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Why do WebM clips load so much more quickly than animated GIFs? | Primarily because webm is based on a file format that's designed for video. Gif has to load every frame in full, and does because it was designed originally for tiny little pixelly web animations, it was never designed to handle proper video content. Webm on the other hand uses a format designed to be efficient at disp... |
How can a dog bark for hours on end without seemingly losing its "voice"? My neighbor's dog barks for 8 to 12 hours straight every week day. | The same way some people , can talk for hours and hours. To a dog, barking is not "shouting", it's more like just talking is to us. |
If Jellyfish don't have brains, how do they know to swim or eat or reproduce? | They don't have brains, but they still have a nervous system which responds to stimuli. They don't "think" about swimming. Their nervous system just makes the necessary movements to make them swim. Something gets caught in their tentacles, and the response is to pull it up to their mouth. For reproductions, certain con... |
US Mercenaries in Iraq. Why would ex military groups think they would be quicker than the military? | UN law does not supersede US law as far as the US Government is concerned. The 2001 treaty you are referring to was never ratified by the US Government, or any permanent member of the UN's security council for that matter. As to why former military members want to do it, it pays A LOT. Back in Iraq's hay day in the mid... |
How do we know the gravity of a planet without even being able to land there? | We can measure a planet's mass by watching how it interacts gravitationally with nearby objects. Pluto is an easy one because it has a system of tiny moons that are dominated by its gravity. We can measure its radius with simple photography. One you know the mass and the size, the surface gravity calculation is fairly ... |
After watching GoT last night, I was wondering how in historical times horses behaved in battle. How come they were willing to run into each other during charges instead of disobeying their riders? | Horses have been trained over time to obey their rider *no matter the cost*. I'm not sure of the accuracy of GoT since it is a fantasy show but I know that horses are entirely domesticated and obedient. During WW1 they stood near cannons and howitzers without running away so the idea that they'll obey their riders into... |
Spontaneous Combustion, How does it work and how does it happen to human beings? | There are things called hypergolic propellants. This just means when you mix the 2 components they spontaneously combust. They generate enough heat to ignite when they come into contact with each other. This is utilized in rocket technology. People don't spontaneously combust. That was just a myth and misunderstanding.... |
How does refinancing your home work? ELI5 | When you take out a loan for a house you agree to pay a certain interest rate, so a certain amount of what you pay each month ends up going towards the interest , and a certain amount towards the principal . Refinancing usually means taking out a new loan at a lower interest rate. The result is that the amount of money... |
What is exactly the job of an editor, since the screenplay and the director have already decided which scenes to shot and what order they'll appear. | The editor takes the pre-defined order and assembles the raw footage based on it, making cuts to fit time constraints on individual scenes/the overall production. The editor also has artistic license when constructing the sequence, and may also be responsible for sound or VFX; although these roles are often delegated t... |
How did Crysis look so much better than any other game when it was released, or even games released in the 6 years between it and Crysis 3? | One of the biggest reasons why triple A games still don't look any better is because they have to work on consoles which have a much bigger market. The games are "ported" to PC and depending on what effort the company behind the game has put in it can be anything from the same game to a much better looking game. With c... |
By what method does Google Translate detect the language of input texts? | Same way you would. You recognizance that the words in this sentence are English words, so you guess that I'm in fact writing in English. Och du ser att orden i den här meningen inte är engelska, eftersom att de är svenska And google can confuse langues sometimes if it only has a limited number of words to work with an... |
Could a brain transplant actually be possible and would memories transfer over to the new body like a hard drive? | With current science? No. There are way too many nerves and things we wouldn't be able to connect. Memories would transfer over though because they are all contained in the brain. |
What makes Subway bad for me. | It can be healthy or unhealthy.If you get the six inch oven roasted chicken with no cheese, veggies and a low fat/low calorie sauce it will be healthy. Replace that with a footlong, add cheese, mayo, and a large spa soda on the side, and you might as well visit McDonald's |
Why aren't some of the immigrants who travel to the US from Mexico and Latin America considered refugees? | They are not refugees because they are not persecuted in their country of origin for their race, religion, nationality or political beliefs. |
Why do humans talk to babies in a high pitched voice? Why does it feel instinctive? | Higher pitched noises are usually more comforting and soothing rather than low, deep rumbles. You can see this in most animals. Go up to a random dog and talk to it in a soothing, cushy, baby voice odds are the dog will wag it's tail and won't see you as a threat. But if you come in with a low grunting voice then it pu... |
why does your skin peel when you get a sunburn? | The UV rays present in sunlight are damaging to your body. Too much exposure kills your skin cells, and the dead skin peels off. |
What are allergies and why can't we get rid of them? | Allergies are your body having an inappropriate immunoresponse to something that is not inherently harmful to you. Your body comes into contact with the substance , and then reacts as if the substance is toxic, irritating your skin, closing breathing passageways, and generally cocking everything up. We *can* get rid of... |
When meteorologists say we received "5mm" of rain overnight for example, how is this measurement made? | Yes, it does mean exactly that. Obviously averaging the rain across an area, the entire region would have 5mm of water if it didn't run off or soak in. I think you are overcomplicating this. It doesn't matter what size the "bucket" is. The rain measurement is a height, not a volume. A larger bucket will capture more vo... |
"Commercialized" Facebook pages? | Let's say you owned a page, and the name of the page is something along the lines of "yo mama is ". You were likely like-whoring everything so that page of yours could get a ton of attention. Sometimes, companies and the like get interested, and attempt to buy the page. Let's say they offer 1k of $ for a million likes ... |
Is there any scientific explanation for human intuition? | Generally intuition comes from your brain subconsciously picking up and processing clues. One simple form is [subitizing], where you can look at a small number of objects and just instantly know exactly how many there are without having to count them individually.Rigorously define 'human intuition' and we might be able... |
Are there any 100% real, legitimate ways of making money on the internet? Or are they all scams to lure us into purchasing their "get rich quick" products. | > If this is true, please explain exactly how this is possible. Creating those scams and stealing sap's money works fairly well.There are totally legitimate ways to make money on the internet. YouTube, Twitch, etc. are good examples. Now if you mean "get rich quick" schemes no, they are likely scamsleapforce is a compa... |
What's happening with my watch display? | The first blob is only lit if the digit contains the center segment of the seven segment display. Second blob corresponds to the lower left segment. Third blob is matched with the lower right segment. Fourth blob goes with bottom segment. Why? Beats the hell out of me, OP. I guess whoever designed the display had extra... |
How can we make composite images of the Milky Way if we only have cameras inside it just outside of Earth? | By observing galaxies outside of ours, we can classify them in [several types] and we know some of the properties of each type. Looking at our own galaxy from the inside, we can see what are its properties and deduce which type of galaxy we have and its shape: the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy. From then, we can ... |
Why do new consoles break easier than old ones? | The same why your sword breaks less than pistol. More mechanical things = more chances for something to break. This is not restricted to mechanical things. But defects always exist. A memory leak that will make your hardware overheat, which will tax it heavilly if not cooled properly. etc Old Snes, PS1, N64's etc Worke... |
Why can´t I(we) stop arguing with strangers over the internet | Because it's the internet. It's published for anyone to see. If you hear a stranger spouting nonsense in a public square, who cares? But on the internet, you don't know if someone is going to come along later and read that and be convinced, so you seek to challenge it. That and internet arguments are the biggest demons... |
why does a gun emit a loud noise every time you fire it? | Gases and sonic boom. Escaping gasses from a gunshot are the first bang you hear. This is why suppressors are effective for safe hearing. They have chambers which capture the gasses and release them more slowly. But supressors don't work like Hollywood has you believe. You will still hear a supressed gunshot from far a... |
at what point does a carrier of common infectious illnesses (i.e. cold/flu) stop being contagious? | If you are a carrier of a disease, you will hold on to that disease for years, if not forever. If you are a carrier of something deadly like Typhoid, that's bad for everyone around you, because you will end up killing people by giving them the disease. With the cold/flu however, symptoms are usually mild and rarely res... |
Why are stars and planets named so strangely? | First, there are tons of stars outside our solar system that have "normal" names. They tend to be in Latin or Greek but that's because of tradition. Take a look at this list: _URL_0_ But, I think you're referring to planets like Kepler-452b. The main reason we don't give flowery names to all the stars and planets we di... |
I can purposely make my vision blurry. How do I do that? | Very related ELI5: Can some people not do this? I was under the assumption everyone can.It's voluntary accommodation in your eye. The muscles on either side of the lens in your eyes usually automatically adjust so that the light coming from the object you're viewing focuses on the retina. You are purposefully adjusting... |
What's the deal with Houses at the unis in the US? | No. [Fraternities and sororities] are not just living quarters, but invitation-only social organizations. Someone who lives in a dorm may or may not run in the same social circles as other people in the dorm. But in a fraternity/sorority, the others in the same house make up a very large part of that person's social ci... |
Why do rich people working for companies (eg Steve Jobs) request to be paid low amounts like $1 instead of just working for free? | The biggest reason is likely to have the CEO considered an employee as opposed to a volunteer or unpaid staff; this has big implications for the benefits and rights that the employee receives. For example, most unpaid staff are ineligible for benefits ). And as most other commentators have stated, most CEO compensation... |
Why is it so difficult to use numbers fluently in another language? | Because not all languages treat numbers the same way. you have to translate the number "ninety" over to "Níutíu [is][nine tens]" "Halv-Fems [dan] [Half Fifths]" "quatre vingt dix [Fra] [four twenty ten]" e.t.c. each language has new words or even new systems of counting for each number, and you'll have to learn those w... |
What causes the feeling of Déjà-Vu? | Sometimes something *really has* happened before. Like this question! :-) 1. [ELI5: What happens when we experience déjà vu? ]1. [ELI5: Why do I sometimes experience Déjà Vu? ]1. [ELI5: What is deja vu and how does it work? ]1. [ELI5: Why do we sometimes feel Déjà Vu's ]1. [ELI5: How exactly does Deja Vu happen, and is... |
How come people say "drinking the Kool-aid"when referring to cults? | The Jonestown Mass "Suicide" where over 900 members of the Peoples Temple drank cyanide laced kool-aid. I take the term to represent how people involved in cults are willing to do anything and believe everything the leaders tell them. Jim Jones told the members to drink to kool-aid and nearly 1000 people drank the kool... |
Why can't the body differentiate from a real threat vs second-hand anxiety symptoms? | We are social and empathetic creatures. We may not be experiencing it for ourselves, but our brain knows that it would be a bad idea so it triggers an anxious response in most people so they won't want to do it. It doesn't work all the time, obviously, and there's no way for your primitive instincts to know about the s... |
What's the difference between centrifical and centrifugal force? Which is the "fake" one? | Neither one is "fake" however one is "*fictitious*". But fictitious doesn't mean "not real." The centrifugal force is the fictitious one. When you have circular motion, there must be a force pointing inwards, since the object is always accelerating towards the center of the circle. That is the centri**petal** force, an... |
How can Soccer players slide on the pitch after they score and not feel pain on their knees? | Adrenaline. Same way you can get hit in a fight and not feel the pain as much. You're just hyped as fuck to have scored so the pain isn't really noticeable", 'Also, real grass, which almost all professional soccer is played on, does not hurt too badly even if slightly wet.It's a combination of adrenaline and the sheer ... |
Why aren't there gas caps on both sides of a car? | Because it's a waste of money, weight, and space, and for what? Do you actually need it? Adding gas caps requires two filler necks, two gas caps, two gas doors, two gas cap locks and sensors, it adds a failure point to the evap system, it requires extra cutouts in the body, and typically removes possible storage or com... |
The halting problem and universal Turing machine. | [Proof that the halting problem cannot be solved written as a children's poem.]", 'Here's an oversimplified, only mostly accurate answer. You want to tell if a given problem with halt. But, you don't want to go on trying this forever. So instead, you decide the way to check if a problem will halt is to run it on anothe... |
What key features define a cloud? | 'The cloud' is more of a marketing term than a technical term. I'd argue that what makes a cloud a cloud is that it uses a distributed computing network, where the actual physical location where a file is saved or a computation is made is varying greatly, irrelevant to the user and often even unknown. Technically it's ... |
Have plants evolved to become more human dependent? | Those plants only existed in parts of the world where they received the necessary water. The vast assortment of beautiful plants people own are not local, they come from across the world, the issue is that they haven't adopted to the new placement . People don't want to be limited to just the plants that can naturally ... |
Why does highway/motorway traffic come toba stop without an accident? | In my city, we have a freeway situation where traffic stops around two in the afternoon and continues through rush hour. Traffic flows ahead of it, and traffic flows after it, but once it starts, it is self-perpetuating. So, how does it start? Finally figured it out. Freeway is three lanes going into the stop region, b... |
the war in Iraq and Afghanistan | We aren't in Iraq anymore. Coalition forces withdrew not long ago, at the request of the Iraqi government no less. We had stayed to keep stability and wait while the Iraqi government was established. We requested an extension of our occupation, and they denied it . As you can see, our withdrawal didn't end happily, as ... |
How do very public scammers like the long island medium get away with it? | Criminal: A recent Supreme Court 1st Amendment case called US v Alvarez explains why it isn't criminal quite thoroughly. _URL_0_ Even untruthful speech is protected from government controls unless the government has a good reason to regulate it. In Alvarez, the Court stuck down a law that made it a crime to lie about h... |
How does one layer of uncooked pastry become multiple layers of flaky pastry when baked? | It's not one layer of pastry. It's actually many layers of pastry. They take a piece of dough, roll it out, add a layer of butter, fold it in half or thirds, roll it out again. Repeat this many times. Eventually you have many layers each separated by a bit of butter. When the pastry is cooked, the water in the butter t... |
What does it mean to win a year's worth of say, for example, baked beans? how much do I get? are there any hidden costs? | They generally limit it some way. I know someone that got a years worth of pizza. It was something like 1 medium 2 topping and bread sticks every week for 52 weeks1. there is always fine print. They will define what "year's supply" means - something like 5 cans a week, but that is a made up example. 2. there are tax im... |
When you get something small in your eye, and then get rid of it by blinking, where does it go? | It's carried away with your tears, to the corners of your eyes and onto your face. That's one of the reasons we have tears, to help remove debris from our eyes. |
Why is black text on white background easier to read than white text on black? | This sounds like a question about usage of program. For example which programming IDE theme is the best for me. For answer it is good to go right to the source and ask the programmers. [link to user exchange] Generally the idea is, use what works for you. Black characters on white background are easier to read, because... |
Why is the 5-17 age group so valuable to advertisers versus other age groups? | Becaus for most if them their frontal lobes aren’t developed yet and are very easily molded by repetition and hype. Adults have the ability and experience to see the BS in ads.Because they are easier to manipulate and are really good a whining. Ask any parent about the horror of McDonald's offering some cheap plastic t... |
Why do the phrases "Cut it out!" and "Knock it off!" mean stop? What is their origin? | Etymology online says knock it off is a request given to an auctioneer to end bidding . While the entry puts the first usage as 1880, the same entry cites a US Senate record of 1834. _URL_0_It's actually a translation from the common discourse of the time during early catholic censorship spawning from the council of Tr... |
Why does almost everyone agree that sweet tastes good? | Your body has evolved to love sugars and fats because they're quick, easy energy. If you were starving to death and had the option between a bar of chocolate and a bunch of kale, the chocolate is the thing that would keep you moving, because you'd need those sweet, sweet calories. So we've evolved a taste for sweet foo... |
How does our brain evaluate jealously when witnessing other people's actions? | If I get the gist of what you're saying, then basically if something that shouldn't happen, and you don't want to happen, actually does happen, then that's the feeling you will experience, jealousy and betrayal seem to be more complex of emotions and can be broken down into simple emotions, if your partner cheats on yo... |
How was it that in the United States, most people were able to afford mortgages, car payments, health insurance, food, etc. without a college education before? | In the 50s and 60s the world was decimated by WWII and we were the domanant manufacturing superpower. Blue collar work was valued and unions were strong. Women didn't work as much. Fast forward to the present. Jobs require more sophistication. Manufacturing is done for cheap in a heavily comoditized fassion. The us has... |
Why cracking knuckles has a cooldown timer. | The crashing sound is a result of dissolved gasses in your cartilage escaping. Since these gasses have already escaped, and they're was no time for more to dissolve, it results in a "cooldown" period.Basically think of your joints as being full of Soda. Now soda is not just liquid, there are also gasses dissolved in. W... |
what happens if you or your child are uninsured and you get diagnosed with something really bad like aggressive cancer? | You get whatever treatments are considered non-experimental, and you go into debt beyond your wildest nightmaresYou rack up tons of bills and you and possibly your family declare bankruptcy. The hospital writes it off and sort of recoups some money by charging everyone else more. Your families credit is ruined. Etc .I ... |
why the insides of my cheek goes all wrinkly when I keep a lollipop there for long periods of time? | It's the same reason why your fingers get wrinkly when you stay in the bath too long. Osmosis. Your body tries to balance itself all the time. The lollipop is a bunch of concentrated salts and sugars with little water. The inside of your cheek is a lot of water with little salts and sugars. Somethings can pass through ... |
Why can't homeless people get on government assistance like food stamps and section 8 housing, aren't they the people that REALLY need those programs? | As homeless housing programs have shown, it's in everybody's best interests to give the homeless housing with no strings attached. _URL_0_ All homeless housing programs reduced homlessness signifigantly and reduced the cost to the state. These programs are not offered to the homeless because of politics. Some people fi... |
why in English can one say "I used to think so" why can the word used be applied in this way? | Another definition of the verb \'used\' is "describing an action or state of affairs that was done repeatedly or existed for a period in the past" For example "that house used to be an empty lot" It's only used in the past tense in this way. |
how the Astros moving divisions is going to mess around the wild card situation. | It won't? There are a few different weird things at play. MLB is planning to change the postseason for 2012. Five teams from each league would make the postseason, the three division winners and two wildcard teams. The two wildcard teams would play a one game play off. The winner would then be the 4th team in the tradi... |
How certain websites get access to obscure weird extention names (_URL_3_ isn't _URL_1_, _URL_2_ isn't _URL_0_...?) | _URL_0_ -.fm is Micronesia _URL_1_ -.ws is Samoa Lots of small countries make a lot of money selling domain names to foreign corporations.So the internet has a number of extension names, basically it has a few big ones - com, net org - which anybody can register and which doesn't say anything about where the business i... |
Why do cops sometimes give out warnings rather than tickets, and why is it legal to do so? | Cops aren't required to arrest everyone for every minor violation of the law. They're allowed to use their personal judgement for minor infractions, especially when there is no victim or material damage . The purpose of the police is to create an ordered society & keep people safe, not throw people in jail. Jail is a *... |
Why can a baker keep their breads out to exposed air and still be 'fresh' where I take it home and leave it out the bag for an hour and it's rock hard? | I worked in a bread bakery for 6+ years and have no idea what you're talking about. Our bread would be baked from approx. midnight until 8 am or so and a loaf that came out at 2 in the morning would still be tasty at 6pm. I 've never seen a loaf get "rock hard"; if anything they tend to get softer at first. We donated ... |
Why do some blisters fill with fluid? | The fluid that fills in a blister is your body’s way of making a padded bandaid. Say you get a burn, fills with fluid, the outer layer of skin is dead skin, but the skin underneath is the damaged skin from the burn. So the fluid is the body’s way of protecting the damaged skin until it heals. That’s why doctors tell yo... |
What makes people shout when they are angry? | Anger is stress. Stress tends to trigger your "fight or flight" instinct. Verbal fighting, instinctively, is roaring. So, we "roar" to gain/show dominance over a threat. |
How can water produced by different brand taste difference when they are in essecen, all water? | water can have varying quantities of other chemicals and minerals, depending on how and where it was processed/bottled. It's not pure H2O. That would be distilled water. |
Why do you start imaginary arguments while in the shower? | Do you start imaginary arguments with imaginary people? Or do you re-imagine real arguments with real people? Or something else? |
How do bagged cereal companies not get sued? | A patent only lasts about 20 years in most cases. So it is perfectly fine to make the exact same product. Thus, it is only the trademark laws that you have to get around. If you can argue that a person wouldn’t confuse your Big Fatty’s sugared broccoli squares with Nestle’s sugared broccoli squares, then you are all go... |
Why do men get itchy balls? | Many reasons really. Sweat, dry skin, poor hygiene, allergies, insect bites, dust, hairNoticed this thread in the middle of a scratchAs a guy I can say that I do not believe that my balls itch more than any other spot on my body. Sometimes I got an itch on my balls sometimes I get an itch on my back. Not really sure th... |
Why couldn't Yoda, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Mace, Anakin or any of the rest of Jedi Council sense that Senator Palpatine was a Sith Lord? | Because the Sith Lord has the ability to cloud their vision. They only knew that "something was wrong"Palpatine, like many other powerful Sith Lords, not only was able to reduce his connection to the Force's "footprint" but he, uniquely I believe, was able to dampen the connection to the Force the Jedi had near him. In... |
What is the biology behind being able to raise one eyebrow but not the other? | you can practice and train yourself to control the other eyebrow. if you lift your weak brow with your fingers, practice raising and lowering the muscles for a couple minutes every day using your fingers as a guide- eventually you will be able to do it without your fingers. keep using your dominate eyebrow too or else ... |
Why does Youtube have to reload the whole video even if I just go back 1 second? | It used to not do that. Something changed in the coding at some point to where it does. The whole video used to buffer at once also, instead of only a certain amount past the current position marker. I remember buffering entire videos when I was on a 1 Mbps or slower connection. The best guess I have is that it reduces... |
Why do the years seem like they are getting shorter as I get older? | When I was young, I thought it was because the amount of time passed would be a relatively shorter amount of time, compared to the amount of time I've already lived. When I'm 10, one year is 1/10th of my life. When I'm 50, one year is 1/50th of my life. Now that I'm older, I've realized it's because my life is monotono... |
India's new currency crisis. | India has scrapped the 500 & 1,000 note rupee. They were the largest bank notes in circulation. They did it with no warning. The reasons, they wanted to crack down on corruption, counterfeiting, money laundering, and tax evasion. Those bank notes were held many Indians. The government gave them until the end of the yea... |
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 swirlUnless it w... |
Why doctors work such long shifts? | It depends on the practice or business model. In some fields, like Emergency Medicine, shift work is the norm. In some large medical practices , physicians work shift work as well. But the trade off is mainly two-fold: 1. The physician often has to hand off the care of one patient to another physician. This is seen as ... |
Why are there only 3 blades on wind turbines? Wouldn't they be able to capture more wind energy if there more blades on each turbine? | Adding more mass will make it harder for the wind to get the turbine up to speed . Also, adding more surface area increases wind resistanceWind turbines are very large to be able to capture more wind and have a greater mechanical advantage. With the long lever arms, it is easier for the wind to turn the giant wheel . T... |
Why do places like Domino's and Pizza Hut have really high pricing yet always offer codes that give you 50% off etc | Incentivizing the consumer. A person who gets email coupons or offers is probably someone who has used the service in the past, and is probably going to use it in the future. Say they are trying to decide between dominos and pizza hut, and they check the email and see a half off coupon from pizza hut well then the deci... |
Why are there still US military bases in Europe? | Because there's not a huge amount of incentive to remove them. The host countries don't at all mind the money flowing into their economy from the US troops and associated other visitors, the US government maintains stronger ties to that country, the miliitaries get a lot of practice in working closely together etc. Ger... |
How do whales not suffer from the bends? | Some articles I'm finding on the subject suggest that they do have such adaptations. Very interesting stuff. First off, nitrogen absorption is much more of a problem for SCUBA divers than for freedivers. If you're not continuing to breathe at depth, it's much less of a problem; you need to be talking the kind of heavy ... |
why are prices always a cent cut short? Like "5.99" "299.99"? | Two reasons. 1) people don't really pay attention to the cents so if the dollar is lower the price looks significantly lower. 2) cents are used as code in store so x.99=full price, x.98=on sale, x.95 = clearance.It cuts down on theft by employees. Almost nobody will pay $4.99 in exact change. They will pay with a $5 bi... |
The reason why conjoined twins are born | Identical twins are when the zygote, or super early baby, splits in two. So instead of one baby, you have two identical babies that develop separately . Conjoined twins occur when this split happens to late and cannot be fully completed so some parts remain joined |
What's the real difference between bottled water and tap water? | Water is indeed not just water. I don't know much about the regulations in other countries, but here in The Netherlands bottled water is of a lower quality than tap water. Before water comes out of the faucet it'll get 'cleaned'. They remove a lot of particles in different ways. The water used for tap water can be from... |
How did sushi chefs originally figure out which part of the blowfish was safe to eat? | No, it doesn't work like the simpsons, "poison, poison, poison, tasty feesh". Only a very small part of the fish is poisonous, namely the eyes and liver. Avoid that, and you're fine. The poison is very fast acting. If it is in your mouth, you know it immediately because you can't feel your lips or your tongue. In fact,... |
How do you clean up the water in a situation like West Virginia? | Clean up the spill. Let the river clean itself for a while, or dredge the muck that is contaminated off the bottom and dump it in a chemical landfill. Clean the water treatment plants if needed, or run water through them until no more hazardous level of contaminant remains. Run the taps, the fire hydrants, the hoses, e... |
Why do college/university professors feel the need to "dumb down" the information? (X-post from r/askreddit) | It depends on the school the more rigorous the college the more likely you cover the whole picture of an issue. You get what you pay for both in cost and the difficulty of getting in. If I was teaching at Failreject school number 5 I'd be dumbing it down. If I was teaching at an Ivy League I'd be delving into the compl... |
What happened that all the subs shutdown? | A key organizer/moderator of the AMA subreddit named Victoria was terminated from her position with little to no explanation from the higher-ups. She made sure all of the AMAs were set up and went smoothly. The backlash is twofold: first, people are extremely frustrated that Victoria is gone. They're mad that there's n... |
If all dogs are descendants of wolves, then how are there so many other breeds of dog? | Let's say you're a hunter. You have a pair of generic dogs that you use as guard dogs and companions, but you'd really love it if your dogs were more intimidating, stronger, and better at hunting so they could help you earn a living. So when your dogs have puppies, you pay close attention and see which one is the stron... |
If HCl is released from cells in the stomach, how do the cells remain safe from the acidity? | The stomach's epithelium is protected by its own coating cells which produce bicarbonate, a buffer substance that neutralizes the liquid acid and also attracts water so that the acid's effect is diminished. |
Why do computer games have to be programmed separately for Windows and Mac? | You know those books at the back of your kindergarten class? Well, they're different from the books at the back of the kindergarten class next door! And you have to base what you read on the books that your class contains, right? Well so do developers! Think of your class as a Mac machine and the class next door as a W... |
Why do noise cancelling headphones make me feel sick? | So the thing with noise cancelling is that what you hear is not 'silence'. They use anti-noise to cancel out unwanted noise: they measure phase and amplitude of the noise to cancel, and send out an anti-noise with the same amplitude but inverted phase, and the result of this is that you hear 'nothing'. But this only ca... |
Why is it hard to snap out of deep thinking | Serious comment and I’m not trying to make fun of you. You might actually have ADD. You’re basically describing itI agree with /u/homebrew311evolver, you might have ADD. I say this because I have ADD and you are describing me. |
Why do we feel hot in 90 degree weather if our bodies regulate temperature at 98.6? | Because our bodies are at 98.6F. Our bodies are constantly producing heat and have to dump extra heat into the air around us. The warmer that air is the harder it is to dump extra heat. We do so most efficiently at around 70F. As things get warmer we need assistance to cool so sweat starting at around 80F. The closer w... |
What does nicotine do to your body to make you feel the way it does | So nerves in your body are activates by chemicals binding to certain proteins called "receptors". There is an entire class of receptors called "nicotinic" receptors, named so because nicotine binds to these receptors. That is not to say that nicotine is used in your body to "activate" these receptors, it's just that ni... |
Why do our ears 'pop' when flying or driving at high altitudes? | [This is what your ears look like internally] Now, as you can see, the ear drum completely blocks the inside of your ear from the outside of your ear. That means that the air inside is isolated from the air outside. Now, that would be a problem if you got on a plane or drove to high altitudes, because the high pressure... |
What actually happened with Freddy Gray? | The current top answer is a bit opinion-heavy for an ELI5 and is taking assumed hearsay as fact. What is known is that Freddy Gray was arrested for cocaine distribution and died while in police custody. That is currently ALL that is known. There is hearsay including multiple fractures or breaks in his spine and possibl... |
Can a child be conditioned to think insects are the cutest thing ever and be instinctively afraid of kittens? | When studying ethics in psychology at uni I read about "Little Albert". The short answer to your question is yes, a child can learn a phobia of something not usually thought of as phobia-material. _URL_0_ In short, they used the techniques of Pavlov with classical and operant conditioning, only Pavlov famously used it ... |
Why do I occasionally get solid gummy-like pieces of semen during ejaculation? | The most common causes of gel-like clumps and globules in semen are dehydration, poor diet, and low testosterone. In some cases gel may also be related to protein coagulation, particularly if a man hasn’t ejaculated in a while or doesn’t have a regular pattern of consistent discharge. In rarer cases it can be a sign of... |
What is Publishers Clearing House and how can they afford to gift people $10,000 a month for life? | PCH is like the original spam warehouse. When you enter, they sell your info to a TON of companies, traditionally magazine and periodical publishers- hence publisher's clearing house. So they make money off that. And how can they afford it? They made $750 million in 2012, and as they put it on their FAQ: "PCH SuperPriz... |
Where did light get the energy to move as quickly as it does? | It has no mass. Things travel by default at the speed of light, you essentially have to give it mass to slow it down.Particles have mass because they interact with the Higgs field. Photons do not interact with the Higgs field, therefore they do not have mass. The Higgs field is usually described like 'swimming through ... |
How does my body let out a fart and not also all my stools, even when watery? | Psh, speak for yourself. If mine is "watery" it's like an air powered paint grenadeI would assume it involves pressure differences. Gas has a higher pressure than liquid. The air outside of your butt has a lower pressure than the gas in your butt. The gas in your butt most likely collects between your sphincter and the... |
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