post_title stringlengths 5 304 | post_text stringlengths 0 37.5k | post_scores int64 15 83.1k | comment_text stringlengths 200 9.61k | comment_score int64 10 43.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Is it normal to still make silly mistakes as a postdoc? | Started my first postdoc position three weeks ago. It's a bit of a shift for me; my PhD was in protein-RNA interaction biochemistry and crystallography, very in vitro, and I'm now shifting to a cell culture and bioinformatics lab. Well, I was doing great, but yesterday I made such a DUMB mistake...
I generated six CRI... | 147 | Everyone makes mistakes and this one wasn’t a big one, but they can have serious consequences and the key is to develop processes and procedures so that they do not happen. This is a new area for you and you are going to make some mistakes. The right question now is how you are going to ensure that this one never hap... | 155 |
CMV: Banning people on the No Fly list from buying firearms is a horrible civil rights violation | To be clear, I support gun control and don't care about the second amendment. I oppose the bill because the No Fly list is an awful, immoral concept and the bill gives its use further credibility.
I know people on the no fly list. They have Arabic sounding names, "similar to those of known terrorists", and there's not... | 189 | I think the basic problem here is that there's barely any meat to any of the discussion about how this would be implemented.
I mean, if there's no due process, you know that the courts will rule it unconstitutional. The politicians know it. Everyone that knows anything about American politics knows it.
So one of two... | 52 |
CMV: If I support Bernie Sanders, and I live in a state that is guaranteed to vote Republican in the general election, then I should vote for Bernie, even if Hillary wins the DNC nomination. | I'm from South Dakota, a state that has voted for a democrat something like 2 times in the past 100 years (and even THOSE times were in years where >85% of states were also blue). Thus it is guaranteed that my state will put its 3 delegates toward the Republican. Since I support liberal policies, my vote is effectiv... | 108 | You should vote Green party instead. It sends an even stronger message because if the Green party reaches 5% of the vote, they get the same federal funding that the Dems and Repubs get come next election. Plus, as a Bernie supporter, I'd be willing to bet that you would agree with Jill Stein on many of her positions. | 82 |
Star Wars is far more interesting than Star Trek CMV | I have always been a Star Wars fan since I was little, I've watched all the movies and played almost all the games. Its story line is emotional and I find it interesting how the galaxy is so extensive. The different planets and different races fascinate me and how you can kind of compare it to our world. I know Star Tr... | 18 | Imagine the worst racism isn't just allowed, but considered very necessary. Imagine seeing white/black/brown people in groups, and they'd rarely ever speak to anyone else.
Imagine women are a joke. Such emotional creatures! They're like a sexier, more unstable, Peter Griffon. Many will be the first to assure you that... | 72 |
[Forrest Gump] Could Forrest cook good shrimp? | Forrest's entire fortune was built upon the foundation of shrimping, even if other factors are what made him a millionaire/billionaire. His best friend besides Jenny told him pretty much everything there could be known about shrimp.
So was Forrest good at cooking it or did he just harvest and sell it? | 38 | Forrest is incredibly good at following directions. Forrest also became friends with Bubba's mother who worked her life as a maid/cook who was good at cooking shrimp (you see her as one of like a dozen people who attended Forrest's wedding). It's very likely she at some point showed Forrest how to cook shrimp and he ... | 49 |
[The Defenders] How did Daredevil completely dominate his fight with Danny Rand? | 45 | Danny is skilled, but so is Daredevil - maybe not to the same level, but skilled enough that he'd be able to tag Danny at least. Daredevil has extensive fight experience in real, life or death scenarios, much more than Danny, which makes a big difference. Daredevil's enhanced senses also give him better indication of w... | 66 | |
Does sweating empty the bladder? | Let's say you have a full bladder, but you hold it. If you sweat a lot, will your bladder eventually empty? Can some or all of your urine go back into your body to hydrate you? | 27 | Nope. Once you're dehydrated the kidneys will be producing urine that is more concentrated (and lesser in quantity). But the urine that has already been produced and is being stored in the bladder will not get reabsorbed. | 33 |
ELI5: Why is coconut oil considered healthy, even though it is so dense with saturated fat? | I hear so many people say that coconut oil is healthy, but when I look at the macros, this makes no sense to me. Can someone ELI5? | 163 | The saturated fats in coconut oil are in the form of “Medium-chain triglyceride (MCT)” - this basically means your body burns the saturated fats found in coconut oil in the same way it burns carbs.
Carbs (and the sat. fats in coconut oil) are used directly for energy rather than being stored as fat in your body. Howev... | 155 |
ELI5: what the difference is between the 7 types of twins | there was a post today about there being 7 types of [twins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin#Fraternal_.28dizygotic.29_twins) but I would like someone to explain this in terms I can understand. | 42 | As the wiki article states, the 3 most common types are all *fraternal*. This means that the mother's ovaries released two eggs instead of one, and both were fertilised. The three types of fraternal twin are male-male, male-female, and female-female.
The next most common type is identical twinning. This occurs when o... | 15 |
CMV: Mandatory voting is a good thing. | I've seen a couple of posts discussing this, but I'd be interested to see answers in the current context of Brexit and the upcoming US election. From my perspective, if you want the right to have your views as a people represented and implemented (i.e. democracy), you should have the responsibility to vote on them.
I... | 143 | Anyone who doesn't want to vote is someone who shouldn't.
Most of them would vote for a joke candidate or the one with the most advertising budget. These are people who don't understand the ramifications of voting or don't care.
A better idea would be to have a bit of political studies in high school to raise awarene... | 51 |
ELI5: why does exerting pressure reduce pain? | 27 | There are a couple things like vascular compression and limiting air contact, but the biggie is your brain's input threshold. Think of it a little bit like math. You have lots of different nerves that all give your brain info, but your brain can only pay attention to so much total info from the nerves at a given moment... | 59 | |
ELI5: some states in the us require alimony from people who are listed on the birth certificate, regardless of paternity. What's to stop people from listing rich or well known males as father? | Read a couple of stories. seems retarded | 24 | Alimony is spousal support. What you mean is child support.
What happens is that when you list a father, he gets notified of this. If he then feels this listing was incorrect, he can fight it / prove he is not the father. If this is done within a certain period of time, it gets erased from the birth certificate and no... | 15 |
Why does our brain perform complex tasks such as object recognition and language within an instant, but trivial tasks such as 9.342^2 require longer to perform? | 16 | We have hardware for object recognition and language, but no math hardware, so we have to do it slowly in software.
On the flip side, computers have hardware for math, but object recognition and language have to be done in software that we don't even understand how to write. | 30 | |
[Archer] How does Archer perceive Dreamland? Is he watching the whole thing from a third person perspective, or is he participating in it? | The latest season of Archer is taking place in his head, but how does he perceive it? Does he see everything, or just what Dreamland Archer sees? | 49 | It's like a dream state... when he's "present" he's living the scene. When he's not in the scene, he's a disembodied observer who can't act or retain knowledge of events he's witnessed.
Dreams are weird, man. Coma-dreams are even weirder. | 23 |
ELI5 How we can sleep in a position that causes debilitating pain when we wake up, but don't notice at all while we sleep? | 1,989 | While your body sleeps, it alternates between REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and non-REM cycles. REM sleep is where you dream and the body essentially recuperates from being awake. During this cycle. Your body is paralyzed, which prevents you from feeling pain or discomfort at all, so if your body is at an awkward angle movi... | 831 | |
[Batman] How much does Alfred get paid? | Was watching an episode of *Batman: The Animated Series* (S1e4, "The Last Laugh"), and at the end of the episode, Bruce said he would doc Alfred's pay for a few years to pay off a "priceless Ming vase."
So I wondered how much Alfred was being paid that he would be able to pay it off in just a few years? | 62 | Only Alfred knows. As butler, Alfred is in charge of all matters pertaining to the domestic staff of Wayne Manor, including payroll. Bruce Wayne sure doesn't have time to look into it.
Let's just say that Bruce Wayne is still a rich man. Or at least he thinks he is. | 66 |
[Fallout] Given the progress/recovery demonstrated across the timeline of the existing games, to what extent could the world be restored closer to its former self in the long-term; how many years would certain achievements take? What features could NEVER be restored? | (The title should contain everything that needs to be established here) | 22 | With fusion becoming popular the energy crisis of old won't be a problem. Civilization can learn from its old mistakes and move forward.
House was planning to leave the planet within the span of 200 years. With the rate the NCR and East Coast Chapter have been restoring it's not unlikely humanity will find a world mos... | 15 |
[Star Trek]If you find a starving child in the woods you don't leave them because it is "natural". That would be monstrous. The Prime Directive is incredibly cruel. As a private Federation citizen, am I bound to follow the Prime Directive, will I be arrested if I start rescuing primitive planets? | The Prime Direct is inherantly selfish and monstrous. We don't force every person who is sick to personally rediscover the entire history of medicine. We give them the medicine. No person in a society truly knows the basis for how anything works, society is an arrangement of specialists standing upon the shoulders o... | 472 | The Federation does not lack resources and it is absolutely not about burdening the Federation. The Prime Directive is there to protect alien cultures from being exposed to a technology before they are ready. A society that achieves techonological growth before its culture can adapt can easily cause irreparable harm f... | 340 |
What happens to photons of light that only penetrate the open ocean so deep? Why don't they hit the seafloor? | 22 | They are absorbed by the water molecules, and as a result the water heats up. If you want to look at it on a photon level, each has a probability of getting absorbed as it propagates, and the probability that it does not get absorbed approaches zero as it propagates deeper and deeper. Multiply this by a bajillion photo... | 20 | |
How can fish be so active in cold water when other cold blooded animals like reptiles and amphibians need the Sun to warm up? | I have two fish tanks one half full of water with a turtle. The turtle needs to bask in a heat lamp for at least half the day to have the energy to go "hunting" around his terrarium. In a different cold water tank I have some very active and energetic fish that seem to swim non-stop and only have to eat every other day... | 19 | hi, fishy researcher here. there are sooo many adaptations that allow for these behaviours. one is that fishes have a network of veins and arteries called the rete mirabile. the rete regulates blood flow which in turn allows the fish to thermoregulate! in addition, this thermoregulation allows for adjustment of metabol... | 20 |
ELI5: How do sex scenes in movies work? | 329 | They don't really stick it in if thats what you want to know. Its a lot like wrestling, they don't really punch. They kiss and grope but they usually cover up the female genitals, there are lots of way to do that, stringless panties for example.
Body doubles are sometimes used if an actor or actress is not hot enough ... | 240 | |
How does the water supply network still remain liquid in cities even at very cold temperatures? Why don't the pipes freeze? | 282 | They are buried below the frost line which is a depth where the temperature of the earth doesn't go below freezing. Here in Chicago it's about 48", so.ewhere like Minnesota is more like 55" so it varies by climate. Occasionally in really bad will they will get below freezing but it's really hard to freeze moving water ... | 266 | |
What does it mean to say that waves in the electric field move perpendicular to waves in the magnetic field? | The pictures in my textbook show them as two transverse waves, but that doesn't quite make sense to me. Which way is 'up' to the electric field? | 19 | The fact that they're transverse just means that the electric and magnetic fields are perpendicular to the direction of propagation. So the electric field, the magnetic field, and the momentum of the light wave are all mutually perpendicular vectors. | 11 |
What does it mean when physicists refer to several additional "small" dimensions? | I've just reread a couple of Hawking's books, and I can't figure out how to conceptualize additional dimensions. Three spacial dimensions plus time as a fourth seem straightforward enough (though obviously not always easy to visualize), but what does it mean to speak of additional dimensions that are "small" or "curle... | 20 | >but what does it mean to speak of additional dimensions that are "small" or "curled up"? How exactly are they different from the 4 space-time dimensions?
What we mean by "small" is that the symmetry groups describing translations in those directions are "compact." What compactness means is that if you go far enou... | 20 |
ELI5:Why do politicians use religious grounds for policy making when there is a separation of state and church in the U.S.A.? | 56 | Separation of Church and State means that the government cannot establish a State religion, and that the government cannot prevent a citizen from practicing their religion. Since religious people use their religion as a primary component in how they form their morality and ethics, and morality and ethics are how lawmak... | 28 | |
[Star Wars] Orders to TIE fighters deployed after the Millennium Falcon's escape from the Death Star | Since the Falcon was supposed to escape so it could be tracked to Yavin, what were the TIE pilots told to do when pursuing the Falcon? Did they know it was a suicide mission and if so, why were they OK with it? | 78 | No. They were likely sent out with orders to disable or destroy the ship, just like you'd expect in that situation.
However, there were fewer TIEs deployed than were really appropriate to that kind of mission, and it was expected that the Falcon would be able to escape anyway. They pilots weren't told that, because... | 62 |
[Watchmen] Would it actually hurt to be vaporized by Dr. Manhattan? | Of course the death LOOKS painful (and extremely gory), but would it actually hurt? If your molecules were ripped apart in the space of a second or two, if you felt anything at all I would assume it'd be shock and not pain. All that pain sensory information would be too sudden for your body to process in the very short... | 35 | It'd be instant death. The span of time between your nerves realizing they're being torn apart and the electric impulse needed to reach your brain is too short. Unless he vaporizes you in pieces instead of a whole you'd be dead and scattered over a square mile before you could process a single thought. | 53 |
ELI5: If we left earth and went straight down or straight up, would we eventually arrive at another solar system? | Edit: Assuming up means traveling a route up perpindicular to earths orbital plane thanks for pointing that out /u/demonspawn79 | 75 | There is no "down" or "up" in space, so I'll rephrase your question.
If we left Earth and traveled on a route perpendicular (up or down) to our orbital plane, would we eventually arrive at another solar system?
To which I'd respond with another question; if you closed your eyes and shot a gun into the air, would you ... | 100 |
ELI5: why did android 3.0 honeycomb never gain much market share & popularity? | 65 | Honeycomb was developed for the tablet architecture only, but was quickly replaced by the follow up release for the general Android development Ice Cream Sandwich, 4.0, which was designed to specifically create a universal OS for android no matter which architecture standard was being followed. What that means was Hon... | 47 | |
Do subliminal messages really work? | I just downloaded a program called "Subliminal Messages."
It claims that by flashin text too fast for me to read it can help me do things like quit smoking, have more confidence, etc.
Is this true? | 73 | Almost certainly not. Subliminal messages are just messages that fall below the human threshold for perception.
People often connect them with their sub-concious, which is wrong. They have no more effect on your subconscious that any regular message you come across. If it did work, it would almost certainly be in comm... | 56 |
Can a dwarf planet become a moon? | I was noticing that Eris’s orbit bring it close to Neptune’s orbit. If the timing lined up would Eris be close enough to become a moon of Neptune? Are there any other dwarf planets that scientists think may become a moon? Lastly are there any know current moons that are theorized to come from the Kuiper belt? | 20 | Eris is too far away from Neptune to be affected by it much even when they are as close to each other as is possible. Even at the point of least separation, there's still something like 8 AUs distances of separation between the two.
To compare: Earth and Jupiter get to about 4 AU of separation, Jupiter is more massive... | 21 |
ELI5: How does anti-venom work, and is it available for every type of venom? | Just wondering how a paralyzing or flesh eating venom can be stopped in it's tracks with a simple anti venom. Does it just teach our bodies how to deal with it or eradicate it? | 16 | It binds with the venom and allows it to be eliminated from the body safely.
Venom works by interacting with certain receptors and causing them to either stop functioning or be overstimulated.
By binding with the venom, it prevents it from binding to those receptors, and since the venom is now stuck to the antiveno... | 19 |
Is it possible to quantify the impact of Wikipedia the world economy? | 77 | Sure, but probably it can't be done well. Probably, the most reasonable approach to doing something like what you may be asking about would involve sorting out the following:
1. How valuable is Wikipedia to people as a consumption good? That is, how much is it worth as a thing people browse and look things up in for f... | 31 | |
[Harry Potter] Is Hogwarts (and the wizarding world in general) ready to admit disabled students? Would wizards even be able to adapt to such a student? | Since I was a child I have asked myself. They can't cure disabilities: Harry, Dumbledore, and other characters still wear glasses and there are people with rudimentary prosthetics.
The books and study materials are written on parchment, which I don't think works for braille. The stairs change places, another nightmare... | 59 | I don't see why not. There are blind people in the Wizarding community and they will adopt Muggle developments if it's low-tech, truly innovative and there's no better option.
They may have braille books but they are specialty orders. Blind people can have spiritual guides who can direct them via words (and since we k... | 36 |
Why do we design vehicles to be aerodynamic (laminar?) while dimpled golf balls are designed to create turbulence to get them to travel farther? | Wouldn't inducing turbulent flow on a vehicle reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency? | 59 | The dimples on golf balls were added after golfers noticed that the smooth balls they used went farther after getting cuts and scrapes in them. The uneven surface creates eddies around the ball that act as a cushioning against the air around it while flying.
If you want to get deeper into the aerodynamics, there are t... | 49 |
Why are train rails usually built on gravel? | Is there any particular reason for this or is it just cheaper than asphalt/concrete/whatever? | 55 | The material that forms the trackbed upon which railroad ties are laid is known as **track ballast.** It is packed between, below, and around the ties. It bears the load from the railroad ties, facilitate drainage of water, and discourages vegetation growth that might interfere with the track structure. It is typicall... | 141 |
ELI5: Why can't we use materials with lower boiling points to generate power? | My understanding is that water is commonly used in coal-fired power plants and the like, and that water has a rather high boiling point. Wouldn't using something with a lower BP like acetone produce the same amount of energy at a lower temperature, making it easier to generate with heat sources like the sun or geotherm... | 131 | Water's volume expands 1600-1700 times when it turns to steam. That increase in volume allows the pressure it creates to be used for mechanical motion.
Acetone doesn't expand that much, so it is not as efficient or useful. Acetone is also quite dangerous when heated while water is not. | 113 |
eli5 what does "gain" mean in regards to audio and recording? | Basically just looking into external mics for my phone and all the reviews for the different products I'm looking at are talking about "too much gain" and "not enough gain" and I have no earthly idea what that means. I tried looking it up, but it's confusing as hell for someone with no know, who just wants to record co... | 26 | AFAIK (not an audiophile), but gain refers to the amount of sound energy the microphone translates into signal for recording or re-processing through the remainder of the audio equipment. Take your voice as an example and keep your personal volume exactly the same at each attempt. Turn the gain up too high and the mi... | 51 |
ELI5: Why do little kids like/want to hurt each other | I just realized how mean some kids can get and I just want to know why | 16 | Empathy, like all human traits is developed over time. Because children obviously haven't had much time on this earth, they also haven't had much time to refine their sense of empathy. You know which other groups of people have under-developed senses of empathy? Sociopaths and serial killers.
The other big part of it... | 17 |
ELI5: 20 Years ago there was a lot of fear about the effects of China having too many men because of sex-selective abortion. Shouldn't we be seeing the brunt of that now? | In the 1990s and 2000s there was a lot of fear mongering about China having too many men. Because of the one child policy there were a lot of sex-selective abortions to be rid of girls so families could have their male heir. There was a lot of "what does a nation do when they've got 30,000,000 unmarried adult men but ... | 256 | there have been much talks about it. China is the leading male-female disparity country for the young generation age group. by 2012 census, there are 40 million more males than females. additionally most people in the under 30 age group are only childs as well.
there already a big gap of unmarried males bec... | 176 |
[superman] Why does Luthor's armor not have a helmet? | So there are a few iterations of Lex Luthor's warsuit, but all of them have his face exposed:
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/b/b4/Lex_Luthor_004.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20060106181022
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/injusticegodsamongus/images/e/ee/LEX.PNG/revision/latest?cb=20130130002303
http... | 16 | Pride. He wants Superman, or whoever he's fighting, to know who defeated them. Not a suit of armor, but a man. Just a human, who now defeated a god. He wants everybody to know for damn sure who that was. | 41 |
[Civilization 5] What happened to the civilization that all the ruins belonged to, before they were ruins? Why did that civilization fall? | Do barbarians have anything to do with it? | 170 | Old City-States that have collapsed from war, famine, migration or other means. No doubt those who didn't have much success finding new homes were forced into the warlike barbarian factions that dot the lands. Without the stability of an established city with the proper infrastructure for sustainable life people would ... | 128 |
I'm about to see a therapist for the first time due to grad school stress/anxiety. Have you seen a therapist for academia-induced issues? What was your experience like? | 50 | First, congratulations. Making the appointment is the hardest part.
If you're in a college town, your therapist probably sees lots of stressed out grad students. This is good. Try not to rush to judgment after the first session. Go a few times and see if your therapist has the right "feel" for you. Not every therapis... | 22 | |
ELI5: How can some Medicine (for example Tilidin) give me nightmares as side effects? | 56 | Let's use the analogy of food. Pizza (drug) for instance would solve your desire to satisfy your hunger (condition). You eat the pizza and feel full (desired effect). You eat pizza for a few days and notice that you have upset stomach from too much acid building up (side effect) but you still feel full (desired effect)... | 23 | |
ELI5: Why are furniture stores always "going out of business"? | 44 | because you rarely (once every few years) shop for furniture and have no idea what furniture stores are around until you start to shop. The going out of business sale creates a sense of urgency and the feeling that you are getting a good deal. | 41 | |
CMV: I feel people should be given the choice to participate in scientific studies that would normally be considered "not ready for human trials" for scientific research. | This CMV was inspired by [a thread](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2rydxd/if_ethics_were_forgotten_what_scientific_advances/) currently on the front page.
I don't mean donating your dead body to science, I mean giving yourself *alive* for scientific research. Today, human trials are only available once oth... | 189 | The principle reason such tests are labeled as **not ready for human trials** is because medical professionals whose life has been dedicated to understanding the human body consider it to be such a risk that no one should be submitted to treatment with current knowledge.
A layman may think the research is phenomenal ... | 60 |
When we eat meat, it has cells which have the animal's DNA and RNA. What does out body do to them once they've been digested and broken down into nucleotides? Do our cells use these nucleotides when replicating DNA or making mRNA? | 113 | There are enzymes which degrade DNA and RNA (RNAases and DNAses) in our intestines, along with all other enzymes, to degrade various forms of food such as proteins (trypsin), carbs (amylases), fats (lipases). Then the constituents are taken up by the body. | 64 | |
[Star Wars] How come, at 900 years of age, Master Yoda still hasn't got the hang of Galactic Basic sentence structure? | 178 | In Fate of the Jedi (Allston), Ben Skywalker explains Yoda's speech pattern as
> "After nine hundred years, he (Yoda) was sick of hearing the same old things the same old way. Use the same old cliché phrases too long and people stop hearing the message."
I think that is the best explanation, because even though ... | 199 | |
ELI5: Why does some smartphones get slower with time? Is it a hardware or a software problem? | 25 | Both
On the software side of things not only are newer programs typically more demanding, but newer operating systems are designed with newer/more powerful devices in mind.
As for hardware, the only real thing that degrades over time is the battery. As they age, and go through more charging cycles, batteries tend to... | 24 | |
CMV: Superman is too perfect and because of this his stories aren't compelling | I *know* this is an unpopular opinion, but I don't like Superman. For me, he is literally too perfect, and as such, he doesn't have a personality. I find this to be a huge character flaw, and I just want a character that actually has weakness inside of him. Yes, I realize his "weakness" is Kryptonite, but he has no mor... | 73 | Superman is interesting precisely because he is so powerful. In Superman stories the drama rarely comes from whether or not Superman can punch some other guy harder, or fly faster or whatever.
It's much more likely to be about how this God-like being finds his way in the world. He loves humanity, and in many ways is... | 34 |
Why isn't a zip code enough when entering an address, why must I give my State, City AND zip code? | 609 | I'd assume it's a 2nd check for incorrect zip codes... IE: If you're sending a letter to Scruff McGruff in Chicago, IL 60652, and accidentally mix up your 5's and 6's and send it to Scruff McGruff Chicago, IL 50562, (Which is the zip code for Mallard, IA) they can say "Chances are, it was meant to go to Chicago, rathe... | 497 | |
ELI5: In a high-smog area, how is staying inside any safer than going outside? | Isn't it the same air? Wouldn't I be breathing in about the same amount of smog in my house as the air directly outside my house? | 100 | As mentioned by others there is HVAC filtering, but the big reason is that it keeps people from driving and using other polluting forms of transport.
Also, if people don't go to work at construction sites there is less dust kicked up and if they don't run factories that produce particulates at full capacity that also... | 71 |
[Star Wars] Why did the Separatists use piloted tanks? | Almost every member of the Separatist army is a droid, the B1s, B2s, Vulture droids, Hailfire droids, crab droids, ETC. Why do the AATs require pilots? This leaves them open to hijacking by enemy humanoids. | 26 | I assume they weren't built specifically for the droid army, but were a standard design built with organic pilots in mind which the Trade Federation just used with droids. Same reason the battle droids used blasters instead of having guns for arms. Using simple droids able to manipulate tech made for organics allowed t... | 51 |
CMV: I believe that satire has encouraged a "cool to hate" mindset in social media that is damaging society. | **Note:** Let me preface by saying that I realize this viewpoint has been discussed on this subreddit before, but I don't feel like it expanded the discussion enough. In any case, those threads are dead and difficult to revive. There are new points that I would like to bring up.
For the most part this concept is onl... | 33 | You haven't convinced me that this is a new phenomenon. In the '80s everyone hated HEAVEN'S GATE, ISHTAR and HOWARD THE DUCK. In the '70s it was disco music. In the '20s it was Fatty Arbuckle. In the '30s it was Herbert Hoover. In the '40s it was Communism.
You'll find that for all the Nic Cage haters, he is still /r... | 15 |
What was the very first post-Newton experiment that hinted the universe wasn't as it seemed? | I suppose that Special Relativity was the big point where physics took a sharp turn away from Newtonian physics. But what was the very first precursor observation that suggested that the universe wasn't really just a "box containing lumps of mass that attract each other", and didn't behave in a way that common sense wo... | 24 | The Michelson-Morley experiment was important, but there were some earlier hints. The Fizeau experiment of 1851 was what influenced Einstein, more than the MM experiment. Thompson in 1881 noticed that it was harder to move fast charged objects than slow ones. The orbit of Mercury was realized to be anomalous in 1859. ... | 23 |
[Avatar] Realistically, how long could you survive if a waterbender froze you in ice? | 22 | Without the power of the Avatar State to help you, or a fire/water bender's resistance to extreme temperatures?
Not very long at all. Frozen up to your neck, you'd be suffering frostbite and hypothermia rather swiftly. As your core temperature dropped, so would your heartbeat. Shivering wouldn't help you, as you could... | 23 | |
CMV: people who live in Europe and claim to have visited 20 countries, all of which are inside the EU are no more adventurous than people in the US who have visited 20 different states. | I get annoyed when I see this, I just don't really see the difference, both you aren't really leaving a place of safety, the cultures are all relatively similar, if compared to how new Mexicans are like people from Maine for example, complete opposites, or how Alaska is nothing like California, how north Dakota is not... | 167 | >I'd argue actually going from France to Germany is far less adventurous/"seeing new things" than going from somewhere like California (southern) to Oregon
I mean, this makes sense, Oregonian is a much trickier language to learn than German | 224 |
[Terminator 2] How strong is the T1000 in comparison to the T800? | 27 | Roughly equal. It might be able to produce slightly more force, but it has less mass and therefore less leverage. When they wrestled in the mall, it was a fairly even back-and-forth.
The T1000's real advantage is its polymorphic ability. The T800 sustained damage piled upon damage, whereas the T1000 was at full capaci... | 36 | |
I just found out that while mars has about 1/10th the mass of earth it has 38% of the gravity. This suggests a non-linear relationship between mass and gravity at the surface. What causes this effect? [Physics] | Follow up question: Does this effect mean that the gravity on the surface of planets that are significantly larger than earth would be survivable for humans? | 17 | Gravity is a function of both the mass of the object as well as the distance to it. The force of gravity is proportional to the mass, but falls of with the square of the distance.
In the case of a planet (or spherical body in general), the "distance" refers to the distance to the center of the planet, so for something... | 61 |
ELI5: Why is cyanide such a deadly poison? | 44 | Poisons are toxic because they interfere with the body's biochemistry.
Cyanide's toxicity is because it interferes with the way energy is used and generated within the cell. It binds permanently to one of the cells' most important enzymes, preventing it from doing its job in using sugars in the cells. Without energy, ... | 40 | |
ELI5: how does a private prison operate differently from a state or a federally funded prisons? | 20 | Private prisons have an incentive to cut corners in order to pass the savings on to their investors. This often means less experienced, less-well-trained security personnel, worse food, higher prisoner to guard ratios, less ability to accommodate special needs of prisoners, less maintenance, less investment in prisoner... | 16 | |
ELI5: Hyperreality. | 15 | There once was a king who hired a team of cartographers to undertake the most exhaustive survey anyone had ever created; he wanted the most detailed map of his empire possible. The map he had the cartographers make was so detailed that the map's scale had a ratio of 1 to 1; the map itself spread out over the actual lan... | 11 | |
I think parents who don't vaccinate their children should lose their child and be put in jail. CMV | Everyone is aware of the vaccination conspiracy theory hysteria that has caused parents to choose not to vaccinate their children.
Now more than ever are we beginning to see the results of this: erradicated diseases are coming back and taking lives.
This is neglect and abuse on such a level that I would let pedophiles... | 45 | It's one thing to punish the parents, but what about the child? Either you don't care about the child's well-being and are okay with sacrificing them to make an example, or you're grossly underestimating the damage inflicted on the child's psyche and well-being by removing them from their family. | 26 |
[Groundhog Day] After escaping the time loop, what does Phil Connor’s life look like? | He made it back to a normal life, but he still possesses unnatural amounts of knowledge about the town and everyone in it, as well as having mastered more skills than a normal person could in their lifetime. Does this make the rest of his life notably different, especially since he expressed desire to remain in Punxsut... | 46 | He now possesses a nearly perfect knowledge of every single person that was in Punxsutawney on Groundhog's day.
He is master of many different skills, such as Piano playing.
He has lived the equivalent of 50-100 years in a single day.
He probably continues to date the girl he was with, and visits the town every year... | 53 |
ELI5: What really happens when people die of "old age" or "natural causes" ? | 2,637 | what happens is the family and doctors agree it is not worth determining what the actual cause of death was.
actual cause is often heart failure, but frankly could be almost anything that isn't blatantly obvious from an external inspection.
edit: stroke is another common cause. may actually be even more common that h... | 2,830 | |
eli5: What is soil, technically? | Are soil and dirt one and the same, and is it possible to run out of either? Hypothetically speaking, is there a set amount of soil on Earth? How does more soil get generated? | 147 | Soil is a mixture of ground up rock and decayed organic material.
Soil is continually created, as part of the great cycles of life.
Ground up rock is created as a result of erosion, with rocks being weathered by water, wind, ice, physical erosion by animals etc.
(and new rocks can be formed over time by sediments be... | 260 |
[Superheroes]What martial arts would be the most practical for a vigilante to learn? | 38 | The killing type of vigilante, or the non-killing type?
For the killing type, enough judo to put people on the ground long enough to shoot them in the chest and head, plus a solid foundation of boxing for footwork, endurance, and to become accustomed to the sensation of hitting and being hit in return.
For the non-ki... | 41 | |
ELI5: Why do our eyes “click” in place when we look around? (ex. looking at a wall and tracing it left and right) | 14,768 | That's called saccadic masking. When you move your eyes to look around it's less 'real time camera' and more 'individual photos stitched together to make a panorama'. As your eyes move from point A to point B, your brain switches off image processing, making you functionally blind (for up to an hour a day IIRC). Your e... | 8,446 | |
Why does an oasis in a desert not just evaporate? | I don’t see how it can flourish so damn well. | 16 | It does evaporate. It’s just that more ground water keeps flowing in to replace it. Bodies of water at the Earths surface can get water from the mantle (via volcanic venting), from rain, from rivers (really mostly rain), and from groundwater. In the desert, water from rain and rivers is minimal. If there’s no volcanic ... | 15 |
[DC] How the hell is Lex Luthor of all people consistently able to get into the Oval Office? | 22 | Lex has good PR. He managed to make the American public focus on the times where he's helped save the world, such as during the Final Night where his scientific skill assisted Earth's heroes in dealing with the Sun Eater that threatened to extinguish our son. He's also managed to blame many of his misdeeds on others, s... | 55 | |
ELI5: Why do balloons make such a loud noise when they pop? | 12,864 | A balloon is essentially a vessel of compressed air. When the balloon pops, all of the air inside is released instantly and forms a pressure wave as it disperses to return to atmospheric pressure. You perceive the pressure wave as a loud noise when it strikes your ear drum. | 16,456 | |
Why do some programmers use multiple devices while coding? | I have been into coding for some time now and I couldn’t help but notice that some programmers use multiple devices while coding. Does it provide any advantages/disadvantages? And how does it work? | 18 | Probably they testing that their code is adaptive to devices and work across multiple devices, at some job they'd provide me with Mac and pc, at current job they didn't, me personally would use all devices at hand to check adaptivity and cross browser support | 34 |
How do tree rings form? | 17 | When the Treestump grows, it becomes thicker too. Now because that takes a long time this process has to happen throughout a lot of seasons.
In winter there‘s less energy for the chemical reaction that is used to grow wood, which leads to a slower growing process, this is where you can see a dark „ring“ on a tree stump... | 12 | |
Aside from all the deaths, what were the long term health effects of the 1918 pandemic? | I recall reading somewhere about long term morbidity dipping for decades but can't find a source now. I'm curious if there were other documented effects like lower IQ scores or poorer academic achievement. I assume it might be hard to differentiate some of that signal from the great depression effects so would apprecia... | 20 | There was a high risk of heart disease. They said people had 25% more heart disease, increased risk of diabetes.
They also had increased neurological issues. Depression, neuropathy, neurasthenia, meningitis, degenerative changes in nerve cells, and a decline in visual acuity | 10 |
ELI5: Why are ancient historical ruins (for example Ancient Roman structures) situated dozens of feet below the current "ground level"? | 48 | They aren't always, but generally the reason is that before the 19th century we didn't really feel this need to preserve our past, so we built on top of ruins. People would abandon a settlement, then when conditions changed and the area could be repopulated they tended to build a new settlement on the same spot (usuall... | 16 | |
ELI5: why does it feel like there is a lump in your throat when you are in the verge of tears? | 29 | When you are sad, scared, or stressed out, your body can enter into a "fight or flight" response. Your body is preparing either to throw some punches or run for the hills, and this causes your muscles to tense up. Since your muscles need lots of oxygen to fire, your brain will tell the muscles near your vocal chords to... | 35 | |
I don't understand "Nuclear Radiation". How does it work and what separates it from other forms of matter/elements in our world that seem to make it so much more dangerous? | I understand that it's 'bad', is most closely related nuclear power plant meltdowns and atomic bombs. But I don't understand HOW it works. Are there different types of radiation? Is the radiation our phones give off the same exact thing, except at a much lower level?
What is happening to our body when radiation... | 103 | Regular matter is made of atoms. And every atom has a nucleus, made of protons and neutrons. Some nuclei are *unstable*, meaning that they decay. When a nucleus decays, it emits radiation.
There are different kinds of nuclear radiation. Some examples are alpha particles, beta particles, gamma rays, protons, neutrons, ... | 73 |
If light emits a significantly minute force, how much light would it take to crush a human? | Or maybe throw them around. | 3,129 | The main issue is that any light is intense enough to push a human would literally vaporize someone. For a 100 pounds force, you'd need roughly 130 gigawatts focused on someone. A 1-watt laser is enough to cause burns. | 2,821 |
What does Foucault mean when he says “everything is a prison”? Does he even say that or is that just a meme? | 104 | Broadly, it's a perspective on power, where power is less directly possessed by people and groups than it is distributed through institutions and their logics of flow. Bodies and statements are organized, shaped and channeled by power, the example of the prison demonstrating how bodies are materially organized into spa... | 87 | |
Is it possible to construct a trampoline or net that is capable of saving a person from free-falling from 553m (top of CN Tower) ? | If someone were to jump from the top of the CN Tower, is any material durable enough to break the fall at ground level so that the individual could survive? | 249 | Well, let's engineer as if we're falling in vacuum for added safety margins. A fall of that height would take 5.3s leaving the person moving at 52 m/s (116 mph or 187 kph). Now a human can take 10gs or so safely for short periods of time, so we need to slow them down never exceeding 10gs. (Technically humans can surviv... | 250 |
Why has there been a big effect in commercial real estate market one year into the pandemic..with all the closures and work form home situations? | So I find it a bit strange that one year after the start of the shutdowns, the commercial real estate market isnt in deeper trouble.
.I understand many tenant's have longer leases etc.. but if they haven't been paying our went out of business (like many restaurants did) , the lease length is likely irrelevant. ..
I w... | 135 | I work in CRE and can help answer this. A few things:
1) Lending standards are much more strict than they were in 2008, so you are seeing less defaults
2) certain asset classes (mostly hotels and big box retail/malls) have been impacted badly.
3) the effects of the pandemic have been localized. Commercial real estat... | 25 |
ELI5: how are different types of cheese made? | 42 | All cheese goes through the same basic process. A starter bacteria is introduced which consumes the lactose and shits out lactic acid. The rise in acidity causes the two proteins in milk to separate -- the casein and the whey. Then rennet is introduced which further solidifies the casein and voila you have your cu... | 12 | |
Is there any language which is truly (or almost completely) gender free? | One for which there is no modification of adjectives for gender (like there is in Romance languages), a single gender pronoun, and no assigning of gender to nouns (not only lacking masculine and feminine nouns, as there are in Romance languages, but also lacking nouns which specify for gender, ie, having a single word ... | 31 | The Uralic languages (which include Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian etc.) have very little gender-related grammar. No gendering of nouns, pronouns or adjectives.
Finnish does have gendered kinship terms: sister/brother, aunt/uncle, mother/father and so on. Additionally, there is a feminine suffix *-tar/tär* for certain ... | 19 |
Why are realistic CGI movies so expensive to produce? | Why do movies like avatar, where it's heavily CGI'ed, cost so much to produce? It's much more expensive than movies that use physical props. Where do the chunk of the budget go into? Animators? Actors? | 23 | As with most things expensive; it's difficult, it takes time and it requires a lot of resources.
For one scene of CGI it might be months of work behind it, with everything from motion capture actors (so you need to do everything you would need to actually film the scene but with even more things needed than normal), s... | 14 |
[Harry Potter] Harry used three wands to stun Greyback with a triple spell. If that works, why doesn't everybody use many wands? Were the spells each as strong as a single wand would've produced, or did Harry just split the power of one spell into thirds? | 328 | Harry was 17 at the time, and had never paid much attention in his classes. He had three wands available, so he gave it a try, but the number of wands didn't change anything. One wand or three, a spell is only as powerful as the wizard or witch who is casting it. Otherwise, wandless magic would be impossible.
However... | 325 | |
[Star Wars] Why didn't Palpatine just stop zapping? | In both III and IX, Palpatine's own force lightning was being deflected back at him and he didn't stop despite it causing physical harm.
I get that dark side powers are caused by—and cause—strong emotions so he was probably blinded by his own anger/hate while using lightning, but he was also dying and iirc Sith don't ... | 492 | The Dark Side of the Force is a positive feedback loop - powerful emotions fuel it, and it fuels more powerful emotions. The strongest Sith lords are constantly riding the line between being world-shatteringly powerful and being torn apart by that same power.
When a Jedi loses control, their power just stops working(s... | 340 |
ELI5: Why do airlines throwaway single containers of liquids containing 100ml or more of it? | 1,324 | In 2006, a group of Muslim terrorists planned to blow up seven long-haul flights from London to the US and Canada using liquid explosives in 500 mL beverage containers. The plot was intercepted and thwarted by Metropolitan Police. For a short time, passengers were not allowed to bring any liquids on airline flights - i... | 1,762 | |
[Star Wars] in A New Hope, why were the Admirals so dismissive of The Force? | In the scene where the Admirals were discussing what course of action to take after the Death Star plans were stolen, why did they so easily dismiss Darth Vader's statement about the power of The Force? They were so patronising to him by referring to him as a "sorcerer" when there are extensive records of his extraordi... | 151 | Vader did kind of antagonize them. The admirals weren’t just insulting Vader randomly. Vader outright said that the Death Star, the most powerful weapon in history, which many of them have dedicated their entire careers either to building it or fighting to get a posting on it, is irrelevant compared to Vader’s ability ... | 224 |
ELI5: Are dogs and other domestic animals susceptible to mental illnesses such as things like Down syndrome and Autism? | 20 | Neither Down Syndrome or Autism are mental illnesses. Could you clarify what you mean by this question? Do you mean disorders such as Down Syndrome or Autism, or mental illnesses, more along the lines of depression or schizophrenia? | 11 | |
Eli5, how is the abbreviation for number 'no.' ? | 82 | It comes from the latin NumerO, meaning number
it's kind of weird that the it's the first and last letter rather than just the first two letters which would be more expected nowadays, but that's how "number" was abbreviated for centuries | 134 | |
[Star Trek] A question about starship design | What was the point of the saucer/body [design](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/USS_Enterprise_%28NCC-1701-A%29.jpg) of the Federation Crusiers? Is it a simple design aesthetic or is there some purpose to it? | 15 | Originally, this design of saucer - hull - nacelles was the optimum for generating a warp bubble around the ship, while still keeping the crew safe and the Gravity and structural integrity fields from interfering. | 22 |
ELI5: Why are most weigh stations on US highways always closed? And what is their intended function in the first place? | I'm curious as to why these are always closed, compared to toll booths/rest stations. | 22 | Truck driver here,
Weigh stations are there to make sure that commercial vehicles such as semi trucks are not over weight for the roads that they are traveling on because an over weight semi would not be able to stop as fast as normal, they may blow tires, and/or may cause other parts to break under pressure also it c... | 35 |
CMV: I should not be solely responsible for putting the seat down. | I have noticed my significant other REALLY hates when i do not put the seat down. I understand i am also the one that picks it up.
The problem here is that i am actively working towards a goal that we both benefit from: no piss on the seat. Granted, it is nice for both of us to not have to sit on the seat that might... | 59 | We are not talking about an all else being equal scenario.
You don't have to use the bathroom standing up, you want to use the bathroom without having to sit. She cannot use the toilet with the seat up. She has no other options. You are making a choice to do something with the seat that is specifically for your beni... | 77 |
[SCP Foundation] How powerful is the Foundation, exactly? | We see the Foundation effectively going up against nigh-omnipotent entities, hyper-infective diseases and all other manners of extradimensional entities practically daily at this point. Is there anything the Foundation *couldn't* contain? | 33 | The designation "Apollyon" is the designation given to the few anomalies the Foundation have absolutely no power over and can simply do damage control. SCP-2317 for example.
Beyond that they also have unfortunately come across several nasty antimemes that have totally wiped out their antimeme division as its very comp... | 30 |
[Elder Scrolls] I'm an Argonian fortune seeker. Is there anything sunken worth searching for in Skyrim? | 21 | Plenty of ships have sunk around the coast near vardenfell but you'll want to be warned of the frigid waters and vicious wildlife that are found there. Best just to travel to solsthiem and help dig out the raw ebony or if you're fourth era then dig out the ruins of ash | 24 | |
Why does smoke from incense or cigarettes not (usually) set off smoke alarms? | 131 | Fire Alarm / Smoke Detector Manufacturer here.
Household smoke detectors (excluding Heat and CO) fall into two catagories, Ionisation and Photoelectric.
Ionisation smoke detectors (the detectors with the radioactive symbol on their label) are designed to detect sub-micron particals of combustion (different to thick s... | 159 | |
ELI5: Why do frogs sing/croak when it's raining? | There's a thunderstorm outside and I can hear a lot of frogs croaking very loud/long. Is there a reason why they do that? | 148 | Croaking is usually a mating call, and frogs like to stay wet. Usually this means they're normally by a pond or stream, but when it rains they can move about on land more freely. So, you get more frogs wandering about on a rainy evening looking for mates, and so croaking more | 64 |
ELI5: Why does yellow food coloring look red when it's concentrated? | 16 | A dude named Beer made a law about it. It's called "Beer's Law", oddly enough.
Here's the way it works. Say you have a rainbow and a very special pair of filtering glasses. Without the glasses, you see every colour in that rainbow. But the glasses make the lower part of the rainbow a little bit hidden more than the u... | 20 | |
Speed of light = maximum speed of information? | As far as I can understand, it follows easily from special relativity that you can't accelerate anything to >c, because as you get closer to c you need to spend more and more energy for each incremental increase in speed, and the total grows to infinity. Maybe this is also true for energy propagation - I haven't see... | 21 | The issue here is one of Local structure vs. Global structure.
Remember that, in General Relativity, space-time is modeled as a four dimensional surface: one for time, and three for space. The theory (specifically Einstein's Field Equations) describes how the the curvature (i.e. local structure) of this surface is r... | 14 |
Why do higher resolutions require more power? | Stupid Question and this might be more related to hardware: Why are things more intensive when you change the resolution? For example, if you have a 1920x1080 monitor, then your screen is constantly showing 2073600 pixels right (unless there's a letterbox)? I don't get how changing the resolution affects the amount of ... | 18 | Because the complexity of basically every single rendering algorithm (2d/3d rasterization/3d Ray traced) is a function of the amount of pixels being drawn. The RGB value of every single pixel needs to be set (and calculated) independently by the GPU. If you want to draw a green triangle, a function has to be run for ev... | 14 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.