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Is everything humans do natural? | We are part of nature, so is what we do natural? | 64 | This question pivots on whether we have a clear consensus about what it takes for something to be "natural" - once we have that in place, we can determine which, if any, human behaviors count as natural.
Importantly, natural and good are different concepts. Usually there's an implicit assumption behind questions like ... | 55 |
ELI5 3D printing | I've come across these things making living organs to guns. How could such a machine possibly exist. Considering its so far over my head, the only thing I can compare it to is a genie in a bottle. | 56 | You know how a standard inkjet printer works by laying dots of ink down on a page? A 3D printer is that, just times several thousand
Consumer 3D printers are filled with plastic that is used for the construction, and it goes molecular layer by molecular layer laying down a little dot of plastic wherever the blueprint ... | 20 |
[Marvel] Why Doesn't Doom Get Surgery To Fix His Face? | I understand the 60s were a different time and medicine wasn't advanced, but with modern medicine it sounds totally do-able.
Doom is one of the most powerful men in the world, and it's clearly something he cares about. He's done it in the past on a few occasion, such as when he had the power of The Beyonder. | 18 | You don't understand- it's irreparable.
The scars, they're so bad, they're beyond fixing. No doctor Doom would respect could ever repair him to his former glory, at best he'd be a pale reminder of what was once beautiful.
It's better that he be known by the mask and what remains of the face his heritage gave him tha... | 23 |
[Star Trek] Why does the Enterprise have little windows? Why isn't the entire outside made of transparent aluminum so that everyone has ceiling-to-floor views? | Also, nine times out of ten all there is to see is black with twinkly bits. Couldn't they simulate something far more interesting via holograms?
Plus: Shouldn't the main control area be deep inside the ship to protect it from attacks? Why does it need to be in the front? | 17 | I think at least as far as your last point, both shields and weapons are so good that it doesn't matter where in the ship you put the command deck, and furthermore, the thinking is that the farther away it is from the warp core the better | 11 |
How do other political ideologies respond to Rawls' veil of ignorance? | [newb] Rawls' thought experiment seems really convincing. However, I'd like to hear the opposition's response to what he's saying.
Also, critiques of social liberalism are welcome. Thanks for your help! | 19 | There's a lot that's been said about the implausibility of the original position. Here are two criticisms.
First, Rawls fiats that parties behind the veil of ignorance know the "basic truths" of human psychology, sociology, political science, economics, and so on. Critics point out that there are hardly established t... | 12 |
ELI5: How google makes profit with some of its services that seems completely free like Maps, Translate or Gmail | 18 | They provide these services for free because those services are only secondary to how they make their money.
They made their money with advertising and data. Data which is used to make better advertising, targeted advertising.
You are not Google's "customer". You are the product. | 46 | |
ELI5: Why television and media cameras are so big, despite the same level of picture detail being achievable on much smaller devices? | What's all that 'extra camera' used for? | 383 | Much higher quality sensors and optics. In order to fit a small camera on the back of your phone, there's a lot of compromises that need to be made so that it will fit in that limited space. That will affect the sharpness, clarity, and detail of the image, and when you're getting paid for top quality shots, a camera ... | 247 |
[Punisher] Which legal code does the Punisher use to judge whether someone should be "punished"? | Is it U.S. federal, state, or municipal law? Would he kill people for actions that were considered legal where they lived - e.g. selling marijuana in Colorado? Or owning a slave in Mauritania?
Or does he follow a "higher" code of justice? | 48 | Short answer: **His own**
Long answer: Frank really only punishes those who have violently hurt others. He probably won't care if you're just an average heroine user, but he will go after you if you're a dealer or a trafficker who sells to users/addicts and (to arguable extents) gets people addicted in the first place... | 59 |
eli5: Why is co2 the gas used to pressurize drinks. Why can’t something like nitrogen or atmosphere air be used. | 2,781 | Carbonated water creates carbonic acid which gives a little sting and sourness to your drink and tickles your nose when the bubbles burst at the top.
Nitrogen infusion gives a creamy texture and it's used in beer and coffee.
Oxygenated water is advertised as having health benefits, but at high amounts of infusion you... | 4,293 | |
CMV: It doesn’t make sense that good people who don’t believe in God go to hell anyways. | My boyfriend is very religious so I’ve tried to keep an open mind to Christianity. Personally, I think we live in a simulation. Not going to explain all the details since it’s not the subject but it’s not very far from being religious: if we’re in a simulation there is a “creator” and if we’re conscious we might just c... | 42 | Alright, hear me out.
In Christianity, hell is for people who screw up. Anybody who has ever screwed up is supposed sent to hell. Which is basically all of us.
Then Jesus comes along, and sacrifices himself to cover the cost of our screwups. Basically each person's sin accumulates a debt, and any debt gets you sent t... | 14 |
Why do peoples nipples get hard when its cold outside? | I don't know how much more I could elaborate on this. | 26 | They are trying to preserve heat.
When a nipple is exposed to cold temperature skin reflexively contracts, causing the nipple to become smaller, wrinkled and "hard." The ultimate function of this reflex is to decrease the amount of surface area on the nipple that is exposed to the cold.
Decreasing surface area is t... | 14 |
[Legend of Zelda] How would the events of Majora's Mask have panned out if it were Adult Link instead of Child Link? | Simply put, after defeating Ganon in the future and making sure he's locked away before he can rise to power, Link decides to check out what the future is like now that Ganondorf isn't going to be an issue. Upon arriving and seeing everything is peaceful, Navi decides Link doesn't need her anymore and leaves (a la the ... | 21 | Kid link had all the experiences of adult link at that point. He retained his memories of the future when zelda sent him back to the past. That's how he was able to warn the king about Ganon's plans.
So probably not that much different. Adult link is slightly stronger than kid link so he might have had an easier time ... | 16 |
ELI5: How did the Nixon Shock cause the change in the Productivity-Pay gap? | 19 | It didn't, or at least you're not going to find many economists who agree that it did. Pay and productivity didn't begin diverging until 1984 - 13 years after the Nixon Shock.
The overwhelming consensus as to the cause of the Productivity-Pay gap is that in 1983 the US re-designated China as a "friendly" nation. Thi... | 15 | |
Are solar systems known to collide with each other? Is it possible? | As we're sat here merrily spinning around the galaxy, is there the possibility that we could collide with another solar system? Would two star systems get close enough over time that the conflicting gravitational forces of the respective stars throw both sytems into chaos or maybe even 'strip' one star of its orbital b... | 108 | Yes, they can 'collide', but it's unlikely any body would impact another. This is because a galaxy consists mostly of space. (think about how big our solar system is and the relative size of the sun and planets for that massive volume). | 48 |
eli5: What do CEO's actually do? | 130 | Depends on the company but generally it is their job to make their company succeed. That does not translate into internal management 9/10 times. It translates into raising funds, hiring an executive team, creating long term corporate visions, and making executive decisions - i.e. we have 200M in the bank, do we hold it... | 325 | |
ELI5: How do systems on the other side of a phone call know what buttons you're pressing. | For example: I just called a phone number to activate a visa gift card, and the system told me to enter the number of the card on my dial pad. How does that system know what buttons I'm pressing? | 21 | Your phone beeps when you press the buttons - the same beeps that tell the phone company which number you're dialling on a landline. The system on the other end listens for the beeps and knows which button you pressed. Each button actually makes two tones together - one for each column and one for each row. | 13 |
Do imaginary numbers have any practical applications? | 55 | Of course, why wouldn't they? They're just as real as normal numbers, which is to say not at all. Complex numbers are a nifty way to encode 2D translations, 2D rotations and scaling compactly as addition and multiplication. Very convenient.
Electrical engineering, fluid dynamics, quantum mechanics and much more all e... | 87 | |
Why don't the armed forces in Attack on Titan use shotguns, explosive flechettes, or some other ranged weapon to destroy the weak spot on the necks of the titans? | By armed forces I mean the ones with 3DMG, who are getting up close and personal to the titans. | 15 | They don't seem to have advanced much in personal firearms tech. The guns they had in the anime were breechloaded flintlocks.
That means slow rate of fire, horrific accuracy, inability to be loaded while moving or being jostled around, and no special munitions. | 27 |
ELI5:If I develop a website for a wedding photographer, the website belongs to the photographer, because it's a work for hire. Why, then, if he takes photos of my wedding, do the photos not belong to me? | 212 | You could work out a contract with a photographer where they assigned the copyright to you. But most photographers don't do it that way because reasons. Mostly because if you ever wanted reprints back before digital they could charge whatever they wanted. | 69 | |
[40K] How did Astropaths navigate the Warp before the Astronomicon? | So it seems to me that the Golden Throne was built during the later stages of the Great Crusade, for the purposes of constructing the Human Webway project and projecting the Astronomicon. I believe that the Emperor could navigate the warp without the Astronomican, but what about his other expeditionary fleets?
Edit: P... | 32 | So first off Navigators are the ones who navigate through the warp, not Astropaths. Astropaths send messages through the warp.
To answer your question it is possible to travel through the warp without the Astronomicon, it's just slower (Rogue Traders sometimes have to do this when traveling to areas beyond its reach).... | 43 |
CMV: The use of pharmacological stimulants as a treatment for non-chronic obesity and binge-eating disorders is unfairly socially stigmatized, and because of this is underutilized by patients and medical practitioners in a non-trivial amount of cases wherein it would do more good than harm overall | To start off, my scenario: I dropped like 35 pounds in 2 months using stimulants for weight loss with absolutely no effort. I had no history of addiction to amphetamine derivatives, no heart or cardiovascular conditions, had the capability to pay for my stimulants and medical consultations financially, had no major sid... | 27 | I think there are two main reasons that stimulants aren't used a lot more for obesity. First, obesity goes hand in hand with cardiac complications and there are no stimulants powerful enough to affect weight loss without placing significantly increased strain on the heart.
Second, stimulants can be very useful as an ... | 25 |
Are most advancements in AI from better hardware or more advanced formulae? | Theoretically, a computer could brute force a problem to figure out every possible optimal solution, but that is absurdly infeasible in most instances, so systems use tricks such as classifiers and error minimization to get a "best guess."
When new milestones such as Deepmind's recent victories are reached, is this m... | 19 | Most of today's computer science theories were created way before the creation of efficient computers. But ANNs (Artificial Neural Networks) only began to be a research topic in the 1960s.
The new powerful hardware allows the researchers to think of new algorithms that previously seemed ridiculously inefficient, so it... | 10 |
ELI5: How does acid dissolve things? | Can't understand what Google gave me :(
EDIT: Thanks for the help! | 25 | Basically, aacids are really attractive to other molecules/atoms, to the point where they will leave their current bonds to combine with the acid. As parts of the material break off to bound with the acid, it dissolves | 63 |
What is the likelihood of a major food crisis? How can we stop it? | 44 | Due to the oil intensive nature of modern agriculture, major food crisis will likely be precipitated by significant disruptions to oil markets and supplies, i.e. trouble with Iran and the Straight of Hormuz. Modern agriculture is increasingly consolidated into the hands of fewer and larger companies. Really the only wa... | 12 | |
ELI5: How does "my bones hurt when the weather is changing" work? (scientifically) | 71 | It has to do with the changes in air pressure. When the weather changes from higher to lower pressure it usually brings bad weather, but also the joints in your body expand just a little bit and that can allow for more inflammation to occur. | 97 | |
ELI5: What Fermat's Last Theorem is and why its important that it's solved. | 57 | Fermat's last theorem states that for integer values a, b and c the equation a^n + b^n = c^n is never true for any n greater than two. So for example a=1 b=2 c=3 n=4 gives you 1+16=81 which is obviously false. This is rather simple, but proving that it was true turned out to be an utter bear.
Proving Fermat's last t... | 45 | |
ELI5: What happened to Blackberry and why did they go from a sensation to being a rare sight? | 90 | They failed to adapt.
Blackberry was the *only* option for business users, really.
Then the iPhone came out and suddenly everyone wanted a friggin iPhone. Now us IT people went "Dude, Blackberry has a lot of business and, more importantly, *security* features that are really, really important, so no, you can't have... | 47 | |
[Marvel/DC] How would the avengers react to Green Arrow's Chili | incase you dont know Green Arrow's Chili is one of the spiciest entities known to the general superheroic community. like supes has to use his freeze breath on it to atleast make it not hurt as bad and aquaman feels instantly dehydrated when taking a bit of it and martian manhunter is reacting to it akin to how martia... | 32 | Hawkeye would eat massive bites of it and pretend it's not hot at all because there's no way he'll let that bearded weirdo archer ever claim he could do something better than him. He's taking bites, sweating horribly, obviously in pain despite pretending not to be.
Hulk like beans! But beans too hot! Why Funny Beard ... | 54 |
[WH40K] What would happen if a tyranid hive fleet attacked Cadia? | Would the pylons on the surfice fuck with their hivemind? | 34 | Tyranids have shown to be highly resilient to standard Psy defences and attacks, so there's a good chance that their 'Silent Shadow' thing would fuck over the pylons, leaving it down to a purely military scrap.
The Imperium would win that fight, after a looooong grind. We won by the skin of our teeth at Maccrage, and ... | 46 |
ELI5: If an amputee, such as Oscar Pistorius, goes to prison, are they allowed to keep their prosthetic limb since it could be used as a weapon? | 60 | This is going to be a country specific answer. In the United States, both 42 USC 1983 and the Americans with Disabilities act are the controlling law.
Basically, a state actor like a prison guard can not abuse prisoners. Not giving an amputee some means of mobility would be abuse. Therefor, a wheelchair, prostheti... | 26 | |
[Dragonball Z] Did Goku know what was happening when he was going Super Saiyan for the first time? | When he transformed fighting Frieza it was because he was angry. He stops and struggles with what seems like his emotions as a storm surges, and he screams, transforms, then was "calm" (as calm as you can be in that situation I guess) and gets ready to fight
Did Goku realize what had happened to him? Was he somehow ab... | 42 | He was only thinking of one thing. Revenge. He was so emotional because his friend was dead and he knew he could do nothing about it. Frieza would then kill his son and himself. Goku fully believed he had lost.
After the transformation Goku has a lot more power. He doesn't know why he has more power, he doesn't care w... | 62 |
ELI5: Why do sparsely populated areas tend to vote Republican/Conservative? | You can see this on a state level:
http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results
If you zoom into any red or blue state, the sparsely populated counties usually end up red. Is there a simple reason why? | 43 | It's all about population density.
In an urban area, having a lot of people around is the norm. This has benefits and disadvantages. It means help in any number of ways is usually nearby (police, fire, you need a jump from your neighbor, etc).
It also means that other people's behavior can adversely affect you becaus... | 83 |
Is there a scientific reason that the hexagon is 'nature's shape'? | I saw this [picture](http://www.flickr.com/photos/lagodigarda/96477237/sizes/l/in/photostream/) in Earthporn, and this one of [Devil's Postpile](http://www.appstate.edu/~marshallst/photos/boone_photos/devils_postpile/Devils_Postpile-030.jpg) and it reminded me hearing somewhere that the hexagon is nature's shape. Is th... | 82 | Hexagons represent the shape with the lowest possible energy when nested / packed. If you imagine a soap bubble, it pulls itself into a sphere for the same reason - the sphere is the least possible surface area which contains the maximum volume - the lowest energy shape. If you subsequently nest soap bubbles together... | 85 |
ELI5: With most countries so far in debt, how does China have all this money to loan other countries like the U.S. and U.K. | 665 | That's not how sovereign debt works.
Sovereign debt exists as bonds. A country offers bonds on the market, and other countries buy them as investments. A bond is basically a contract between the bond issuer (usually a government) and the bond holder (whoever buys it) that says "The issuer agrees to pay the holder the ... | 290 | |
ELI5: Some jobs are unpleasant but fundamental to society (eg: janitor, bus driver). Why aren't these the best paid jobs? | 36 | Because anyone can do them. They are low skill and lots of people can fill that role.
Sometimes they do get better pay because the job is undesirable (I think trash collectors get paid decent, at least compared to minimum wage). | 86 | |
CMV: It’s understandable why many vegans are so loud and preachy about how bad consuming animal products is. |
If you had really come to the conclusion that billions of animals are slaughtered every year, animals who are conscious and have souls and experiences and emotions and feelings, obviously you would want to let everyone know the moral tragedy that they are partaking in every single day by consuming animal products. In ... | 1,384 | This is exactly why evangelical Christians proselytize. Millions of souls go to Hell each day and they're just trying to prevent it.
Do you like when Christians proselytize by telling you your going to Hell? Is it effective?
This is the same for anti-abortion advocates as well. | 1,080 |
I have a volume slider on my headset, a volume silder on youtube, and a volume slider just on my computer. Which one should I maximize for the clearest audio? | 23 | Youtube should be at maximum.
PC volume as high as possible without clipping/distortion. That may be all the way up.
Control listening level with headset control.
You want to use all the dynamic range of your PC's digital to analog converter. Then attenuate it as needed with the headset control.
In practice, jus... | 11 | |
How do/can black holes "grow"? | Perhaps this has been answered here or elsewhere, but I can't seem to find a clear answer.
Maybe this is a dumb question, and maybe I've already read the answer before and forgotten, but: How is it that black holes can "grow" by consuming matter/mass? If matter beyond the event horizon is "gone" (though, I guess Hawk... | 44 | Are you asking about a mechanism?
Because if so, they just *do,* by conservation of mass/energy.
When matter (or energy, such as photons) cross the event horizon it is absolutely doomed to end up at the singularity. That's just the way spacetime works in the black hole. Basically, geodesics (which are orbital traject... | 16 |
ELI5: How is it that Manhattan doesn't collapse under all the weight of its buildings? | As a non-engineer, I wonder how it is possible that Manhattan, with hundreds of massive skyscrapers and high-rises, does not simply collapse. There are a series of tunnels underneath that go quite deep, and even if they are in a grid and don't run directly underneath the buildings, I still can't wrap my head around it.... | 24 | If you replaced the Empire State Building with a similar mass of granite, it would only be about 50 feet high.
Bedrock is thousands of feet thick. It has no problem supporting buildings because it has not problems supporting itself. | 36 |
CMV: The bodily autonomy argument for abortion isn't really valid because most people in society agree that bodily autonomy can be broken for multiple reasons | I want to premise this by saying I am very pro-choice. I believe anyone who is pregnant should have the right to an accessible and safe medical abortion at any point. I believe that no one should be allowed to use another person's body parts without that person's consent, even if it would be medically necessary. I am a... | 33 | So you gave two examples of bodily autonomy being violated but they're both flawed.
We don't actually have mandatory vaccinations. We have vaccination as a mandatory step to participating in certain public goods. You don't have to vaccinate your kid, they just can't go to school if they aren't vaccinated.
And... | 38 |
CMV: Ghosts don't exist | Science tells us that once we die, we cannot come back to life (excluding the exceptional cases of people coming back to life a couple minutes after their death). Our body decays and our brain too. Our "soul", i.e. memories, ideas, thoughts, knowledge, etc. disappear. And there is no scientifically rigorous way to asse... | 607 | Let's start with your basic premise. "Science has proven that...". Science doesn't work that way. Science is ever changing and is not immutable. Science is a great way to explain things, but can be changed based on data as it is discovered. A "soul", for lack of a better term, is not something that science can eit... | 441 |
ELI5: Can you own land on the moon? Could a nation form on Mars? | What laws get in the way of these things? I know that no nation can claim the moon, but is private ownership restricted, and if not, how does that play into activities such as the mining of the moon? | 27 | Right now all of space is more or less agreed to be neutral territory. Whenever the day comes that someone starts forming permanent colonies on extra-terrestrial bodies, there will likely be a very serious and very important global discussion on how ownership of these bodies will work. Right now there is no clear plan ... | 13 |
CMV: Canceling student loan debt is not a progressive priority. Warren, AOC, Sanders, etc shouldn't be championing it. | Hey peeps. I'm a progressive voter who supported Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren (I'm in MN). I have a masters degree and about $20K in student loan debt. However I don't understand why canceling student loan debt is a progressive policy that is being championed by the likes of Warren, Bernie, AOC, and others. Change m... | 394 | Part of the priority, is that it is actionable. The debt is owed to the federal government itself, and hence can easily be voided. Other than the process of debate itself, the act of doing this would only take a few minutes.
This is in contrast to other problems, such as addressing underlying problems, solving povert... | 226 |
If you put a live power cable in the sea, how far away could it electrocute someone? | What got me thinking about this in general was wondering about my house flooding and whether or not the electricity box becoming compromised with water could cause all of the water to become electrified.
Also, I remember a scene from Ozark, the Netflix show starring Jason Bateman, where something similar to my origin... | 34 | Electricity goes from high voltage to ground. If you put a live power cable in the sea it would act a little strangely. If you included a ground the electricity would run from between them.
Current kills, but depends on a lot of factors. You could wear a chain mail suit and would be safer because the electricity would... | 14 |
[Final Destination / Final Destination 2 / Final Destination 3 / Final Destination 4: The Final Destination / Final Destination 5] Why can't Death simply give people heart attacks or brain aneurysms, rather than concocting elaborate (and potentially defeatable) kill traps? | 61 | The entire point of the Final Destination is that those who cheat Death don’t do so for long. To that point, Death is incredibly pissed that they cheated him in the first place. For all intents and purposes he is a sentient and malevolent force hellbent on claiming his due in the most vindictive and vicious way possibl... | 61 | |
ELI5: Why if a man and woman are both drunk and have sex can it be considered rape? Isn't he equally unable to give informed consent? | 51 | There's a bit they generally leave off when they're talking about rape in that scenario. Simply having sex with someone who is intoxicated is not rape. Having sex with someone who is intoxicated *and would otherwise be unwilling to do so* is rape. It's not automatic just because sex occurred while intoxicated.
| 35 | |
Has anyone worked with IBM Watson? How is it like? | Has anyone worked with IBM Watson? How is it like?
Is it a set of programmable APIs? | 21 | In terms of branding, "Watson" is like "Docker"; it refers to a set of different and unrelated things under the same umbrella name:
* Watson Assistant, an API for building chatbots and virtual assistants
* Watson Studio, an IDE for AI modeling and analysis
* Watson Knowledge Catalog, a storage engine optimized for dat... | 15 |
(Astronomy) When fusion begins in a star, is at an immediate happening where the entire star bursts to life or does it slowly build energy and therefore light emission? | 463 | The main thing to understand here is that fusion is not on/off effect. Its probabilistic effect. And it depends on temperature/density. So the more dense the gas, the more probable it is for it's atoms to fuse and more energy is produced.
This means, that as the proto-star grows more dense, the rate of fusion increase... | 190 | |
As Voyager leaves the solar system, is there any chance it could still be carrying active biological contaminants? | 282 | Well, it's hard to say that the probability is 0. So yes, there is *any* chance. Although NASA takes care to sterilize its probes, it has been shown that life can survive a trip through outer space. | 85 | |
ELI5: Why have major countries not taken to teaching Esperanto in classrooms to allow people to communicate internationally? | To rephrase my question; Why haven't we all agreed on a language that everyone should know so every human on Earth can talk with one other? | 16 | Because English largely fills this role, albeit incompletely. In general it's far more practical to get everyone to speak a language that at least some people already speak. It's at least incrementally harder to get people to speak a language that essentially _no one_ speaks.
As for why we aren't "all in" on this, it... | 32 |
How did the cicada's mating cycle come to be 17 years long? Wouldn't a cycle of only a few years be necessary to avoid lining up with predatory mating cycles? | 46 | It's very beneficial to take a prime number as the length of your mating cycle. If you'd take 4 years for example, any predator that has a cycle of 1, 2 or 4 would eat a large part of the population. If you take a prime number like 7, then predators with a cycle of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 will all miss you.
The bigger the prim... | 18 | |
[Harry Potter] Why do the Dursleys resist sending Harry to Hogwarts? | Okay, I get that they don't want any interaction with magic at all, and refusing for awhile I can understand-but by the point they were moving to a shack on a small island in the middle of nowhere, surely it would have just been easier to send him and, as a bonus, have him out of their hair for entire years at a time? ... | 28 | **Wall Of Text Incoming**
Petunia explains the Dursleys' motivations really well in both the movies and the books.
When she was a small child, her sister Lily discovered that she was magical, and shortly thereafter was accepted to Hogwarts. Petunia wrote a letter to Dumbledore begging to be accepted as well, but was ... | 69 |
ELI5: Why do some cuts leave a scar and others don’t? | 29 | A big reason some injuries leave scars is the depth of the wound. The more layers of tissue damaged by a knife, for instance, the more likely a more prominent scar will result. Also, some people have more of a tendency to scar than others. | 23 | |
ElI5: How do they make machines that make proprietary product? | i was watching How It's made, and there was a dedicated machine for a particular part of the product something as little as a proprietary bottle cap. and it was a huge machine. Who got the time to sit and invent the machine for that little piece. think of the variety of such designs, so does that mean you need a differ... | 221 | Engineer here. We design these machines, we've got the time to do it because it's our job.
It makes sense for the company to employ us to do this because of scale. 1 or 2 things being made, it's probably faster and cheaper to do it by hand. Thousands or millions of these being made, you're going to want a machine that... | 349 |
ELI5 how does paper get softer when you crumple it up? | I just don’t understand it and idk what lost flair to make this | 55 | Some of the fibers holding the paper together have been broken. If you look at the creases very closely you can sometimes see stray fibers sticking out of them. Break the fibers enough and you've essentially turned the paper into felt. A very water sensitive felt but very felt like. | 45 |
ELI5: how are smart phones and tablets able to keep getting faster without ever needing a fan, when older computers with the same performance needed big fans? | 16 | The reason for this is that the electronics get smaller. Smaller electronics have less electric resistance, so they're able to do the same work without consuming as much power and therefore also without developing as much heat. Processing power has doubled without increasing power consumption every 18 months on average... | 10 | |
[LotR] If the Shire is a county, then what are the Farthings? | 21 | >The Shire was divided into four quarters, the Farthings already referred to, North, South, East, and West; and these again each into a number of folklands, which still bore the names of some of the old leading families, although by the time of this history these names were no longer found only in their proper folkl... | 25 | |
ELI5: Why are there so many homeless veterans? | 23 | A disproportionately large percentage of the homeless in general have severe mental issues. With homeless veterans that translates to PTSD to a degree severe enough to make getting by with a day-to-day job difficult if not impossible.
The process of getting help and benefits from the VA can be years long. Too long to ... | 28 | |
ELI5: Why is it usually recommended not to take medicine on an empty stomach? | (Sorry if I used the wrong flair, didn't know whether this was a biology question or a chemistry one) | 17 | Some medicines require that you take medicine after a meal as the medicine may cause nausea or stomach irratation when taken on an empty stomach.
Some medicines require the opposite, that they be taken on an empty stomach and this may be due to precise dosage affected by food or vitamins/chemicals in the food reacting... | 28 |
[Star Wars: Attack of the Clones] Dooku says to Yoda that their fight cannot be decided with the knowledge of the force but via lightsaber combat. Does this imply he was as strong as Yoda in the force? Or was he just trying to get Yoda to stop using the force? | I got a bit confused with the scene. Surely Yoda can wreck his shit up anytime right? Is Yoda holding back? Is Dooku trying to change the subject so to speak by making Yoda fight with a lightsaber instead of the force? Or did he really master the control of the force greatly?
Aside from the films I don't really know o... | 119 | Against just about anyone else, Dooku's force lightening would have been enough end the fight. Yoda blocked his attack with his bare hands so clearly Dooku's skill with the force was not able to defeat Yoda, so he switches to a lightsaber because Dooku was also a master at lightsaber dueling. This doesn't necessarily ... | 141 |
[Marvel/MCU] Is Captain America the smartest a human can possibly be? | I know the combination of the super soldier serum and vita-rays was designed to make everything about him the peak of possible human perfection, but does the same apply to his mind as well as his body?
On that note, exactly how much did the process effect his personality and way of thinking? Is he still the same per... | 27 | It gave him a peak human mind as well as body, but it did not make him any smarter technically. It really just made him a genius, in the sense that he has the ability to learn faster than the average human. He has used this ability to be a great battle tactician and pretty much a leader among any ranks.
It has changed... | 46 |
CMV: Only those who previously registered to be an organ donor should be entitled to receive an organ transplant when/if needed. | Most countries have a chronic supply issue in the area of organ donation. Over 8,000 Americans die each year because they can’t receive the life-saving organ they require.
In the USA, only 45% of American adults are registered organ donors. Organ donation is, in theory, supported by nearly 90% of the general public. ... | 284 | We will just ignore all the ethical problems with this idea.
This fails immediately for anyone who has read the Constitution. Some religions prevent the removal of organs. So, any law that prevents transplants to those who aren’t registered donors discriminates against some on the basis of religion. 1A violation, law... | 181 |
[Call of Cthulhu] What were the beings Jack met/became under the farm and before entering the city of Dagon? | 16 | Those were Yithians, also known as the "Great Race of Yith" in some other works. They existed over 200 million years before humans did, and had strong psychic abilities and precognition. Yith itself was destroyed in a war against another, evil race known as the Flying Polyps (seen themselves in the game), but the Yithi... | 12 | |
[Star Wars] How bad is life under the Empire for the average joe? | 21 | It depends a lot on what planet you are on and what species you are.
If you're on Coruscant, it's probably indistinguishable from the heyday of the Old Republic, but with more racism against non-humans. If you're non-human, you're more likely to get shunned to the slummy lower levels.
If you're on a fairly important ... | 49 | |
How can audio be sped up without increasing in pitch? | For example, say that you increase the speed of a recording of a voice. Normally, the pitch of the voice would increase as the sound gets sped up, but some software allows you to increase the speed of an audio file while maintaining the pitch. What's the difference between these two functions regarding how the sound wa... | 22 | Understanding Fourier analysis is key to knowing how this works. Any complex wave signal (like a sound wave) can be represented by a sum of pure sine waves at varying amplitudes. This collection of equivalent waves as a sum constitutes the frequency spectrum of a sound at a given instant.
The frequency spectrum is con... | 24 |
[Batman] What happens if Batman takes someone under his wing to be a Robin and it turns out they’re just not….good enough? What job does he give them? | 197 | Tim Drake started off doing research and figuring things out from inside the Batcave to keep him out of danger. If he'd never gotten up to the physical abilities necessary to be Robin, he'd probably have become backup and assistance for Oracle. | 232 | |
ELI5: Why does a word no longer seem like a word to our brain after we say it so many times? | 112 | It's not fully understood why, but its called semantic saturation. Effectively the part of your brain that knows the sound of the word and the part of the brain that knows the meaning of the word are different. Through repeated use, the pathways between these two parts get "tired" and so you don't associate the sound t... | 48 | |
Why does egg turn white when you cook it? | 104 | Proteins are shaped with hydrophobic parts of the molecule on the inside and hydrophilic parts on the outside, allowing them to be water soluble. When the egg white is clear, you're seeing a solution with dissolved proteins in it.
Proteins are very large molecules that are typically designed to function in a certain r... | 68 | |
I believe that grade inflation is slowly ruining society. CMV. | Grade inflation seems to be a growing issue in the U.S (maybe in other countries as well). I believe that many teachers/professors are more worried about how they are perceived relative to the average grade they give out to students rather than how much the students actually learn.
For example, I graduated college in... | 59 | Grade inflation isn't ruining anything. Grade inflation is a symptom not a cause. It's a symptom of the corporatization/consumerization of the university. Faculty promotion and advancement is now tied, in part, to end of term student evaluations, despite the fact that they are 1) notoriously unreliable, 2) very depende... | 23 |
ELI5: Why are steroids such a big problem in the MLB but not in every other professional sports league? | 20 | The major reason is that in no other major sport does brute strength play such a significant role. In most other sports strength has to be balanced by other factors such as speed, agility, and endurance- all of which can be negatively affected by putting on excessive muscle mass. However in baseball, for half of the ga... | 15 | |
Eli5: why overwatering plants can cause roots to rot, but growing plants in just water dont? | 18 | So not all plants can grow in with their roots submerged in water. Many will just die.
That being said, for those plants that CAN grow in water or soil, care needs to be taken. Although roots look the same to our eyes, roots that are grown in water and grown in soil are different, and if you take a plant that was grow... | 16 | |
CMV: There is a shortage of workers because the pandemic has taught us that the economy doesnt need us; and over the last year & a half we have individually found ways to minimize or even eliminate our dependence on abusive employers. | I am a professional chef and the pandemic and lockdown hit the food scene like the fist of an angry god. Many restaurants immediately shut down to wait it out. Many restaurants shut down and went out of business. Some restaurants were able to stay in business by effectively converting to a dine-out-only model. Overall,... | 954 | It’s not necessarily that the economy taught us something new, it’s just part of the business cycle. Because overnight, people started going out to buy stuff/participate in the economy instead of staying locked inside, demand for labor increased rapidly since more people were out shopping. But the supply of labor has n... | 122 |
[Superman] Could Krypton have been saved? | I've seen a few threads that deal with the possibility of Krypton being saved, either by a Green Lantern or a time traveler or some other method. But... Even if it were possible for someone with extreme superpowers to get to Krypton in time, what could they have done?
I can see a mass evacuation being somewhat success... | 30 | A popular way for heroes to 'save' Krypton is to hammer lead rods into the core, rather like a nuclear reactor. Kal-El did this once with a Green Lantern ring in one Elseworld, and Tomar-Re planned on doing it before he got blinded by a supernova and recovered in time to see the planet explode. | 18 |
[Star Wars] Why was Anakin so mad that he didn't get promoted to Master when he knew he wasn't selected? | I find it strange how Anakin told Palpatine that him being placed on the Jedi Council wouldn't work because they elected their own members and that the chancellor doesn't have authority on the Council.
But he then gets mad and complains to Obi-Wan about how it's not fair that he would stay as a Jedi Knight when they ... | 38 | His entire time at the Jedi order they basically didn't trust him while calling him the chosen one and while he did their dirty work by going on countless missions and fighting in the Clone Wars. Aside from a few jedi like Yoda, Windu, and Obi Wan, he was one of the most skilled jedi in the entire order. After years of... | 53 |
[Super heroes] Do lesser known C-list super heroes have fans in their own universe ? | Is there a Question fan club somewhere in the DC universe?
Or people who rather get autographs from Booster Gold than Green Lantern? | 16 | There are certain people who are just fans of heroes in general, and they chase after the biggest names.
But a lot of people become fans because of a personal interaction they've had. Mitch Anderson didn't think much of Superman until Big Blue saved him.
So a lesser superhero who still saves people on a regular basis... | 22 |
Is "footnote-mining" okay? | History grad student here. I have been wondering for a while what people make of ["footnote mining."](https://onelastsketch.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/footnote-mining-and-interdisciplinary-research/)
By that I mean: When I do my reading of the secondary literature before starting to write an article/book chapter, I ofte... | 113 | Like the others said: yes, "footnote mining" as a way to find references is fine.
I might be stating the obvious here, but what is NOT fine, however, is to just add such references to your paper. You should only cite references that you yourself have read, i.e., don't believe other people's claims about a reference, c... | 182 |
[WH40k]How to get the most Dakka? | Attach Gatling Guns to the barrels of a larger Gatling Gun? Or maybe put even more Gatling Guns onto those Gatling Guns?
Then paint it red to make it shoot faster? | 50 | TVTropes had a prolonged discussion on the subject of "enuff dakka". I'll save you from the rabbit hole by summarising:
You need to have a gun made out of all the matter in space and time, which fires all the matter in space and time as ammunition, at a target of all the matter in space and time. Repeatedly, with an i... | 69 |
CMV: though people with gender dysphoria are perfectly sane people in the sense that they can and should be granted all the rights and freedoms other people have in every sense, that does not mean we should pretend that G.D. is not a mental disorder. | Thus, people should not be offended if we say, for example, that a biological male is fundamentally different than a trasgender one, that they're not the same thing.
It's an opinion I have, trying to put together the pieces I find reasonable in the two sides of the argument. It's a question of coherence more than one ... | 32 | >that a biological male is fundamentally different than a trasgender one, that they're not the same thing.
I don't think that I've ever met a trans person who says they are the same thing.
The problem is when people think this "fundamental difference" means that there is no such thing as being a trans man, or that... | 30 |
[Avatar TLA & LoK] Is the sun like the real-life sun (i.e. a radioactive ball of plasma), or is it some kind of magical, nonradioactive ball of actual fire? In either case, would a firebender be able to "bend" the sun? | In a lot of fantasy universes, the sun is just a big ball of fire, not a radioactive ball of burning plasma like it is in real life. I can't recall any of the ATLA or LoK characters ever explaining if their solar system's sun is a magic fireball or a radioactive plasma ball.
Regardless of which type of sun the Avatar... | 22 | The sun is never confirmed either way.
We know the moon is a spirit though, and that is given as the reason why water benders are able to draw power from it. It would stand to reason that the sun is actually a spirit as well, and that is the reason why firebenders are able to draw power from it.
It may well be the c... | 22 |
ELI5: When going over a hill in a car, what causes that fluttery feeling in your stomach? | My daughter asked me this question while we were driving earlier today and I was completely stumped. | 36 | That's your stomach jumping up in your abdomen. You might be (hopefully) strapped in with a seatbelt, but your organs as such aren't. They can move a little bit when you're in a car going over a hill, and that's all it is. | 29 |
So I know that heat rises, but why is that so? | It's almost an adage at this point, however what is the reasoning between heat rising? Does it have to do with air pressure? | 23 | Hotter fluids like air and water generally have a lower density. This means that a given volume of the hotter fluid is lighter than the cooler fluid. The heavier fluid sinks forcing the warmer one to rise.
Heat doesn't rise. This is why you don't see heat "rising" in solids. This is also dependent on the differing we... | 25 |
A few questions on Abortion (Thomson and Mary Anne Warren) | 1. Does Thomson agree, for the sake of argument, that the foetus is a person that has a right to life?
2. Does Thomson’s view distinguish morally between cases of abortion depending upon the hardship to the mother required to bear the child?
3. Is Thomson’s Henry Fonda case supposed to illustrate that Fonda would infri... | 28 | In response to the questions about JJT:
1. Thomson wants to show that, even if the fetus is a person with the right to life, that doesn't entail the right to use the mother's organs.
2. If she's right, then even given the fetus's rights, the mom doesn't have to endure significant hardship to bring the fetus to term. S... | 20 |
ELI5 Saw a video of a squirrel getting rescued via CPR and it made me wonder... If CPR on humans has a specific "cadence" to it that is said to be best, would CPR be more efficient on an animal if the cadence was much faster (to match their normally quicker heartrate)? Thanks! | 35 | Indeed it is. There have been some research into this on dogs and cats which are the animals most often receiving first aid. And they have found that the optimal cadence is much faster then on humans. In addition the heart is not in the exact same place and the ribs are different so you end up performing the CPR routin... | 14 | |
Eli5: Why do we use clean, potable water in toilets? | 230 | A separate water supply system for toilets would cost too much to build and maintain in a city. The water in it can't so dirty to cause gunk to deposit in storage tanks, pipes and the toilet, or be toxic for plant life that it can't be used for watering a garden. | 500 | |
ELI5: Why does every car have a different type of battery when every car takes a 12-Volt battery? | 28 | different sizes.
the bigger the engine, the bigger the amperage is needed for the electric starter motor to turn the engine. the bigger the amp requirement, the bigger battery you need.
bigger batteries also happen to be more expensive and more heavy. so you use the size battery that most appropriately matches you... | 21 | |
is it possible to move an object in circular motion using magnets? | hello I'm trying to make a device which uses magnetism. my device is like a windmill but instead, I'm planning to use magnets to move the blades. I created a miniature using a pc fan and a dynamo generator. So far it doesn't work. Is it possible to move an object in circular motion with the use of two opposite magnetic... | 1,070 | Absolutely, this is how most electric motors work. They have a coil of wire around the magnet, and adding a current makes the magnet attract or repel other magnets on a part that spins freely. (unless i misunderstood your question!) | 792 |
Are adult children morally obligated to care for ailing parents? | 20 | Do you have a general moral theory within which you want an answer to this question?
Part of this is the extent to which you think familial status can itself cause a moral obligation.
edit--just adding a little elaboration.
Myself, it seems very unlikely that we can actually argue the "parentage" can be the cause of... | 11 | |
ELI5: Why when we think about breathing we start breathing 'manually'? | And how do we forget about it suddenly 'automatic' breathing starts?
Thanks!. | 30 | Breathing is regulated by two different pathways, an automatic center that originates from your brainstem that controls your natural breathing when you are not actively thinking about breathing. There is also an area that comes from your cortex allows you to have active control of the muscles that are related to breath... | 23 |
[Harry Potter] Hogwarts students enter at 11 and stay up to 7 years. Even the most advanced students never learn very powerful magic like the kind dumbledore and Voldemort use. Are there universities for young students who want to further their education? | 807 | Its more an apprenticeship based civilization. A student might graduate Hogwarts and be interested in Wandlore, so they would go to Olivander's or some other such place and apply for an apprenticeship.
Either that or there are low level ministry style jobs where you get additional training. | 569 | |
ELI5:why are chickens more likely to be contaminated with salmonella and not other animals | 53 | Just like reptiles, chickens have Salmonella bacteria in their digestive tract. Adaptation in both the bacteria and animal has resulted in a situation where infection is often asymptomatic. Issues arise, however, when slaughtering and processing isn't done in a sanitary way.
Because the Salmonella lives in the chicken... | 34 | |
If the coronavirus keeps mutating to evade our vaccines, like the South African mutation, and we keep on updating vaccines to protect against the new variants, would the virus ever “run out” of new mutations to try? | Just thinking of the worst case scenario where every time we create a new vaccine the coronavirus mutates again to get around it. Is the number of possible mutations that could affect vaccine response limited in any way? | 173 | Influenza is effectively doing this. It's constantly mutating. Every year, vaccines are adapted in an attempt to catch the latest mutation. Problem is the latest mutation can be quicker than our efforts leading to larger outbreaks of influenza once every couple of years. | 167 |
ELI5: If the Earth's crust is divided into tectonic plates, all bordering the adjacent plates, how is it that continents manage to move away/towards each other? | Are there gaps between the plates that allow this constant movement? | 72 | At the scales we're talking about - very long timeframes, very large forces - even rock is somewhat "squishy". The plates compress and stretch as the forces below them push them against one another or pull them apart, so the horizontal size of the plates does not have to remain exactly the same over time.
In some case... | 38 |
[Star Wars] Why was the death star built when you could just carpet bomb planets using giant space ships? | 33 | It's about fear.
A fleet of ships. That's an understandable thing. Something you can get your head around. A fleet comes to glass your planet, you think maybe you can fight. Maybe you can drive them off, or maybe there will be enough left after to rebuild.
A moon-sized space station that can reduce your whole pl... | 78 | |
How fast is the sun moving through space and how can we measure that? | 27 | Speed is relative. "Space" isn't some substance or terrain through which the sun is moving. Nothing moves relative to space. So you must choose another object to compare the sun's movement to. The sun moves in it's circular orbit around the galactic center at something like 800,000 km/hr. But you might also choose to c... | 23 | |
[General] If a werewolf was stabbed with a silver-plated blade, would it be as effective as pure silver blade? | 71 | Yeah. Silver is silver. As long as the silver is on the outside, then it's going to do harm. The problem with using silver plated items is that the playing can wear away with repeated cleaning, which is going to happen a lot of you are a hunter, and may become ineffective. | 76 | |
How did the functions of super computers change over the years? Is a super computer just a stack of the newest hardware? | This field is something that always interested me a lot and I do have many questions about it:
How did the functions of super computers change over the years? Is a super computer just a stack of the newest hardware? How long does it take to build one, did the time needed change?
Are super computers doing the same th... | 22 | I can speak (a little) for the climate/weather oceanography group.
A lot of the basic code (for large scale climate system) was written over the last 30 years, and we still use that same Fortran.
The advances are running on finer and finer grids, or running more simulations to get better "average" properties. So yes... | 16 |
ELI5: Why do we want to listen to a specific song multiple times and afterwards don't want to hear it for weeks? | Everyone has that, finding a song particularly mesmerizing that you listen to it on repeat for days. But then all of a sudden you get tired of it and can go without for months. Why is that? | 27 | People want a feigned sense of newness. People often don't like a song because they haven't heard it enough to become familiar. Then you listen to it a lot, because you know what to expect then it becomes the boring because you know it too well and there is no growth. | 12 |
[Comics Marvel/DC] How do enhanced geniuses like MODOK, Leader, or Hector Hammond (DC) stand up to there "world smartest" baseline humans? People like Lex Luther, Reed Richards and Doom. | This was a question I had for a long time, and it was never really answered in a satisfying way, as far as I know. To me, it would only make sense that these enhanced minds are smarter than humanly capable, but comics don't really handle intellectuals too well. | 46 | Reed Richards is recognised as being the smartest character in the marvel universe and consistently outsmarts his opponents.
I'd say MODOK and such probably outthink any "normal" human, which means they can plan ahead incredibly well, develop crazy tools and weapons and be sneaky enough about it to do a lot of harm.
... | 33 |
ELI5: Why induce labor in pregnant women past their due date instead of just letting the baby come on its own? | 35 | 1. When the baby gets too big, it can require surgery to get it out.
2. You can make less of what the baby needs.
3. What the baby is using to live (placenta) can begin to fail.
4. Insurance reasons: Since is is now standard practice to induce if you are a bit late, any complications arising when they deviate from t... | 41 | |
[Beast Wars] How come neither the Autobots or Decpticons found any relics from the Beast Wars? | 41 | Both the Axalon and Darksyde were destroyed with the remnants either long buried or recovered and packed up when the Maximals left Earth.
Other things that may have being left behind, such as Tarantulas's lair, would have been near impossible to find if you didn't know to look for them; buried under the ground or at t... | 24 |
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