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ELI5: When they say that human body is made of 73% water, does they mean actual "H2O" aka water, or just liquid in general? | 275 | They mean actual water. Think of soda; it's predominantly water, right? However, it's got plenty of stuff dissolved in it.
Cells are (and this is simplifying a lot) basically water balloons filled with soda. You've got a membrane which keeps all of the soda in. This soda is mostly water with the proteins and stuff you... | 387 | |
[MCU] Who does Thor actually prefer, Banner or Hulk? | On Sakaar Thor tries to befriend each of them by trash talking the other, but neither seem very persuaded. But say Thor had a Gun~~gnir~~ to his head and was forced to give an honest answer, who does he like better? | 45 | I'd say it's right down the middle.
Hulk tends to hit him and is a huge green jerk, but they've also taken joy in battle together several times, which is a huge thing for Thor. And Thor gives as good as he gets, so Hulk is a great sparring partner when no other Asgardians are around.
Banner is physically weak and n... | 72 |
Why aren't there any logical atomists around anymore? | This is something that struck me recently, but I have no idea why it's true. If you ask me to name any logical atomists, I would have to start naming people from a hundred years ago (Russell, early Wittgenstein, arguably Moore etc.). But I could name you several German idealists just in my department.
Now that I ... | 50 | One issue was the color exclusion problem (or any other synthetic inconsistency). For instance, “a is red all over” and “a is blue all over” are both logically atomic sentences. However, they both cannot be true at the same time, and the falsity of one can seemingly be inferred from the other. (And the relationship isn... | 31 |
CMV: Abrahamic Religions are generally evil | Most of the time I can't stop myself from feeling/believing that, even though I strongly want to believe otherwise.
I strongly believe in mankind and I believe that people are generally good. I also believe that ideas by themselves can't be evil. It's what we do with them and how we take them, is what makes them good ... | 43 | > Yet again, why do those religions happen to be the ideology used the most in those cases?
This requires just two points:
1. Most (or at least close to half) of the world belongs to an Abrahamic religion.
2. People generally feel the need to justify how their actions match their religion, and people are *really... | 24 |
ELI5: Do people actually have "bad circulation" when their extremities are susceptible to being cold or is there another explanation? | 472 | Depends.
Individuals with bad circulation really do have numbness or coldness in the extremities faster than people with healthy circulation.
The reason is pretty straightforward. Your blood (and veins) act like a radiator system. They're brought to the same temperature as the surrounding area, and then sent off to... | 127 | |
Are forests and jungles growing more rapidly now that there is an increase of CO2 in the air? | 105 | In photosynthesis there are 3 metabolic pathways for carbon fixation from CO2. In forests and jungles we are concerned with the C3 and C4 pathway (the CAM pathway is only found in arid plants). These pathways impact how a plant responds to elevated CO2 levels.
In the C3 path oxygen competes with CO2 in the presence of... | 43 | |
ELI5: Why is it that pretty much no matter what goes into it, garbage always ends up smelling the same "garbage" smell? | Is there a specific reason for this? Sometimes I'll have a lot of potato peels or cardboard from TV dinners, sometimes just an empty milk carton and some banana peels, but no matter what, once that bin is almost full, it always has that same pungent garbage smell. Why doesn't garbage smell specifically like the things ... | 64 | When you smell garbage you're not smelling banana peels or potato, you're smelling the rotting remains of those things.
In general the products (gasses, etc) of rotting are the same, no matter what leads to it.
Garbage made up of *clean* plastic, glass and dry paper is likely not to smell at all. | 29 |
[Mortal Engines] What is daily life like? | Assuming I'm a normal human living on one of the "Mortal Engines" like London. What will I do as a daily routine. | 17 | Work to keep the city running, same as any industrial-era citizen. Only differences are in the nature of the work (built around preying on other cities) and the decor. At the higher levels, "city planning" becomes less of an exercise in things like traffic control and more in route planning and risk management. Oh, and... | 14 |
ELI5: Why are prisoners who go on hunger strikes force fed and not left to die? | 16 | Prisons really dont want their inmates dying en masse. Especially if they're doing it for a reasonable cause (mistreatment, corruption in guards etc), you're just turning them in martyrs by letting them die. The best course of action to keep as much attention away from the jail as possible is the force feeding method. ... | 18 | |
ELI5: Where did American Chinese food come from and why is it so drastically different from traditional Chinese food? | Every other type of food bares some similarities, Chinese food does not. | 39 | it came from California. where chinese immigrants sought to sell food to the American palate. real chinese food didn't appeal to Americans. so things like chop suey and egg foo young and beef brocolli and crab rangoons and fortune cookies were born. | 46 |
Do the ants I'm flicking off of my backyard table feel pain? | 492 | No, they do not feel pain. Whilst invertebrates do possess nociceptive ability (the detection of noxious stimuli), they do not experience pain as we, mammals, do. Pain is a multifactorial experience in response to potential or actual tissue damage which has a sensory and affective components. This relies on the integra... | 302 | |
Unions and shareholders | What prevents unions (or other groups of employees) from pooling resources in order to buy enough stock to make board members vote to increase wages and other labor requests? | 74 | >What prevents unions (or other groups of employees) from pooling resources in order to buy enough stock to make board members vote to increase wages and other labor requests?
You woukd need to own a lot of of the voting shares which could involve needing to purchase a huge proportion of the company.
If you're uni... | 95 |
[WH40K/Marvel] Would the God Emperor of Mankind be deemed worthy enough to wield Mjöllnir? | If not, I don't see who else would be! | 16 | Yes. The Emperor is the embodiment of Humanity, all that is good in the entire galaxy and universe. He is literally against everything that Mjolnir is against - Chaos, death, destruction, wrong doing. He did not wish for the Imperium that exists now, he aimed to create a paradise of Humanity where Chaos was dead. I... | 48 |
Why does our brains tend to recall bad memories and make us in a bad mood rather than recall good memories and make us in a good mood more often? | 11,670 | This phenomenon called “*Negativity Bias*” has an evolutionary hypothesis behind it: Negative experiences and traumas often carry a much higher survival cost (like death) that typicially far outwieghs the potential benefits we might gain from positive experiences. And so our brains, the hypothesis goes, are wired to b... | 5,312 | |
Why don't waterfalls get worn down to gradual inclines? | 231 | Waterfalls form where a layer of hard rock lies on top of a layer of soft rock. The soft rock below erodes faster, creating a steep drop, sheltered by a ledge of hard rock above. Eventually, the soft rock starts to erode beneath the hard rock, creating an overhang, which breaks off when it gets too long, creating a new... | 273 | |
Where does new wealth come from? | I've been reading "The Commanding Heights" by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw which is really my attempt at learning anything about anything in economics. Anyway, while I was reading it and considering the keynesian vs hayek arguments and the author said something about how to have to generate wealth before you can... | 27 | Human labor.
People make stuff and provide services. That's wealth.
Imagine two guys on an island who happen to have one $100 bill, call them Amos and Bill. Amos, who started with the $100 bill pays Bill to build him a shelter. Bill builds a shelter for himself too and pays Amos to build a bed. Amos builds his own be... | 44 |
ELI5: Why doesn't the windchill affect my thermometer? | My friend and I were talking about this yesterday and again this morning. It's -31oC with a -15oC Windchill. Why wouldn't the windchill change the temperature in a vehicle thermometer or on a house or somewhere that it would be in the wind? | 195 | Wind chill is a made up number; it has nothing to do with the actual temperature. It indicates (sort of) what it would feel like to stand in a room with non-moving air at a given temperature. So if it's 30 out and there's a 20 knot wind blowing, your body would lose heat as though it was 20 out and there was no wind ... | 208 |
Since Temperature is a measurement of how fast molecules vibrate, would it be possible to heat molecules to a point where their vibration approaches the speed of light? | This may be a stupid question or passed on a lot of false assumptions. But if the high the temperature of of an object the higher the rate of molecular vibration, could theoretically something be heated to a point where its molecules vibrate at a rate approaching C? Would this have implications with time dilation? | 41 | Well it's not just the vibration, it's the rotational and translational kinetic energy, and in fact _all_ forms of energy in a solid contribute to their temperature, but it doesn't really matter to the question.
Anyway, while there's nothing stopping you from adding more energy, and more vibrational energy does mean f... | 15 |
[Predator/Lord of the Rings] My dropship just discovered this world the locals call Middle Earth. What's the best site for hunting here? | 89 | The mines of Moria, go deep you'll find some good prey down there. Since you stated Lord of Rings I'll assume around the time of the book. But if you hit it earlier around the time of Silmarilion you are in for a real treat. | 97 | |
I don't see what's particularly wrong with bestiality. CMV. | To clarify, I am not in the least bit attracted to animals. I am probably just as turned off by the idea of people engaging in sexual activity with animals as the next guy. However, I can not logically justify society's disdain for those who are attracted and have sex with animals, when humans slaughter millions of ani... | 41 | Animals can't consent therefore bestiality is always rape. Even if you aren't emotionally sensitive to rape doesn't change the fact that many people are
Rape is a societal problem but cannibalism isn't. So there are societal consequences to indicating that you are indifferent to rape through bestiality but nobody in m... | 20 |
[LOTR] What's the tentacle creature that attacks the group outside the Mines Of Moria? | 53 | No idea. Gandalf mentions "the world is gnawed by nameless
things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he." It is *possibly* one of those come to the surface, but really we just know very little about the Watcher. | 61 | |
What happens if an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction were to continue uninterrupted? Specifically in the examples of criticality accidents. | For example, in Louis Slotin's criticality accident. Viewers present saw a flash of blue light and Slotin disassembled the experiment.
What would happen if say Slotin ran away instead of disassembling it? | 18 | When your mass goes supercritical, its neutron flux will multiply continuously until something returns it to subcritical.
In a nuclear power reactor, the fuel heating up (doppler effect) initially returns the fuel to a critical condition for smaller excursions or reactor startup. Moderator/core heatup and/or voiding i... | 10 |
Beginner readings on how individualism and the concept of self is informed and nurtured by capitalism? | Been quite interested in this lately. Personally I've been torn between being a cog in the machine and following the rule book of work to afford a happiness and peace outside of work, and realizing that my whole narrative of self/selfhood and the process self-actualization are actually indoctrinates that serve the capi... | 21 | It's worth reading Bell's *The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism* to understand a highly influential framing of this issue, and Taylor's *Sources of the Self* and *Modern Social Imaginaries* for a take on these kinds of developments from a very different perspective. | 12 |
[My Hero Academia] All Might tells Midoriya he can't be a hero without a Quirk, but some time later the Support Class gets introduced. | Even without a Quirk, couldn't Izuku, an expert on heros, try for the Support Class and become an Iron Man -style hero? Did this not cross his mind at all? | 41 | The point of the Support Class is to build gadgets to enhance others' quirks. Izuku could have built gadgets for himself and become an Iron Man-style hero, but it would have been strictly less effective than having a hero with Iron Man armor, a quirk, and who can spend all their time practicing their quirk instead of b... | 53 |
[Death Note] What rule stopped Light from making an investigator kill L? | What rule stopped Light from writing one of the investigators names into the Death Note and making his method of death "Murders L and commits suicide" or "blows himself up at taskforce HQ at 11:30am" or something to that effect?
Is there a rule that only the person named in the note is allowed to die in the process? | 29 | >Is there a rule that only the person named in the note is allowed to die in the process?
Exactly.If the death stated in the DN causes the death of another person the former just dies of a heart attack | 43 |
[ELI5] What the hell is VEVO and why does it "own" all of the music industry on YouTube? | 848 | VEVO is basically the Hulu of music videos. Music publishers don't like when music videos are shared for free on YouTube, because it means someone else is earning tons of ad revenue off of their content. VEVO solves this problem by signing contracts with various music publishers, so that the publishers get a cut of the... | 600 | |
If someone has COVID-19 but is asymptomatic then doesn’t that mean that their immune system isn’t fighting to get rid of the virus? And if that’s the case how do they ever get rid of it? | 3,292 | It doesn't mean that their immune system isn't fighting it. It means their immune system doesn't need to use everything in its arsenal to fight it. The body is winning without it all the tools at its disposal.
Think of it this way does the military always throw every single weapon in to combat? Would say a small insur... | 3,401 | |
Has Global Poverty been... increasing? | There's this [article](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/07/5-myths-about-global-poverty) from currentaffairs.org which is claiming that:
\> B*ut when we look at absolute numbers, the news gets worse. Remember when Arthur Brooks touted free markets for lifting “over 2 billion people” out of poverty? Well, under t... | 38 | The article is making a slightly different claim than what the World Bank and co are making.
>But when we look at absolute numbers, the news gets worse. Remember when Arthur Brooks touted free markets for lifting “over 2 billion people” out of poverty? Well, under the $7.40/day threshold, it turns out that nearly 1... | 53 |
Am I Being Realistic in My Reasons for Pursing a PhD? | I am a librarian in the U.S. with a Masters of Library and Info Science. I love everything about librarianship, and with ten years of experience in the field, I am thinking seriously about pursuing my PhD. I want to pursue it in library science (technically communications and information science with a focus on librar... | 161 | Great reasons, clearly it means a lot to you. The reality of doing a PhD will not be as rosy since it's a long grueling process and you won't make much money. But if you enjoy digging into unexplored topics and writing about your findings you'll fare just fine. | 150 |
[Harry Potter/Star Trek] If we assume that Wizards remained clandestine even into the 24th century how might they and their culture have changed over time to remain so? | 84 | [](/vsspace) Contrary to popular belief, wizards *do* adapt to Muggle technology; they simply advance at a multi-decades lag. For instance, there were radios at Hogwarts and wizarding households in the 1990s, even though most wizards would have been clueless if faced with a computer.
So a few decades after a technolog... | 75 | |
ELI5 How does a flash bang work? | 15 | Sensory overload. Creates a very bright light to temporarily blind people, and a loud bang that gives tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and disables a person's ability to both see and hear opponents, which totally disorientates them until they're recovered. | 10 | |
[Pokemon] What is the fallout of a ten year old becoming the greatest pokemon trainer in the region? | What are the political ramifications? What is the impact on the pokemon training 'sport'? Etc | 39 | Nothing.
It's made clear Ash/Red isn't the first to do it. There aren't any benefits to doing so outside of bragging rights and maybe a chapter in future history books.
Think of it this way, IRL the youngest person to graduate from college was Michael Kearney at 8 years old. It made headlines across the globe but it ... | 49 |
ELI5: Why did Katyusha rockets and Nebelwerfers make a wailing sound but modern rocket artillery does not? | A BM 21 Grad basically just sounds like a roar, not the wailing that was so notorious for the Katyusha rocket launcher
Compare this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bWt81vhIyY
With this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdHz01kUZfs
Is it the rails? | 66 | That's a great question.
A century ago, military planners thought the sounds from Katusha rockets or Nazi dive bomber bombs was intimidating and demoralizing to the enemy....So things were added to bombs and rockets that made screaming sounds.
In actuality it gives away the position of the attacker but at that point ... | 91 |
[Pokemon] What even is Normal type? | It is vaguely defined as a non-elemental type, but why is Mega Punch a Normal move while Dynamic Punch, Mach Punch and so on are Fighting?
How can creatures like Normal/Water Bibarel and Dragon/Normal Drampa simultaneously be non-elemental *and* elemental?
Why aren't Explosion and Hyper Beam Fire-type when those inv... | 78 | It's a type mostly defined by physical attacks and characteristics without obvious skillful or elemental caveats.
Dual-type Pokémon are, by definition, combinations of two types of Pokémon. Bibarel and Drampa can be dual Normal types by combining some aspects of both types, but not all of them. For instance, they can... | 87 |
Can Moons Have Rings? | 25 | If they can, they'd be very short lived. Rings require a very stable orbit, but with moons, the gravitational effect of the planet is stronger on one side of the moon than the other. This will distort the ring orbit, and without the stability, the debris that makes up the ring will either crash into the moon or be pu... | 23 | |
CMV: The electoral college is undemocratic in the sense that certain citizens votes are "worth" more than others depending on what state they live in. | Unless I misunderstand, an individual New Yorker's vote is worth less than the vote of someone living in North Dakota because of electoral vote distribution for the state. Even though the state of New York (31) gets more votes than North Dakota (3), the individual Dakotan has more influence over what the state decides ... | 398 | First I'd like to address that winning a state means winning all the electoral votes from that state. The electoral votes are up to the individual states as to how they wish to appropriate those votes. Most states have chosen a "winner takes all" model, but certainly not all of them.
Second is that no one's vote in pr... | 79 |
Does pregnancy really last a set amount of time? For humans it's 9 months, but how much leeway is there? Does nutrition, lifestyle and environment not have influence on the duration of pregnancy? | 4,810 | There is a little leeway, but it's really constrained by biology. If the baby comes out too early, the lungs aren't developed enough to oxygenate their blood. They are often weak and can't latch onto their mom's breast and suck. They don't have much body fat, they have higher surface-area to mass ratio and have a hard ... | 5,576 | |
Are all the planets in the solar system (and others for that matter) on the same plane or simply orbiting the sun all over the place? And if so, why? | 207 | Most things in the system (not just the planets) within the Oort Cloud orbit near the same plane.
When clouds of gas collapse to form protostars, the excess material forms a disk around it. This material aggregates into planetesimals after a few million years, which then combine to form planets. So most things tend t... | 90 | |
[Star Trek] If Kirk and Scotty were able to teleport onto the Enterprise at Warp Speed... | Does that mean that people will soon be able to travel from planet to planet using just transporters? | 18 | Interplanetary teleportation is already feasible, if dangerous. The danger is in the data corruption. Pattern buffers store a lot of complex data. Data is susceptible to disruption from background radiation, solar radiation, you name it. To prevent that information from being damaged, teleportation cylinders have force... | 23 |
Why aren't there more eye colors? | 23 | Your eye color derives from the same biochemical pigment compound that gives you your skin color: melanin. Melanin is *vaguely* yellow-brown-ish when light scatters off it, which is why skin comes in colors in the yellow-brown range.
Eyes which have no pigment in them at all appear pale blue, because of how light scat... | 38 | |
Which types of taxes have the least amount of deadweight loss? | Which types of taxes have the least amount of deadweight loss?
And which of those taxes are considered to be more progressive? | 17 | Pigouvian taxes have negative deadweight loss. Taxes in markets with perfectly inelastic demand or supply have no deadweight loss
An example is land value taxes, where perfectly inelastic supply exists
Luxury taxes have a large deadweight loss because of the high elasticity of demand | 29 |
Would it be possible to 'carbonate' a beverage with a gas much heavier or lighter than air, and then when the consumer drinks it, the gas density changes their voice pich? Such as with the helium trick? | 134 | CO2 is used for fizz because it dissolves in water extremely well and mostly safe. Speed of sound in CO2 is almost 20% lower than air's, if would be noticeable if it worked.
Having gas in your stomach will only change the tone of your burps. When talking, the voice box and resonating cavities almost immediately filled... | 232 | |
ELI5: NASA announced Juno's arrival as the hardest thing they've ever done... | yet they also put men on the moon using less computing power than you can find in a modern calculator. Not to mention multiple previous exploratory missions to Jupiter. So what is it about Juno's mission that makes it the hardest?
Edit: let me clarify, I'm not asking because I doubt the claims, but because I'd like to... | 607 | Used a relatively small launch rocket so less fuel and mass to work with.
No Fuel for a nuclear RTG forced Juno to have the largest Solar panel area of any deep-space probe ever launched
Using only a single Earth gravity slingshot to Jupiter requiring more fuel than past missions. Other probes used Venus, Earth, Eart... | 451 |
[Startrek] In "First Contact" how does the crew hide the Enterprise from the Vulcans when they come to Earth? | 16 | They don't. In fact, it's well-documented in Vulcan Science History that the Vulcan contact vessel DID detect the Enterprise, and were able to correctly extrapolate what had happened. Since even at that point in history, time travel was known to be theoretically possible, the head science officer of the Vulcan contac... | 26 | |
ELI5: Do slow-growing plants, such as cacti, produce less oxygen and clean up CO2 slower than a fast-growing plant, such as grass? | 20 | Yes, all plants with a slower metabolic rate will consume less carbon-dioxide and will produce less oxygen. It should also be noted that roughly 80% of atmospheric oxygen is made from ocean algae and plankton, not land plants as is often assumed. | 14 | |
[Dragon Ball] Are Saiyans a subspecies of primate or are they just very similar? | 81 | Saiyans are an extra-terrestrial mammalian species who bear significant biological similarity to terrestrial humanoids, to the point of being able to cross-breed with them. They are a case of substantial convergent evolution most likely, however the saiyan's ancestors at the point they diverged from monkeys seem to hav... | 60 | |
What makes good code good? | Assume that you've just become part of a team that manages a large code base for an interesting and fulfilling project. What most important aspects of the way the code is written will make the code **good**? What specific things are going to make your journey a **complete breeze** in terms of reading and understanding ... | 37 | Hard question to answer.
A few things come to mind:
- easy to read and understand
- easy to change
- easy to test
How to get the above qualities in code is a matter of great debate though.
Abiding by SOLID, KISS, DRY, etc principles helps but is not by any means sufficient.
It takes experience tbh to get a feel f... | 32 |
CMV: Gender shouldn't be as debated as it is. | It seems gender debates has entered the forefront of worldwide discussion. My argument is that gender is not a complicated topic and all this debate is unnecessary.
I suspect the top debaters of the topic understand this but purposely keep it confusing for social media following and virtue signalling.
Sex is what gen... | 40 | The reason gender is debated is because many people aren't willing to accept as free flowing a definition as you are.
Some people believe that sex and gender are linked and not entirely separate. Some people believe that gender is assigned rather than subjective (that which society decides your gender is it is, rathe... | 41 |
[Harry Potter] I come from a very progressive and rich Pureblood family, and I was recently sorted into Slytherin. How am I going to be treated? | I am in my first year at Hogwarts. My family is mostly Ravenclaws, but I was sorted into Slytherin.
My family is super old nobility, and we're extremely wealthy (I once overheard my father saying that the entire Malfoy fortune was a mere single Knut compared to a quarter of our wealth, so we're likely doing alright), ... | 31 | You'll make plenty of friends, just not Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. There are more Slytherins than just those three, and Slytherins tend to be nice to each other (just not necessarily so much to "outsiders"). | 29 |
Why don’t men go bald around their beard like they do on their heads? | 139 | Because it is different types of hair, and they react differently to hormones!
The main culprit is Dihydrotestosterone, a hormone that starts being produced during/after puberty, which causes both the production of beard/body hair, and also has the side effect of causing baldness.
It obviously isn’t as simple as g... | 97 | |
ELI5: If fat is for energy storage, then why is it so hard to get rid of? | Shouldn't it be easy to deplete your fat since its an energy storage? I get so confused because people say for weight loss its actually all about diet not exercise. Wouldn't you want to basically just consistently exercise and deplete your energy (fat storage)? | 979 | Fat is an extremely effective form of energy storage. It's hard to get rid of because it stores sooo much energy. You'd have to completely stop eating for a day or two to burn off a pound of fat. The common number is a pound of fat is 3500-4000 calories, but that's complicated.
If you want to do the excercise route, ... | 1,257 |
[DC/Marvel] What if Wolverine got Nth metal grafted onto his bones instead? | Could he be stopped? | 51 | As an aside, the adamantium was molecularly bonded *into* Wolverine's bones. The bones aren't in a sheath, they're paired at a microscopic level.
That's why his bones can still function. It's technically a new material entirely, called Adamantium Beta. | 50 |
[Harry Potter] There are cats, rats, owls, and toads at Hogwarts. Why no dogs? | Hagrid has a dog, but he isn't allowed to use magic. What gives? | 30 | Dogs aren't dramatic enough, they would also get bad vibes about the blatantly evil wizards and tip off their owners to solve major issues in way to short amount of time. Although it may be because a dog decided chew on someones wand one time and caused a whole mess of shenanigans. | 30 |
CMV: I should actively ignore the latest Trump scandal. | I've been seeing feeds blow up yet again over the whole [athletes and the national anthem thing](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/723p11/why_did_bruce_maxwell_kneel_during_the_national/?utm_content=title&utm_medium=new&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=OutOfTheLoop). And low and behold it is because ... | 84 | I don't find it hard to pay attention to both the disastrous policy of the administration and the disaster of a human being that underlies them.
You would think the non-stop personal scandals, gaffes and tweetstorms would distract us from the policies, but instead they are inspiring people to pay attention to politics... | 32 |
ELI5: Why are some shows edited when shown on Netflix? | I'm watching the third Family Guy Star Wars episode, and notice that some little pieces are missing.
The first is at the beginning when Stewie and Roger are talking. Roger says there's still a hole, but no trench on the second Death Star.
In the original, Stewie reprimands and cautions him that he'd better fix it. O... | 30 | Netflix doesn't edit the content, they just get whatever they get sent. Very rarely, the version is slightly different than the original version that aired on TV. Each one would be a unique case, and almost never would the network that owns the material say why changes were made. | 30 |
CMV - I believe human civilization is doomed. *PLEASE* change my view. | Well, I hate to be a downer, guys, but I don't think humanity has another 100 years left (give or take a few years). I want to believe that things will be alright, but when you keep hearing worse and worse news about the environmental degradation of the planet (even if you are still somehow a climate-change denier, you... | 16 | Because humans are unbelievably adaptable and inventive. We have adapted ourselves and our civilization to every land environment on earth, and we're well on our way to adapted to the ocean floor, the skies, and other planets. Yes, we have caused massive changes in the climate and the world, and we need to grapple mean... | 13 |
ELI5: why does wood pop when it's on fire | 16 | Wood contains sap which contains water. As that water boils from the heat of the fire, it expands. Being confined by the wood, the expansion builds up pressure until it forces the wood apart, creating an audible pop as the wood splits. Expanding air trapped inside the wood can do the same thing. | 13 | |
ELI5: Why don’t automatic cars stall at traffic lights? | I understand they use a clutch, but how come the power is instant and there is no lag/it’s smooth to accelerate? | 23 | They don't use a clutch. Instead they use a fluid coupling called a torque converter which works kind of like one turbine spinning another with transmission fluid, or think of one fan blowing another fan to make it spin. The torque converter is designed to allow the input and output shafts to spin at different speeds, ... | 28 |
[MCU] Why did Captain America use firearms during his tenure in WWII, but doesn't use them in the present? | 194 | Mostly because in the 1940s there was a war on. There's no room for mercy or empathy in war, so Cap had to forgo his distaste for killing out of simple necessity. In the present however, he's mostly working for SHIELD. While he may deal with terrorist threats and super criminals on a daily basis, he doesn't want to kil... | 144 | |
ELI5: Why does time slow down when you're about to be in a car accident? | 18 | Under normal conditions, your brain effectively discards large amounts of sensory information - input from your eyes, ears etc. - because it's just not useful. When you're in danger, particularly something extreme like a car crash, less of this information is thrown away and you start forming short-term memories at a d... | 31 | |
ELI5: Why does hold music sound so terrible? In this age of UHD sound how come hold music sounds like it's being played through sock in a wind tunnel? | 16 | Phone lines are designed to carry voice and not music. Humans can hear sounds from 30Hz to 22kHz but can only make sound from 300Hz to 3000Hz with out voice. So you need very different sample rates for the voice and music. This means that phone lines works terribly for music as it cuts out most of the high pitches and ... | 34 | |
ELI5 what "bubbles" are (in regards to economics) | I've always had a hard time understanding what "bubbles" are. I hear people discuss housing bubbles, stock market bubbles, economic bubbles, etc. but I've never grasped a strong or definite understanding of what they are.
Can someone please help me understand? Thank you I appreciate your time! | 29 | A bubble occurs when people artificially place value on something.
For example, people thought that they could make money by buying a house, fixing it up, and selling it. People were also willing to spend a little more on their purchase, thinking that their improvements would increase the value of the house wheneve... | 16 |
ELI5: why do women tennis players scream as if they were having an orgasm when they play? is that suppose to give them more power or is it just a way to fuck with the opponent? | 15 | It's mostly derived from a tenet of many Asian martial arts. A vocal exclamation adds force to a physical action.
It happens a lot in Karate and other martial arts competitions.
A vocal "Hayyaahh!" is used to reinforce the physical action being performed. It's a psychological idea that actually works quite well. | 22 | |
ELI5 how do stores like Poundland manage to maintain a consistent price even through recession or currency changing in value? | 16 | They have a profit margin built into their items, and they are willing to decrease the profit margin in order to keep customers. They'd rather make less money on each sale, than annoy customers and stop selling anything at all.
Sometimes stores also have loss leaders. For example, supermarkets will often have very che... | 12 | |
[Terminator] How much better off would the resistance have been if Kyle Reese survived and helped Sarah Connor? | There's a lot of talk about how the future can only be delayed, but would anything have changed if Kyle survived to help guide the future? | 23 | It depends on the model of time travel you're thinking of, which changes from one movie to the next. In the first Terminator, time travel is cyclical, meaning if Kyle Reese survived he would have always survived, so anything he would contribute would have gone that way already, leaving the resistance with the same ups ... | 19 |
ELI5, why do WWE wrestlers die so young? | 17 | Many 'pro' wrestlers live a hard life on the road which can make them prone to depression and lead them to abusing intoxicants, a lot of them take steroids and/or other performance enhancers, it's a freaking hard job that takes a massive toll on a persons body which often leads to heavy duty painkillers and then there'... | 20 | |
ELI5: Why do some words in English have two or more very different meanings? | Some examples:
Run - running, blocked nose.
Wave - moving your hand, water ripple like movements.
Cool - Justin Bieber, cold.
Duck - A creature, bend down.
Ring - A circle, a onomatopoeia .
Tear - Water droplets that leak from your eyes, ripping apart things.
Bat - A flying nope mammal, a wooden stick.
Bass - Instrume... | 23 | Sometimes it's the same word that evolved into having two or more different (but related) meanings. For example a "wave" is a repeated fluctuations, just like when you wave your hand (you move it side to side) or ocean waves (the water moves back and forth). Sometimes the two meanings are far enough from each other so ... | 24 |
[Star Wars] What did Obi-wan mean when he said "I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine"? | As far as I know, that line has never been paid off. There is no sequel where we see Obi-wan use those unimaginable powers. | 96 | Being part of the Force and being allowed to guide it makes you pretty op. Of course, his victory wasn't immediately apparent as it's little things that culminate into larger victories. Luke may not have even blown up the first Death Star if Obi Wan hadn't reminded him to use the Force. Sure it seems like a small thing... | 254 |
Why is it that in groups humans are so naturally passive(Bystander effect), yet individually humans are usually very aggressive?(If you see a homeless man you want to give him a dollar) | 51 | In the instance that something terrible is happening in public (say, an assault), individuals tend to diffuse their personal responsibility for the situation to those around them; the bigger the crowd, the more culpability is dispersed. That being said, groups are constructs which can and often do facilitate violence f... | 31 | |
ELI5: How is "To Catch A Predator" legally allowed to expose the predators on National Television before they are convicted of their crimes? | 1,320 | It is journalism. Disclaimers indicate to viewers that the predators caught are not convicted of crimes. What the program shows is the process of baiting predators, who are always given the opportunity to explain their presence at the sting house. The journalistic fact that the program uncovers, most of the time, is th... | 757 | |
ELI5 Why do tv shows need people to sign a release form to show people on tv, but you can post videos and pictures of strangers on the Internet? | 32 | You need consent from people when you have images/videos of them taken in public places, and you're using them *for commercial purposes*.
If the image isn't being sold or used to generate revenue, then you're free to use it. | 14 | |
ELI5: Why does meningitis always seem to kill people who are college aged and otherwise healthy? | I just read another news story about a college student who died from meningitis. I personally have known a couple of kids who have succumbed to it. Is bacterial meningitis more dangerous than viral meningitis? How come it doesn't kill the elderly and infants as often, or do we just not hear about it? | 18 | Bacterial meningitis is *extremely* deadly, able to kill in less than a day, often under 3 days. You often hear of it in college students simply because they are more exposed to the infection, as bacterial meningitis is usually transferred through saliva. Any age group can contract and die from it. | 11 |
A simple factorial phenomenon ive discovered | Anything above factorial of 6 adding all the numbers will end up at 9, example: 6!=720. 7+2+0=9.
17!=3+5+5+6+8+7+4+2+8+0+9+6
+0+0+0
=27
2+7=9.
8!=40320
4+0+3+2+0=9.
What is this issue of all factorials ending uo at 9 are there any other people whove recognize this pattern? | 17 | Any number that is a multiple of 9 will have this phenomenon. Any factorial starting with 6! is a multiple of 9, because it has a two factors of 3 (because both 3 and 6 are factors of any factorial starting with 6!). | 29 |
ELI5: Do other countries have the equivalent of a Hollywood? For example, does Germany have blockbuster films and movie stars? Why don't we hear about them? Are they aware of our films and stars? | I'm aware of India and Bollywood, but what about other countries? | 77 | Germans are very much aware of Hollywood films and stars. Almost all Hollywood movies are dubbed and shown in German movie theatres.
There are, of course, German movies and stars, but they are mostly unknown in America because Americans in general aren't interested in foreign movies. If a foreign movie looks interest... | 65 |
ELI5: What keeps other countries from "bringing the war" to US soil? | It seems like so many other countries have had wars on their land. The US hasn't been in that situation since the Civil War. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to live in the US as it was being invaded by another country. | 23 | "Force projection", or being able to attack targets a long way from your own country, is not easy.
If you want to attack by air military aircraft don't tend to have very long range, especially fighters. The options are to have a conveniently located airbase, have an aircraft carrier, or run a complicated air-to-air re... | 76 |
ELI5: How is it that charcoal burns with a hotter flame than the wood the charcoal is made from? | 38 | That is because charcoal is produced in a low oxygen environment under heat. The water in the wood is cooked out and a lot of extra compounds that would rob the carbon of oxygen for CO2 formation have been burned off, too. You're left with essentially pure carbon that is ready to consume all the available oxygen for it... | 31 | |
ELI5: What is the point of XML? | I have a great understanding of database systems, HTML and CSS but I after reading for hours and even watching videos I cant see why anyone would ever use this. It does not seem an appropriate or efficient way to deal with data. | 15 | XML is a well defined, general purpose, data transfer language that's designed to facilitate the transfer of data from one system to another in a standard way. Before XML was a thing, every program had its own protocol so you'd have to write new parsers for data import or interchange between every system. XML is basi... | 11 |
Why exactly does water put out fire so effectively? Both oxygen and hydrogen merrily burn, so why is the combination of the two such a great anti-fire agent, from a physics standpoint? | 27 | Because when they are combined to form water, they are _have already_ undergone _all_ the combustion they are capable of undergoing. Water _is the product_ of the _absolutely complete combustion_ of hydrogen & oxygen. There is _no further combustion_ for it to undergo.
All this stresses _very forcefully_ the essen... | 89 | |
I believe the loss of 19th century European honour codes has resulted in an inept and weak soceity. | This won't likely be popular.
By honour code I'm referring to a set of unwritten rules that guided social behavior in 19th century Europe. Their gradual erosion has ultimately resulted in a generation of fatherless divorce babies with little male guidance, utterly inept when removed from their bubbles of urban artific... | 16 | Honor is just false integrity. Honor results in people killing each other over imagined slights. Honor is not even something that people can agree about.
I think you have a very sugar-coated impression of what life was like back then. Things were just as shitty as they are now, if not worse, and people were still awfu... | 32 |
What exactly is the difference between Logic before Frege and after him? | In my first year of university, I visited a Logic seminar, which mostly taught propositionale calculus and first order logic but mainly in a way of just using it and not showing how it actually developed. Since then, I often read Frege practically reinvented logic in the 20th century.
So my question is, what did he ac... | 25 | The key difference is in the analysis of general statements like "Humans are animals." For Aristotle, the logical form of "Humans are animals" is relatively similar to the logical form of "Socrates is human." Both are predications---in the first, one's predicating animal of human and, in the second, one's predicating h... | 38 |
How common is it for postdocs or PhD holders to switch research interests? | So I was just thinking, are all PhDs all set for life when they did their research back in their grad student days/post doc days? How rare is the switching of research interest after getting the degree. For example your research interest is environmental microbiology, then after some time you wanna delve in immunology ... | 28 | Switching topics for post-docs is fairly common. Switching fields completely is less common but I've known people do it (e.g. astrophysics to climate change). You're not deciding on your entire research career just because that's your PhD topic. | 42 |
Why are Neanderthals classified as a different species from Homo Sapiens? | If they can mate and form viable genetic offspring, what makes them a separate species? Please feel free to apply this same line of logic to all the other separate species that can mate and form viable offspring. | 45 | I don’t believe they are always considered a separate species anymore. IIRC they are often classified as *Homo sapiens neanderthalensis* (with anatomically modern humans being *Homo sapiens sapiens*).
Part of the confusion stems from how species work. We’ve applied a relatively rigid system of classification to somet... | 51 |
CMV: The idea of an afterlife is improbable and ridiculous. | I just can't behind the idea of an afterlife. There was nothing (as far as we know) before you were born, and there seems to be no definitive evidence to believe that it will be any different after you die. As we learn more about the brain, it seems apparent that consciousness originates from the brain, and does not wo... | 15 | Reincarnation and/or the afterlife is not only scientifically possible, it is unavoidable.
We've learned some new things about the universe over the last century. One, is that on the smallest, most fundamental level, nothingness itself has the ability to randomly generate "somethingness" in the quantum foam. Two, the ... | 15 |
ELI5: Why do sugary solutions get sticky as they dry but salty solutions don't | Source: Have dropped a variety of IV solutions. | 270 | Sugar will form hydrogen bonds with all sorts of compounds. This means it can be "sticky" and hold lightly to things while still being in solution.
Salt, however, will simply dry as a crystal and just be either in solution or out of solution, and can't interact very strongly with ions already in solution. Thus, it is... | 113 |
CMV: Even if the Christian God existed, it would not be worthy of praise and worship | From what I understand, the Christian God is all-powerful and all-knowing. And yet suffering, disease, genocide, etc. exist. The existence of these phenomena would require an all-powerful God to permit them. Therefore, God must permit these hardships for some reason. There is no reason to test humans since God is a... | 339 | If the Christian god exists then it is all knowing. Therefore it's intelligence would not be comparable to our own.
You are thinking of the relationship as equals. As if we could some how bargain with this being and attempt to have it see our reasons. But the truth is the relationship would be closer to the relationsh... | 230 |
If Cacti are known for growing in the harshest of environments, Why don't we see them in non-harsh environments? | They protect themselves from predators, don't need a lot of water. So why don't they dominate vegetation in other places? | 1,689 | Cacti are incredibly competitive in their environment, meaning they have adaptations to make efficient use of resources in a resource poor environment. However, other species that evolved in higher resource environments are similarly adapted to use more resources effectively, allowing them to out compete cacti which ma... | 1,616 |
ELI5: Why is dry-firing a weapon bad for it? | 146 | I can only answer for bow and arrow. But when you fire a bow, the arrow takes a lot of kinetic energy out of the string so that it can fly. Without the arrow, that kinetic energy reverberates through the bow, and can damage it. | 133 | |
ELI5: What is that pressure sensation we feel in our chest when we get a spike of anxiety? | 33 | I believe it is adrenaline, the fight or flight reflex. But modern man doesn’t necessarily have the same fight or flight reflex as our ancestors - it’s more fight, flight or freeze. Most people freeze but the body still release the adrenaline used from the original fight or flight. | 17 | |
[Assassin's Creed] Why are the modern day assassin's so rubbish. | Ezio, Jacob, Conner, Edward, Evie et al were all prepared to use whatever means necessary to achieve their goals, from business to politics to criminal networking.
Coming in to the modern day, the templars have grown with and helped to create the modern age, mostly through abstergo. We have hitmen for hire that can k... | 402 | That wasn't always the case.
It used to be that the Assassins were a major player on the world stage. Sure, they weren't as public as the Templars, but they were evenly matched in terms of power and influence. Do you want to know where the headquarters of the Assassin Brotherhood was in the late twentieth century? A s... | 314 |
What are some examples of human traits that developed which were key to our survival at the time, but now are hindrances in modern society? | 185 | How our body reacts to psychological stress. If you are worried about an upcoming deadline for a project due next week your body reacts the same way it would if a lion jumped into your cubicle and tried to eat you. Increasing your blood pressure and heart rate and shutting down digestion will definitely help you in fig... | 219 | |
ELI5: This quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson: "If you fall into a black hole, you'll see the entire future of the universe unfold in front of you in a matter of moments." | How do we know this? Is this just speculation or do we have solid evidence of this? | 1,561 | Because, in high gravitational fields, time slows down. This is a fact that we can observe by comparing clocks on Earth to clocks in space. We can calculate that a second near a black hole is a lot longer than a second outside a black hole. As you approach the event horizon, the relative difference between passage of t... | 562 |
ELI5: Why do certain substances (drugs, pharmaceutical drugs) need to be carefully injected in your blood in order to be effective, while others (tranquilliser darts, poison from a bite) can work regardless of where they puncture you? | 210 | It is mostly question of dose and pharmacokinetics (the speed the substance acts). When you carefully inject something into bloodstream (some bigger vein), pretty much all of it spreads around the body fast. That way you can exactly control the dose and make the most out of what you have. If you injected it elsewhere, ... | 107 | |
ELI5: What ultimately causes batteries to completely die? | Some batteries that sit in unused electronics for an extended amount of time don’t hold charges anymore.
So is it better to periodically charge electronics that aren’t used regularly just to keep the battery from losing its useable life? Or is it reasonably just a matter of time before batteries aren’t reasonably usa... | 27 | Batteries are basically a little block of material rusting in order to make electrons move. One that little block of material rusts completely, or at least enough that no more if it can rust, it can't make electrons move anymore. As long as there is any connection between the two ends of the battery, even a bit through... | 16 |
[Olympus Has Fallen] Following the liberation of the White House and President Asher being secured and the terrorists all dead, what happens to DC immediately after and months/years later? | After Kang and the KUF all get killed and US troops liberate the White House while also having President Asher secured, what immediately happens to Washington, DC days following the fiasco?
Assuming that Posse Commitus has been suspended in order to have troops lay siege to the White House, are soldiers, National Gua... | 118 | If you're old enough to remember 9/11, then you'll have an idea of what it was like. A huge wave of nationalistic, anti-North Korean sentiment broke out, which occupied pretty much every level of society. Everyone can agree that attacking civilian structures (like the KUF forces did early on in the attack) and causing ... | 41 |
[Dc/marvel] deadpool and joker meet and get to chatting. Do they become best friends or do they hate each other? If its the latter is the joker crazy enough to mentally break wade or vice versa? | 33 | I remember something like this being asked once.
As it turns out DP's crazy but he's rationally crazy. He has a rhyme, rhythm, and a reason that you can usually understand if you try hard enough. This is why its possible for the heroes of his universe to work with him.
Joker has no such thing, so they instantly woul... | 31 | |
CMV: Major platforms for speech should not be censoring speech to "limit misinformation" | I am not talking about any particular topics on this post. Platforms that people sometimes rely on for expressing ideas to large groups of people do not have to allow posts of certain topics. I think that they shouldn't be legally obligated to do anything, however I think it do think it is wrong. It is especially wr... | 21 | Let's take it to the extreme and work backwards.
In a small town there is an election for mayor.
There is one local paper, and the population of this town trusts everything it reads in the local paper.
The paper's policy on submissions is completely liberal. Anyone can write anything and it goes in. Each submission... | 20 |
ELI5:Why do some users that have top-rated comments with thousands of likes eventually delete their comment? | Many times over I have seen the top comment to be from [deleted] | 24 | It's (probably) because their inbox gets flooded by PMs that they really don't want. They'll get sent threats from people angry at them for what they posted or just for getting top comment/gold. People start looking at their private information, trolling them, going through their old posts, sending them annoying questi... | 24 |
ELI5: What actually happens if "the government shuts down" | I just see it all over the news articles. "Votes to defund Obamacare threaten to shut down government." What the hell does shutting down even mean? | 27 | 2.1 million federal employees will be furloughed, many federal programs such as SS and welfare will still happen but be slowed down because of loss of staff. Borders will still be patrolled, certain obligations still paid for, military still will carry out actions but the federal government will halt all of its non-es... | 16 |
[The Last of Us] A vaccine has been created for the infection and I have been vaccinated with it. However while exploring a tunnel I was ambushed and bit on the arm by an infected, what happens now? | The bite isn't too bad but I am bleeding. I know I won't get infected but will anything bad happen to me now? How will they treat my arm wound? The infected was a stage 1 infected as well. | 19 | If your vaccination had time to "take," then you might get away with no symptoms at all, or you might experience some fever and flu-like symptoms.
As others have pointed out though, the human mouth is filthy, and the infected are not known for their hygiene. You should clean the wound gently with a clean, damp cloth.... | 27 |
[BvS] Why didn't Luthor actually want to watch the Batman & Superman fight? Couldn't he have asked Clark to bring an aerial drone with him & watch it from his phone or something? | 28 | Why would he want to watch it? He wasn't making them fight for the sake of making them fight, he was doing it so that everyone could see Superman as a fraud, a fake, not the hero everyone pretends he is. Lex couldn't care less about Batman or the actual fight itself. | 24 |
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