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ELI5: Why is it harder to look at something in the dark directly rather than looking to the side of it? | 1,586 | Our eyes have different kinds of light-sensitive cells. They're not spread evenly across the retina. Rod cells only detect light or dark, but work much better in low light than the colour-sensitive cone cells.
When it's dark, you are only using your rod cells, which is why when it's really dark you can't see any colou... | 862 | |
Why is Internet priced by speed, but cell phone priced by amount of data? | Illuminati? I dunno. Someone tell me. | 255 | Different infrastructures. Cell companies incur a lot of costs from power required to pump signals to your equipment. Less data usage, less signal needed, less money spent.
Cable companies incur costs from trunk line maintenance, the faster the speed, the more trunks needed, the more costs incurred. | 83 |
[Warhammer 40k] was the Chaplin erebus alone responsible for every event of the horus heresy? | 41 | He was responsible for Lorgar going heretic. Lorgar was responsible for many of the others going heretic. If the other heretic primarchs didn't listen to Lorgar the Horus Heresy would not have been as catastrophic. | 26 | |
Eli5: why does my stomach "growl" | Just laying in bed and my stomach is growling so I figured eli5 could help haha | 20 | When your stomach is digesting food, it moves and squeezes in order to move the food around and digest it better. Sometimes your stomach will still do this when you don't have any food in it. If it does, sometimes the air in your stomach will make a growling sound | 14 |
Why do some materials conduct electricity while others do not? | I've heard that it is related to the energy levels of electrons or the lattice of the material among other things, but I do not have a good answer as to why some materials conduct electricity while others do not. It is quite difficult to find information relating to electricity on the atomic level. | 41 | When you have a bulk material like rubber (insulator), silicon (semiconductor), and copper (conductor) the electrons energy levels of the individual atoms form energy bands when considering the bulk properties of the material. To move electrons through a material you must promote them from the valence band to the condu... | 15 |
ELI5:Why are Adderall, Ritalin and other medications with side effects used to treat dopamine deficiencies rather than dopamine itself? | And by that I mean, why use medications that attempt to cause the production and modify the uptake of dopamine rather than using dopamine itself as a medication and directly supplementing a person's dopamine levels? I mean, sure, you'd have to ensure that the release of the dopamine is gradual rather than all at once, ... | 55 | Dopamine itself cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. You can shoot someone full of dopamine via an IV all day long, but it will not do anything to affect the dopamine levels in the brain itself. So, the best thing you can do is either stimulate the brain to produce more itself or limit its reuptake. | 90 |
We know that mass can become energy. Is it possible to turn energy into mass? | 271 | Sure -- this is how particle colliders work. The kinetic energy of colliding particles produces new particles with a greater mass than the particles you started with had.
For example, the (apparent) Higgs boson, was produced in a collision of two protons. The mass of a proton is less than 1% of the mass of the Higgs... | 208 | |
ELI5 what is the THE GREAT FILTER (Fermi Paradox) ? | 370 | The Fermí Paradox is that there are probably billions of habitable planets in our galaxy alone, and yet we don’t see any signs of sentient life up there in the sky. The Great Filter is one possible explanation of that. It goes that while there are many life-supporting worlds out there, there exists some barrier that is... | 549 | |
ELI5: The difference between advertising and marketing | 17 | **Marketing** is a business role that analyzes and/or makes decisions about everything needed to bring a product to market: research, manufacturing, finance, packaging, advertising, sales…etc.
**Advertising** is one piece of marketing: communicating a product to potential consumers. | 17 | |
ELI5: Why do humans not remember being babies? | 110 | infants do form memories. But they forget quickly:
* 6 month => 24h retention
* 9 month => 1 month retention
* 20 month => 1 year retention
So human (babies) remember being babies. But human (adults) dont remember beeing babies.
Baby brains grow fast. From birth to the age of 2 they triple in size. During... | 121 | |
[MCU] Rocket has no idea what a "Raccoon" is, since to his knowledge he's the only one of his species. But Drax mentions that he and his friends roasted raccoons on a campfire as children ("they were quite delicious"). How did Drax run into raccoons on his planet? | 309 | Those weren't raccoons. They were completely alien lifeforms that just happen to be identical to raccoons in every way.
Notice that many of the inhabitants of Xandar are identical to humans in every way. That doesn't make them human. | 313 | |
[Batman]Why hasn't Bruce Wayne ever put his resources to stopping the Batman? | Isn't he a philanthropist. The batman is a vigilante, and is taking the law into his own hands. Why not devote some resources to try to catch the bat | 139 | Because even when what Batman is doing might not be legal, the people of Gotham, across all backgrounds, are shown as generally being divided as to whether or not what he is doing is or isn't right. They usually lean more towards the latter the longer he's been around and proving himself to them.
In Pre-Modern Age com... | 134 |
ELI5: why do only some materials work on touchscreen, and what is in touchscreen gloves that makes them work? | 32 | The basic difference is conductivity + surface area. A needle will not work because it has very little surface area that can directly touch. A cotton glove will not work because it is not conductive. A glove with a bunch of flexible little conductive fibers WILL work. | 25 | |
[Harry Potter] does polyjuice potion have an expiration date after brewing and if not what happens if a take a persons hair and make the potion when they’re 20 but don’t drink the potion until they’re 40? | 30 | Apparently you can't just brew one big batch or Not-Moody would have done so. Snape said that someone kept stealing his alchemy ingredients and not that somebody had wiped out his stock in a single heist. | 18 | |
CMV: It's ok to be skeptical about the Covid vaccines | I'm not an anti-vaxxer and I've done all the vaccines I needed to at a young age, Please hear me out.
A while ago my mom called me on the phone to tell me that a friend I had in highschool died. I didn't keep in touch but my mom still talks with the parents of my school friends. He was studying to be a doctor so he h... | 60 | I see that vaccines are a very personal issue for you but the way the math pans out, covid is a bigger threat for every age group than the vaccine ever will be. Furthermore, you spread the virus to people around you, creating an even greater threat.
The J and J vaccine and AstraZeneca vaccines are both incredibly safe... | 35 |
This may seem like a silly question, but what is the definition of mass? | Let me elaborate a little. I'm not an idiot, but what is for example a gram of mass relative to, is it something to do with 1/12 of C 12, or was it just decided that a certain 'weight' would be a mass of 1 gram, like the melting point of water being 0. I feel like such a fool to be asking this question but it's been pl... | 226 | >The kilogram is the only SI base unit with an SI prefix ("kilo", symbol "k") as part of its name. It is also the only SI unit that is still directly defined by an artifact rather than a fundamental physical property that can be reproduced in different laboratories.
Specifically, it is the mass of the International... | 141 |
Could you help me understand this excerpt from "The Myth of Sisyphus?" | > In its way, suicide settles the absurd. It engulfs the absurd in the same death. But I know that in order to keep alive, the absurd cannot be settled. It escapes suicide to the extent that it is simultaneously awareness and rejection of death. It is, at the extreme limit of the condemned man's last thought, that s... | 20 | The condemned man here is the mortal human - in that you are condemned to die at some point in the future the moment you are born.
With that in mind, suicide is confronted and considered by the condemned man, but said man decides instead to continue living until his death with the knowledge that suicide is an option.
... | 11 |
Why doesn’t the minimum wage increase with inflation? | I don’t want to argue on what’s an acceptable federal minimum wage, but doesn’t it make sense to increase it yearly? | 121 | Because the existing minimum wage legislation wasn’t indexed to inflation 🤷♂️
There’s no particular reason why it is or isn’t currently other than that.
Indexing it to inflation has been suggested with recent minimum wage legislation, but that legislation isn’t getting passed with a 50/50 senate. Maybe it was propo... | 80 |
[Star Wars] Was Vader even worthy of being deemed a "Sith"? | Darth Vader, at least the few comics I read and the films, never really dabbles or studies the dark arts. The guy pretty much carried over his Jedi experience and now likes to choke people more, that's pretty much it. Is he really a "sith"? Isn't he more like a broken man who's always pissed off and intimidating?
Comp... | 25 | Worthy? What's worthy?
Literally the only other Sith in the universe said Vader was a Sith. Mind you this is the guy who wiped out the Jedi, overthrew a thousand year old government, and took over the galaxy. If that dude says you're worthy, you're worthy. | 53 |
[Rick and Morty] Are Jessica and Morty getting somewhere? | It doesn't bother me that despite all the surreal things humanity has witnessed every episode restarts like it wasn't that important of a historic event, because it's kinda the nature of the show.
But with Jessica, it feels different, from season one to four it seems like there's a growing relationship between both of... | 18 | In many instances, it definitely is an alternate reality.
In "the vat of acid" episode, we see Morty can not only be placed in alternate dimensions without his knowledge, but that Rick purposely does so to teach him lessons. There's no telling what personal history is consistent from Morty's point of view, and that's ... | 14 |
[40K] Space Marines in Inquisitorial Bands. | Greetings honorable battle brothers!
I belong to a space marine chapter that has some itinerant traditions that go back thousands of years (mostly our tech marine initiates visiting important forge worlds and Nocturne to pay homage to the Salamanders who once helped us). Anyhow, I was wondering since we seem to have o... | 33 | Greetings, Brother /u/jad4400!
While not common, it's certainly not unheard of for small groups of Marines to be enlisted for a good cause.
Commissar Gaunt once was privileged to receive the aide of a single Battle-Brother from three different chapters during a particular mission which was deemed "Suicidal" for mere-... | 13 |
ELI5: What is the purpose behind the common "crescent" shaped ice cube? | Is it more effective in any way or is it no different from the traditional "cubes" from trays? | 25 | Crescent-shaped ice cubes are easy for a machine to remove from the tray. After they're done freezing, a mechanical arm swings in a circle and pushes them out of the tray. Cube-shaped trays are a bit harder to automatically remove the ice from them. | 15 |
What are the ethics of terrorism? Under what conditions, if any, would just war theorists condone terrorism (inflicting violence intentionally on civilians)? | edit: To broaden the question: Under what conditions would philosophers and political theorists (not solely traditional just war theorists) condone terrorism? | 68 | Just a preemptive warning because we know this has the possibility of spiraling: this is NOT a question about whether YOU think terrorism is justified or when, but rather when various philosophers and political theorists have argued it was justified. Our top level answers require a citation so if you're not able to poi... | 32 |
[Westworld] What's preventing guests from assaulting other guests? or worse? | There seems to be no rules or boundaries at the park. I understand the guns have tech to prevent guests from getting shot, but what happens when a guest decides to assault another guest with their fists or a knife? What happens when they decide to sexually assault another guest? What even distinguishes the guests from ... | 68 | The Hosts, and the constant surveillance of the park administration. Consider when the Man in Black was dragging Teddy all around creation, and had a conversation with Ford, and pulled a knife on Ford. Despite being nearly comatose, Teddy reacted instantly to stop MiB from even threatening violence against Ford.
Same... | 85 |
[Watchmen] Why aren't there more Dr. Manhattans? | Seeing as the accident that converted a normal scientist into a god was highly publicised (at least, according to the movie) why haven't more people, or at least some of Dr. Manhattans colleagues, or maybe even Communist spies attempted to replicate the accident for their own benefit? | 77 | They did try, but the circumstance that led to the birth of Dr Manhattan is unique. For one thing, Dr. Osterman had the scientific knowledge, being the son of a watchmaker, and the will to return to his girlfriend, all allowing him to slowly reconstruct himself.
Plus, if the Soviets were in fact feeding people into an... | 112 |
ELI5 if you tell me your name, I forget immediately yet I remember every lyric to 1000 songs on my Ipod? | 24 | You have heard those songs 100's of times and the music helps you remember plus the singer is filling in the blanks helping you remember too.
Where as a name is just one word with nothing for you to connect it to, to help you remember it. | 14 | |
Please take time to learn how to answer a question | In response to this front page post, I felt it important to give the other side.
Yes, it is absolutely important to learn **how to ask** a question.
However, no matter how you try, if you're asking that likely means that you need help and aren't really knowledgeable in the area.
So, as long as you aren't asking hard... | 74 | > Assume that the person has tried their best to solve the problem
That's a bad assumption. There are many questions on the programming subs where it is obvious the asker has not thought about or worked on the problem whatsoever.
You can usually tell though - so assuming one way or the other isn't necessary. | 19 |
ELI5: how do lotions that you wash off immediately(in the shower or in the sink) work if they’re on your skin for such a short amount of time? | 39 | The lotion is made of two main components: an oily phase and a watery phase. When you apply water, the watery phase will dissolve and wash away while the oily phase will resist the water and remain stuck to your skin, providing the moistness. | 32 | |
[Star Wars] Count Dooku was the head of state of the Separatist Alliance, and yet he regularly went around the galaxy with a red lightsaber, training apprentices and acting as a Sith. Was the general public aware he was a Sith lord? Why didn't the Jedi Order make this publicly available information? | Training Grievous (and Ventress and his other apprentice in the Clone Wars tv series), using force powers, giving direct military orders to generals, and so many other things Dooku regularly did seem to make it inconceivable that at the very least, the Separatist leadership wouldn't know he was a Sith. Did they simply ... | 26 | To the vast majority of the galaxy, "Jedi" and "Sith" are merely two diametrically opposing philosophies about life and the nature of the universe. Think of Christianity and Islam in your own world. They both believe in the same consciousness, whether you want to call it God or The Force, but believe different things a... | 26 |
ELI5: Can someone explain the new discovery on how humans respond to oxygen (Nobel Prize in Medicine)? | 49 | We already knew that our cells variate their oxygen uptake. These cell biologists now found the protein that measures the oxygen level within our cells (and decoded its structure). Now we can work on manipulating this protein to fight different illnesses like cancer.
Cancer cells as an example need much oxygen because... | 52 | |
[Mr Bean] What on earth is wrong with him? | He is obviously highly intelligent as he is capable of finding novel and effective solutions to certain problems, and apparently gains a pretty good knowledge of trigonometry at one point. On the other hand, he is sometimes vindictive and seems to enjoy upsetting children and sick people, he is obsessive about finishin... | 108 | Mr Bean is a fallen angel. He has an intelligence beyond humans, but he has odd personality quirks, and his idea of amusement is a bit off. You'll note he has a few 'encounters' in church. He likes to mock God for tossing him out over what he considers trivial matters. | 133 |
[Lord of the Rings] Why don't the Orcs stab the horses that Aragorn and Theoden King were riding when they were leaving the castle at the end of the Battle of Helms Deep? | 43 | At first, because they were moving. A moving horseman is a terrifying thing - even when going slowly, the weight of horse and rider give it massive inertia; impact with any part of them can cause injury even before you factor in the blades the riders were carrying.
(One of those things that Hollywood frequently gets w... | 62 | |
ELI5: what is the logic behind letting someone go if you love them ? | wouldnt you rather have them stay ? | 22 | The issue is that if you love someone, and genuinely love them, you want the best for them. Even if the best for them isn't you. You care about them enough that you just want them to be happy, and though it'd make you happy to have them with you, you know that you aren't the one who can give them the happiness and joy... | 49 |
ELI5: Why is male circumcision considered okay when everyone would agree that female circumcision is a violation of human rights? | Edit:
Here is some additional background for my question.
I was having an argument with my boyfriend about the conflict between cultural acceptance and "integration in Canadian values". For example Canada’s citizenship guide was recently revised to say that the country’s “openness and generosity do not extend to bar... | 28 | Male circumcision generally involves trimming back a portion of skin around the genitals which does not substantially impact their function. The skin involved contains relatively few nerve endings, the procedure is for all intents and purposes cosmetic, and is generally done as an expression of religious identity or fo... | 13 |
ELI5: Why does taking a warm bath when you have a fever feel so cold? | 9,628 | Because - in order to slow down viral multiplication - your body increases the thermostat of your body. So what normally feels comfortable suddenly feels cold.
Update: That's also why you sweat when you're recovering. The body lowers the thermostat back to normal temperature. Everything feels more hot as when you were... | 4,934 | |
[Punch-Out!!] Is there any trainer, fictional or real, that could fix Glass Joe? | Anyone? Man has the heart for fighting a hundred bouts despite losing 99 times but he's just so fragile. Is there anyway someone could improve him? | 45 | In the Wii version, he comes back in Title Defense mode with some better training and wearing a helmet. While he is still the easiest fighter of the mode, he is actually somewhat of a challenge to beat this way.
So, canonically, the answer is yes. | 52 |
ELI5 what is rollback in fighting games and how come it makes it feel like there isn’t really any lag? | 48 | When you play online it takes time for control inputs to get from player A to player B and vice versa. In a rollback scenario, player B's computer is constantly trying to predict what input it will receive from player A and animates the game based on the predicted inputs. When correct, it appears lagless. When incorrec... | 105 | |
What's the best response to the problem of evil for Christianity? | I'm aware that philosophers and theologians like Augsustine, Leibniz, and Plantinga have offered responses, but are any of their responses (and others) considered strong or satisfactory? What's the best of the bunch? I've read the SEP article but honestly it feels like a paper written from a starting point of 'none of ... | 19 | Okay, so the standard argument from evil looks basically like this.
1. If God exists, then there are no pointless evils.
2. There are pointless evils.
3. Therefore, God does not exist.
Standard theodicy approaches will reject the second premise by claiming that there are no pointless evils, i.e. every evil has a p... | 17 |
ELI5: What is Trust-busting? How is it used? | 97 | A monopoly is when a single company controls all of some portion of the economy. For example, one company is the only company that sells oranges. Since they're the only source of that commodity, they control the price. This is generally seen as a bad thing, so monopolies are outlawed.
Having multiple companies creates... | 164 | |
ELI5: If the color white reflects light (and black absorbs it) why does a lighter skin tone easier get sunburned? | Why does the body produce melanin to absorb light? Shouldn’t it be possible to just reflect the light and thus avoid getting sunburned? | 42 | Dark/black colours "absorb" light turning it into heat. Light/white colours bounce it. That is true.
The sun's visible light doesn't cause that much damage to skin, and heat isn't the concern. Ultraviolet (UV) light damages DNA and that's what really causes a sun-burn. That layer of skin dies and that's why it peels o... | 30 |
ELI5: Is there a difference between types of cancer other than location? | Breast cancer, brain cancer, pancreatic cancer, skin cancer, etc... Are they all the same thing just indifferent locations, or are they biologically different? I know different things cause different cancers, but is it exactly the same disease just in a different body part? And if they aren't related like that why a... | 164 | Yes. If your body is a company and every cell is a worker, cancer is a worker gone rogue. One day he decides he isn't going to do his job, destroys a part of the company and grabs a gun to prevent being kicked out. Every day, he destroys more stuff (unregulated growth).
If he's a low ranking worker, he doesn't have a... | 86 |
ELI5: Why is bailing(releasing suspects from jail for money) allowed? | I think it is a very stupid question, as everyone else seems to understand it, so I posted it here.
I know that the suspects are no released completely, only until the court, but why should the wealthier people get more advantages? Also, do they release anyone, even the most potentially dangerous suspects? | 17 | >why should the wealthier people get more advantages?
They don't. The bail amount is set by the judge based on multiple factors, such as perceived danger to others, and possible flight risk. One of those factors is the financial situation of the accused. If you're filthy rich, your bail is going to be much highe... | 18 |
Based on statistics from countries which currently do not allow legal abortions, if the US were to make abortion illegal, how common would illegal abortion be? What would the health risks be? | I'll try to word this in an ideologically neutral way. I might not succeed.
I've been seeing a lot of coat hanger imagery coming from the (American) left as the abortion debate returns to the media, arguing that shutting down abortion clinics will result in dangerous back alley abortions. However, it seems like a vi... | 23 | A question to the OP. In countries that do not allow legal abortion, how likely is it that any estimates of the actual abortion rate are reliable and non-noisy?
You are better off comparing states in the US who border each other, where both states had policy X at time t, and at time t+1 state 1 had policy X and state... | 12 |
Why aren’t home prices crashing? | It seems like prices have remained the same since pre-covid. Shouldn’t prices fall? | 43 | It takes time to adjust. Especially in a market where transactions are much higher in value and they happen more infrequently. It's just the first month of the slowdown. Home prices going down means that is a sudden surge in offer that can be caused by more houses being foreclosed. But for that to happen, you have to m... | 14 |
[Star Wars] Is it morally, or ethically wrong to kill a rank and file Stormtrooper, or a common Imperial Officer? | Chances are that they’re just ordinary people, right? Who joined the Empire for a chance at a better life, and way off some backwater, Outer Rim world. Not to take over the galaxy. | 27 | It's morally ambiguous. They may be ok people in personal life, but they are a direct part of a military outfit that is directly subjugating entire planets (even planets that AREN'T rebelling, but just happen to have things the Empire wants to take), enslaving other races, razing entire planets for resources. And it is... | 38 |
What were the evolutionary steps for the blowhole on whales and dolphins? | I'm watching a dolphin show live right now and I'm wondering, that if they're mammals, did they develop from an earlier form of gills? When in the chain of evolution might have it developed and are there any other mammals that have a vestigial remnant of this feature? | 19 | The blowhole evolved from the nostrils, which migrated to the top of head and (in some whales) merged to form a single opening. Some whales still have two blowholes, while the sperm whale's blowhole is its left nostril, with the right nostril not having an opening. | 22 |
ELI5 what the Right to Repair fight is about with Apple? | 37 | Imagine you buy a car. Let's say a Chevy Cruze cuz why not. Now, Chevy has all sorts of reasons to want you to only use Chevy certified mechanics and official Chevy spare parts because they can make money from that service and maintain quality control.
On the other hand, you as a consumer wants to find the best de... | 33 | |
Do g-waves attenuate with time(or when they interact with matter)? | If they do attenuate, how can we determine the source considering the waves could have interacted with a random number of matter | 120 | Gravity waves do not attenuate when they pass through matter; they just deform the matter a little tiny bit and move on.
They also don't attenuate over time, beyond the fact that they get weaker as the spread out through space.
| 25 |
[Game of thrones] where are all the other Giants? | Did they just not ally with the Wildlings? | 38 | There are probably some still left north of the Wall, surviving in the ice as they have done for countless centuries. They are adapted to survive in those cold climes, but they face other threats - the White Walkers are on the move, as they have not been since the Long Night, and these last few giants may become their ... | 29 |
How Much Of A Difference Is There Between Philosophy Of Religion And Theology? | 25 | The primary difference would be that theology operates within the confines of a particular religious tradition, applying many of the tools of philosophy of religion but assuming certain non-philosophical premises. | 15 | |
ELI5:So we are seeing the Sun as yellow but why are we seeing it's reflection from Moon as white? | Hey guys, so right now it is an almost commonly known thing that The Sun is white but we are seeing it as yellow. I wonder why this is not happening to the Sun's light reflected from the Moon's surface. | 28 | Moonlight actually appears slightly bluish to the human eye due to the Purkinje effect, which basically states that at low illumination levels the eye is slightly more sensitive to blue light. The reflected light however is white, the same as sunlight. The sun appears yellowish due to a combination of its blackbody rad... | 21 |
[The Office US] How in God's name has Michael Scott not been fired? | From 2005-2007 *alone*, Michael Scott somehow got away with:
- Leaking news of a downsizing
- Telling the entire office they were being closed down before it was finalized
- Carrying on a secret affair with his boss
- Outing a gay employee
- Kicking a ladder out from under his warehouse manager
- Countless insensitive... | 28 | His branch was the highest performing in Dunder Mifflin by a wide margin over Utica and Nashua. He’s extremely loyal to the company and had been working there forever. He was an elite salesman before he became manager, and when he steps into making sales himself he does very well. He never asked for a raise until Darre... | 37 |
ELI5: Why do the integers up until 12 have no pattern in their words (after which the teens start), but in French the integers have no pattern in their words up until 16 (after which dix-sept, dix-huit start)? | In English and German all numbers up until (and including) 12 have different words with no pattern, whereas 13 and upwards follows a pattern (thirteen, fourteen, dreizehn, vierzehn). (Probably due to the value of a dozen. Thank you [/u/Linard](http://www.reddit.com/user/Linard))
In French it goes up to 16 (seize) and ... | 187 | there is a pattern, its just heavily based on latin.
11 - onze - (**un**decim) - un
12 - douze - (**duo**decim) - deux
13 - treize - (**tre**decim) - trois
14 - quatorze - (**quattuor**decim) - quatre
15 - quinze - (**quin**decim) - cinq (this one is weird yes)
16 - seize - (**se**decim) - six
| 51 |
ELI5: how do car dealerships make money when they claim the markup on new cars is only a few hundred dollars? | 258 | They can make money three ways when they are selling you a new car, the dealer markup, and any hidden incentives from the factory.
The second way is what they offer you for your trade in.
The third way is through financing of the vehicle. They secretly get kickbacks from certain finance companies depending ... | 170 | |
What happens to a photon after it has been seen by our eyes? | 74 | Our eyes "see a photon" through the response created in our visual system by the absorption of that photon (or more realistically a stream of such photons) by the biological dyes in our eyes. Since the photon is absorbed, its energy is transferred to the molecules that constitute those biological dyes, and the initial ... | 42 | |
CMV: Poor people shouldn’t have kids | This is obviously incredibly controversial, but hear me out. I live in South Africa which is one of the most unequal countries in the world, I grew up middle class and started working in unprivileged communities and was blown away by how ill equipped their parents were to parent them and how despite being ravished by p... | 139 | Do you believe non-existence is preferable to a life in poverty? Do you think most poor people would agree it would be better if they had never been born?
Also, do you think that corporations and governments who exploit the poor have any responsibility for the conditions the poor live in? Or does the responsibility mo... | 30 |
CMV: Nearly everything I did in school was a waste of time, money and effort. | I'll start by saying that school teaches a few useful things. Driver's ed is one; just about everyone needs to know how to drive. Reading and writing are essential, as is basic math. Some vocational and technical electives like computer programming were useful. However, most of what is required in a typical k-12 curric... | 34 | > One could also tell me that employers reward people for having degrees. This is true. I'd argue that it's because the ability to finish a degree says certain things about you. Employers do not care about the existentialist philosophy course you took to meet the humanities requirement.
This is entirely true and it... | 27 |
[Vampire Lore] why does blood taste so good to vampires? And what is the human equivalent of how good it tastes? | 66 | "The blood is the life!" Dracula (1992)
It's like mother's milk for a baby, alcohol for an alcoholic, or cool water for a profoundly thirsty man. It's sweet, it's wholesome, and *it's what you need.* | 95 | |
ELI5: What is chapter 11 bankruptcy and how and why would it help Toy "R" Us? | 29 | Bankruptcy: You owe so much money that you can't possibly pay it all. Imagine you own a company that's not doing well. It now owes a total of $1 million to various people: rent, electricity, suppliers, employees, clients you've not delivered product to.
Chapter 7 bankruptcy: Everything the company has gets sold, and t... | 75 | |
ELI5: What is happening when a game is loading? | If a game can render the scenery and objects as you're moving through the world, what's the point of waiting behind a loading screen? | 21 | So imagine a fast food place that can make burgers really fast, on demand. This is like the game when it's loaded and running, it's rendering stuff quickly and on demand.
In the morning someone has to open the fast food restaurant, warm up the grills and get the ingredients out and prepped for rapid burger making. Th... | 120 |
I believe any working individual should make a living wage. CMV | US citizen here, if that matters.
I've spent the majority of my working life making a wage that put me well below the poverty line. When I was in high school this made sense because I wasn't full time, nor was I in a high-skill position. I'm now a college graduate with a good deal of experience and myself and my fianc... | 69 | The United States establishes a minimum wage of $7.25/hr (higher in some states). The 2013 poverty level is $11,490. Income at that level is tax-exempt.
Therefore, to be above the poverty line you need to work about 30 hours per week. You claim you are "well below" the poverty line -- how many hours less did you wo... | 21 |
ELI5: Why do Hindu dieties have more than 2 arms/multiple faces usually? | 18 | Hindu {and some associated with some schools of Buddhism) have multiple arms as a symbol of their capacity for actions (how much more could you do if you had more hands and arms?) and multiple faces/heads to show their all seeing natures. | 13 | |
ELI5: How does exercise actually reduce the risk of diabetes? And how does too much sugar in a diet cause a person with no diabetes to get the disease? | 16 | Type two diabetes is effectively caused by having a higher than normal blood glucose level for a prolonged period of time.
When you eat, most carbohydrates are transformed into glucose and absorbed into the bloodstream. Simple sugars are digested and absorbed into the blood very quickly, causing large spikes in blood... | 18 | |
CMV: if you can't afford living in an expensive city, you should move out. | Most big cities are becoming prohibitely expensive to live in, making it hard for middle class people to afford a home or even rent. I'm from Canada where this phenomenon is getting progressively worse in cities like Toronto or Vancouver.
And yet I rarely hear of people talking about moving out. I don't really mean th... | 32 | Moving is often suggested as the solution for many problems, but the fact is it's an incredibly difficult process for most people, particularly the low-income. Aside from the expenses themselves (moving trucks, etc) looking at available places in other cities/regions means taking time off work, which could be impossibl... | 45 |
[Star Wars] Why do planets tend to only have one enviroment? | For example:
Tatooine and Jakku = Desert
Dagobah = Swamp
Kamino = Ocean
Naboo = ~~Lush forest~~ idyllic paradise.
Hoth = Antarctic
There are more examples, I just can't recall their names. | 356 | According to legend many of them were terraformed by the Rakata. It's also worth mentioning that just because the area of the planet our heroes visit consists of only one enviroment doesn't mean the entire planet is the same (although that's usually the case). | 367 |
ELI5: How come I don't see metal ore anywhere when I walk around in the nature, while extracted metal is so abundant and cheap? How did humans even find metal ore and think of extracting metal out of it millennia before what looks like very basic inventions? | This one has always confused me. Metal is so omnipresent that you'd think you'd often run into it in nature, I mean, does all the metal I see around me, in my house, my car, really come from deep underground mines? And if so, how did early humans figure it out, I mean, in the New World, somehow, nobody had thought of b... | 30 | Early ore was either meteoric or formed in bogs. So this would be on the surface. People would pick up what they thought was just another rock and use it to surround their fire. Tin can melt at fire temperature so they'd find this shiny substance after their fire died. It's not too much of a leap to figure out that cer... | 24 |
ELI5: Why are egg donors upheld to such strict requirements in order to donate? | 250 | Because the people who receive them want healthy eggs to produce healthy children, especially since they're paying for them. Messing up the eggs with drugs, excessive alcohol, and other unhealthy habits isn't fair to anyone involved.
Egg donors may be held to higher standards than sperm donors because sperm are consta... | 192 | |
If the immune system "learns" and "remembers" viruses, how and where is this information created and stored? | My understanding of vaccines is that we take "dead" viruses, and inject them into the body so that our immune systems can learn to fight them before we first get them. My guess is that somehow the white blood cells (?) adapt to the virus somehow, but in what way? Do they unzip parts of DNA like cells do when they repl... | 36 | To simplify greatly, there are immature immune cells present in your body. Certain types have "hypervariable" regions which, for complex reasons, are able to develop with incredible diversity on a molecular level. Enough diversity that virtually any complex protein (which are absolutely essential for life but are incre... | 21 |
ELI5: How did people/society deal with depression, burn-out-like symptoms and therefore an inability to work in times before modern psychology? | 70 | Before psychology what we refer to as depression was called "melancholy" or "The melancholy". We understood in general that certain people would feel certain ways and not be able to recover from it. We didn't understand what exactly caused it but we understood that it was a real thing.
Often times it wasn't treated. M... | 130 | |
ELI5:Why do you see shapes/colors when you rub your eyes when they are closed? | 22 | You are stimulating your retina and causing the cells in it to send errant signals to your brain, which your brain interprets as bursts of color.
The retina is a complicated structure with cells that basically take light and turn it into images your brain can understand. When you physically put pressure on those cell... | 13 | |
Has teen acne been around since prehistoric times? Did cave-dwellers have zits? Or is it related to modern eating, exercise, pollution, etc.? | 713 | Based on responses here it made me wonder, are there cultures in the world that have more or less acne than others?? Like if you compared the average teen in USA vs the average teen in India, would one have more or less than the other?? | 373 | |
[RPGs] I just spent the afternoon walking around beating monsters to death with a club but for some reason I seem to have improved unrelated skills like bartering and lock picking... How does that work? | 16 | While engaged with monotonous physical activities, sometimes the mind wanders, reflects on past experiences, and explores the possible answers to lingering questions.
I imagine you rehearsed some conversational skills in your head and gave serious thought to the engineering behind popular locking mechanisms of the tim... | 34 | |
If dimples on a golf ball increase distance, and denticles on a sharks skin decrease hydrodynamic resistance, why are barnacles bad for ships, aside from weight? | 35 | The dimples on a golf ball create turbulence which normally increases drag, but in the particular circumstance of the golf ball, it actually reduces drag. The reasoning is totally not intuitive and easy to explain, but it has to do with the turbulence allowing the air flowing around the ball to detach (stop being lamin... | 80 | |
ELI5: Why it's so difficult to make Xbox 360/PS3 emulators for PC. | 98 | Well first off an Emulator for a game console is a software that is replicating the hardware that is being used in the console and its operating system.
Old machines we're easy to do this with such as the GameCube and N64 because they we're inexpensive and simple machines.
Microsoft and Sony however have spent money ... | 37 | |
ELI5: How much truth is there to the idea that the United States invaded Iraq for oil? | 1,188 | Practically none. Iraq was invaded because the neocons thought they could remake the Middle East into a region of free-market democracies by toppling dictators. The easiest one to topple was Hussein, but the only clear excuse they could all agree on to do so was the WMDs. Everyone thought he had them, even if there was... | 1,062 | |
ELI5: What were we actually hearing during the classic dial-up sound? | 26 | The modem is communicating over the analogue telephone line, normally used to transmit spoken language.
Computers only speak binary though. What you are hearing is actually pure binary in the form of an analogue square wave, where each "up" is a 1 and each "down" is a 0 (or the other way around, can never remember).
... | 43 | |
Crimea should become independent or be joined to the Russian Federation. CMV | Look at how much tension has brewed up over Crimea between major world powers. The question is, is Crimea really worth it?
Many people put forward the argument that Russia should 'respect the integrity of Ukraine'. Well, if Russia did take other parts of Ukraine or even Kiev I would agree with you. But historically, C... | 24 | Do you realize how much you sound like Chamberlin when Hitler took Czechoslovakia?
"Why shouldn't they take this one piece of land that isn't necessarily not theirs?"
"We don't want war so let's just give them what they want so they will be satisfied"
We cannot allow for a country to be forcefully taken just to av... | 19 |
[LOTR]Why did the technology level of Middle-Earth remained the same throughout the ages? | I mean, in 3000 years we evolved from fighting with rudimentary swords and shields to nukes,lasers and drones yet the people of Middle Earth still used the same weapons and lived the same as their ancestors.
| 48 | Right, but in 200,000 years we went from spears and bows and arrows, to... spears and bows and arrows. Remember, at the point in Middle Earth we're shown, Saruman was just getting around to gunpowder-level tech. So it's probably within reason that sometime after the 3rd Age, they are primed for an Industrial Revolutio... | 72 |
ELI5: Why are so many common philosophical ideas dismissed as Philosophy 101? What concepts are covered at higher levels? | 25 | Most common philosophical ideas are common because they can be communicated and understood without an extensive background in philosophy or specialized vocabulary. Think of the plot of the matrix and its idea that the reality we perceive may not be 'real' at all, this is a very expansive concept but it's summarized ver... | 20 | |
ELI5: What is String Theory? Has it been proved wrong? Whats the current replacement theory/idea? | 17 | There are four fundamental forces in the universe, gravity, the electromagnetic force, the strong force, and the weak force. We can describe so of these forces with two models, general relativity can be used to explain gravity, while the standard model explains the three remaining forces. These theories are immensel... | 10 | |
Do you also happen to get sad because you simply will never have enough time to get the knowledge you want to? | I was wondering if other people also get kind of sad because it is simply impossible to have enough time to learn everything you actually wanted to learn by a certain age/stage in life. Like idk, completing that list of books with important authors in your field which gets longer and longer while keeping up with the re... | 648 | I never thought about it but now that you mentioned it... Yess!!!
Its kind of like when you read a review paper and they cite many other original research papers, and you wanna get through all of them but you dont have the time to do so.
When you do attempt to get through them, you find yourself going down a rabbit ... | 159 |
ELI5: Why are high powered graphics cards needed in cryto mining? | The reason that I am having problems understanding this is because when I imagine crypto mining, I imagine basically an infinite command prompt constantly running. In my uneducated mind I don’t seeing this as a graphics drain I see it as taxing the gpu and ram. I am below beginner in my knowledge of computers. Thanks i... | 45 | >I see it as taxing the gpu and ram
Assuming you meant cpu here.
The thing to understand here is that computing graphics involves doing loads and loads of the same set of relatively limited calculations. GPUs are optimized for this in their architecture. Think of it as wanting to solve a million simple math proble... | 86 |
In a recent appearance on TV, Sen. Warren claims that Glass-Stegall ended the boom-and-bust cycle for all intents and purposes. How true is this claim? | http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/16/1224220/-Elizabeth-Warren-Reduces-CNBC-Squawk-Box-Team-to-Rubble | 62 | She rather claimed that it was a key part in facilitating a jump from a 15 year boom and bust cycle to one that took 50 years in its first iteration. A second iteration didn't happen, but it would seem it was quite effective in that sense. | 20 |
[The Culture series] What is the Culture's plan for the Heat Death of the Universe? | Sure, it's a long way away, but it is guaranteed to happen eventually. | 29 | They either sublime, which may shield them from the effects of entropy, or pass through the Grid to a younger universe. The ability to do this has so far eluded them but was demonstrated to be possible in *Excession*. | 41 |
ELI5:Why are diseases that have been eliminated kept in labs.What if the labs get contaminated and the disease spreads again? | 97 | they are kept in case some country or terrorist group has an unregistered secret culture (a viable or dormant preserved form of the disease) that they may use for biological warfare. If, say, smallpox was released to the public in a terrorist act, everyone born after the 1970s when they stopped vaccinating would be sus... | 73 | |
ELI5: Where did the ongoing ‘do a good deed and the mayor of the town congratulates you with the key to the city’ in movies & shows come from? Was that ever a real thing? | I’m watching family guy & Peter found a missing kid and as a reward the mayor gave him the key to the city (or town hall?).
I’ve also seen this happen in a few other movies.
Was this ever a real thing? Is this an inside joke I’m not aware of? | 2,573 | The "key to the city" comes from serfdom, where it was originally called the "freedom of the city," meaning that the honored person was to be treated as a free person, not a serf, while they were in the city. The "key to the city" derives from the custom of walled cities closing and locking their gates up at night; if ... | 3,486 |
[The Matrix] Where did they get the memories/files/whatever they needed to upload things like kung fu or helicopter pilot to people's brains? | Did they have to liberate someone who knew kung fu, or hack the brain of someone still in the matrix? And does that mean that all the free people know the same kung fu, and thus have the same weaknesses that could be exploited? | 50 | Since the machines are the ones that truly created Zion, along with the last few iterations of the city, we can assume they provided the new "free" humans with all of the technology needed for them to thrive in accordance with the Architect's design. This includes memory files for Kung Fu and flying helicopters.
All ... | 51 |
ELI5 Why we have two types of screw heads/drivers? | While putting together a piece of furniture recently, I constantly had to switch back and for between a Phillips head screwdriver and a flat head screwdriver. Why do we have two types and not just one. If we could have just one, wouldn't the Phillips be the best? | 232 | Flat heads are easy to use by humans, they have 2 downsides. The first is that the bit slips horizontally and falls out of the screw. They tend not to strip very easily, both bits and screws are simple so they are cheap to manufacture
Phillips heads exist because the flat head does very poorly when you have a machin... | 150 |
How do deep-sea fishes not get crushed by the tremendous pressure of the ocean, at the sea floor? | 259 | Marine Biologist here!
This is a pretty interesting topic. The reason that us humans cannot withstand the great pressure of the deep sea is simple: the pressure difference between the environment and our bodies. This is why oil rig divers are kept in pressure chambers throughout the duration of their placement - to ma... | 207 | |
ELI5: Why do British singers seem to lose their accent when they sing? | For example, the Beatles had a pretty thick accent when they spoke, but their songs don't seem to have that. Is it because they were imitating American blues/rock and roll singers? | 113 | Phonetics and Phonology professor here. It happens because what we call an "accent" has much more to do with suprasegmental traits (such as stress and prosody) than with the pronunciation of individual sounds. When we sing, although we utter the phonemes as we'd do while speaking, the melody of music (which is kind of ... | 62 |
ELI5: When Bill Gates makes those adds saying we're THIS close to wiping out Polio but just need more donations, why doesn't he just donate the rest? | 203 | There is unlimited demand for funding campaigns. So he spends his money on less publicity-prone projects and asks for world wide funding to campaigns that are simple to understand and close to finishing. Doing this is an effective way to raise even more funding to these campaigns. | 347 | |
[Stranger Things]Is it wrong or unhealthy for Mike to try & build a romantic relationship with 11 on foundation that he was the first person she ever met who expressed concern for her for reasons other than her powers or presumed helplessness? | 131 | Mike and Eleven are both 13 years old. They're having *young love*, which is an experience every kid goes through as they try to understand and fit all of their new pubescent feelings and thoughts into the conceptual framework of *love* and *dating*. Essentially, they're trying to figure out how to be what they think e... | 193 | |
ELI5: Why do they show flashes of someone's skeleton when being electrocuted in cartoons? | This does not really happen in real life does it? | 51 | Doesn't happen to people in real life, no.
I always assumed that the cartoon version was a joke along the lines of turning the person into a light bulb and showing the bright bones like the filament of the light, glowing brightly. | 18 |
[Star Wars] What is the purpose of slave leia' s sexy outfit/sleeping with jabba? | Is Jabba sexually attracted to her? Are they genetically compatible? Is there cross species sexual compatability in the star wars universe? | 84 | It's a dominance ploy. It's not about Jabba being particularly sexually attracted to Leia, it's about Leia being placed in a degrading/subservient position.
Jabba gets off on having a powerful human reduced to a piece of visual candy / pet at his... uhm... tail. | 130 |
CMV: News should have a stricter criteria for how they’re able to report on things | I remember when breaking news came in it was always something urgent and important. Like there’s an active shooter here, or OJ Simpson is on the run from police, or there’s a tornado about to hit Alabama. I believe it was after 9/11 that news stations began using the term breaking news on a constant basis. Now they use... | 87 | >how they report it should be better regulated.
by who?
by the government?
Freedom of the press is an essential liberty. Its a liberty that exists to protect against the risk of tyranny. Today Trump says that all the new media is lined up against him. The more radical people call it a media coup against the pr... | 21 |
ELI5: who and how do they determine how many calories are in a particular item of food? | 29 | A calorie in your food is the amount of energy that is needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by 1 degree Celsius.
This is done by burning the food in something called a bomb calorimeter. That is a box within a box. A sample of food is put on a dish in the inner chamber of the calorimeter, fill it wi... | 20 | |
If there are billions of stars in the sky and their light is hitting earth, why does it ever get dark? | 18 | This is a very good question. Such a good question, in fact, it has a special name. It's called "Olbers's paradox." After a guy named Olbers.
The answer to the question wasn't fully understood until just a few decades ago. It was once thought that (a) there's dust and junk in the way that scatters the starlight, or (b... | 23 | |
CMV. I think it's racist and sexist to assume some one is more 'privileged' than other people based off of their skin color and their gender, no matter what. | 247 | I think you misunderstand what privilege in this context actually means.
Does it mean the generic straight white upper-class man in the US won't face problems in their life? No, absolutely not. Does it mean a black lesbian poor trans woman will have a harder life than the first person? No, it still doesn't.
But that'... | 225 | |
[Batman] why doesn't batman camouflage his whole face? | If stealth and his secret identity is so important, shouldn't he camouflage his jaw? It would make him harder to aim at and obscure his skin tone. | 16 | People have given good practical answers here, but there’s another element to it as well: the answer Batman gave to Joker when he asked the same question-“to mock you.”
Batman is supposed to be a terrifying force of nature to the cowardly and superstitious criminals, those who would prey on the innocent and harm the ... | 43 |
If a computer runs at 1 Hz, how fast will it count through an empty for-loop? | 40 | Assuming 1 Hz is the clockspeed... No clue. That's going to depend on the IPC of the CPU in question.
Most languages the answer would be "none, the compiler optimized the empty for loop into oblivion"
If you managed to remove the optimizations for C, and assume 1 for IPC, the assembly generated would be add and jump... | 78 |
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