propane) expels ammonia from it at high pressure in one part of the system. Cooling the water back down (by a radiator) while it moves someplace else allows it to reabsorb low-pressure ammonia from a diff... | [
"The Ghostbusters infamous backpacks are supposed to be \"positron colliders\". When positrons collide with electrons, they either destroy them or scatter, they dont create magic lassos."
] |
Is there an estimate on the size of the universe vs the size of the observable universe? | [
"The size of the total universe is at least 250 times the size of the observable universe. Citation: _URL_0_ This might be a bit more accessable: _URL_1_"
] | [
"While what /u/masterkrabban says is right and there is a lot of debate, if you wanted just the most widely accepted personality theory you would probably want to stick within [the big five](_URL_0_) model. The crazy thing is that the standard test for it [the NEO](_URL_1_) is actually a privately owned test and no... |
Were Templar Knights wearing armor not able to withdraw from battle while a Christian banner was up? | [
"[Clause 168](_URL_0_) of the Latin Rule, the laws of the Templars, forbids retreat: > And if it happens that the Christians are defeated, from which God save them, no brother should leave the field to return to the garrison, while there is a piebald banner [i.e. the black-and-white banner of the Templars] raised ... | [
"New answers are always welcome here, but while waiting for them, you may be interested in reading these old threads: * [How did European late medieval/early renaissance pike squares compare to classical phalanxes? Going head to head, would a phalanx of Athenian hoplites stand a chance against a square of Swiss pik... |
We are far more economically productive then ever before, so why are we working such long hours? | [
"Because people who are willing to work longer hours outcompete people who are not at keeping jobs and getting paid more. So we end up with a race to the bottom: everyone works harder and harder because everyone else works harder and harder. It is a form of [prisoner's dilemma](_URL_0_), and everyone is choosing to... | [
"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... |
Say two galaxies are combining, what would happen if two stars collided? | [
"_URL_0_ There's a violent, bright phase associated with the collision, and obviously depending on the masses, the result can be a supernova or black hole formation. Other than that, it's a merging of two bodies into one, just like when non-stellar masses collide."
] | [
"Yes! The child would be what is called a [chimera](_URL_0_)! He/she would have some areas of the body made of the twin's cells and some of its own cells. There was actually an instance where a chimera woman almost lost her kids because they were found to be not a genetic match, but they actually were hers and *her... |
How did flowers and plants reproduce before there existed bees? | [
"The way that plants get pollinated is based largely on the type of plant and the ecosystem. There are types of plants that can pollinate themselves or use the wind to carry their pollen to other plants. In the same vein, there are other insects that can pollinate plants other than bees, but again this depends on ... | [
"They don't have to wait for the animals to do anything. Artificial insemination has been going on for a long, long time. That said, many animals will breed with whomever is available. Scientists probably have a harder time *preventing* this than getting it to happen."
] |
Any good and very accurate films/documentaries of the Nuremburg trials? | [
"The go-to dramatization is \"Judgement at Nuremberg\", a 1961 film starring Burt Lancaster and Spencer Tracey. It was very well regarded when it came out, garnering a number of Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) and winning for Adapted Screenplay. It still shows up on a number of \"great film\" lists, and ... | [
"I really liked Ron Chernow's \"Washington: A Life\". _URL_0_ ***** McCullough's Truman bio is awesome, BTW. I don't buy many books, preferring to read them for free from the library, but when I finished reading it, I went right out and bought a copy, just so I could have it on my shelf."
] |
Why does my 21 inch LED monitor support 1080p but my 32 inch LED tv only does 720p? | [
"You are meant to sit closer to your monitor than you are to your TV, therefore resolution matters more on a monitor than it does on a TV. That being said, there are several models of 32\" TVs that support 1080p perfectly fine. One that only goes up to 720p is a cheaper model, or several years old."
] | [
"Brains easily perform many, many tasks hat are difficult for computer. Take that we know brains are optimized for pattern-finding. Consider intelligent life forms have to interact with a real 3-world and real time. Which means they can check their expectations. Testings a supposition is as simple as rotating an o... |
Why can different big cats, and different equines breed together and produce offspring, but different apes such as humans and chimps cannot? | [
"We actually don't know that humans and chimpanzees or bonobos can't produce offspring. It's actually likely that they can. A Russian scientist played around with it a bit and had some positive results but he died. Today the ethical implications of doing something like that are profound. Here is some info on a pot... | [
"Imagine you are made of genetic soup. Some people have ingredients that just don't go well together and make the soup taste bad. But that's ok, because when you have a kid, we just take some of my soup and some of my wife's soup and pour it in together. So even though my soup has some bad ingredients, her ingredie... |
How did all the civilizations take inspiration from the cosmos? | [
"Without modern light pollution, the night sky looks [really different](_URL_0_). Imagine you're a primitive human. You sleep 8 hours a night, even though it's too dark to see what you're doing for (on average) 12 hours. You've got 4 hours to kill, and your options are pretty much limited to sex and talking. After ... | [
"Back then people still needed jobs, now they dont and can practice harder for longer. And science helps by showing then methods on improving motions. You cam find cool videos on youtube"
] |
Most accurate portrayals of the Seven Wonders of the World? | [
"Are you looking for like pictures/drawings from when the structures existed, or the most accurate we can come up with today?"
] | [
"Could I ask a followup? The actual compilers of those lists, what were their jobs or positions in Greek society? How did they become somewhat travel guides of their times and how did they become so well traveled in the Mediterranean?"
] |
If chimpanzees are our closest neighbor, what animal or species would have the most different DNA from us? | [
"Based on our nuclear DNA, the bacteria are least like us. Based on mitochondrial DNA, the archaea are least like us. Of the animals, the sponges are least like us."
] | [
"You know when iTunes, Facebook or your phone updates and how you know it's the same program as before but things have changed slightly and you are kind of lost. Well that's what it would be like going from animals to humans with the errors being death instead of frustration."
] |
What is the difference between a video and a gif? | [
"A video will use more frames per second making it much more fluid. Videos also usually have audio files to accompany the video, gifs are more like a looping slideshow"
] | [
"Here's a pretty good explainer. _URL_0_ Basically it comes down to different memory, different promises (reliability and service life), and different marketing."
] |
How do TV stations afford to pay millions of dollars per episode for some shows? Are ads the only source of revenue? | [
"DVD sales, licensing (to Netflix, for example), cable fees (for a show produced by a cable network), ad revenue, syndication, and probably more all contribute to a show's earnings."
] | [
"Your question doesn't reflect on the stability of their income, but on how big their bank accounts are. Their income would drop to near 0 instantly if no one used their sites. But they would live off their savings while trying to regain their users."
] |
Without a brain, how do vines know how to wrap around things? | [
"[Thigmotropism](_URL_0_). Cells in a plant can sense if their in contact with a surface or not and adjust their growth accordingly."
] | [
"Sort of. As you can see in Jurassic park 3, they can find out the shape of the voice box and get an idea of the nature of their vocals. They probably couldn't work it out exactly, and a lot of Jurassic Park is sort of filled in gaps."
] |
Why does using a plastic bag help credit cards swipe? | [
"As time passes, a small fraction of the particles that make up the magnetic stripe stop functioning properly, which corrupts the information that your card is transmitting. So now you have two signals, one that's correct, and one that's just white noise, more or less. It's like if someone was talking over you. The... | [
"Angles my friend. Try taking a knife and sliding it across a piece of fruit like a razor, then try the same thing smashing it perpendicular. One won't do a damn thing, the other slices the fruit wide open."
] |
What makes typos like "it's" in place of its so common? | [
"It's not truly a \"typo\". A typo is when you try to type one thing, and mistakenly type another. Sometimes the two \"its\" can be a typo in that it is caused by autocorrect. But the main reasons are (a) many people don't seem to remember that possessive its needs no apostrophe, and (b) a lot of people simpl... | [
"This has been asked multiple times [here,](_URL_2_) [here](_URL_3_), and [here,](_URL_4_) for example. You'll find even more by [doing](_URL_1_) a few [searches](_URL_0_)."
] |
How does mopping clean the floor, if the soapy water just stays on the ground? | [
"you will typically mop in back and forth passes. The mop will get the floor wet which will help dissolve dirt on the floor. A second pass will catch the dirt. You repeat multiple times until the floor looks clean. You then put the mop in the bucket to get fresh water and release the trapped dirt. You do not necess... | [
"Because of Newton's First Law of Motion: \"In an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force.\" You were moving along with the surface when you jumped or whatever and being in the air doesn't change that."
] |
Why are kids such picky eaters? | [
"1. This is a stereotype and not at all true for everyone. Lots of kids like at least some vegetables. 2. Kids' palates aren't very developed, so they tend to prefer simple, straightfoward flavors. Their tastes simply aren't sophisticated enough to enjoy a subtle bitter overtone, it just tastes gross to them. 3. I'... | [
"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."
] |
At an atomic level, what is the difference between objects touching and not touching? | [
"It's important to note that \"touching\" doesn't really have a precise definition at atomic scales like it does for big things. If you consider the attraction between two neutral objects like atoms or molecules, beyond a certain distance they will attract each other due to dipole (van der Waals) forces, but below... | [
"Nothing. That's pretty much the definition of \"elementary.\" They are the smallest building blocks that we currently know of."
] |
How do waves freeze in place? | [
"It's not a frozen wave, it's the beginning of a cornice. By how the wind works it can create overhangs on snow/ice that can look like a wave. Antarctica is cold enough that it'll continue building up for a long time. Snow cornice _URL_0_"
] | [
"Blood is 2 parts; plasma (mostly water) and cells (mostly red blood cells). In the plasma there are some proteins called 'clotting factors'. Now, when the flow is normal, the lining of vessels *prevents* the cells from contacting with it, thus not clotting (because one way of forming clots is damaged vessels). I... |
Why is human bio-engineering prohibited? | [
"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 ... | [
"Short version: evolution and natural selective pressures don't care that we've figured out how to do blood transfusions."
] |
Are there any promising avenues for dealing with antibiotic resistant bacteria? | [
"Yes, there are a few in the pipelines, the oldest research is around phage, or phage technology. This was started in Russia and according to wikipedia is was researched and still is from as far back as 1922, I remember reading about in the 90's. Still haven't heard of anything commercial though - _URL_0_ There are... | [
"This is just a quick response. Fission: Search generation 4 reactors. This is the active area of research for the future of nuclear fission reactors. In addition, small modular reactors (SMRs) are big areas of research. Fusion: In this area you have competition between inertial confinement fusion and tokamaks. In... |
How come we don't have to get up while we sleep to avoid blood clots, but we do when we are awake? | [
"Because you sleep horizontal - your blood is less prone to pool in your lower extremities since it doesn't have to work against gravity. The reason that idling at a desk or in any kind of sitting position can be risky is because blood flow in the lower extermities is assisted by the contraction of the muscles, whi... | [
"It's just a matter of paying attention. You are more likely to pay attention when driving a car because a momentary distraction could kill you or someone else. The risk is still there when walking around your home but its far less likely."
] |
How to prevent antibiotic resistance | [
"Typically we use a mix of drugs to help stop this. A bacteria colony may have a few mutant members resistant to drug A and a few resistant to drug B, but it's unlikely that there will be members resistant to both at once. By mixing drugs, you ensure that the entire population is killed instead of leaving resistant... | [
"If five male ducks all have sex with one female, her being able to reject the sperm of the weaker 4 and only allow the strongest one to give her offspring gives her children a better chance at reproducing themselves."
] |
Do any animals other than humans like spicy food? | [
"Spiciness, caused by the chemical Capsaicin, appears to be an adaptation of plants to prevent mammals from eating their fruit/peppers. Birds, which are immune to Capsaicin, appear to be the intended consumer of these fruits, which is understandible considering they fly and can, thusly, disperse the seeds over a wi... | [
"Please avoid anecdote. The answer should not include the words \"my cat\" or \"my dog\". Instead please cite research."
] |
Do historians consider all 43 men who served as president of the US to be Christian? | [
"If someone says they are [insert belief here], then we tend to take them at face value. To do otherwise would be to start down a long and slippery slope of passing judgements on historical figures, something that is diametrically opposed to the practice of good history. If someone acts significantly outside of ort... | [
"In America we have good dentists. They are able to look at our teeth and tell us whether or not the teeth will be a problem in the future. If the teeth are going to be a problem anyway, why not remove them before they're an issue?"
] |
Are any of the founding fathers descendants still politically active? Are there records of their lineage? | [
"I'm sure other people with more experience will chime in, but the Smithsonian magazine had an article on this topic. [When the Country's Founding Father is Your Founding Father](_URL_0_)"
] | [
"This will be my second attempt applying for a PhD in History. While I am aware of the competitive nature of the application process, last year's zilch-score was definitely demoralizing. My Masters thesis supervisor as well as my other teachers have encouraged me to reapply. How relevant are *current* references f... |
Did an Anglo-Saxon and an Irish/Scoti battle ever take place? | [
"Well, to the extent that [Northumbria](_URL_1_) warred with [Dal Riata](_URL_2_), indeed they did. Now, the Picts and Britons were the more immediate and frequent foes, for Northumbria and its constituent/predecessor kingdoms. But as far as the Anglo-Saxon military interaction with the Gaels in Britain goes, it wa... | [
"Hi, I'm Dr Jim Leary, lecturer in Archaeology and Director of the [Archaeology Field School](_URL_3_) at the University of Reading in England. I'm going to be here in AskHistorians to give an AMA on the 10th of November at 5pm GMT. I'll be talking about my work on round mounds, which included recently [discoverin... |
When and why did people begin consuming the milk of other species (cow, goat, etc)? | [
"This is not that uncommon among animals. Different animals might try to steal milk from other mothers, including different species. But it was not until right after humans domesticated animals that we started doing it on a large scale. Initially it was only for babies and in large parts of the world it is still on... | [
"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... |
Is anyone working on building a launchpad on the moon so we can go further into space? | [
"No; there's no reason to do this. In terms of energy and size of rocket you need, you're closer to deep space if you're in Earth orbit than you are on the surface of the moon."
] | [
"Most of the time the people who go to these places are either already successful or some kind of athlete. The majority of the people you are talking about already have a lot of money to finance these trips. The alternative is usually some kind of athlete like the ones you see on YouTube doing extreme sports (base ... |
Why Russia annexed Königsberg/Kaliningrad after WW2? | [
"There are some reports that the original plans for the enclave were to fold it into the newly liberated (and still very recently created) Lithuanian SSR, however, resistance from the leadership of that government (alternatively because it didn't want to be responsible for rebuilding the devastated territory or tha... | [
"It is believed that the Varangians in the Rus weren't 'slavicised' until the late 11th century so it's pretty safe to assume that the Varangians were still following the Norse religion until the Christianization of the Rus in 988AD. Unsurprising considering that Christianity in Denmark wasn't widespread until Hara... |
I've heard that the census in which Jesus was supposed to be apart of was not during his lifetime, but in fact years before. Is this true? | [
"Not years before, but afterwards. Essentially, the question is about the census mentioned in Luke's Gospel, where he talks about a census in the time of Quirinius as governor of Syria. The problem is that Josephus doesn't mention a census under Quirinius until 6AD, and we don't have any evidence that Qurinius was ... | [
"Your employer takes money out of your paycheck throughout the year to pay your local, state, and federal taxes. The amount they take out, however, is just an estimate how much tax you will probably owe at the end of the year. There's no way for the state, local, and federal governments to know what you actually do... |
How can countries that are geographically close and have the same language family , develop vastly different languages? | [
"Mass transportation and communication are relatively new inventions. For most of history, people lived and died without travelling more than 10 miles form their homes. Add in a geographical feature, like a big river or a mountain range, and they might as well be thousands of miles apart."
] | [
"Most people copy ideas. If the tribe A comes up with a good idea, then tribe B next door will copy it. Or tribe A's good idea may make it powerful enough to conquer tribe B and force them to adopt their idea. Isolated communities may not be exposed to outsiders' ideas (like modern technology) so they don't copy th... |
Why is it considered bad table manners to use your hands to eat? | [
"It's not in every country (Middle east and southeast asia it is actually pretty common.) In western culture it is because of the status symbol of silverware in the 1700's. If you were rich, you used silver-wares, spoon and forks (wares) made of silver, instead of your hands like the peasants. That carried into mod... | [
"I don't actually know the whole idea behind it but I believe it is intentional habit building. The idea being that if you spend 2 months *acting* like a character, their mannerisms, their way of thinking etc then when it comes time to actually shoot the scenes you will do these things naturally and subconsciously... |
Can trees repair themselves/their branches? | [
"There's a difference with regenerate. Plants can work around damaged structures and continue to grow without the damaged parts. So you won't have a tree branch repair itself like our bones growing back together. Even grafting is touching in order to bond where bones will produce overgrowth to bridge a gap."
] | [
"In your example given, asthma is the body's immune reaction and not necessarily a function of the lungs so no, the person would still have asthma. -Correction in reply below Now, if someone had nerve damage in their hand (not resulting from a spinal issue) and successfully recieved a hand transplant, in theory thi... |
Why do we love members of our family that aren't our parents? | [
"Because, evolutionarily speaking, they share a good bit of your genetic material. Furthermore, we're a social species. We basically lived in extended family groups for a lot of our history."
] | [
"Mirror neurons. When you watch someone do something, your brain fires as if you are experiencing it as well. Here's an article: _URL_0_"
] |
How come a business will position itself near another business/businesses that offer the same service? | [
"Imagine a beach with 2 drink stands, one in the middle of the left half of the beach and 1 in the middle of the right half. That would be optimal. Lets say the drink stand from the right half moves to the middle of the whole beach. Now he gets all the customers of the right half and some from the left. Consequentl... | [
"Facebook DOES have direct competitors, it just beats them. Here's why: even though the ToS of Facebook is stupidly crazy, so many people are on Facebook that it's hard to leave. Would you go to a \"better\" party, if you were the only one there? No. You wouldn't. You would stay at your shitty party and hang with a... |
Why is the heart symbol shaped like that? The cardiovascular organ looks nothing like it! | [
"I heard its supposed to be the ass of a bent over woman but I don't know if that's true."
] | [
"Each of them has a special meaning on the command line, so if they showed up in filenames they would lead to ambiguity. \\ is the path element separator on Windows and / is both the path separator on Unix-style systems and the normal command switch character. : is the character that indicates a drive name as well ... |
how can an airline justify me not being able to update a plane ticket to someone else's name? It's paid for, who cares who uses it as long as they're notified? | [
"\"Updating\" a ticket to someone else's name is not really \"updating\" -- you are trying to transfer your ticket to someone else. Some tickets are non-transferable and non-refundable. Others can be transferred to another person, if you pay a fee. Changing the name due to a spelling error or even a name change is ... | [
"The N-S equations are [partial differential equations](_URL_3_) - they have no [closed form](_URL_1_) solution. You can't solve them algebraically. \"blow up\" is a loose term for [stability](_URL_0_) - a giant topic itself. Basically, because there's no closed form solution, it's impossible to tell if the equatio... |
Why are controls on aircraft inverted instead of un-inverted? | [
"Leaning forward makes your body face towards the ground , leaning backward lets you face upward. This corresponds to the mental model we have of flying a plane and the associated tilting of the plane itself."
] | [
"For the same reason we prefer drinking cold water to warm water. It makes no difference, but we prefer the taste/feel of cold water in our mouths."
] |
How does a hard drive compensate for the expansion of itself when in use? | [
"The head positioning amplifier is driven from processed feedback out of the heads that are reading in a dynamic fashion. Fine positioning is determined by the picked up signal, not absolute, predetermined locations."
] | [
"When you watch a video it only needs to send the video as fast as it needs to in order to play it back. When you download a large file from Steam it attempts to get you the file as quickly as possible."
] |
How do places like zoos and amusement park profit off memberships? | [
"People tend to over-estimate how often they go, so they’re as likely to not get their money’s worth than benefit from free admissions; conversely, admissions are basically free in terms of variable costs to institution — if another family shows up, the Zoo doesn’t need to have more staff working, there isn’t much ... | [
"Depends on the country. Some countries have laws in place that ensure equal service for all providers using the same network, i.e. the network owner aren't allowed to diminish the service in any way for providers who \"rent\" their network. As for your particular example, they're both owned by the same corporation... |
Why are homeless people almost always men? | [
"I've met and seen many homeless women in the Western US. Usually, when women are put into this situation due to drug use, they will start to use sex as a way to make money and find places to stay. If they aren't homeless due to addiction then there seem to be more shelters and programs available to help them get b... | [
"\"Just about everyone here\" Where is \"here\" for you? It sounds like your question's premise is based on a small sample set based on personal observation. Before your question is addressed, you should be making sure the premise is valid..."
] |
My dad is having quadruple bypass surgery. What they heck are they going to do to him? | [
"Your heart muscle needs blood to function just as any other muscle does. So in addition to the big chambers of blood that are being pumped, there are other, smaller arteries that deliver blood to the heart muscles. Sometimes these get so plugged up with gunk that the heart muscle can't get enough blood. If they ca... | [
"From what I understand it's more or less Algorithms that find redundancys in data and instead of IE 01010101 it's condensed into 01x4. Pretty simplistic I know but that is the gist of it if I understand correctly."
] |
Dependency Injection in programming. Why use it? What does it accomplish? | [
"In a nutshell, what it means is that any given piece of code you write should be provided everything it needs to do its job, instead of creating things for itself. So say I'm writing a forum, and I'm specifically writing the code that adds a new user record to the database and sends them an email to confirm their ... | [
"The US Department of Energy published a study [pdf:[1]] in 2008, showing a decrease of one-half of one percent (0.5%) daytime energy usage during the extended DST hours established in 2005. Conversely, most of Indiana did not observe DST until 2006; when they switched, the result appeared to be an increase in ener... |
How often are wild animals born nearsighted or farsighted compared to their species norm? | [
"That's kind of a wrong question. Animals are typically born either near or farsighted, the eye reaches its correct shape after birth in a process called emmetropization, which shapes the eye according to the visual input. It's the failure of this process what causes nearsightedness, and yes, it happens to animals ... | [
"It's due to a lack of genetic diversity, which results in recessive or unusual traits being expressed more strongly over time. Let's say the two siblings both carry a gene that, if fully expressed, causes an extra toe to form on the foot during embryo development. Neither sibling has the gene expressed, but if th... |
Societies throughout civilizations have existed without a dedicated police force, what changed or led to the first police force being formed? | [
"I much doubt that a civilization without any policing entity ever existed. Even in the most primitive group there was a form or an other of authority and a way to enforce it. They might have been called warriors or guards or soldiers but they still were there to enforce the will of the \"leader(s)\"."
] | [
"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... |
What stops a company from using people with the same name as a celebrity as endorsements? | [
"Because they would get sued. The legal system isn't like some kind of beep-boop robot that overlooks totally obvious loopholes. Any company that claimed \"No, we were really advertising the endorsement of Bill Gates, plumber, from Bumfuck, Nebraska.\" would get laughed out of court. As /u/Snewzie pointed out with ... | [
"Per a quick google search, they are often lawsuits for this. However, I’d hazard a guess that court costs and lawyer fees are factored in before moving forward. Generic copy at Walmart maybe only profits 40k$, but the lawsuit would cost 200k for both sides. It’s now a loss to sue and not worth moving forward. Adid... |
Why does water swirl down drains/toilets instead of just going straight down? | [
"Drop a marble down the edge of a round bowl. Unless your bowl is perfectly straight and your marble is perfectly round, it's gonna wobble and spin into the center. If a stream of water is flowing towards a drain and \"misses\" to one side, the water around it will push it sideways and back in, creating a swirl."
... | [
"Your internet connection isn't one big pipe where data can go either way--it's several 1-way pipes. Given that most consumers download more than they upload, it makes sense to have far more download pipes than upload pipes in the standard connection."
] |
How do cars move? How do the wheels even move and stay in place? | [
"[This](_URL_0_) is how a ball bearing works, there are hundreds in a car."
] | [
"\"magic\". This question is repeatedly asked. You need to ask more specific questions as there are a lot of things to answer."
] |
How does world news affect the stock market? | [
"Much of what determines stock prices is market confidence-- that is, how people are feeling about the company. So if a huge war were about to happen, a defense contractor (like Lockheed) would likely shoot up. This is also evident when retail prices go up before holidays, stock prices fall when a key figure at the... | [
"Hi there -- while we've approved this question, we would like to remind potential respondents of our [current events](_URL_0_) (AKA \"20-year\") rule -- it's fine to discuss events through 1997 (inclusive) and their effects, but not events after 1997. Thanks!"
] |
why do countries print new currency (notes & coins) every year, and how do they decide the amount that is made. | [
"The population of the US, and almost every country is growing, so more people need more money. They also destroy damaged money every year, and have to replace it. The federal reserve will keep a supply of extra bills, and send them to banks when needed. If they are running low on cash, they order more from the min... | [
"Say you're in class, and good work provides results in jelly beans from the teacher. These are super jelly beans, and you need 10 beans a day to survive. So any amount of 10 beans is luxury. You work hard and you earn 20 beans, but in order to get those beans you used pencils and paper provided to you. Therefore ... |
Why does faxing from a smartphone seem to require a third party to do the conversion and transmission? You're using a phone; why can't the conversion be done on your device and the audio fax signals be sent directly to another fax machine. | [
"It's mainly because the mobile voice protocols send your speech data in little packets, and allow for some of these packets to be lost, because having tiny gaps in the sound is more acceptable than a long delay (which you'd get if you insisted on resending lost packets). The Fax protocol, on the other hand, is des... | [
"So let's say I manufacture computer mouses. I need metal, plastics, lasers, and coding. We'll say I have all the other parts I need manufactured in house. So I trade computer mouses to miners for metal? And I pay my coder in mouses? Doesn't really work. Barter requires you to have the goods on hand that the person... |
What did bands playing live performances do before ear monitors existed? | [
"They used stage monitors - speakers aimed at them, playing their channel [usually front & center on the edge of the stage]"
] | [
"Because the high prices would piss off fans. For whatever reason there are a lot of people who won't pay huge amounts of money directly to an artist to see them, but they will pay the same money to a scalper. The artists and venues care about this because there are a lot of other ways for them to make money, ... |
1938 Peace for our time agreement with Germany. What were the alternatives and the arguments pro/against it at the time? | [
"I think its pretty simple: For - No one wanted another war, I don't even think Hitler did. Against - Hitler and the Nazis weren't to be trusted. Chamberlain was hailed as a great statesman for getting the agreement signed and \"taming\" Hitler. It all relied on Hitler keeping his word, which of course didn't happe... | [
"Hi, I've approved the post, but just a note to you and potential respondents: this subreddit has a 20-year rule against discussing current events, so any answers will have to cut off at 1997. If you're looking for answers that can include 1998-2012, do consider x-posting elsewhere, eg. a foreign affairs sub like /... |
Does being the strongest sperm cell matter in making a desirable offspring? | [
"no, the genetics package is a semi random assortment of half chromosomes. also the strongest swimming sperm would arrive first and be responsible for attacking the eggs outter covering of helper cells to create an entry"
] | [
"The kind of extreme poverty you're talking about is actually pretty rare. Dying of hunger and thirst are usually caused by a period of bad weather, and are in a sense more like localised events than sustained realities of x country. Generally speaking people don't live in places that can't sustain life. /u/the_or... |
Why are fighter jets so much louder than passenger jets? | [
"The exhaust velocity is much higher first and foremost. I've gone into further detail answering similar questions on here before, but that's not really necessary here I don't think. Excluding sonic booms, the primary source of noise from an aircraft is the engine. The high speed jet exhaust flow mixing with the s... | [
"**The stagnant air** Rooms which are used often are generally cleaned more often, so mould and mildew cannot grow. Rooms you often go in have air circulating round them often, due to open windows and doors (wind), and people moving in and out of them. Mould and mildew can both grow in unused rooms and produce wa... |
Why does hot air rise? | [
"I'm not sure your view of buoyancy is correct. Buoyancy is concerned with density, which is essentially weight over volume. The volume considered is not really \"volume of the particles themselves,\" but volume occupied by the fluid. You can view individual particles as point-like but they can still occupy a volum... | [
"Intermolecular forces! In a solid, the atoms are close together, kept in place by attractions to the other atoms in the sample. In a liquid the atoms are still close together, but have more room to move. In a gas the atoms are free to fly away from each other, feeling minimal attraction to each other. When boiling... |
How do shows like Game of Thrones have one director per episode? | [
"Most single-camera dramas have a different director per episode, and this is because the job of a director starts long before filming and ends long afterwards. And yes, there will be lower-level or unit directors on location shots that report to the director. The director is the guy who is responsible for that epi... | [
"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 come sometimes when you swallow a pill it gets “caught” in your throat and you can still feel it there after you swallow it? | [
"The pill rubs on the way town, creating a temporary spot of irritation that feels similar to something still being there."
] | [
"Usually when we type, we are using our working memory to hold the info we want to type. Our working memory only has so much space in it that if something new pops up it pushes back the old info and takes front seat; attention also affects this. Think of it like a bus. What you're trying to type is in the drivers ... |
To what extent do laptops effect male fertility? | [
"This [in vitro study](_URL_2_) suggests that exposure to laptops (specifically, ones with wi-fi) may reduce sperm motility. Caveat: not the best paper, but one of only 4 returns on pubmed search for 'laptop sperm'. This [in vivo study](_URL_0_) quantifies the increase in scrotal temperature due to laptop use over ... | [
"They actually debunked that, same with that nonsense about listening to classical music in the womb making your child smarter. It was all just BS to sell some cds. I'll see if I can find an article about it, and I'll edit this to put it in. And now to see if this answer is long enough, or if it will get auto-modd... |
Can you actually get infected with HI from being accidentally stuck with a dirty needle? | [
"Yes, there have been recorded cases of accidental laboratory infections. You've got to remember that when you're sticking an HIV contaminated needle into your body you're bypassing all the usual barriers to infectious agents and giving the virus direct access to your bloodstream. It's not hard to get infected that... | [
"Diseases that are passed down from mother to child are hereditary, and are inherited because they are part of a mutation in genetic code. Immunizations, however, are not part of your genetic code, so they can not be passed down. Another example is if you dye your hair, that cannot be passed down to your offspring ... |
How come Europeans don't have monolids? Like East Asians, they also dealt with harsh cold climates. | [
"Mutations are not inevitable or in response to environmental factors. The epicanthic fold mutation might have been preserved for its usefulness but there was a slim chance it would occur again elsewhere in unrelated populations."
] | [
"Not an expert on circadian rhythms but I know that modern humans didn't usually sleep 8 straight hours a night even a couple hundred years ago. It was very common to wake up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night to do things. Prior to the industrial revolution both biphasic (sleeping twice a day) and p... |
How did Israel develop such an effective military so quickly after its independence? | [
"I asked a similar question a while back and got a [great answer](_URL_0_) from /u/tayaravaknin. You might enjoy reading his replies while waiting for responses in this thread."
] | [
"The person you link to has borrowed (~~or plagiarised - there's no citation~~ Edit: /u/Iguana_on_a_stick points out they do reference Eckstein on page 3, I only Ctrl-F'd the first page. My bad.) their main argument almost entirely from Arthur Eckstein's *Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome*... |
Why do I get carsick when I read in the car, but not when I close my eyes? | [
"There's fluid in your ear that tells you how fast you're moving. When your brain gets conflicting information from your eyes (seeing all the reference points around you not moving) and ears, you get nauseous."
] | [
"We associate cold moving air with invigoration and warm still air with nappy-time. The human animal has evolved to have a preferred avoidance when possible of being really active when it's really warm. A lot of societies in warmer climates have a \"siesta\", or mid-day nap time, to dodge the hottest sun and heat.... |
why do we get cramps? | [
"when you exercise, your muscles have two \"modes\"- aerobic (regular mode) and anaerobic (overdrive mode). When you work out hard, your body switches into anaerobic mode. This allows your muscle you work faster, but not as effectively-when your muscles use anaerobic mode, one of the byproducts is lactic acid. the ... | [
"Simply put for the same reason drinking water when you're not thirsty isn't as refreshing as when you're REALLY thirsty. Anticipating the bodies' needs doesn't trigger the same reward responses in the brain as fulfilling a need that is already present. Your muscles don't NEED to stretch right now, so you can't ant... |
If you were born on Venus, how often would you have a birthday? | [
"> how often would you have a birthday? Just once, since, you'd be immediately killed by the extremely hostile conditions. But that's no fun, so, assuming we treat it the same way as on Earth, once every 224.6 earth days, since that is the time for a full orbit. Or about 91% of a day after you were born. So every ... | [
"If you can't find an answer here you can always try e-mailing whatif@xkcd.com and hope it gets featured there, because it sounds like a question that would fit. Sorry I can't help any further =/"
] |
Did Curiosity and NASA ever determine what that strange "metallic arm" object was on Mars? Why couldn't Curiosity get closer and take clearer pictures of whatever is was? | [
"It was completely driven by tabloid speculation. [Here's a bit of slightly intelligent speculation](_URL_2_), but it's still a bit outlandish. [Here are the actual two images taken by the rover: [Photo 1](_URL_0_), [Photo 2](_URL_1_). It's pretty much just an ordinary rock with a bit of lighter material catching t... | [
"Not all museum records are as good as you might hope. Detailing everything in a museum collection can be quite hard. And then keeping the records and catalogs up to date is a continuous effort. Things get mislabled or misplaced all the time. If you have a giant collection you might only look at an artifact once ev... |
Sphere/Tetrahedron equivalent of the tesseract? | [
"If you continue triangle- > tetrahedron- > 4D, it's called a 5-cell and looks like this: _URL_0_"
] | [
"Oobleck is the closest you will get _URL_0_ It's cornstarch and water mixed together Water has one of the highest surface tensions, so that's your best bet, but oobleck stiffens under pressure, so if you jump around, it's ok"
] |
why does biting into food taste and feel better than sucking on it for flavour | [
"This is subjective and not true for all people. It’s possible that you’re experiencing something related to the texture, but that’s not true for everyone. Lots of people are all about texture, and I understand that, I am, too, but that’s not a universal truth like you’ve framed it."
] | [
"You essentially create a battery in your mouth and cause an electric shock. _URL_0_"
] |
How do you increase energy of photon emitted from magnetic resonance relaxation in MRI? | [
"Increasing the magnetic field increases the Zeeman splitting between levels, so that increases the energy of the photon emitted in a transition between them."
] | [
"Yes, but bear in mind that muons have a very short half-life of a ~~2.2~~ 1.5 microseconds (edit: corrected, thanks!). However, that, together with relativistic time dilation for fast muons is sufficient to place them in a storage ring and do experiments with them: [This](_URL_0_) article shows some details of the... |
Why do you get hungry (munchies) from smoking weed? | [
"Marijuana / cannabinoids act as competition for the neurotransmitters that would say we're full, effectively not allowing them to bind properly. Do you want specific chemical names or is that good enough? Because I'd have to look them up, not exactly a weed + molecular physiology expert."
] | [
"I'm sorry that I'm no expert, but I remember reading about this the last time a similar question was asked: _URL_0_ Basically, you percieve time faster after your run because of endorphines released during the work out, which means that the music seems slower. This is apparently also why a lot of rock musicians pl... |
When they say the bullet matches the ballastic report for this gun, what is the key identifier? | [
"These shows are always a bit of fun and play creatively with the truth. Indeed ballistics isn't as cut and dried as \"every gun has a unique fingerprint, no two can ever be the same\". Marks are compared by eye, very similar guns will have very similar marks. Even much real life courtroom \"science\" is pretty poo... | [
"older machines relied on magnetic properties of the ink in bills and features visible in UV. newer machines can do optical recognition in addition to the older techniques. Newer machines can also work with the features added to more modern bills to distinguish between the denominations."
] |
How did common people react to the discovery of America? | [
"Not OP, but I have a related follow-up question to this. How many years did it take for the discovery of America become a \"common knowledge\", say in Europe? By that I mean, if you asked a random stranger on the streets of a large European city, there is a fair chance that they would know that a \"new world\" exi... | [
"This is a broad question do you have a specific time period or place in mind?"
] |
How does getting drunk work? | [
"In the mouth, down the esophagus, into the stomach, into the small intestine, diffuses through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream, through the bloodstream to the brain, diffuses across the blood brain barrier, latches onto neurons as a positive allosteric modulator (meaning it doesn't bind to the receptor si... | [
"Well, the colour of your skin depends on how much melanin pigment you have in it. When you expose skin to UV light, two things happen: One, your cells start creating more melanin in response to the exposure, and two, some of the melanin that was stored in the lower layers of your skin gets moved up into the upper ... |
How are wells built? | [
"Wells are not technically built, they are drilled. In reference to a water well, a company will do some research to see if they can drill a well in the desired area. This all depends on location, ground type, and various other things. If a well is drillable they will bring out a truck, that is basically a small o... | [
"By tapping the wood. You quite clearly hear the difference when they find a good spot vs when they find nothing. And if they find nothing they just try another spot."
] |
What two points on Earth are the farthest apart that you can walk between? | [
"I played around a bit in Google Earth, and it's surprisingly close. I think Kamchatka - South Africa is longest, but not by more than maybe 500 km. Allow for some inaccuracy in the numbers! 1. Tip of Kamchatka, Russia - Cape of Good Hope, South Africa: 17674 km. 2. Bering Strait, Russia - Cape of Good Hope, South ... | [
"Because there's a bunch of rock in the way, some of it molten and super-hot, and digging a tunnel is too hard. (Here, \"too hard\" means, *totally impossible with present technology, even if you had an unlimited amount of money.*)"
] |
The Romney 47% fiasco? | [
"Mitt Romney was filmed on camera at a private event saying that 47% of American voters, those who voted for Obama, don't pay income tax and feel they're entitled to government support and that it isn't his job to worry about those 47%*. If you search for the video, it's pretty self-explanatory why people are upset... | [
"Yes I agree and would say that the video is misleading. These should thoroughly answer your question: _URL_2_ _URL_3_ _URL_0_ Also, something easier to read: _URL_1_"
] |
How does blood cell production work? Do the cells that have nuclei (like white blood cells) undergo mitosis? | [
"Blood cells (red, white, platelets) are produced in the bone marrow, without exception. White blood cells possess nuclei because they do a lot of things that red blood cells don't: * They produce antibodies * They produce surface receptors to identify pathogens * the production of the above requires active genetic... | [
"Wells Fargo, the company, didn't benefit much, if at all. However, Wells Fargo had monthly quotas of new accounts that their employees had to meet or they were subject to disciplinary action. Since it's quite difficult for a bank branch employee to generate interest in creating additional accounts (bank branches a... |
Why do rainbows appear in the same color order? | [
"Rainbows happen when light gets split from pure white light (sunlight), into the colours that make up white (exactly like using a prism). The longer light, bends more than the shorter light. So you see the colours in the order of wavelength. Rainbows always happen when the sun is above, and behind you. (At 72 de... | [
"Yes - the charged particles from the Sun follow the Earth's magnetic field lines, which will converge wherever the pole is. (I wonder if there's actually been any work on the position of the aurorae drifting with the pole's slow movement... To Google!)"
] |
How can paper be sharp enough to cut through human skin? | [
"Microscopically the edge of paper is like a saw blade rather than a razor, it has to slide along the skin in order to make the cut."
] | [
"never seen this in the movies, and this would not be true in real life. think of aloha air flight 243. a huge chunk of the cabin skin peeled off, instantly depresurizng it. it landed safely."
] |
how can people take pictures of the Milky Way Galaxy. Don't we reside in the Milky Way Galaxy? | [
"We can't. [This is what the milky way looks like to us](_URL_0_). We're on the inside, seeing the disc of the galaxy. Any pictures you see otherwise are either artist's conceptions, like [this](_URL_1_) or pictures of galaxies that we think might look similar to the Milky Way, like [NGC6744](_URL_2_)"
] | [
"Since the question has already been answered, I'm just going to throw in a plug for my favourite app for answering these kinds of questions, [Google Sky Map](_URL_0_). Just point it at whatever is confusing you, and it tells you what and where everything is."
] |
When a house gets completely burned down, how can experts figure out where the fire originated? | [
"It is quite rare for a house to burn into a pile of ash. Generally the fire department will arrive in time to put the fire out. In those cases, it isn't terrible hard to determine the general origin. For example, if the downstairs rooms have more fire damage than upstairs rooms you can determine the downstairs was... | [
"Exit polls. People stand outside polling places and ask people questions after they vote. They get demographic information, as well as information like who they voted for, what their main issues are, and so on. Voters can decline to participate but the exit polls seem to be pretty accurate nonetheless."
] |
How do employer personality assessment tests work and how could someone possibly fail one? | [
"If you're applying for a sales position (or any customer-facing position), but your personality test indicates that you're strongly shy and introverted, they might consider that a \"fail\". It's not a judgement of you as a person, just an evaluation that perhaps you may not have the disposition to be well-suited f... | [
"They don't. It's a marketing ~~lie~~ gimmick. I used to work for a company that did a similar thing by mail. New customers were supposed to sign up by a certain time for special rates but as a specific matter of policy we'd give those rates to *anyone* who mailed back the special offer."
] |
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