post_title stringlengths 5 304 | post_text stringlengths 0 37.5k | post_scores int64 15 83.1k | comment_text stringlengths 200 9.61k | comment_score int64 10 43.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Why do humans like to watch things break, get destroyed, or crash? | We all enjoy watching controlled building implosions, Will It Blend? is popular on YouTube, and there are countless videos of crash test vehicles available online. What is it about destruction they we're so attracted to? | 27 | The neurologist Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, suggested that humans have a "death drive" or destrudo which is the opposite of libido, the drive to create life. The concept is still highly controversial.
I interpret it as humans are attracted to destruction because of the huge of amount of entro... | 21 |
Are humans actually much smarter than other primates like chimpanzees, or do we just seem smarter because we hit the threshold allowing written language? | 15 | Define "smart". You can't have a discussion about what species is smarter without defining the word.
There are reasonable arguments that humans aren't much more intelligent than most species on the planet if you measure intelligence by a species' ability understand the consequences of its actions and adjust its behavi... | 11 | |
ELI5 Why is packing tape nearly impossible to tear when intact, but easily shreds if you cut the slightest nick into it? | 6,108 | It is made of a relatively inelastic polymer.
While some plastics are fairly 'stretchy', these are a huge pain in the ass to cut. Think about duct tape. It's extremely strong but also quite difficult to work with.
Packing tape is strong but not particularly robust - it cannot stretch much before it breaks.
All mater... | 3,283 | |
[Star Trek] What is the transporter chief doing when they manually adjust three analog sliders to energise the transporter? Wouldn't something this sophisticated be completely computer controlled? | 37 | >Wouldn't something this sophisticated be completely computer controlled?
Oh, no. There's a *startling* lack of automation in the Federation. There are various fan theories to explain why (my favorite is that they all flipped their shit after the M5 incident and refuse to let computers have too much control). | 38 | |
How do linguists discover the phonetics of ancient symbols? | 25 | Typically via comparison with known languages. Bilingual (or trilingual) inscriptions like the Rosetta stone provide a basis for sound when words like names are transliterated. Monolingual inscriptions in a different script can be helpful, like an Egyptian name written in Greek. You can also find words in surviving lan... | 20 | |
[Marvel] Is it deliberate that so many Inhuman names conveniently shorten to good superhero names, or just a weird coincidence? | 71 | Not all of them do. "Karnak" is slightly similar to a place in Egypt, which is a rather odd name for a superhero. Most of them seem to have vaguely classical names (Maximus, Petragon, Triton, Crystal actually comes from a Greek word) or else something odder like "Tonaja" or "Ahura"
Probably the most straightforward su... | 64 | |
ELI5: Who, or what, is Citizens United, and why have they all of a sudden been in the news so much lately? | I've been seeing a lot of posts on Reddit pop up, and in the morning news programs on the drive into work about Citizens United, though nobody has ever really stopped and talked about why they exist, what they stand for, and why they're causing such controversy. | 100 | Citizens United refers to a court decision *Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission*.
Citizens United was making a movie that was critical of Hillary Clinton and wanted to advertise it before the 2008 democratic national convention. Before the ruling, it would have been illegal to do so within 80 days of an ele... | 49 |
ELI5: How do Mesh Wifi sustain speeds when a Repeater drops a speed to half? | I understand that, using a Repeater results in our internet speed being cut in half as it has to re-encode the packets before broadcasting. But, isn't mesh wifi basically a primary router coupled with a number of repeaters? | 211 | mesh wifi has 2x2 or 3x3 antennas
that means they can communicate with each other on a separate channel leaving a channel free for clients
old repeaters didn't have multiple antennas (MIMO), so speed was cut in half or worst
| 100 |
ELI5: What happens to our bodies when someone makes us jump? | 53 | Your brain thinks there is an immediate danger and tells your body to suddenly release loads of adrenaline and activate a part of your nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system which deals with the fight or flight response.
This has the effect of increasing your heart rate, making you more alert, making yo... | 46 | |
CMV: The liberal arts are an essential component of a complete college education | I think that at least in the United States, the intense focus on production and materialism has elevated STEM careers to the highest echelon of desirability for people entering the workforce after receiving their degree. I don't think thing moving in this direction is adversarial to the liberal arts, however it does se... | 431 | About 2 years worth of liberal arts classes are required for any degree though? Even math and physics degrees require all the same breadth requirements as an English degree and the vast majority of that is courses that are liberal art disciplines. In fact you only have to take 1 or 2 classes for both math and science i... | 121 |
ELI5: Why do hamsters like running? | I have seen so many videos of hamsters running around in the cages, on wheels, etc. What drives this need of theirs? | 24 | It's not just hamsters, but many animals, and it's not the wheel they like, it's the running. Hamsters, like many other animals, do a lot of running in the wild, and can cover many miles in as single day. Obviously they can't do that on flat ground in a cage, so the wheel lets them run and get out all of that energy th... | 19 |
[Marvel/DC] How are characters like Captain America, Batman, Green Arrow, etc atheistic even though they have met several Gods? | 381 | Cap isn't an atheist. Batman appears to be a lapsed Catholic. Even if he says he's an atheist (depending on continuity), it's more in an "angry at God" kind of way.
There are people in comic book universes with immense superpowers. That makes it easy for some people to write off Biblical tales as probably just an e... | 580 | |
If we created a colony on Mars, could we make it disease free? | Of communicable diseases, at least. | 39 | No. We, as humans, need bacteria to survive. We need natural "helpful" bacteria which live within our digestive tracts, in our airways, and over every millmeter of our skin.
Given time, and the outrageous rate at which bacteria mutates, it is inevitable that some strains of said bacteria would become virulent. | 30 |
[Star Trek Into Darkness] Khan's allies | So as we all now, Doctor McCoy discovered that the blood of the super soldiers can revive dead cells. So when the crew of the Enterprise wished to revive Kirk, why did they go after Khan? Could they not have taken a sample from one of the many soldiers in stasis around them? | 24 | They had no way of knowing the medical specifics or properties of any of Khan's allies, Khan himself had been thoroughly scanned into the computer. Rather than gamble, McCoy acted on the information he had. | 19 |
Do particles, like neutrinos affect anything, if they somehow stopped existing, would it have a noticeable effect on us and what we can observe around us? | I'm assuming, there are other kinds of particles, that don't interact electromagnetically. Please correct me, if that assumption is wrong. | 17 | Neutrinos don't interact electromagnetically, it's true. If the Sun somehow stopped emitting neutrinos (most neutrinos on Earth are streaming out from the Sun), it wouldn't affect us too much.
It would probably affect the Sun, though. Neutrinos carry a lot of energy away from the Sun (just by virtue of how fast they'r... | 20 |
ELI5 the Google v. Oracle case | Specifically the whole debate over copywrite law regarding programming languages. | 35 | Oracle bought a company (Sun Microsystems) that had created the Java programming language. Now think of a programming language like a car. The concept of a vehicle with four wheels and some motor can't (currently) be copyrighted by any one company. A specific car has parts designed by a company (or companies) that a... | 20 |
ELI5: Why can't game pirates just copy the binary code, start to finish, from a disc and then just copy and burn it? | Why is there a need to crack consoles? Aren't all game discs exact copies of each other? | 15 | That is basically how it works for the most part. However there are numerous schemes that software makers have come up with to prevent just that.
The current generation of video game consoles uses a combination of schemes, some of which are built into the specification of the disc system.
The one most relevant to you... | 10 |
Bremsstrahlung and General Relativity: Does a charge resting on the surface of earth emit radiation? |
The Standard Model treats gravity as a force like any other while General Relativity models gravity not as a force, but as the curvature of spacetime.
A consequence of the latter is, that free-falling objects are force-free and their acceleration, defined as the covariant derivative of their four-velocity, is zero. ... | 27 | It depends on the frame of reference. A charge at rest on the Earth does not appear to radiate as seen by other at-rest observers on the Earth, but a freefalling observer would see a charge-at-rest radiate. | 11 |
ELI5: Why can't you just cut off cancer cells? | I know there's a reason, but I don't know what it is. | 1,162 | A lot of tumours ARE surgically removed. But there's several big issues with that.
Surgery may leave small, microscopic pieces behind that could grow back.
Cancers spread, so a tumour may have already sent out metastatic cells to other parts of the body.
Most of your organs are necessary for you to live and there m... | 1,749 |
If I leave the faucet on in an area with abundant freshwater resources (e.g., the Great Lakes region), is that water "wasted?" Or does it make its way back into the water supply pretty easily? | 558 | What you're really wasting is the energy spent cleaning and transporting the water to you.
It depends on the sewage treatment plant if the water gets dumped back into the local water reservoir or it might get dumped into the ocean / river that isn't used as a source of water. If it's the latter, then it's "wasted",... | 363 | |
[Fallout] What if the NCR/Caesars Legion were introduced to the capital wasteland? | 17 | Probably steam roll everyone in the Wasteland save the Enclave. Remember, the NCR has fought to at minimum a stale mate both the Brotherhood and the Enclave already, and they've grown since then.
If we assume the Lone Wanderer ended the Enclave before they arrived (reasonable considering it'd be after the whole New V... | 29 | |
ELI5: Why can't you make a bit-for-bit copy of a disc and use that as the original? | It seems to me that if the original disc is copied bit-for-bit to a new disc, the new one is indistinguishable from the old. Yet, you can't simply copy an XBox/Wii disc and expect it to work without patching your disc drive's firmware. I don't plan on doing this(did a few months ago, realized it was a dick move), but I... | 81 | The disks used on gaming consoles have special components of the data tracks near the inside of the disk. These components can be neither read nor replicated by standard drives. Only the drives used in the consoles themselves can access and utilize these proprietary features. | 35 |
[Red Dead Redemption] What happened to all of John’s money at the time of the next game? | When we leave off with John in Red Dead Redemption 2, he has 20,000. This is the equivalent of $600,000 in real world money.
Yet, by the start of Red Dead 1…he has none of that.
Canonically, it seems Abigail might not know about the money? Correct me if she has said otherwise, but in the game she will go up to John... | 71 | He's been captured by the government in the first game. When you're an outlaw captured by the government, you don't get to keep your stolen money.
>Also, does this mean John is an asshole
Yes, but really more for the murdering brigand stuff then anything else. | 84 |
[DC] When did Batman truly anger Joker the most? | It seems rarely anything ever gets under the Joker's skin, but when something does, it's not pretty, *especially* when it's Batman. What's the single most infuriating thing that Bruce has done to Joker? | 33 | * In Brian Azzarello's *Joker*, Batman shows up while Joker's in the middle of one of his many mental breakdowns and delivers a single line that makes the Clown Prince go absolutely berserk.
>**Joker**: You wear your shame like a badge because you don't have the balls to actually pin a real one on. Just look at yo... | 37 |
ELI5: Why don't more cars run on diesel instead of gasoline? | In my understanding, diesel usually gets 20-30 mpg more than gas does and that would produce less harmful gases and be worth the extra money spent on it. | 18 | A lot of people don't like the sound & vibration of a diesel engine, they are "rougher" than the regular engines. If you're on the fence, take one for a test-drive you'll be a convert like me, the torque of a modern diesel is something to experience. | 11 |
How does the blood circulatory system adapt to amputations? | For example if your leg is amputated, all blood vessels going to the leg are now dead ends and the blood can't circulate normally.
How does the blood coming from the heart get back to the heart if the connection via blood vessels is severed? | 896 | Rather than being one long continuous loop, your arteries actually give off smaller arterioles along their entire length. These arterioles perfuse the capillary beds that are in all your tissues. This means that even if you clamp off an artery halfway up your arm, there are still pathways for the blood to get to capill... | 857 |
When my guitar is out of tune, the strings are always in a too high pitch. Intuitively, it feels like it should be the other way since they would loosen. What's going on? | 37 | The coefficient of thermal expansion of the (steel or bronze) strings is higher than that of the wooden neck of the guitar (along the grain). After you've been playing the guitar for a few minutes, both strings and wood will have warmed up due to you touching them.
If the thermal expansion of each material were equal... | 38 | |
ELI5: What happens to electricity that is "grounded"? | 19 | The electricity doesn't go into the ground like a big tank of electricity.
It just completes a circuit using the ground as part of the circuit.
We connect things to the ground mainly to make sure they won't shock you. As long as only one part of the circuit is connected, it makes no difference to the circuit since th... | 12 | |
[Injustice 2] Couldn’t Flash have easily saved Deadshot from Grodd’s control by vibrating the explosive device from his head? | Flash has done so before in several similar situations. It seems like a very obvious solution. | 26 | Grodd is a smart monkey, he likely has some sort of sensor that triggers if it feels abnormal molecules vibrations too close to it... Since you know he IS one of Flash's villains, he is likely used to account for Flash's skills... | 29 |
ELI5: How do US Businesses like Apple affect the trade balance when its products are produced abroad? | 43 | Trade deficits are about as useful to characterize a nation's economic well-being as it is trying to determine a person's identity from a shadow. It only provides the broad outline. A massive trade deficit can be the result of over-consumption and/or under-production rather than purely antagonistic practices. If the... | 17 | |
ELI5 Why can’t you split an atom using a knife or a hammer, if you basically hit anywhere | 66 | Imagine you are on a sandy beach. Now try to crush a grain of sand using a hammer. You will never be able to do it, since the grains of sand will just disperse rather than break.
Of course if you could concentrate the force of the hammer onto a single grain of sand you could break it without breaking a sweat, but that... | 162 | |
[Superheroes] What sort of social media presence do superheroes have? | In Kick-Ass we see the world of superheroes becomes very focussed around social media with the rise of Kick-Ass and heroes in general starting with a viral video and a myspace page. However in my other (admittedly limited and usually about 20+ years too early for modern social media) excursions into the superhero world... | 19 | They don't do the work to get famous, they fight to save their cities. They don't need a social media part of their work. For one, it would make it possible to track them, and two, they are already legends, why bother? | 12 |
ELI5: I keep hearing that 20% of all US dollars were printed in the last year, so why isn’t the inflation rate 20%? | 25 | First of all, US paper money has a short lifespan, especially for the smaller and more frequently used notes. $20 bills and below last about 5-8 years on average, while $100 bills tend to last about two decades. Most of those new bills are just replacing old bills being taken out of circulation.
But the real reason w... | 44 | |
CMV: Public transportation should run 24/7. | We live in a world that is no longer 9-5. Businesses stay open later, friends can reach us with a portable device simply by typing on a mini keyboard. It doesn't make sense that public transportation isn't 24/7. Here are some reasons why it should be 24/7:
1. Very few buses run at 2 am for last call, I feel like if no... | 295 | Where's the money going to come from? The vast, VAST majority of the workforce do indeed work 9-5 or thereabouts. To pay for drivers that late at night would require enough passengers to negate the extra you'd have to pay them. | 176 |
[General] If I create a robot that is incapable of projecting the color red can it ever turn evil? | 722 | It certainly can turn evil. Every body knows that red is only the colour of POLITE evil. The upfront kind that knocks on your door and informs you that it's going to kick your puppy now, are you busy? Real evil narrows its eyes and looks sneakily from side to side. The T-X managed just fine with blue (although it had a... | 311 | |
[ATLA] Regarding the airbender genocide | So the Southern Air Temple was Aang's home and also monk Gyatzo's. The fire nation came in and killed everyone including Gyatzo.
My question is this. Why did they leave the bodies of their fallen? Roughly twenty firebenders were used to take down Gyatzo but in end there were no aorbemders left to resist them. Why wou... | 16 | Either they were superstitious, in a hurry, or it was too expensive to remove them.
The fire nation is surprisingly tradition bound, and it's possible that they thought the spirituality of the air nomads would allow then to return in spirit form.
It could also be they were nervous from all the killing, as even thoug... | 22 |
What kind of reading schedule do you maintain to be on top of everything while completing a major research project and going through day to day life? | I only ask because I'm a final year undergrad who has gotten by through bursts of productivity on some days and days where I am out of commission. I might read 4 articles/book chapters a week in depth and loads of skimmed material ie. stuff I didn't have time/energy to complete. There is no regularity or sense of contr... | 126 | I suggest setting goals in terms of time spent reading, not the amount read. Spend the same time every day reading, and it quickly becomes part of your routine and you won't have to worry whether you've done it or not. And you can easily scale it up or down to find the ideal balance. | 73 |
My (undergrad) professor assigns 200 pages of readings a week and hasn't answered my last three emails :( | I'm in a senior research seminar for my humanities major. The professor is someone I completely adore. I have, in fact, a bit of a crush on him.
But he assigns so much in terms of readings - up to 250 pages a week but usually closer to 150. Do you guys think this is reasonable? Half of it is usually primary source mat... | 178 | To be frank, your professors are busy. 2/3 of the emails you’ve described are basically attempts at having a conversation, which your prof isn’t going to want to do. Keep your emails short and to the point. If by the next class he hasn’t responded to your request to meet - which honestly he may not have read since it s... | 439 |
If there is one queen bee or queen ant in a colony that is responsible for laying all of the larvae, is the whole colony genetically identical? | If a queen bee/ant lays all the eggs/larvae in her hive, does that mean the offspring are all genetically identical? Where does she get the sperm? How are the eggs fertilized?
Assuming they are all genetically identical, does this lower their probability of surviving a virus or something similar because they aren’t ge... | 16 | I can discuss honey bees *Apis mellifera* details on other species, particularly those more distantly related like ants may be different.
Queens leave the hive soon after they emerge as adults from the pupal stage. They take a mating flight usually a mile or so from the hive to mate in what are called Drone Congregat... | 20 |
ELI5: Why does saliva sometimes shoot from a person's mouth when they're yawning? | 56 | Otherwise called "gleeping", or "gleeking": what happens when you yawn, your tongue squeezes back and compresses the tissue beneath it. Under your tongue there are little tube-like glands that produce saliva (salivary glands). These are normally filled with saliva, and once compressed by your tongue, they expel the sal... | 53 | |
Does illness affect the phases of sleep in a person's sleep cycle? | I know that in Stage 3 of NREM sleep, the body works to physically restore itself by releasing HGH, etc., and I know that the longer someone sleeps for, the amount of time spent in the NREM phases decreases and the amount of time in the REM phase increases.
I am wondering if someone who is seriously ill (or recovering... | 2,506 | In general, the pro-inflammatory cytokines (interleukins 1 and 6, C-reactive protein, TNFa, etc.) that are released during an immune challenge will increase sleep pressure and therefore increase NREM 3, especially in the first half of the sleep opportunity. Similarly, sleep deprivation itself will increase circulating ... | 481 |
ELI5: Why do we have scars on the upper arm from shots? | I mean, needle pricks are too small to have such obvious scars. | 17 | Well, when a scar happens, it's where you skin has repaired some damage. It can't quite get it just like new every time, but it does its best. It's like your body remembering some awesome fight it had.
The scar on your arm isn't your body remembering just the needle prick, it's remembering the fight *with the disease ... | 21 |
ELI5 Why don't we call countries by the names they call themselves? | For example, Germany is Deutschland. Why do we not refer to it as such? | 2,134 | This is an awesome question...I have ALWAYS been curious about this (specifically in the example you have provided).
Looking at it again, for the first time, it appears to be a situation where the name "Germany" developed for that region LONG before Deutschland became a unified country and they started referring to th... | 929 |
[Star Wars] How to Bounty Hunters find people in such a huge galaxy? | I recently finished reading the Darth Vader comic, and I'm now reading the Kanan comic, and it seems way too easy for bounty hunters to find their target considering the size of the galaxy and even the size of each planet.
Even if you somehow find a lead that leads you to the planet your target is on, what do you do ... | 31 | There's still a lot of old-fashioned legwork, but electronic records exist, and so do slicers. The galaxy is a little smaller for it. And with galactic fugitives, bounties can be very large. This supports an extensive network of informants.
Some bounty hunters are force-sensitive. And droid bounty hunters, with their... | 25 |
I think the answer is A but i would like to check. Anyone?? | ​
https://preview.redd.it/3mrf3h69boc71.png?width=1482&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae7bcee0d223a88002d150e36415bc4933f9ce0a | 38 | Nope, try dividing the side lengths in the top triangle by 4
For two triangles to be similar we can arrive their lengths by multiply/dividing the side lengths of one of the triangles by some constant.
A looks off because it's a reflection of the original triangle which is still allowed for in similar triangles.
How ... | 29 |
[Marvel] Could a person use Spider Man's web slingers without having any of his powers? | I mean use them to sling between buildings without dying. | 523 | A peak human gymnast could probably get around with them, but they would have one or two webs between stops at most, and a rather limited number per day.
Swinging around like that takes serious arm and grip str and endurance.
Most people with super str could manage, but without his reflexes or Spidey sense (or both) ... | 485 |
[DC] Is Superman's loose hair-lock accidental or on purpose? Does he use some kind of Kryptonian hair gel to hold it in place? | 76 | Normal hair care products work. His hair is incredibly strong, but it doesn't have a lot of leverage to resist styling. It's not like it has any muscles to resist a brush.
The swirl atop his forehead is a fashionable affection. | 36 | |
[Percy Jackson and the Olympians] Why did Luke stop using his teleportation and scorpion-summoning powers after the first book? | They would’ve come in handy a lot. | 27 | We really don’t see Luke in combat situations very often. Obviously it only happens once in The Lightning Thief, and he uses the powers. But in Sea of Monsters he only appears in combat one time again, and he had his entire army with him at that point and Percy challenged him to a straight up one on one duel, so there ... | 27 |
Given optimal conditions (say room temp, no air currents, no water evaporation, etc), would a soap bubble in water last "forever", or would it eventually burst? | When I see soap bubbles, usually they last for a little while (say, 15-20 minutes), but eventually they blow up. Now, is this because of some disturbance (air current, dust particle, wave motion of the water underneath), or does the soap bubble begin to "wear down" over time?
Now, if indeed they would wear down over t... | 44 | It all comes down to energy in the system. There is surface tension in a soap bubble. In order to lower the free energy of the system, the surface of the bubble will break and allow the liquid to pool together in a smaller volume, which would be energetically favorable even under perfect conditions. Think about a bu... | 12 |
ELI5: Why was Pol Pot never prosecuted for war crimes? Why was his government still recognized by the United Nations? | 118 | He opposed Vietnam so the US liked him, the Russians and Chinese liked the Communist government, he shut the outside world out while he was massacring people and the US hadn't signed the genocide convention yet. See "A Problem from Hell" by Samantha Power for more information. | 44 | |
ELI5: How come a venomous animal is not affected by its own venom? | 76 | Well they don't bite themselves for one, and venom is a protein which is designed to react with cells in a specific way - usually by creating blot clots and melting the walls of cells. Because the venom is specifically developed to work on certain cell structures, the snake just has to store the venom in a cavity made ... | 53 | |
ELI5: How do scientists detect the DISTANCE of source of radio waves coming from different regions of universe? | 342 | Simply: Light stretches and the further away something is, the more the light stretches
Less simply:
Waves stretch in accordance to how fast an object is moving towards/away from you, called the doppler effect.
To gauge distance, we must first relate the specific waves (as objects emit more than one, this is very im... | 90 | |
ELI5: Is eating food off the ground in any way beneficial to your immune system? | I'm sure we all know the type: someone drops part of their sandwich on the ground, picks it up, eats it, then claims that they are, "strengthening their immune system" by deliberately exposing themselves to whatever was on the floor.
Is there any truth to this? It seems to logically follow that giving your immune syst... | 23 | your immune system is like the borg. it is very adaptable. once it encounters one enemy, it'll be able to adapt to it and fight it off next time (assuming, that you survived the first encounter).
being exposed to germs, bacteria, and viruses invoke your immune system. once your immune system is familiar with a ce... | 26 |
[Alien Universe] How long would a Xenomorph population survive on Earth before killing all other life forms, thus exhausting their sources of host animals? | Once they run out of hosts, do the Aliens die off and become extinct, or do they hibernate in their eggs until some poor saps come along and wake them up? | 64 | We know they can hibernate for centuries at a time in egg-form, presumably they can manage something similar in their regular forms. Humanity would be consumed inside of three years, total extermination could take up to a century - birds aren't hugely easy to kill for Xenomorphs.
Xenomorphs appear to breathe underwate... | 40 |
ELI5: How can a machine extrude a round pasta shape with a hole in the middle (e.g penne), without the middle metal part blocking the hole falling away | How can a round shape be made, when the middle part of the metal creating the hole needs to be attached to something, which would create a gap in the shape | 496 | If you split pasta dough you can join it back by forcing it together under pressure. This is what the pasta extruders does. Pasta dough is forced under very high pressure through a metal die. The die does have support structures supporting the center core and the dough have to go around these structures. However due to... | 418 |
Why has HIV not mutated to be transmitted more easily, say via respiration? Are we, the human species, just lucky that non-curable deadly viruses happen not to be as easily transmissible as say the common cold? | This has intrigued me for a while. I feel like if random chance, in the evolution of the HIV virus, had made it more easily transmissible, the human species could have been nearly wiped out over the last 30 years.
Thoughts anyone? | 115 | Viruses respond to selection pressure, sometimes this correlates with opportunity to enhance their means of infection, sometimes it doesn't. Much of the HIV-1 genome is efficiently evolved for infection in macrophages and T-cells (vpx/vif/vpr/nef/vpu). Essentially, HIV-1 would have to undergo numerous genomic alteratio... | 52 |
I'm sorry, but nobody has actually told me what cryptocurrencies are used for. | Is it purely an investment now? I, with my limited idea of economics, do not see a reason to keep it except for investing or hobby purposes. I know that it was supposed to replace banks or something, but what does that even mean? | 24 | Currently, almost all the value of almost all crypto currencies is based on investor speculation. More materially, the fundamental value of cryptos is the electronic ledger and the ability to privately and securely transact. | 31 |
ELI5 - Why do our stomach's make a grumbling sound when we are hungry? | 171 | Basically, when you think of food, your stomach begins to excrete hydrochloric acid and begins to churn in expectancy of food. When no food arrives, the gas pushed around in the stomach from the churning escapes making a grumbling sound. This is also why it doesn't happen immediately, it takes a while for gas concentra... | 144 | |
ELI5: Alcohol is a "depressant", but does nervous system depression cause actual depression? If so, how? | There's a lot of information and references to alcohol being a depressant as it depresses the central nervous system. However, there's not much info about it from that point on and on some level, it seems the connection to depression as mental health issue, at least based on cheap internet articles, is based on the use... | 31 | "To depress" means to slow down, bring down, or otherwise "lower" something.
Alcohol, as a depressant of the central nervous system, slows down its function. It slows your reflexes, dulls your mind, and reduces your inhibitions.
Depression as a mental health issue is a lowering of your mental state. You don't feel as... | 62 |
Eli5 How would people in olden times publish books | This may seem like a question with an obvious answer but I just gotta know what the process was like and how similar is it to todays process of publication | 18 | Before the printing press all books had to be hand copied. You would typically only find books in libraries which often doubled as universities. Prominent people would sponsor writers to write a book for them, or the writers might have enough money to sponsor it themselves. Some writers made a lot of money on speaking ... | 22 |
[Batman] Is Batman a better fighter than the average League of Shadows member, If so Why? | 34 | Specifically the Nolan films? Yes, for the same reason that Mike Tyson was better than the average boxer: Natural talent, genetic gifts, and a rare focus.
Batman in general? Hell to the Y to the E to the S. Because, in addition to the above, he had vastly more training. Plus a genius intellect dedicated to combat tact... | 44 | |
ELI5: Why are we not able to domesticate bears? | I really want a pet bear. | 15 | We could. There's a guy in Russia who domesticated foxes in a period of just a few generations.
What has to happen though is a number of specimens need to be repeatedly bred. From each litter you select the most docile and only breed those for the next generation.
Some problems exist. First of all, bears are very s... | 21 |
ELI5 Why is the breaking news about Facebook’s selling of user data such a big deal? | I am very confused. I was under the impression that there is no such thing as online privacy, that every click we make and page we view is tracked and bought and sold by various companies and entities. Furthermore, I thought that this fact was common knowledge. Datamining is nothing new. Targeted ads are nothing new. W... | 135 | What Cambridge Analytica is alleged to have done goes way, way being simply collecting information that people willingly gave out online. It was how they did it, how they analyzed it and what they did with the results.
If you were to take part in an online survey that asked you about your opinions on certain political... | 184 |
ELI5: How are bridges tested for how much weight they can hold without breaking the bridge? | 60 | It's not like they build the bridge and THEN test it for strength. The architecture of the bridge was designed under the principles of engineering in such a manner that the mathematics and physics behind the design equate to a certain amount of load capacity, above and beyond what the structure will ever be expected to... | 170 | |
ELI5: How does frequency(Hz) affect loudness(dB)? | 75 | It doesn't, but humans don't have a flat hearing curve so we hear some frequencies louder than others.
Sometimes you see the audio level expressed in dBA which means the A curve was used, giving a closer approximation to actual hearing that raw dB. There's actually many different loudness curves. | 116 | |
[D&D, TES, Fantasy General etc] What *is* in Spell Tomes? | I know this is a very general question, but what exactly is in a spell book?
So let's take TES as an example; in Skyrim you can find say, a Spell Book: Courage, that teaches you the Illusion spell courage, where you create an orb that when it hits a target, forces them to be brave and not run away.
In that spell book... | 25 | This is going to come mostly from a D&D perspective.
The magic that wizards use is very technical in it's nature, manipulating magic requires not just extensive study but also very precise combinations of words, movements and materials. So at a basic level spell books are a Wizard's notebook where they record thes... | 26 |
[Harry Potter] Had Voldemort ever considered trying to manipulate the Dursleys' hatred of Harry? | We all know that despite being Harry Potter's legal guardians, the Dursley family hated his guts with all their hearts. I wonder though, has Voldemort thought about taking advantage of their hatred for Harry to maybe talk them into turning on Harry completely and throwing him out and straight into the Dark Lord's "lovi... | 66 | No. Muggles literally don't factor into his thinking at all, except as something to be either purged from the planet or enslaved. The idea that he would need to rely on any to get the job done is unfathomable to him. | 79 |
[Harry Potter] The Battle of Hogwarts is over. Harry finds the mirror of Erised. What does he see? | 35 | I mean...his parents are still dead, so they show up. Sirius and Lupin might also appear due to them basically being uncles to him. Harry's main desire is to see his loved ones he never was able to share memories with, and with the war far more loved ones will he left behind on the battlefields and halls. | 42 | |
[Star Wars] Which lightsaber form would be most useful for a non-Force sensitive wielder? | 50 | The put-it-on-your-belt-and-pull-out-a-blaster-instead form would probably serve you the best.
Out of the seven Jedi forms, Form III Soresu is right out - it's built around deflecting blaster bolts and unless you're a droid or alien species with beyond-human reflexes and reaction times, that ain't happening for more t... | 65 | |
Why do I have to poop within a minute of drinking coffee? | I understand it's some sort of diuretic, but could it really be that fast acting? | 38 | Ingestion of food e.g. in the morning once it hits the stomach, stomach wall stretches, causes impulses to be sent to the colon (gastrocolic reflex) propels food toward rectum which relaxes, sends more impulses, internal anal sphincter relaxes, you control your external anal sphincter for defecation. Secondly, coffee i... | 59 |
[Futurama] How did scientists increase the speed of light and what did they increase it to? | 43 | Due to the intervening interplanetary wars (often thought to be caused by this event), records of this era are almost as hazy as those of the 20th century. The early 23rd century is marked by a rapid increase in interaction between alien species, especially from an Earth vantage point. Probably not that coincidentally,... | 57 | |
[Star Wars] How was Anakin able to build his Podracer? | A big part of the economy on Tatooine is centred around junk shops and machine parts. So how could a young slave boy afford the leather for his seats, and tailor them to shape the cushion, did he beat the metal into shape for his pod himself? Where did he get the paint for the pod?
I don’t believe Watto would give a s... | 17 | >and tailor them to shape the cushion
he took an old seat off another ship / pod
Watto is going to give anakin parts he thinks he wont be able to sell or cant sell.
Watto also likely has anakin build and repair droids and other things that watto wouldnt be able to sell.
The lucritive parts of pod racing is not i... | 20 |
[Star Trek] If replication technology exists, shouldn't it therefore be possible for the ships to repair their hulls as long as energy exists to form into matter? | 19 | There's a great debate over whether or not replicators *reconfigure* matter or whether they *create* matter. I've looked at the figures, it makes no sense whatsoever that they *create* matter given the context of how they're treated (in literally dozens of examples) and the figures for power generation, fuel storage et... | 17 | |
[Back to the Future] When Marty is playing guitar, and his family is fading out, why doesn't he forget who they are, if they don't exist anymore? | 22 | In BTTF, the time travellers always remember the original timeline, not the new one. At the end of BTTF1, Marty remembers his family being poor and his sister never being allowed to meet guys. In BTTF2, Marty remembers his father still being alive in the 1980s, and in 3 Marty remembers Clayton Ravine, not Shonash or E... | 17 | |
[Avatar: TLA and LoK] Are avatars always good? | My experience with Avatar amounts to whatever I could catch on-air back in middle school and the first season of Korra, so pardon me if this is a stupid question.
Whenever an avatar, past or present, they're usually portrayed as heroic and selfless: Aang fights tyrants and invaders, Korra fights criminals and terroris... | 69 | It's the same person reincarnated over and over again, so yes, they are all good at the core. In the later seasons of TLOK, you can see how similar Korra is to Aang; deep down they both share the same traits of compassion and empathy.
Avatars however are still part human. They can struggle and make mistakes. They can ... | 102 |
CMV: Requiring that jurors are willing to impose a death sentence creates an inappropriate selection bias on juries | In the US, when a defendant is charged with a "capital offense" it means there is the possibility that they will be sentenced to execution. In order for this to happen, the jury must vote (normally unanimously) in favor of execution after first voting that the defendant is guilty.
Many US citizens believe that executi... | 198 | If the death penalty is on the table you need juniors that are not against it in principal . Because there is a possibility that they will vote on that principal. Just like if you ask a juror if drugs should be legal and they say yes , they are probably not who you want serving for a drug dealers case. | 26 |
If black hole singularities have infinite density and gravity, why don't they have an infinite pull on everything in the universe? | Why don't black holes suck up everything in the universe with an infinite acceleration if they have infinite gravity? Does this have something to do with the speed of light limiting the speed that the force of gravity "travels?" Or maybe the fact that time slows down (for an outside observer I guess) as you approach th... | 17 | They don't have infinite gravity. Recall that the gravitational force due to an object is given by Newton's Law: F = m1 m2 G / r^2 with G a constant and m1 and m2 the respective masses. Hence, the force of a black hole on any given object is finite.
For example, if the Sun were to be replaced by a black hole of the ex... | 26 |
[The First Avenger] Where did Hydra get all of its soldiers ? | This movie takes place during WW2 so most men where fighting for the Allies or Axis powers so that alone would make recruitment difficult. And judging from the looks of each base or factory, Hydra had hundreds of people operating at those places. How did Red Skull get all of these people devoted to his cause ? | 15 | Hydra is theoretically part of the axis war machine - most were probably bog standard soldiers (maybe SS units) assigned to a weapons development team that promised Hitler they could single handedly win the war (and *would* have had Cap not shown up). Once there, they were probably “radicalized” into believing Red Skul... | 42 |
[LoTR]: What happened to Saruman and Sauron after they died? | In my understanding, when Gandalf died his soul/Maiar nature went back to the Lands Undying, and he was sent back by Eru, empowered and transformed. What happened to the antagonists' souls/eternal natures? Did they merely cease to be? | 16 | They don't really die. They live on, in the background, as severely diminished and impotent spirits. Gandalf received special treatment from Eru, the god of middle earth.
They don't cease to be, but realistically they are a non-entity on the world stage. | 19 |
ELI5: Cars have an “idle speed” where the engine still runs even without pressing the gas. What happens when you’re pressing the brake and completely still? How is the engine not harmed since it’s still running? | 111 | Automatic transmissions have a fluid coupling between the engine and transmission that allows the engine to run at low RPM without transmitting much torque to the transmission. Imagine a propeller spinning, making the fluid spin, then the fluid makes another propeller spin.
Manual transmissions disengage the clutch... | 173 | |
Advice wanted: salary lowered bc of looming science budget cut ala Trump | TLDR:
...is this something that is common? Are salaries being trimmed for the potential Trump outburst? Also... is 67k a decent salary for running an academic core facility (think along the lines of a screening / genomics / proteomics / imaging / sequencing / cloning / etc... a life sciences speciality facility). All ... | 39 | Is the position soft money (grant supported)? Because if so, absolutely reasonable, happens all the time. Otherwise, the answer is It Depends.
Whether you get a straight answer out of the people that know, is a different matter. | 24 |
ELI5:Why are SMS text messages limited to 160 characters? | 55 | Sms is a weird hack. It wasn't really meant to exist. Your phone and the tower talk back and forth every few seconds to work out things like phone frequencies and power levels and boring network stuff. Part of the message they send was empty 99% of the time so they said "hey, what if we put a little email in there" and... | 54 | |
ELI5: What exactly are the 'toxins' people talk about getting rid of from your body? | So I've seen a few articles here and elsewhere on the net, as well as heard it mentioned by people I've talked to. Some people seem to talk about doing things or eating certain things to rid your body of toxins. What are they talking about, and is there any science behind it? | 1,135 | They don't even know. Most of those "toxin flush" programs are nothing more than diuretics with some "all-natural" alternative medicine added. The truth is that the word "toxin" just helps them sell their product to people that are scared of the word "toxin".
Actual toxins can build up in the body, but no OTC pseudome... | 1,656 |
ELI5: Why doesn't 'homophobia' mean 'a fear of things that are the same'? Shouldn't it be 'homosexualphobia' or 'orientationism'? And why is 'feminism' positive but 'racism' negative? | EDIT: Please stop telling me that feminism is bad! I meant in the sense that 'feminism' is PRO-female (whether or not you think it's a good idea or "positive" in that sense), while racism is implied to be AGAINST a race!
This was not intended as a debate about the pros and cons of feminism, I used it as an arbitrary e... | 513 | Homophobia is more just colloquially developed, its not like some linguistically derived term, it's more like 'Chocoholic' it makes no sense.
Racism, Feminism, Totalitarianism, Vegetarianism, Communism, Environmentalism... the 'ism' has no implication of negative or positive. To many people Feminism isn't positive...... | 371 |
ELI5: How does this faster than light camera work? | They built a camera that records a single photon of light.
How does this work? Why couldn't they do it before?
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/12/at-10-trillion-frames-per-second-this-camera-captures-light-in-slow-motion/ | 3,737 | What is special about this camera is its shutter. First of all the shutter speeds can be set to extremely short times. This is done using fast spinning rotating shutters. However no camera can capture enough light during the short shutter time to make any meaningful image from. So instead they use multiple exposures to... | 2,059 |
If bruises are from bleeding underneath the skin, where does all the blood go when it heals? | 7,128 | Part of the leaked blood will coagulate and help to form the clot / scab to stop the bleeding.
Macrophages will come and clean up any "loose" blood, or debris, or old scab material - they take it in, digest it, and spit the digested remains out into the blood stream where it's filtered out in the kidneys.
The iron (I... | 5,065 | |
CMV: for all intents and purposes, some people are just better then others | I know we have this societal view that everyone is different and has their own qualities, but as a whole, I wonder, how can you not judge *some* people to be better than others? Say person A is a guy, he's nice but not very smart, funny or good-looking. Now take person B, another guy, who is also nice but unlike A he's... | 17 | The idealistic view is that all people are *created* equal. What we do after that is totally up to us. The idea is that we all have equal opportunity to succeed, but it's up to each of us to seize that opportunity.
This view has been corrupted to imply that all people are inherently equal. We're clearly not. Some peop... | 19 |
[Young Justice]Why is Wally so much slower than Barry and Bart? | 55 | Wally got his powers by trying to replicate the same accident that gave Barry his powers. He didn't get it exactly right so his experiment was only partially successful. Bart inherited his powers from Barry. | 39 | |
CMV: Parents who choose not to vaccinate their children should be treated the same as sex offenders, in that they should be barred from public areas containing at-risk members of the population, and required to obtain written consent of those who live in an area before being allowed to move in. | The issue is that herd immunity is an incredibly fragile thing, as California is finding out with Whooping Cough and Measles outbreaks. Recall, also, that for legitimate medical reasons there is a certain portion of the population that cannot be vaccinated and depend on the herd to be, in effect, the "buffer" between t... | 30 | This needs a little clarification here. You say: "*No. Vaccines should not be voluntary*", and then in the next sentence you say:"*And those who choose not to vaccinate*".
Are you proposing involuntary vaccinations? And if so, how exactly would people still be able to "choose not to vaccinate"? | 11 |
ELI5: Why do airplanes oxygen masks have a bag that may or may not inflate? What would cause the bag to inflate/not inflate? | 20 | You breathe in, pause, breathe out, then pause before repeating when taking normal breaths. Even when you're anxious.
During the exhale and the pauses, the oxygen coming out of a normal oxygen mask is wasted. We don't care so much about this on the ground in a hospital because they tend to have oxygen generators and/o... | 45 | |
What happens if a girl takes Viagra? | My sister literally just asked this question ten seconds ago and I don't really know myself. Anybody in the know? | 49 | There was a study conducted by Laura Berman, director of the Berman Center and a professor of OB-GYN and psychiatry at Northwestern University in Chicago, and Dr. Jennifer Berman, director of the Female Sexual Medicine Center at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on this very thing. The results are preliminary, but see... | 34 |
ELI5: Why did people quickly lose interest in space travel after the first Apollo 11 moon flight? Few TV networks broadcasted Apollo 12 to 17 | The later Apollo missions were more interesting, had clearer video quality and did more exploring, such as on the lunar rover. Data shows that viewership dropped significantly for the following moon missions and networks also lost interest in broadcasting the live transmissions. Was it because the general public was ac... | 3,906 | Because space travel is not inherently engaging for the vast majority of people. In order to be interested, there must be something novel or dramatic to keep people engaged. Hardly anybody saw the Apollo 13 launch, but as soon as lives were on the line it became an internationally captivating story.
It's similar in ma... | 1,732 |
Why does the Earth spin? | Did the collisions of millions of asteroids cause it to start rotating? Was it initially not rotating? | 18 | The Earth spins because it formed in the accretion disk of a cloud of hydrogen that collapsed down from mutual gravity and needed to conserve its angular momentum. It continues to spin because of inertia. | 14 |
CMV: I don't think Gotham can be saved. | *Note: My knowledge here is based primarily on the recent films and videogames.*
Gotham is a cesspool of corruption, violence and greed. Criminals permeate every level of society, business and politics and manipulate it all for their benefit. Even the police force is filled with nothing but self-serving, crooked cops ... | 73 | This is a hazard of spending all your time watching Batman and Commissioner Gordon interact with the worst people in Gotham, who are also far more competent criminals than anything real-life police encounter. We just don't get to see as much of the good people of Gotham, but we know they exist, Batman is protecting th... | 42 |
ELI5: why can girls orgasm more than once and guys can only do it one time in a sitting? | You read the title... It's something that's been bugging me for a while, and I'm just really curious. | 32 | Contrary to popular opinion, orgasm and ejaculation are not the same event.
Men *can* orgasm as much as women, however, they cannot ejaculate more than every so often, since the system needs time to recover. | 46 |
Is there a specific term for the concept where the oppressed does not recognize/acknowledge their oppression? | 31 | From a Marxist perspective it would be false consciousness, where people are unable to recognize/acknowledge the oppressive societal system and institutions in which they live
But this is from a point of view which defines oppression and the oppressed in a specific set of terms | 47 | |
[SpongeBob SquarePants] How did Squidward know that Patrick was going to ask about horseradish next after mayonnaise? | Concerning instruments | 93 | Squidward has lived near Patrick for what must have been years beforehand. He probably knows some of the stupid things that Patrick is going to say beforehand. If his mind was on condiments being instruments then he's probably gonna know what condiment he says next by factor of him knowing what his favorite condiments ... | 93 |
CMV: tracking down your sperm/egg donor is rude. It's not a cute story about finding yourself and your history. It's violating someone else's privacy. | **Edit:**
*A few comments have made valid arguments but not any that I would consider a view change.*
*I think the best solution is to go through the clinic. Maybe for a small fee the clinic can mediate contact? They can send any pertinent medical information to the child. If further contact is wanted by both partie... | 229 | Clarifying question about a related issue:
Do you think it's moral to create a human being and expect to be anonymous to them?
Because people *care* about their ancestors, and this is well known. They care both because of the importance of blood links, and because of the medical issues that don't become apparent unt... | 63 |
ELI5: What is happening when you wake up and can't move your neck without extreme pain? | 41 | You have likely been laying in an odd position that your head and neck aren't designed to stay in for extended periods. So your muscles can cramp and lock into position causing your neck to hurt to move. | 21 | |
CMV: Artists shouldn't be eligible for the Grammy's if they've huge teams worth of production / songwriters / engineers behind the album | If you look at [the Grammy nominees of the last many years]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Album_of_the_Year#2020s), you'll notice a lot of them have 10-20 names behind their album who are helping them produce the album.
I think it's completely bullshit to nominate someone for an individual/group-foc... | 31 | Why not just have the Grammy go to the whole team instead, as a way of highlighting how many people actually worked on it and bringing more public attention to the people who write and produce the music? | 11 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.