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the Middle Ages and the Black Death | Middle Ages: Between the Roman Empire and the Rennaissance. Black Death: A disease that wiped out a massive portion of the world population, and is easily cured with antibiotics. See [bubonic plague] |
What causes people to want to stew in their negative emotions? | Because negative emotions cause fixation, which makes you unable to think outside the box and take on new perspectives. Negative emotions correspond to some threat to our well-being. Such threats can end our life, so the brain doesn't let us daydream and hope and wish and be optimistic. Instead, it focuses our attentio... |
Which is the best theory on how the world will function in ~100 years (socially, economically etc) and what reasoning supports this/these theories? | there is no way to decide which theory is "best", and there is no good theory that can be done up in one Reddit post, do i suggest you read some books instead the best theory i 've read syas that in a hundred years, most countries will have space colonies, which will be used to gather energy and minerals. Far East Asia... |
Puts and Short Selling stocks | Alice has 100 shares of ABC, and ABC is currently trading for $50. Bob thinks that the price of ABC is going to go down. Bob doesn't have any shares of ABC. He borrows them from Alice, for a small price, say $0.50 per share, and sells them to someone else for $5000 at $50/share. He now has $5,000 minus the $50 he paid ... |
why do steps have plateau after every 1 to 12 steps?. Eg in train stations. | Giving climbers a place to rest can certainly be one of the reasons . They also are required to create most stairs that change directions, which lets builders fit staircases into smaller areas. That said the key reason you see them commonly is to work as something to catch you if you fall down the stairs, so you only f... |
When I mute a TV or a computer, I swear to God I sometimes hear a faint bit of sound. Is there still sound coming from it or am I just crazy? | The audio circuit goes from the pre-amplifier to the amplifier to the speaker and back. Each of these components has some resistance. Current follows the path of least resistance. When you mute something, you are redirecting the current to a path of lower resistance to avoid sending it through the speaker. However, it'... |
Why is staying alive not logical? | > Can anyone explain to me why is staying alive not logical? It isn't that dying is logical either, just that logic does not by default imply that a machine should remain operational. For example if you programmed a machine to beat the dust out of a rug, and that beating more dust out is a better achievement of the goa... |
Why do police officers who break the law often get a slap on the wrist instead of having charges held against them? | Well it depends what kind of crime. If you mean for felonies, cops are often unwilling to incriminate a fellow cop, protect their own and such. If you mean for higher crimes like murder or manslaughter, similar rules, however, cops are also obligated to put their own safety first, so when there is a high police investm... |
The Relationship between the Japanaese Royalty (Emperor) and its people. | The Imperial family claimed overlordship of Japan on religious grounds - they are supposedly descended from the Shinto goddess Amaterasu and the emperor is one of that religion's highest authorities. They also would hold great temporal power at some points in history. You're probably thinking of the period from the 110... |
How does a laser maintain its brightness wether it be pointed 2 feet away or 30? | This is a key characteristic of lasers: all the light comes out of them in a straight line, with quite limited spreading-out. Thus the dot doesn't get fainter. |
Why does music effect our species so profoundly? | I'm not sure if there's really a right answer, but I'll give it a shot. First, I think a big reason is that sound is one of our body's most useful senses. We are hard wired to be able to 1.) gather sound information, and 2.) use it to make more educated decisions. The ability to hear, like many of our senses, has its e... |
Why does shampoo/conditioner squeezed from a bottle pour down straight, but then curl when it hits a surface? | This is called "Liquid Rope Coiling". Essentially, the fluid is so viscous that it's able to push against the flowing 'rope\' of fluid to move it out of the way, where it naturally falls into a coil of the roped fluid. If you were to lower an actual rope or string onto a surface, chances are you 'd observe a similar ef... |
Why do smartphones not have SSD-Chips inside instead of their slow and small storage? | They do :). The type of memory cells are the same . The biggest difference is the controller. SSDs have better controllers that do whole lot of other stuff. For phones, you have to take power consumtion into accountThe main difference between SSD and the memory in a cell phone is that there are physically more chips in... |
Why do air conditioners have to pull air from outside? | They don't. They push fluids outside, then a compressor squeezes the heat out of it. Then the fluids can come back in once they're nice and cold. There's a blower outside to blow the heat away and another blower inside to blow air over the cool fluids. |
how come when I see excavated ruins, they're much lower than the current ground level? | Usually because ruins have been hidden because dirt and sediment build up around them over time. When an archaeologist finds them, he or she and their team need to clear away the dirt and sediment to reveal the entire site. |
Why are we still in Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran when Obama said he was going to pull out when he first got elected? | The US is not in Iraq or Iran. The US has bases in Pakistan to allow it to conduct drone strikes on suspected terrorists in Pakistan. This is because the US and Pakistan have a made an agreement, which is why Pakistan allows the US to do so. Obama said he would end major operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that has... |
What happens when someone without health insurance can't pay their medical bills? | In the USA, the hospital harasses you. Then they offer to let you pay less. If that doesn't work, they hire a collection agency. They harass you. Depending on the size of the debt, they can sue you to get the money and then take money from your pay-check or similar. However, most people that can't pay declare bankruptc... |
Are fake items from china just as good as the name brand item? | Chinese corporate heads counterfeit and steal intellectual property, they then produce the item and sell it for 1/10th the price. |
What is a flux capacitor? | The core component of the time machine from the Back To The Future film series. It's just random technobabble, it doesn't actually exit in real life. |
It seems like every day something new comes out in the Panama Papers. Is there gonna be anything actually done to the accused? Who is in charge of prosecuting? | Merely setting up a company in a tax haven doesn't mean you've actually done anything wrong. Its not evidence of a crime by itself. |
When it comes to fluorescent light bulbs, what is a ballast and a starter, and why are they needed? | Fluorescent bulbs emit light by exciting mercury vapor suspended between two electrodes; the mercury emits UV light, which strikes phosphors on the inside of the glass, which emit the visible light that we see. Tanning bed lamps are very similar, just that they lack the phosphors and use a glass formulation that lets U... |
How are people contagious with a virus or bacteria without having any symptoms? | For many diseases, symptoms come not from the infection itself, but from the immune system's attempts to stop the infection before it gets out of control. Some organisms have ways to evade the immune system, at least for a little while. If these organisms can grow while they're doing this, then they can be spread. |
When a surface is between both of our arms how are we able to pinpoint where our other hand is on the other side? | It's a sense, called [proprioception]. Similarly, you can find your body parts with your eyes closed. ELI5: you have a lot of little sensors all over your body that communicate with each other.you generally have an idea of where your body parts are located. however, in the case you describe, i think you feel the torque... |
Why is it US policy to limit the influence of China? | In short: because you don't maintain your seat of power and authority by letting someone else be just as powerful and influential as you. |
Why is it piece of mind and not peace of mind as that seems most logical given its use | I think you're confusing idioms. It's "peace of mind" to refer to calmness or serenity, and "a piece of mind", meaning a telling off. |
The rationale and the end game for terrorists | Pretty sure you're just wanting a basic simplification, but to start here is the ELI5 Version: A terrorist wants to scare people. He's mad enough or crazy enough that he just doesn't care if anyone gets hurt, and he tries to find some way to hurt people so everyone else gets scared. As for why they want to do it, well ... |
How does a lethal dose given during assisted suicide work? | In denmark a glass of orange juice with a very high dose of a fast acting barbiturate like sodium thiopental is given. The recipient drinks it on his own . Barbiturates are powerful sedatives, the patient feels sleepy, falls asleep, then into a coma and respiratory arrest. Yes it is a painless death. |
why do many super rich people keep money in Swiss Bank? | The Swiss are a neutral country, so if anything illegal happens with the account, they don't turn it over. It's why there are email clients in Switzerland too.The idea of such bank accounts is that they: A. Do not fall under the jurisdiction of the United States and its legal system, so the U.S. government cannot force... |
getting selected for jury duty | I would guess it depends on your location. I've been called twice for the county and once for the federal courthouse in my area. I believe everyone is eligible after 18. If you do get called it isn't a big deal. You might not be selected from the pool or excused during the jury selection process. Whatever you do, don't... |
How much of nutritional value depends on chewing? How much work of the digestive process depends on how finely food is chewed? | Okay, I took a physiology class in college and I believe I know the correct info so I'm going to take a stab at this one. Chewing your food helps with digestion in two main ways. First, when you first begin chewing your food, a signal is sent from your mouth to your brain telling it to prepare your stomach for the meal... |
How is it people find new ways to kill cancer cells all the time, be it with drugs or viruses or bioengineering, yet we still don't have a cure for cancer? | First off, there are many different types of cancer and they are all very different. Even within the same type of cancer you will have significant differences between cases. This means that there is no real "cure" to all cancer, reach type needs its own. Second, the trick isn't to kill the cancer cells, its to kill the... |
How does the rotary mechanism of ATP synthase work? | When you make ATP, you're trying to use energy to smoosh together two things that don't really want to be together. This will give you a molecule that can easily break back apart later, releasing a burst of useful energy. Making ATP is hard, so we need a machine to help do it. ATP synthase works a lot like an old-fashi... |
How does UPS work? | One package may have made it to your local distribution center on Wednesday, the other may not arrive until Thursday, but that does not really matter. What matters is that you will have paid for a shipping service to deliver on Friday. In order to deliver the package to your front door, they need to get the packages to... |
How do blind people know when to stop wiping their bottom when they're on the toilet? | It's possible to tell if you are clean by the feel of how smoothly the paper moves over your skin. In fact, whenever this question gets asked, responses from sighted people reading it are split between "that's a great question, how do they do it?" , and "what a stupid question, they do it the same way as everyone else"... |
How are we able to play games for long periods of time without feeling the need to eat/go to the restroom? | Aside from dehydration, hunger and a mess . You 've likely told your body to essentially stop working on a vast majority of your body, and only focus on what you currently need, so your brain, arms, hands, heart, ears and eyes are using what energy the body currently has stored. I personally recommend that you start ta... |
How do we know that the earth rotates around the sun? | Basically we know we revolve around the sun due to simple observation. * With a telescope we can see that other planets have phases just like our moon. * We can also predict where planets are going to be on a night to night / month to month basis. If they were moving around the Earth rather than the sun our predictions... |
Why do areas not flood after a blizzard? | Oh, its quite common for the spring melt to cause flooding. It depends on how big the upstream watershed area is and how fast it melts. Before my hometown dug some flood control ditches, the low lying parts of town sometimes would have flooded basements in the spring as we're downstream of a particularly large watershe... |
Why can't neural networks model the brains of small invertebrates. | Each neuron connects to many others and this adds a lot of complexity. If you open up even a small brain, tracing which synapses go where to any meaningful degree is beyond current capabilities as far as I'm aware. So even if a computer could run the simulation, there is the issue of deciding which neurons should conne... |
Why does glass break when transferred from hot to cold water, but not something like an egg? | First, a plaque of glass is very solid and strong, an egg shell is very porous and bendable. Second, hot objects expands while cold objects contract. Because an egg shell is bendable and porous, it is able to deal with the internal stresses caused by the temperature difference. And because the glass is solid and strong... |
How does putting isopropyl alcohol in your ear work to help clean it? | It dissolves the ear way better than water. OTOH, there are some recommendations that you not do this unless the was has formed a clog in your ear. |
If our brain automatically forgets, what it finds unimportant after some time, why don't we have an ability to choose, what we consider necessary for us? | You do. This is where a lot of practices like mindfulness and meditation come into play. These practices work on re-enforcing certain thought patterns to help *teach* yourself what you should focus on, and what you shouldn't focus on. What you should remember, and what you can forget. Like all processes that modify you... |
How does a canister of gas have only that gas? How does someone isolate the gas from the air? | They purge the tank. They pump that gas into the tank until it overflows and then seal itGases can be isolated by their different properties, or can be produced. One example of separating gases by properties: you know how water condenses on the side of a cold beverage? The cold temperature causes water vapor to condens... |
Dear legal minds, why does the American legal system permit 'plea bargaining'? | Not a lawyer, but I did study political science. The sentencing and the plea bargaining were not designed together. The idea of a plea bargain is that an offender who is genuinely regretful for their actions will plead guilty to save the court some time, and deserves a sentence towards the lighter end. It's become used... |
Why does the Bugatti Veyron's W16 engine sound like a fighter jet and not like two V8's driving together? | The W16 of the Veyron is turbocharged, which means that the exhaust has to flow through a turbine, which removes most of the burbling sound and introduces more "whoosh". Having twice as many cylinders also means twice as many ignitions happening in the same number of revolutions of the crank, which will make it sound l... |
This Hilary Clinton email controversy | For security's sake or for maintaining public records , she really should have been using her State Dept email. Because it was on her own server, the govt had no way to secure it from prying eyes or to make sure she hasn't deleted/hidden embarrassing emails. |
Where does excess energy dissipate to? | > The sun constantly supplies new energy to Earth - where does the excess energy dissipate to? Does energy "leave" our planet? Earth dissipates heat energy into space through radiation, such as infrared. It is why the temperature drops at nightThe law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created ... |
What global/environmental changes are we likely to see if we never bring our carbon dioxide levels back below 400 ppm? | It's only become an article in various sources because 400ppm is a nice round number. There is no real scientific reason why 400 is really bad but if it still had been 398 we would have been ok. That article is really more sensationalist than anything else. Furthermore we are still adding more CO2 to the atmosphere any... |
Why N64 games aren't reproduced? | Lack of demand. Nintendo couldn't sell N64's and game cartridges in large numbers in 2015. Most of the ones they made would wind up sitting on shelves. Part of the drop in demand has to do with [emulation] which I strongly encourage you to check out.this is a good question because I would love to see a Aidyn Chronicles... |
Why does water pressure drop if its let to sit under pressure? | > the pressure is significantly lower even with zero leaks Because it is leaking. It might just be leaking dissolved gasses, but something is escaping the system. |
Why are modern-day cars not designed with panorama windows (no pillars in the sides) to eliminate the blind spot? | The pillars add significant strength in the event of a roll over accident. Also glass becomes much more expensive the larger it getsIt was my understanding that the "Blind spot" is the area not covered by either the rear-view mirror or the side mirror. That's why an over-the-shoulder check is required. The door pillars... |
Why are there pleasure producing nerve endings in the anus? | We have evolved so that anything that keeps us alive gives us pleasure -- one of these things is POOPING. |
- Why do some peoples veins show up better than others? | 1. Genetics - Some peoples veins are just bigger2. Body Fat % - the muscles are pressing the veins against the skin, and there is little fat there to cover them up.3. High Blood Pressure - If your blood pressure is higher , then your veins fill with blood and stick out more. This can also be accomplished by lifting wei... |
Why do we study art? | Studying Art and Art-history is interesting since the particular ideas and ideals of an era or time-period are often reflected in their art, as an aspect of Cultural History. As an example, compare these two paintings: _URL_0_ _URL_1_ Both of them show baby Jesus and Mary, but they are completely different paintings. T... |
How come on even the hottest days in summer, I still want to be covered while sleeping? | I need to be fully covered with heavy blankets to sleep even at the height of summer, I'll just lie their in my cocoon and roast and sweat it out till morning, the alternative is no sleep. There are specially weighted blankets that you can buy for helping small children with sleep problems and for autistic people - the... |
If tomatoes and cucumbers have so much water in them, how do they get their unique taste that water doesn't have? | From the parts of them that aren't water. Even if they are mostly water, we can still taste the other parts. Some things need only a very small amount for us to taste. Cooking with a single little bit of garlic for example can make food have a definite taste of garlic, for example.Plants have things called terpines, th... |
If light is energized particles that give off heat, will the reflection of a heat lamp be warm? | Yes. However, the reflecting surface can never reflect all of the light. Some of the light will be absorbed or transmitted through the surface. For an example of reflected light causing heat, a building in London focused sunlight because of its curved design to melt a car: _URL_0_ |
Why ancient buildings and artifacts are all found underground | It's not that they sink, it's that wind, rain, volcanoes, etc. often end up blowing sand and soil on top of them. Over time, compression can turn that sediment into stone. It happens in reverse, too: some buried architecture ends up getting exposed by erosion. We've actually found some buildings because someone was wal... |
How does a sonic boom happen and what is it? | So, when an aircraft is traveling through the air, it's generating sound, and that sounds moves out as a wave in all directions at the speed of sound of the air . As the aircraft moves forward, the sound waves traveling in the same direction as the aircraft get compressed into each other, similar to the idea of the wak... |
Batteries that can recharge wirelessly. | An electric field is given off by the base station which then induces a current in the charging dongle which then is plugged into your device's power hole |
Just saw the 'Mowgli' trailer. I was under the impression that Disney owned the rights to The Jungle Book. How did warnerbros make their live action movie ? | The Jungle Book was published in 1894. Disney's been active from the 1920s when Mickey Mouse first appeared. They have rights to their own interpretation of the Jungle Book , not the story itself. |
Why is binary code considered universal? | At their most basic, computers are just a means to manipulate massive collections of switches. Those switches have two positions, on and off . Everything in computing, in the end, is down to these simple switches. What makes computers powerful is how *fast* they can perform calculations based on these ones and zeros If... |
How do countries that drive their cars on the left side connect roads with bordering countries that drive their cars on the right side? | Generally, left-driving countries are isolated from right-driving countries by water, mountains, desert, or large stretches of deep forest. While this provides for relatively little traffic crossover between the two mode, there are still numerous roads where the issue of having to exchange lanes due to crossing over a ... |
How do we perceive "Shadows Moving" | I recall seeing a documentary once about a supposed miracle where a statue of Mary was observed to move. The investigators concluded that it was an optical illusion. It was caused by looking intently at an object for a long time, and the tiny motions your head makes—which you generally don’t notice—cause the image to b... |
Why do commercials, TV shows, and movies use fake Phone/Computer programs instead of real ones? | It does occasionally happen. You vastly underestimate how hard it is to get real software to *look* like it's doing the exact thing you want it to do *and* be realistic looking, both visually and with how characters interact with a computer. Not to mention editing. Plus then you watch the show a year later and it looks... |
Why do recent scratches, cuts, scrapes, etc. sting/burn when in warm water? | Because the subcutaneous nerves are more exposed, and are more sensitive without their layer of defense anymore.As /u/Draeon143 said, the reason is that once you have scraped off the outer layer of skin , the regular skin cells and nerve endings below are exposed. But the reason why dipping an exposed wound in water ac... |
How can scientists determine that anything is billions of years old? | This might be helpful: _URL_0_ Carbon decays at a measurable rate. Carbon 14 can be measured up to billions of years. It's pretty well trusted scientifically, but if you're my ex stepmother this is all a lie and the dinosaurs were put here only as skeletons to make us question our existence. Sooo .Radioactive decay. Ur... |
Why are the Ming vases so valuable? | The ming dynasty went from 1368 to 1644 - meaning that an original Ming dynasty vase is at least a little over 360 years old. And that's delicate, super thin porcelain That's why they are so expensive - because they survived that long without breaking. That didn't happen often as in fact there aren't that many authenti... |
The DowJones dropped 400+ points. What does this mean and how does it affect the economy/business? | Minor dip. It'll smooth out over the long run. The real thing to watch is whether a trade war starts with China. If that happens, you can expect certain things to become more expensive and certain manufacturers to scale back their production lines. |
Why is car and motorcycle insurance so cheap in the USA compared to the rest of the world? | Pricing is based on statistical data gathered for each ZIP code . It includes the current value of vehicles involved, the statistics of that specific vehicle being involved in collisions The driving record of the individual . The distance that a person drives on a regular basis . The expense of repairing the specific t... |
The dangers of using public wi-fi | You see, using public wifis is like shouting everyone what you are doing BUT on the internet. Imagine yourself shouting: * I'M OPENING CARTOONNETWORK!!* MY NAME IS DERPINGTON STEEL!!* I'M OPENING RIGHT NOW MY FATHER'S BANK ACCOUNT!! If you like that, go ahead , if you don't it's easy, don't use public Wifi's. PD: Many ... |
Why does my body ache when I get the flu? | When you have the flu, your respiratory tissues are being invaded by viruses, and that's where the immune cells are most active, but they also end up releasing cytokines into the bloodstream. Once the cytokines are in your blood, they circulate through your entire body and cause systemic symptoms. Specifically, those c... |
why is it that european countries have dominated modern history? Why not African countries or the Americas? | Western Europeans were the first to domesticate crops and food animals, therefore making it possible for them to begin to live in stable agrarian societies. Once they formed these societal groups, some people could be freed from looking for food to become "specialists", such as weavers, tool makers, etc. This led to ad... |
are raw or cooked vegetables better for you and why? also does this apply to popcorn? thanks! | Cooking vegetables makes more of the nutritional content of them accessible, and aids digestion, particularly by breaking down cell walls we can't break down or digest. That said, if you live in a first world country, where nutrition and food scarcity is hardly an issue, it probably isn't going to be a concern. If you ... |
Why do we vary so much in our tastes IE how we cant stand certain foods | People who have a lot of papillae—the bumps on our tongue, most of which house our taste buds—often find flavors overwhelming. They’re “supertasters,” and as such they add cream to their coffee and order food mild instead of spicy. Subtasters, on the other hand, have low papillae density and prefer their chicken wings ... |
When staying awake all night why do you get very tired but the following day even without sleep you can feel fairly normal. | Melatonin you brain produces alot of melatonin at night which is the sleep hormone but during the day the sunlight signals your brain to stop producing it because u need to get things done. That's why alot of waking up without coffee hacks say to go outside In the morning or open up the blinds", 'Imagine your body is a... |
why does my facebook app need to do these things. | I read somewhere on here that they don't really "need" to read texts. They claim they do for some phone verification process where they send a code to your phone and read it. They'll say it's to make your account more secure. I say bullshit. |
How do video patch bays work? | I can tell you how audio patchbays work, and hopefully there's some analogy to video patchbays. Audio patchbays are usually wired "output over input," so that for example, the insert point of a mixing desk would have its output wired to the top row of a patchbay, with its input directly underneath it. This means that i... |
Why is milk more expensive than gas? | For one, it takes a lot of work to pinch dem titties to get some milk. Then you gotta pasteurize that shiz.Takes a shit ton of work, seriously! Gas you just gotta dig it up, aint no titty pinchin involvedBecause it takes a lot more labor to generate a gallon of milk compared to a gallon of gasoline. Renewable or not ha... |
During a Star Wars space battle, what happens to the lasers that don't hit their target? | There's no lasers in Star wars: only blasters and their bigger derivative. What goes out of the barrel is "bubble" of gas in plasma state. It's still a physical object, subjected to regular physical laws. It doesn't even travel at relativistic speed , so most likely lose shots will end up having totally expanded their ... |
Why are cats/dogs able to see in the dark so well? | The retina at the back of the eye has cells called rods and cones that detect shapes, edges, color and movement. Humans have more cells that help us see color dogs see only blues and yellows, no red. However, dogs and cats are much more sensitive to movement and light than humans. And while they can see better in the d... |
What would our vision be like if we had a third eye at the back of our head? | Do you mean how would 'what we see' appear? That would depend on how our brain had evolved to use that third eye and represent it to us mentally. Since this is necessarily different from how our brains function today, there's no definitive answer to give you other than 'we could presumably see behind us, at least if we... |
What's happening when I get a sudden, random itch on my body? | Your skin is telling you that you have something on it and irritating it , thats why mosquitos make you feel itchy. |
Why does depth and time affect how long a phone can be waterproof? | Imagine a seat cushion outside in the rain. If it rains a bit on the cushion, it will be fine if you grab it quickly and bring it out of the rain. But when it sits there getting wet for an extended period of time, it will get completely soaked through. Same if it falls in the pool if you grab it quickly, it'll be less ... |
How can programs run if you don't have those programming languages installed on someones computer? | The programming language is just used to write the program. It makes it possible for a human to write code easily. But computers don't understand different programming languages. Instead, programs are compiled to machine code that can run on any computer with the same type of processor. That compiled code is no longer ... |
Why did the Christian East-West schism take place? | It's not an issue that is easily boiled down but I'll try my best. When Christianity was finally established as an important institution within the Roman Empire there were five main Churches. Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. This was the Pentarchy and each had a Patriarch. The argument began to ... |
When politicians, news, citizens say "infrastructure" and how we need to fix it, what exactly does that mean? | Roads, sewers, bridges, railroads, etc. The shit that was built decades ago that is used every day, but never maintained. |
Why isn't American cheese called cheese, and instead called cheese product? | Because it's not Cheese. It's made out of at least two different kinds of cheese and processed, therefor making it a cheese product.To be clear, "American cheese" commonly refers to two things. Kraft singles and similar products are imitations of cheese, and often say "cheese product" or something similar. Traditional ... |
What's "closed" in closed captioning? | It apparently just means that you have to opt in to seeing them compared to captions which are "open" and automatically visible to everyone "Closed" refers to the fact that it is invisible unless activated, because the captions are sent as a concurrent data stream. Open captioning is sent as part of the actual video si... |
why fake credit cards aren’t a thing? | When you buy something, the seller's bank immediately checks the credit card account number to see if it's valid . If even one digit is off, no deal. So they're hard to fake. |
Why does the term cis-gender exist? | In general humans like grouping things, and labeling them. It's comforting to us and helps keep us organized. People who identify as trans-gendered have that desire too. They want to group the people who are not trans-gendered. Calling that group "normal" puts a lot of negative stigma on the people who aren't in that g... |
Are there places where the moon appears much larger? | No, the moon appears to same size to everyone on Earth on any given night and it's size doesn't change very much from night to night, even when you hear about there being a "supermoon". The big moons you see in media are likely someone taking artistic license to depict the [moon illusion], which makes the moon appear b... |
Why is the country approximately 50/50 when it comes to the political spectrum? Is it a coincidence that it's divided so evenly, or is it a statistical phenomenon? | No, it's actually what you would expect with a two-party system. Imagine tomorrow that either societal attitudes changed or the Democrats changed their policies so that they suddenly had the firm support of 60% of the country. The Republicans, now realizing that they're now never going to win the presidency or control ... |
how a moon pool (aka wet porch) works, and why a ship with one doesn't sink. | There are a few different kinds of moon pools. The easiest one to understand are basically a hole in the floor above the waterline of a drilling platform or ship with multiple hulls that lets you look down into the water. You're probably thinking of moon pools below the water line though. Imagine taking a cup, turning ... |
How come taking an extended break from something sometimes makes you come back to it stronger than ever? | Overthinking interferes with muscle memory. Taking a break can clear your head, so you’re back to playing on instinct. [Here’s a related article on why overthinking can make you choke]', "Most likely confirmation bias. Could also be that you're having more fun, increasing your performance.I believe that especially in t... |
Who is winning the Syrian Civil War? | There is no clear winner and there probably won't be one. Also the war in Syria and Northern Iraq are basically one war now. It's even unclear whether Syria as a country still exists considering that different areas are controlled by different groups. IS controls parts of Syria and Iraq and basically removed the boarde... |
Why did old (North America) power plugs have one prong bigger than the other, and why don't we have to do that anymore? | That's not for "old" power plugs. It's still the standard for modern devices. *However*, it only applies to plugs that: 1. Don't have a grounding pin, and thus can be plugged in in either orientation. 2. Are for a device where it matters which prong is hot, and which is neutral. For a lot of modern devices, the plug is... |
What determines the exchange rates of currencies? | You should go search, this question has been asked before. The short answer is - "Whatever someone else will pay for it". Exchange rates are based on supply and demand. |
How do YouTube mashup artists like 'oneboredjeu' and 'InanimateMashups' not get copyright strikes? | First, Youtube takes down things in part based on how likely they are to get issued legal challenges to the videos. So the question is, are mashups illegal copyright infringement? Most mashups and sample usage in original songs are protected under the doctrine of fair use. If you take chunks of someone else's song and ... |
Can someone explain to me how smoke shops that sell paraphernalia are allowed to stay open? | Because they say, explicitly, that the products should only be used for tobacco.Because everything they sell can be used with tobacco, which is perfectly legal. They will not sell anything to anyone who states that they intend to use the paraphernalia with illegal substances. In fact, if you say anything at all about m... |
Why do we care if we win/lose a game (computer games in particular and dota/lol especially). | it's essentially the natural selection part of evolution, hotwired within every single organism. Winning something doesn't need to be specific to games or actions which results have less of an impact, but can also be counted for something like hunting prey. If you don't win, i.e. if you let your prey escape, you wasted... |
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