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CMV: There is no way that a U.S. Constitutional Amendment could pass in today's political environment | **EDIT**
While discussing this, I realized that one of the main subtopics that support my view is that Republicans and Democrats are simply not living in the same reality right now. For example, take [this poll](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/594128-36-percent-in-poll-think-biden-didnt-win-election-legitimatel... | 1,544 | You're forgetting (or unaware) of the other (civil) option: an Article 5 Convention of States.
This would remove Congress from the equation (because they are the roadblock) & allow the States to directly vote on Amendments. The last time this got close to happening, Congress (scared of being shut out of the proces... | 448 |
[The Purge] Why haven't other countries tried to imvade the US during the Purge? Would their invasion and take over technically be legal and accepted by other nations? | 103 | We know that important infrastructures like hospitals or police stations are still protected during the Purge so Military infrastructure is probably also protected an ready to go.
Also the Purge is just a way to get poor people to kill eachother, it doesn't have to be consistent in it's rules. | 181 | |
[Fallout] Are the Mr. Handy robots sentient /self aware? | When you meet codsworth after your 2 century disappearance in fallout 4, you can ask him why he is acting strange, and then starts telling you about how lonely he is and almost starts to have a mental breakdown.
This, along with some of his actions and comments about things, makes me wonder if they are somehow alive,... | 28 | Past experiences with robots says yes. Yes they are. They aren't typically recognised as such, but certain ones do exhibit characteristics which would mark them as both sentient and self aware. EDE, for instance. | 33 |
I think that standardized tests are a waste of time and resources. CMV. | Please note that I am not referring to the SATs or other tests of that nature because I can understand why they exist for the purpose of college. I am also American so I am mainly referring to american tests as I don't know much about standardized tesing in other countries. I am mainly referring to the tests issued by... | 34 | Standardized tests allow for easier comparisons between schools, meaning that if schools perform poorly then it shows them what subjects they aren't teaching well. Without tests that need to be administered by every school, it would be very difficult to determine how well schools are teaching their students. | 12 |
Thoughts/questions about quitting PhD | My apologies in advance for somewhat of a rambling post - I'm a 31/m, have a wife and 2-year old with plans for a second child currently on hold because of financial constraints. I'm currently in the 5th year of a upper mid-tier history PhD program and am juggling quitting. I've lost most all passion and drive for acad... | 24 | 1. If you put your nose to the grindstone, how quickly do you think you could finish your degree?
2. If you dropped out tomorrow, what would you be doing instead?
3. If you dropped out 6 months from now, what do you think you could be doing and how likely is it that would occur? | 17 |
Can a planet have a moon the same size orbiting it? | What would be the consequences both on the inhabitants and the two bodies?
If it isn't possible, why not? | 3,146 | Neither would be a moon. They would be orbiting a point between them. (Like how pluto and charon orbit a point in space between them, but much closer to Pluto).
They would probably be tidally locked (same face facing each other, like the moon is tidally locked with Earth). | 4,455 |
cmv: Taxation in a highly corrupt society IS theft | Take my country. An eastern European country that shall not be named.
It is a country where the taxation is at insane levels. Almost 60% in tax per minimum wage.
Public employees, who do nothing, are hired on nepotism, relations and influence.
Private sector workers PAY for these leeches who in turn treat them like gar... | 16 | Well yes, if the money is being embezzled or misused, then that is when it is being stolen.
That doesn't mean taxation is *inherently* theft, which is what the phrase "taxation is theft" is meant to convey. If you can say that taxation is sometimes theft, but sometimes not theft, depending on the way it's used, then ... | 28 |
Is there a reason the angular size of our moon is almost identical to the angular size of the sun? Or is it coincidence? | Assuming there is intelligent life on other planets, and that we do communicate with them at some point, will we be able to brag that we're the only folks who can see both a complete solar eclipse and complete lunar eclipse? | 101 | It is a coincidence. They both get bigger and smaller from our perspective throughout the month/year, so there is some overlap in their range of sizes, rather than both being the *exact* same angular size all the time.
In many billion years the sun will be bigger and the moon will be farther away, so this won't be the... | 52 |
[Dragon Ball/Z/Super] What determines the color of a specific energy attack? Is it something the user can choose at will? | 71 | It seems tied to specific techniques.
Generally people seem have their own Ki energy, but people with similar styles/training share the color.
Turtle School / Kamahameha : Blue Energy
Kaio-Ken : Red
SSJ Ki: Yellow
Since Ki is just a manifestation of the users energy in DB, it's most likely just focused in a differe... | 41 | |
AskScience AMA Series: Hi! I am J.R. Skok. I am a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute and a Space entrepreneur. I am working with SETI and NASA to develop future missions to search for life on Mars, AMA! | Hi! I am [J.R. Skok](https://www.jrskok.com/). I am a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute and a Space entrepreneur. I am working with SETI and NASA to develop future missions to [search for life on Mars](https://www.madeofmars.com/), map out the minerals and geologic history of that planet while leading expedit... | 2,200 | Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.
What is the greatest challenge your company faces in finding life on Mars and elsewhere in our solar system? How can we use what we learn on Mars to investigate some of our more promising moons, such as Europa? There will surely be different challenges
Thank you... | 61 |
If you were to scream in the vacuum of space, would you be able to hear your own voice through the vibrations in your head? Or would you just hear silence? | 314 | Barring the other physical consequences of being exposed to space vacuum unprotected....if you had air in your lungs to exhale and 'scream' with, the vibrations from your vocal chords would propagate through your bodily tissue/matter and you'd 'hear' it--just like you already do in an atmosphere (except you probably 'h... | 194 | |
CMV: Limiting my privacy rights won't really affect me personally | Ok, so this isn't exactly the typical "If I'm not doing anything wrong, why should I care." Even though I don't really do anything illegal/weird on the internet, I understand that if the government wanted to, they could definitely find stuff out about me that would sufficient in sabotaging my reputation, if not incrimi... | 16 | There is no way for the government to access that data without leaving open loopholes that anyone can exploit. The government its self may not cause any problems through this, but people trying to access financial information through loopholes like this have caused problems to millions of individuals | 15 |
[Jurassic Park] Why did the Velociraptors have so much trouble searching for Lexi and Tim in the kitchen? | Lexi and Tim were making a total racket; scuffing their hands and feet on the floor, bumping into metal cupboards and worktops, spilling cutlery, shrieking and breathing loudly etc. How in the hell did the Velociraptors take such a long time to spot them? Couldn't they be heard in what was an otherwise eerily silent bu... | 30 | They had to cope with all the unfamiliar stimuli of an artificial environment. Their ears weren't used to all the echoing of hard smooth surfaces, and their noses were still coping with all the new scents, including the lingering scent of hundreds of previous humans permeating everything. | 69 |
ELI5: How can we estimate the age of a star based on its size? | I have a homework problem that boils down to this: globular clusters have stars of a certain size in them, and when you plug that size into a formula, it says they are about 30 billion years old. (The universe is only 14 bil) I just don't understand the entire concept of getting a star's age from its size... why couldn... | 57 | Well you can't estimate the age of a star by its mass alone and if you are getting a value greater than the age of the universe you obviously went wrong somewhere.
You can use the size in combination with its luminosity to estimate its age, because stars get brighter as they age. Obviously bigger stars give of more li... | 10 |
ELI5: If someone we're to step onto a gas giant planet would they just sink to the core of the planet? What would happen? | 44 | Assuming you somehow lived through all the fun things that would happen to you while falling?
Eventually you'd hit a layer that had been compressed enough to be denser than you are, and you'd stop there.
Realistically, other things would kill you before you got that deep.
You run into a 1000kmh cross winds, pressure... | 43 | |
How does RSA generate the two prime numbers used for encryption so quickly when its security is based on the difficulty of finding primes? | When I generate an RSA key, it takes a very short amount of time to produce the key, and thus to produce the two primes. How does is RSA secure when these primes are found so quickly? I guess there are two fundamentally-linked questions here.
(1) How does RSA produce two primes so quickly when cracking the primes wou... | 21 | It is an asymmetric problem. It is computationally easy to test whether a number is prime and easy to multiply two numbers together. However it is computationally hard to factor a given number.
So, you pick two large prime numbers (easy), multiply them together (easy) and tell people their result. If they want to b... | 15 |
ELI5: Why does raw poultry potentially go bad after 1-2 days in the fridge while raw steak may last for 5? | Info from http://www.rd.com/health/healthy-eating/how-long-can-you-store-meat-in-the-fridge-or-freezer/ and http://www.foodsafety.gov/blog/meatinrefrig.html but I'm just wondering why bird meat can go so fowl (so sorry) so fast. | 43 | Poultry is not as dense as beef. Bacteria can permeate poultry easier and faster than beef. This is the same reason why you have to cook poultry at least till medium and not rare, which can otherwise be done with beef. | 23 |
Are left-handed people more common in countries that write from right to left? | Seems quite obvious, but: if that would be the case, do right-handed people suffer from the same problems as left-handed people in languages that write from left to right?
I don't know if this is a part biology, human body or linguistics.... | 27 | Everything I've ever read indicates left-handedness is a stable 10-12% of the population around the world, despite the various social pressures put upon us. I've wondered about righties in right-left writing systems having the same smudging problem as I've always lived with, but perhaps the writing positions in those ... | 23 |
[MCU][Endgame Spoilers] What's so special about the Soul Stone? | So, who knows where these things were originally, but the earliest appearance of the Space Stone is in some viking temple in Norway, not some weird non-Euclidean spatial configuration.
The Reality Stone is just a weird pool of goo and all you have to do to get it is touch it, apparently. You don't have to pierce the ... | 17 | No one had to go through a non-euclidean test of sacrifice and death in order to get the Soul Stone *after* it was removed from Vormir, either. Just grabbing it worked just the same as with every other stone, once it was "out of the box".
Vormir and the "Drop One Loved One For Access" puzzle was just where the thing ... | 24 |
ELI5: Why poop is brown | 37 | We just learned this in biology! So, some of the bile from your liver is sent to your digestive system to break down and emulsify fats. The bile has a characteristic green color. Once it enters the digestive system, the bile pigments change colors and eventually become the characteristic brown color of feces! | 27 | |
What is the maximum theoretical efficiency of an air turbine and how close can we get to it with current technology? | The maximum theoretical efficiency of an open air wind turbine is defined by Betz's law to be 59.3%. But if instead the turbine was inside a circular tube of constant diameter, and had a pressure drop of so many pascals across it, how would an ideal turbine behave? As in what would the air flow rate through it be, and ... | 103 | Modern multiple stage bladed turbines typically reach 60–70% efficiency, while large steam turbines often show turbine efficiency of over 90% in practice. Volute rotor matched Tesla-type machines of reasonable size with common fluids (steam, gas, and water) would also be expected to show efficiencies in the vicinity of... | 17 |
ELI5 - How can oases exist in deserts? Where does the water come from? How come they don't just vaporize? And where do trees and plants there grow from? | 84 | Oases exist where groundwater comes to or near to the surface. This usually happens in low places, where all the underground water flows end up. The water itself comes ultimately from rains, which, however rare, occur in every desert. The water then seeps down through the ground until it reaches a barrier made of imper... | 143 | |
ELI5 What's happening in my head when sound gets drowned out while falling asleep and then a minor disturbance "opens" up my ears? | 301 | Your brain differentiates between expected and unexpected noises. So the hum from the fridge or the music you left on is expected, but broken glass or some other noise is unexpected and your brain wakes you up. | 213 | |
I've been introduced to so many softwares in my Bachelors program that I don't even know which one is helpful, any help ? | Basically the title, I've worked on R, Stata, Matlab, Python and C.
I want to pursue a career in economics, maybe research, I like environmental economics and econometrics and would really enjoy working in either of those fields, even if I know that econometrics is more a method than a field.
I will start my Maste... | 20 | For the private sector R or Python are the two languages most widely used for applied statistics/data science work.
Stata is used by a large number of academic economists so if you are interested in academic research you need to be at least somewhat familiar with it because you will have coauthors who will use it.
M... | 27 |
ELI5: ELI5: how does odor transfer through plastic? And does it mean the object giving off the odor is technically penetrating the plastic? | 54 | Yes, any time you smell something *actual pieces of that substance are going into your nose*. Smell is physical contact between molecules and sensory cells in your nose.
If you smell something through a wrapper or bag, yes, the odoriferous molecules are penetrating through the plastic. The molecules we smell tend to b... | 17 | |
Why don't dinosaur exhibits in museums have sternums? | With he exception of pterodactyls, which have an armor-like bone in the ribs. | 3,374 | First of all: pterosaurs aren't dinosaurs.
Second of all, laziness probably. The sternal elements in most dinosaurs except ankylosaurs, *Limusaurus*, dromaeosaurs, troodontids, jeholornithiforms, and pygostylians are unfused, which makes them more difficult to mount. This is also why the gastralia are often missing.
| 1,398 |
ELI5: Trump declared bankruptcy a good few times, yet managed to retain most of his wealth. How? | 113 | Trump companies declared bankruptcy. That's not the same thing as personal bankruptcy. Companies are created, in part, to limit the liability of the owners/shareholders should the business suffer a downturn. | 144 | |
[DC] Doomsday's Limit | Somebody in r/whowouldwin recommended that I post this here.
Doomsday isn't able to be killed but he can be defeated, and with the way his abilities work he becomes more powerful than anyone who defeats him so he could just come back and kill them afterwards, right? I haven't read many comics, especially DC and I gen... | 45 | So, Doomsday is the result of a Kryptonian scientist's research into evolution.
Here's how it works: Doomsday can die. And he has. A lot of times.
But then he gets better.
Doomsday evolves to ensure that he can never die **the same way** again.
Doomsday gets burnt to death, and he develops a the ability to resist e... | 45 |
[Star Wars] why doesn't R2-D2 have speech capabilities? | you would think it would be pretty simple to do given that he already seems capable of thought and has a personality etc. | 25 | Same reason all cars don't have bluetooth capabilities. It's not their primary function and it costs the manufacturer money. R2-D2's main function is to communicate with computer systems, such as those among ships, and to maintain and repair them. Speech is not necessary. Would it be helpful? Sure. But not necessary. | 33 |
[Doctor Strange] why didn’t Master Hamir use magic to grow his hand back is it possible for him to do that given that magic can heal the body in ways it normally can’t or can magic not be used to grow back limbs | Wouldn’t this imply that there is a limit to the amount of damage one can heal from using magic | 38 | Well they also said the paralyzed guy was only able to walk because he was channeling the magic directly through his spine. Not that he was able to heal his spine. So there's definitely a limit to the magic's ability to regrow physical parts.
Edit: And that strange could "fix" his hands by doing the same thing, but he... | 37 |
[Werewolves] So in fiction when people turn into Werewolves, does the Inner Beast have a mind of its own? Is it sentient? Is it intelligent and capable of rational thought? Is it kinda like a demonic possession? | 22 | Generally speaking its mindless hunger and animal ferocity. It's smarter than an average animal but still driven by instinct. Some imprint of the human psyche remains leading to targeted attacks against rivals from the human side or ignoring love interests.
And in others it's just a normal human intelligence within a... | 23 | |
[MCU/616 Marvel] Assuming Kilgrave was raised right and wasn't a sociopath, how would his powers work out as a hero? | Is he street level? SHIELD agent? Avenger? | 29 | He is probably a high level street tier. He is the ultimate hostage negotiator, a perfect crime fighter (they just surrender) and able to deal with most street level criminals.
He has the potential to go above that by breaking the will of Super Villains and using them to fight against supers that he can't take on dir... | 40 |
When you're sick why do symptoms seem to get worse at night? | Right now I've got a cold and during the day I feel somewhat okay and my nose is fairly clear, but right now as I'm getting ready for bed I'm feeling really achy and my nose is all stuffed up. Why do the symptoms get worse at night? | 229 | Your symptoms probably get worse because of circadian rhythm effects. Your immune system is more active at night - you get higher concentrations of inflammatory cytokines and the like - leading to more pronounced symptoms as your immune system combats infection "with more fervor". In the specific example of inflammator... | 402 |
CMV: A total ban on guns won't work in the United States. | Criminals won't abide by the law, and making more won't stop them.
The only reason we have mass shootings is because of people being screwed up in the head ie: parkland girl admitting to bullying the autistic foster kid, saying he deserved it and it's the guns fault that the school got shot up.
The state of mind in t... | 49 | You're kind of all over the place here.
A total ban cannot happen because of the second amendment.
What can happen, and did in the 1990s, is a limit on the more military-style weapons.
As for your criminals argument - the state has a monopoly on force and could allow cops to have any guns they need. | 33 |
Why does it feel warmer when it's snowing? | Is it actually warmer? Or am I just imagining the difference in temperature? | 20 | It can only snow within a certain temperature range, if it's too cold there won't be any moisture in the air. A warm front bringing moisture in will warm the air up some and lend enough moisture for snow to form. | 19 |
ELI5: Why does it take so long to close a frozen program with "End Task" in task manager, yet killing a process is instantaneous? | 317 | End Task relies on sending a signal to the program telling it to die. That requires the program to respond and terminate, which it wont if it's really stuck. After some time the option to try and force close is made available.
Killing a process just outright stops giving it resources so it instantly is removed from th... | 205 | |
[Star Wars] how is no one ever burnt by climbing through fresh glowing hot holes in the floors/ceilings cut by lightsabers? | Sometimes they even directly touch the glowy orange melted metal and don't get burned. How? | 56 | Metal in ships and floors of the universe aren't like earth metals. Under extreme heat or pressure they'll emit an orangish red light but not heat itself. They rather marvelously dissipate heat as well throughout the whole of itself. This leads to stronger building materials that are heat resistant but also indicate wh... | 57 |
Can you delete specific memories by removing specific brain cells? | If a surgeon, say, uses a scalpel to scrape some cells out of the temporal lobe, would the patient wake up missing certain memories? | 41 | It's not that easy.
Memories are stored distributed around the brain and can't be said to be stored in any specific cell or set of cells. Such a "scraping" procedure -- if it affected memory at all, instead of some other function -- might disrupt certain memory connections but it's hard to defend the idea that the me... | 26 |
[The Matrix] Would the Matrix have kept its deal with Cypher, or just kill him? | 57 | I would imagine not. Cypher wants to go back to how it was before, and before, he *chose* to leave the Matrix. He can be rich, famous, everything he asks for, but he'll have that nagging question returned to the back of his mind.
And from Cypher's point of view, there isn't much material difference to him being mindw... | 53 | |
ELI5: What is energy? | What technically is energy, not how it is measured, used, or converted into different forms. I am looking for what energy actually is. | 27 | Energy is the capacity to do work. Many forms of energy can't be used to do work we would think of as practical (like low temperature differences and low heat), but energy is just that element of physical reality that is the capacity to do work. | 16 |
Eli5: why isn't the british army called the "royal army" | Royal Navy, Royal Airforce, even Royal Mail.
Why doesn't the army get to be royal? | 56 | Historical reasons. The army is allowed to exist by order of the parliament, whereas the navy was personally controlled and raised by the monarch. The army exists, legally, because parliament allows it to.
The distinction is less relevant today than once it was, obviously. | 43 |
ELI5: Why is the glass on our phone screens more slippery than the glass in windows? | 66 | The glass in your phone has special coatings to make it slippery. You drag your finger across it constantly so it needs to be slippery.
Window glass need to be glass. That’s it. Were you to make windows out of iPhone glass they would be prohibitively expensive. | 104 | |
[Star Wars] Why did Leia think it remotely plausible to claim they were on a diplomatic mission? | She tells Vader they were on a diplomatic mission. He doesn't believe her. Then in Rogue One we find out why. Because he literally followed her from a battlefield.
How did she think this defense would be even remotely plausible? | 104 | They aren't the only Corellian Corvette in existence and it's not like they have license plates. She was basically denying that they were the one on that battlefield.
Yeah it was a weak excuse but a weak excuse is better than none and she wasn't even trying to convince Vader but rather was threatening to cause trouble... | 146 |
If I am trying to model one single electron (or one hole) delocalized among a small number of molecules, is it appropriate to use a Fermi-Dirac distribution or a Boltzmann distribution for temperature dependence, and why? | Please let me know if any clarification is needed to answer my question. | 358 | Recall that the Fermi-Dirac distribution is the grand canonical ensemble, and the Boltzmann distribution is the canonical ensemble (your terminology is correct, the other answers are confusing "Boltzmann distribution" with "Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution"). So, if your system cannot exchange electrons from elsewhere (e... | 1,426 |
ELI5: How do companies such as Arm & Hammer make a profit off of baking soda when sodium bicarbonate is the only ingredient in a non-proprietary formula with off-brands offering the same product, cheaper? | 291 | I worked at an Arm & Hammer factory where they bottled laundry detergent. They would run a batch of the name brand stuff and then a batch of the cheap stuff. Same machine, same ingredients. Different bottle, different price. They have both markets cornered because they are their own competition. | 177 | |
Is it possible to transform martian soil into fertile soil through bacteria and fungi? | 43 | You’d have to find a way to thicken the atmosphere first. If we had bacteria or fungi that could function in a near vacuum. Add to that the problem that water boils at about 10c on Mars, and you’ve got a bit of a problem. | 26 | |
ELI5: How can lightning strikes cut trees in half, but whenever it strikes a human you don't usually hear about losing limbs? | 629 | The tree splits due to the pressure of the boiled sap inside it, not due to the lightening chopping or physically striking the tree.
This happens in a tree because there is enough resistance to the flow of electricity. When there is enough oomph, like a lightening strike, the electricity is able to overcome the resi... | 281 | |
I think there is such a thing as child pornography which does not involve child abuse or exploitation. CMV | The expression of my opinion does not in any way attempt to minimise the harm that is caused in the creation of images of child abuse or exploitation, but is simply to suggest that the definition of child pornography is broader than those two things.
**Before reading on please keep in mind that my opinion is concernin... | 25 | 1. Completely agree. Good point.
2. Perhaps the children have been negatively influenced and commit the sexual act as a result. This negative influence would constitute exploitation or abuse.
3. Again, the same as in 2. | 10 |
ELI5: In light of the article about the 19 year old female lifting the truck off of her dad to save his life, how is it physically possible for a human to do that even with the high amount of adrenaline that is present? | 129 | The human body is incredibly durable and much stronger than we normally assume, this is because when we're calmly exerting ourselves (like in the gym) we're aware of the stress the load puts on our body, and as such we are cautious to avoid injury. With massive amounts of adrenaline that awareness fades to the backgro... | 128 | |
Inflation is 5% so why are prices going up more than 5%? | In Canada inflation is 5% now. A 5% increase on everyday goods isn't too noticeable, but Often prices are going much higher than a 5% increase. Why is this? | 118 | 5% inflation does not mean that every good’s price is going up by exactly 5%. It means that an average of the price increases is 5%—but some goods will have larger price increases, and some will have smaller. | 171 |
[ATLA] How did no airbender's escape and or survive when the fire nation attacked? | 45 | air nomads were by far the smallest of the 4 nations, there entire people could be housed in 4 temples, which while large compared to real world temples were still smaller then most citys , there simply were not many of them to begin with
the surprise nature of the attack combined with being boosted by the comet and... | 54 | |
[Dragon Ball] How can Fortuneteller Baba be centuries older than her brother, Master Roshi ? | She began her fortune-telling around year 250, but Master Roshi was born in 430. | 21 | I see several possibilities
* Adoption
* Spiritual brother/sister
* Brother/sister in arms
* Some friends are like family.
* The origin of those dates could be from filler which is not canon.
* Time Shenanigans. | 31 |
Why do we "Weigh" things in kg,g,and mg, if grams are units of mass? If I've got some powder on a scale and it reads 40mg, is it actually calculating the weight and then dividing it by 9.8 to tell me the total mass of the powder on the scale? | 21 | > Why do we "Weigh" things in kg,g,and mg, if grams are units of mass?
We measure mass by exploiting Newton's 2nd law: F=ma. The acceleration due to earth's gravity at its surface is about 9.8 m/s*^2*, so we can measure an object's mass by measuring the force gravity exerts on it and then dividing by 9.8 m/s*^2* (u... | 13 | |
ELI5: What would actually happen if a Junior Mint fell into an open body cavity during surgery and then sewed back in? | Let's say the seinfeld scenario actually happened.. would it actually hurt the patient in any way? | 65 | Assuming the junior mint wasn't sterilized (not sure if one can be), the patient would almost definitely develop sepsis. If something isn't done about that soon, the patient will die.
If you could actually sterilize one, what would probably happen is the patient would be in pain for some time and not know why. The j... | 24 |
[Star Wars] Why did the Rebellion never use the Death Star tech? | My wife brought this up yesterday. The Rebellion had access to the Death Star technology. They got the blueprints for both the Death Star 1 and Death Star 2.
We also know that the Death Star's laser can be changed from anywhere to 1% power as seen on Scariff to 100% as we saw with Alderaan. The DS2 was also able to ac... | 28 | The empire needed the resources of several planets to build the Death Stars. They had research facilities on dozens of others and it took those facilities to miniaturize the technology.
Yes it absolutely was a lack of resources that stopped the Rebellion from using any of that technology. They were barely able to fun... | 53 |
Java projects that would look impressive in an entry-level interview? | I'm applying to an entry level software developer apprenticeship program, and the final step of the admissions process turned out a lot more intimidating than I expected. The last 8 minutes of the final interview will apparently be reserved for me to show off a project I'm proud of. The logical solution is to dig up so... | 21 | If it’s a backend role, maybe stand up an api and attach it to a database with some dummy data and do something cool with it?
If all you have to fill is 8 minutes you could probably fill the time with a smaller project of that scope. | 11 |
[The Witcher] Why don't Witchers traditionally use ranged weapons or shields? | It seems to be more of a stubborn show of pride much like the medieval British in refusing the crossbow rather than a practical decision. I get that training for a decade or longer with Witchers who *also* refused ranged weapons and shields will teach you to opt for the standard dual swords/bombs/potions/Signs combo, b... | 117 | Monster 3 times your size is trying to hit you, do you want to dodge it, or do you prefer to give up your arm and try to block the blow with the shield.
Shield is a hindrance, instead of using both hands to make the swings hitting harder, you have one hand blocked, and in most cases you can't even use the shield effe... | 129 |
[The Mandolorian] Antigravity seems to be ubiquitous and cheap to the point of disposable - Yoda-baby's floating stroller was dumped as garbage. How's it work? Is it how ships reach space? Can you stack gravity plates? Turn them off? | 17 | Yes, gravity's a solved problem. Go back and watch Star Wars and pay attention to the speeders. Even when they're parked, they stay in the air. Even Rey's hunk-of-junk popsicle bike on Jakku. Antigravity is so trivial in Star Wars that someone as poor as Rey was doesn't bother turning off their repulsorlifts. | 29 | |
Is the left/right, creative/logical divide of the brain an outdated simplification, or a useful model? | I don't know where I've got this thought process from, but I think I learnt that the brain maps the 'yin and yang' of creative logical in a much messier way than simply left right? What is the current understanding of the brains functioning areas please? | 29 | The logic versus creative seems to be out of favor and kind of had left a bad taste in the mouths of researchers based on how it was popularized. But there's a researcher (Iain McGilchrist) who had proposed that the division is more like "big picture work" versus "details". The left hemisphere handles the really detail... | 15 |
Thoughts on the Mount St. Mary's situation? | Not-in-the-US academic here, wondering about folks' views on what's happening at Mt. St. Mary's regarding a tenured professor (Naberhaus) getting fired for "disloyalty."
[Link to the WAPO] (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/09/the-controversy-at-mount-st-marys-goes-national-after-professors... | 34 | I think we are soon to reach an age in the US where tenure doesn't really mean anything anymore...perhaps we already have.
This is exactly what happens when boards vote MBAs into president positions. They start talking about numbers, targets, and customers. It's stupid and reflects a really reductive view of what uni... | 30 |
What is the difference between Hulk's, Wolverine's and Deadpool's healing abilities? | 51 | Hulk draws mass from another dimension to fill his wounds and his healing is enhanced by gamma radiation. It's the fastest of any of the trio. It combats absolutely everything.
Wolverine simply generates tissue rapidly to heal. His is the slowest of the trio, blocked in part by the adamantium in his bones. His healing... | 42 | |
Reading Discipline and Punish casually. What's Foucault's definition of "power"? | It seems like it's something outside of the usual definition, but I can't place what he means by it. [michel-foucault.com](http://www.michel-foucault.com/concepts/) isn't especially helpful in conveying clearly what it's supposed to be, so I'm wondering if anyone here could help elucidate? | 23 | For Foucault (in that text), power is **productive**, not just repressive. We often think of a person with power as saying, "no, put that cookie down!" But for Foucault, power is not merely a suppression--it helps to produce that person's desires. To take a really crude example, imagine the school teacher who says, "do... | 14 |
eli5: Why do intrest rates fall while average living costs increase? | I live in Germany and my interest rates plummeted over the last 10 years. I always thought, that interest rates existed to level out inflation. But I did some research and found out, that inflation rates are actually pretty stable. Meanwhile average living costs increase. How does all this fit together?
​
... | 22 | Interest rates are controlled by central banks and are used as a tool to meet Government policies to manage the money supply and the tradeoffs between inflation and economic growth. Interest rates are however only one influcence on either of these factors and are not the core reason why costs rise or fall.
It's not s... | 10 |
Is there a maximum frequency sound that air can support? What happens beyond that point? | 1,080 | In air, molecules go 68 nm between collisions on average. The speed of sound is about 330 ms^-1. Dividing gives 4.8 GHz. That's the absolute limit though; you're not going to see practical transmission anywhere near that high. | 334 | |
Is there a reason why the more dangerous frequencies (UV, X-ray, gamma) and the "harmless" frequencies (radio, IR) on the EM spectrum are separated by the visible wavelengths? | 36 | Try not to think about it like the two regions are "separated" by the visible light region. Saying like that kinda puts the cart before the horse.
Those frequencies aren't inherently visible. Our vision evolved to be sensitive to those frequencies that are highly abundant from the sun. The fact that there are two reg... | 55 | |
[MCU] If they could successfully extract Vision's stone, would he have had any powers? If so, what powers would he have that were independent of the stone? | 533 | Without the stone he'd sbe on par with Ultron: strength, flight, durability, intelligence, internet connection. Though his mind stone specific powers (phasing, shooting energy beams, changing his appearance) would be gone. | 460 | |
ELI5: What happens to America when it can no longer pay off its debts? | Obviously America has insane amounts of debt like in tens of trillions and increasing constantly. Not sure if it is possible to ever pay that amount off, what can be done about it? if anything? | 202 | When a country wants to borrow money, it does so by selling bonds...buy a $100 bond today, and you can redeem it for $105 in a year.
That's who the US owe it's money to, whoever holds the bonds. Most of the bond holders are US citizens and businesses...the US basically owes all of this money to itself.
If the US wou... | 205 |
[General] Has any villain "legally" taken over the world? | Like convince all the governments and people of the world that they are the best person and making them hand him/her authority with their own free will | 554 | Norman Osborn the Green Goblin in the Marvel universe after he very publicly killed the queen of the Skrulls during Secret Invasion. He was made the Director of HAMMER by the US government as a replacement of SHIELD, and he even has his own Dark Avengers and Dark X-men composed of mostly villains taking on the legacy ... | 641 |
ELI5: The differences between atomic, nuclear, and hydrogen bombs. | 68 | Short version: "Atomic bombs" use nuclear fission (the splitting of atoms) to make a pretty big explosion. "Hydrogen bombs" use nuclear fission _and_ nuclear fusion (the combining of atoms), and in theory can make explosions without any upper limit. "Nuclear weapons" can mean either.
Elaboration:
"Atomic bombs" deri... | 61 | |
CMV: If humanity has a future, it must settle the cosmos. | Humanity faces many threats on Earth, some of which have threatened our survival knowingly or unknowingly for thousands of years. In 1969, we proved that we have the ability to go to other worlds and survive and with the construction of the International Space Station we have proved we are able to survive living in spa... | 30 | The human species would do better to solve all the problems on Earth rather than use Earth's resources to travel to other planets which are way more inhospitable and way more dangerous - and if they succeeded in surviving there, they would establish a society which would manifest the same problems as we have here, due... | 12 |
[General SciFi]I want to build a spaceship. How would I go FTL | I know that a Warp Drive might work, just as anything including Wormholes. My question is: Is there anything else which might not be widely known and just as or even more possible?
EDIT: I'm serious! I *really* need to get off this planet! | 32 | The Traveller RPG has a different take on warp drives. Every warp jump lasts the same amount of time (approx. 1 Earth week). However the more powerful your drive is the further you can travel in that time. | 27 |
[Harry Potter] What do wizard born children do before they go to Hogwarts? | So if you're a wizard or a witch, you'll get your letter from Hogwarts when you're 10 or 11 years old. Muggle born will of course study at a regular school until that, but what about the ones raised in the world of wizards? They have to learn basics like writing, reading, mathematics and so on, right? But from who? | 46 | A wizard or witch, born into the community at large does not tend school. They stay at home and learn the basics of the wizarding community from their family, and help out around the house. It is an ancient system. The magical society does not accept change very easily. It might sound strange to keep your children at h... | 40 |
[Worm/Marvel/DC] What power classifications from Worn would DC and Marvel characters have? | 29 | You are casting a super wide net here... Any particular characters you are interested in? The power levels in DC tend to be significantly higher than that of Worm. Superman would have multiple 10s for example. | 15 | |
[Game of Thrones] What is the state of religion in Westeros given all the recent happenings? | I'm a lowly Northern Westerosi farmer and I'm having a crisis of faith.
Short weeks ago, we were bundled into Winterfell and witnessed an army of undead kill half of our population. I overheard that the only reason we managed to survive was thanks to some 'Lord of Light'? There was a red priestess who set the swords o... | 118 | Some smallfolk in the Riverlands have seen the Light and now follow the Lord of Light. Whether this has anything to do with the rumoured "Brotherhood without Banners" is unknown. The Old Gods have protected the north for millennia, and belief in their power still runs strong in the North. The Faith of the Seven stil... | 56 |
ELI5 how does active noise cancellation works and is it more harmful to your ears than normal headphones or earphones | 289 | Sounds are moving air. Active cancelation uses a microphone to listen to the sound, and then make an "opposite" sound by pushing air in the other direction. These opposite sounds are added to the music coming through the headphones.
By the time it gets to your ear, the combined air from the original (ambient) sound a... | 377 | |
CMV: Police officers not shaking hands with people is a dick move and is part of the reason public perceptions of officers are so negative. | Police officers not shaking hands with people is a dick move and is part of the reason public perceptions of officers are so negative. It serves to reenforce an "Us vs. Them" mentality. The main reason for not shaking hands with the public is safety, as it would put the officer in a vulnerable situation. However, is th... | 15 | Are you saying that police don't shake hands now, or that it would be bad if they didn't? what examples are there of police refusing hand shakes? Are they specific or widespread cases? Can you show any departmental doctrine saying either way? | 13 |
ELI5: Why do doctors have such long shifts, when they know most about the perils of sleep deprivation? | My friend often works 30 hour shifts, sometimes with only 3 hour breaks in between. It's easy to imagine doctors messing up under those conditions, and it also isn't healthy for the doctors themselves. | 18 | The standard of shifts was established by a hospital chief medical officer who regularly did cocaine back when that was legal. As such he was able to do extremely long shifts and expected it of his fellow doctors. Since then it has become industry standard and changing it is slow because of cost. Doctors are salaried p... | 29 |
Have there been any studies on IQ differences since the dawn of the internet and, specifically, the 'Google generation'? Are scores trending in any way in the last ~15-20 years? | I was born in 1980 and when I was 6 I was lucky enough to get a FULL hand me down set of Encyclopedia Britannica from 1979. They were 7 years out of date already but they were all my family could afford. I know a lot of kids that had much less than that for reference materials.
Now, anything a child wants to learn abo... | 22 | Iq scores, by definition, can't trend. A score of 100 is defined as average for your age group peers. Above 100, above average. Below 100, below average. Ergo, if the average "intelligence" changes, so does the scoring. That being said, even the developer of the IQ test thought it was not useful for determining intelli... | 16 |
[LOTR] What benefits could friendly relations with orcs bring to society? | Maybe the Orcs could bring medical advancements such as the medicines they use in the Uruk-Hai chapter of The Two Towers.
"Uglúk thrust a flask between his teeth and poured some burning liquid down his throat: he felt a hot fierce glow flow through him. The pain in his legs and ankles vanished. He could stand."
"Seiz... | 35 | Orcs are by nature corrupted in the process through which Morgoth created the first of their species by kidnapping newly awakened elves and twisting them.
They will always through their twisted hröa tend towards violence and destructiveness. Mistrusting and hating other races and each other, and in the depths of thei... | 38 |
CMV: If you are playing a game fairly within the defined rules, you cannot act unethically/immorally as it regards to play. | As a small preface, this discussion mostly pertains to MMORPGs that have a competitive auction house system in place. However I feel that my view does in fact extend to all games in general.
If you are playing a game by the rules as outlined by the person who created the game, you cannot act unethically or immorally. ... | 44 | Look into hawk/dove games and other models of human cooperation.
What you should understand is that calling someone immoral/unethical *is a strategy within the game*, because it makes people want to cooperate with them less, and potentially makes them feel bad about themselves, thereby making that 'immoral' strategy l... | 47 |
[Vampire Romance Novels] Help! My teenage daughter has fallen in love with a tall, dark and brooding denizen of the underworld, should I shoot on sight, or is there a way I can tell her to break it off? | 18 | The only way to stop this is to find an equally tall, dark and brooding vampire hunter . When the two of them fight she'll interpret it as the two of them competing for her love. The Vampire Hunter will win and then one of two things will happen.
1. The Hunter will go the classic man with no name and say that his lif... | 38 | |
ELI5 : What is the significance of the new pictures of Pluto and why are scientists so excited? | 63 | We have never gotten any good pictures of pluto. It was discovered 85 years ago and the best we ever saw of it was a few fuzzy pixels and we're about to get great high-quality images of both it and it's moon. | 54 | |
What is the space time continuum? | 54 | Imagine a completely empty square room. One corner has a black dot in it, just so you can distinguish it from the other corners, and then the 3 walls that meet at that dot are colored red, yellow, and blue. Now you can place a ball *anywhere* in the room, and then measure it "x-feet from the red wall, y-feet from the... | 136 | |
CMV: OnlyFans should change their age minimum to 21 and not 18. | A lot of people see OnlyFans as more similar to Instagram than to a cam site or other selling sex sites.
Influencers are promoting their OnlyFans on Instagram to their millions of young followers and with the popularization of sex positivity being equated with being liberated, (which it definitely can make people fee... | 89 | To summarize, your view is that the minimum age should be raised because 18-year-olds are more susceptible to pressure than 21-year-olds? If that's the case, what made you decide that 21 is the age at which the influence of external pressure is low enough to be acceptable? | 35 |
Are there materials that are good at conducting heat but not electricity or vice versa? | 21 | Actually there are materials that are designed to do exactly this for use in thermoelectric generators - they're called 'phonon glass electron crystals' or PGECs.
Other guy isn't wrong they are very much intrinsically related (it's called the wiedemann-franz law). Overall THERMAL conductivity is the sum of contributio... | 26 | |
[LOTR] How did allying with Morgoth further Sauron's plan? | Doesn't Morgoth want to destroy everything and Sauron wants everything to be in perfect order through force? How was Sauron going to prevent Morgoth from destroying everything once the First Age Noldor elves were defeated? | 121 | Sauron was originally attracted to Melkor because of his awesome power and his ability *and will* to effect his designs on the world quickly.
There’s also a strong argument to be made that Melkor originally wanted control and subjugation of Arda before slowly falling into a nihilistic pursuit of total destruction. Hi... | 126 |
CMV: Having 'Cheat Days' Will Make Sticking With a Diet More Difficult | It is not that it is detrimental to your health, one day out of many where you eat less healthy food won't ruin your health. But it is the worst way to motivate yourself and will make sticking to a diet more difficult.
In having a cheat day, you are attributing bad food with a reward and therefore good food with a pun... | 22 | This depends entirely on the willpower of the person pursuing the diet. If you have the willpower to continue the diet without cheat days, agreed. They're only harmful.
If, however, you're like most people who really need a diet and don't always have the willpower to resist temptation, completely cutting all unhealthy... | 12 |
ELI5: Why do cars make a ticking sound for a few minutes after turned off? | I'm a car guy myself, and even I don't really know the answer to this. | 1,247 | It's contraction of the various metal bits that were heated by combustion, and are now cooling. Sometimes that contraction causes an individual piece of the car to exist in either tension or compression, which is only alleviated when the force gets to great and something slips marginally. That slip produces the popping... | 536 |
ELI5 why is white rice cheaper than brown rice if it's the processed form of latter? | 12,620 | White rice is just brown rice with the bran removed. The bran has oil in it which can be extracted to form another product, rice bran oil. By splitting the cost of production between two products a lower price can be provided for the white rice.
Another factor is that the oil in the bran means that brown rice can spoi... | 11,618 | |
ELI5: Why we needed a consitutional amendment (the 18th) to ban alcohol rather than just a Federal law | 216 | At the time of prohibition, it wasn't widely accepted that the federal government had the authority to ban substances. Since then, we've come to take it for granted. Early anti-drug laws started out by finding loopholes in the law. For instance, the government would impose a tax on a drug, requiring people to purcha... | 204 | |
Does the existence of fermions in a black hole violate the pauli exclusion principle? | If you had a large number of fermions enter a black hole and all merge at the singularity, it would seem that you would necessarily have multiple fermions occupying a single state, but this would violate the pauli exclusion principle. My knowledge of black holes is very limited so I would appreciate if someone could ex... | 82 | The flaw is that you assume both general relativity, and quantum mechanics (through Fermi statistic) to be correct. Near the classical singularity, what actually happens is still completely unknown, and you would need a proper theory of quantum gravity to figure it out. | 39 |
ELI5: Why videos don't load continuously, smooth way and load in small 'jumps' | 22 | Imagine you're at a buffet selling only m&ms (in this case, bandwidth) with only one guy handing the candy out to people.
some people will go up to the man with an empty bucket and ask for m&ms, instead of filling everyone's bucket to the top he will put in only a big handful, topping them up as they need. ... | 26 | |
Does the brain invert the image percieved back upright if you wear inverted goggles for a certain period of time? | 20 | Yup! Some cool research done on this over a century again (G Stratton, if I’m remembering the name correctly). The brain adapts to prism glasses and similar input shifts relatively quickly. It also adjusts back (and if you changed back and forth over time, your brain would get quicker at “switching gears”.
Similar thi... | 21 | |
Eli5: How did AutoCAD become the industry standard for drafting when it is horrendously buggy and prone to crashing? | I’ve used a lot of post-2010 versions of AutoCAD over the years in a variety of offices and at home. It’s the buggiest program I’ve ever used by far. Even sometimes something simple like editing a text box makes the whole program crash to desktop. Looking around on the Autodesk website and other forums shows me this is... | 31 | I used the Autocad 13 version in the early 2000s at school. It does not matter how buggy it is if it is the only program available, or the program that managed to get into the school. It was one of the first digital drafting programs to gain any kind of success, and they cut a lot of price deals to get into schools mea... | 19 |
ELI5: Why do people write C.E. instead of A.D.? Why not change the calendar? | It doesn't make any sense. | 61 | CE means Common Era, AD means Anno Domini (year of our lord)
CE is more accurate, because it's arbitrary. Whereas the year of Jesus' birth is up for debate, usually being 3-5 AD (Doesn't make much sense does it).
We don't change the calendar because there is nothing wrong with the calendar, it works the same as ever.... | 150 |
CMV: There was no “SJW” mob demanding Mr. Potato Head to be gender neutral |
There was no one banging on the front doors of the headquarters of Hasbro yelling “YOU MAKE THAT POTATO HEAD GENDER NEUTRAL RIGHT NOW, GOD DAMN IT!” They did this all on their own volition as a marketing scheme to get woke points to boost sales. Yeah, you risk pissing off some consumers, but the likelihood is those pe... | 1,879 | There's one thing you get wrong: Mr. Potato Head has not been made gender-neutral. He is still a male potato, and Mrs. Potato Head is still a female potato. The only thing that's changed is that they now belong to the "Potato Head" line of products rather than the "Mr. Potato Head" line of products, since one is male a... | 1,129 |
ELI5:Why are basketball officials so much more touchy than football officials? | Is there an answer beyond "That's just the way it is?"
Football coaches yell and curse at football officials routinely without flags being thrown. Yet when a basketball coach or player vehemently questions a call, even without cursing, an official will often call a technical foul. | 17 | Part of it is the courtside experience is a core part of basketball both for the image but also for a very important set of clientele. Also, since Allen Iverson, the NBA has worked very hard to sanitize their image and shy away from "street ball."
The refs can take it, but it's very much against the rules.
That's com... | 11 |
Would shooting down a nuclear missile result in a nuclear explosion? | Regarding a successful missile defense system, intercepting a nuclear missile launch. | 32 | No, detonating a nuclear bomb requires a fairly precise set of conditions. The fissionable materials in the device are stored in a subcritical state. That means that on their own, they're not dense enough to cause a chain reaction.
The actual detonation involves pushing the fissionable materials into a supercritical s... | 58 |
ELI5: Why is the comparison of the necessity for balancing our federal budget to balancing my personal budget flawed? | I know economists all think this argument is overly simplified and ridiculous, but I do not understand why. Why is it more efficient for the government to run a deficit, whereas I am better off not running a deficit?
Thanks | 33 | Here is why:
The US Federal Government is one of the largest sources of stimulus for the greater US economy. There are times (not 100% of the time) when it is better for the Federal Government to run a deficit, notably during periods of economic recession, because:
* Constraining the Federal Government to running in... | 35 |
ELI5: Why did Germany lose World War I? | I've only recently developed an interest in history, and this is probably really basic, but it still confuses me - what led to Germany conceding defeat when they did? They'd beaten Russia and Belgium, occupied large chunks of France, created puppet states in the east, and their allies had all held on. What made them su... | 79 | Once the French held through the initial German attack, Germany was already in trouble. Their whole plan for the war was based on defeating France before the British Expeditionary Force could become established on the continent to off-set the German numerical advantage against France. Now Germany faced their long-time ... | 50 |
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