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[40k] Where do Chaos bros get their ammo? | Surely they didn't have enough when they turned traitor to last for 10,000 years? Do their respective gods just pull that shit from thin air or do they have captured forge worlds and stuff? Where do they get the resources to keep those worlds pumping out ammo for their various fights and shit?
I mean, I know Khornate ... | 15 | Prior to the open war of the Horus Heresy, the Warmaster not only allied half the Astartes legions to his cause, but half of the Adeptus Mechanus as well. In the years following the war a percentage of these Hereteks remain to manufacture specilized munitions and armor.
In addition to these hereteks, many chapters of... | 23 |
ELI5: Why is arresting people for pirating so difficult when ISP's can see exactly what is going through from your connection? | 66 | There's no incentive for them to do so. If the government asks for the data for a specific person, the ISP will give it to them (if the proper court orders are obtained and presented). But the ISP, on its own, has no reason to preemptively stop people from doing whatever they like on their internet connections; an ISP ... | 62 | |
ELI5: Why does the body bring tears to your eyes when choking? What is the practical purpose? | 17 | The choking reflex helps us survive, and as such it overdoes it from time-to-time, like our Flight/Fight/Freeze instinct does.
First, it triggers coughing and mouth/throat secretions for lubrication. The secretory motor system, as a byproduct, brings tears to your eyes. It's flushing everything it can as fast as it ca... | 12 | |
Eli5: Why is glacier preservation so important? What would happen if they were to be completely melted across the globe? | 30 | Glacier melting is seen as a significant indicator of global temperature. They are long standing, relatively stable structures. If they start disappearing, it means conditions have changed that were constant for a very long time.
Furthermore, a lot of them are on land, which means if they melt they add their water to ... | 24 | |
[Marvel] Who would win in a game of Risk, Cyclops, Capt. America, or Nick Fury? | Let's assume it's the original Risk, and the Steve Rogers Captain. | 33 | Risk isn't a strategy game. It's a luck game with soft strategy elements.
Whichever person has the ability to control dice rolls would win. Alternately, notable characters all have extremely good luck in dire circumstances, so depending on the stakes of the game it could go on forever. | 40 |
ELI5: What determines the location of a headache? | 5,613 | Pain management doctor here,
There are many, many sources and causes of headaches. The location and type of symptoms are the main things we look for in coming up with a diagnosis. For example, migraines are typically one-sided and throbbing while hemicrania headaches involve one side but are more continuous. Cervicoge... | 3,748 | |
ELI5 - How does anaesthesia work? Specifically, general anaesthesia? | 40 | General anesthesia has has a few main elements, although one anesthetic agent might not affect all of them at the same time, which is why anesthetists carefully choose a combo of drugs that work together. The four elements are unconsciousness, amnesia (forgetting), analgesia (lack of pain), and immobility. Anesthetics... | 19 | |
[Pokemon] Pokeballs. How do they work? | Is it ever given adequate explanation?
How come a bunch of acorns in Gold/Silver allow them to be imbued with special powers, too? | 34 | > Is it ever given adequate explanation?
Matter-to-energy and/or matter-to-information tech. Basically the same as teleporting something, except trapping it between teleporter pads. It's the same principle used for the item box app on PCs.
> How come a bunch of acorns in Gold/Silver allow them to be imbued with... | 30 |
ELI5: When a company talks about how much money they made, "in terms of EBITDA", what do they mean? Why does EBITDA matter? | 479 | EBITDA stands for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. It's just a fancy way of saying how much they made before subtracting unavoidable costs/obligations not to be confused with the costs of running a business since you could theoretically cut costs like employee salaries or manufacturing c... | 421 | |
ELI5: What is it that makes carnivores only able to eat meat? | 63 | Carnivores have a really short digestive system that's well-suited for getting nutrients out of meat.
It takes a lot longer to get nutrients out of fruits and vegetables, which is why we have a much, much longer digestive system.
Animals like cows have incredibly complex digestive systems consisting of several stom... | 45 | |
[Marvel] If Cap’s metabolism is so fast, does he need to eat enormous amounts of food to avoid starving? | Also in one of the films somebody asks Cap if he’s looking for an apartment in Brooklyn. Cap says he cannot afford it.
Why wouldn’t the government or somebody give him a comfortable salary? Dude’s a war hero and active service member .
but yeah also the food intake question if ya be so kind
And if his metabolis... | 20 | Absolutely. His intake is huge. Peak human is his listing, so there's no magic to it (aside from the formula getting him there...) If you train and move be and as busy as Cap, you gonna need some calories. | 27 |
ELI5: How can "Bill" be short for "William"? | 32 | It rhymes. Literally as simple as that.
Nicknames would be stuff that sounded similar, and often rhymed because of our tendency to say cute rhyming stuff to little kids. "Ricky Dicky" "Willy Billy" "Robby Bobby".
Sometimes the nicknames stick, and we get names like Bob, Will and Dick. Not the same as the original nam... | 22 | |
CMV: Porn escorts and the adult industry in general is becoming marginalized onto the Internet. It should be celebrated. | 18 | I think the sex industry moving online is a good thing, a large amount of abuse and harm comes from the people running the brothels and making money off the girls bodies, online sites allow the girls to be their own bosses and control their bodies more. | 14 | |
[Pokémon] How do Ash and his friends get money on the road? | Do they loot defeated trainers or something? | 45 | Trainers pay out after losing a battle. Not all trainers travel like Ash does many will have day jobs using their pokemon for stuff like power generation, rescue work, construction, transportation, and mail services. | 57 |
If you stare at this picture it will disappear. Why? | http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lu9xnxcc4E1qew99q.jpg | 1,488 | The effect is for color/intensity compensation in your eyes. The specific mechanism is fatigue in the particular retinal cells that are responding to each part of the image.
Ever wonder why you can see colors both in daylight (strong, very bluish light) and incandescent light in your home at night (faint, very redd... | 769 |
CMV - "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism" is the most ideal society possible. | So this title might sound like a joke and indeed it is inspired by one, but the more I think about it the more I hold the idea that for a perfect Utopia to exist it would have to be a fully automated luxury gay space communist regime.
Fully automated - all menial labor would be handled by AI programs. This would mean ... | 22 | Any form of "end of history" hypothesis/ideal is guaranteed to be wrong. There will always be something better, and a thousand years from now whatever humans become may look back on fully automated luxury gay space communism the same way we do the Middle Ages. | 34 |
[Warhammer 40K] How common is it really for Commissars to get fragged? | Fragging, for the uninitiated, is the act of "accidentally" killing your commanding officer in a way that resembles friendly fire. It has not gone unnoticed that Commissars have a particular reputation for dying heroically for the Emperor, even when the enemy is curiously far from the front, and without any witnesses. ... | 46 | Like everything 40k it is common and almost unheard of at the same time.
The guard isnt monolithic, its thousands of cultures and beliefs rolled into billions, if not trillions of troops.
So the commissar leading a unit made up of hive gangers will be more likely to "motivate" his soldiers with threats of violence ... | 47 |
ELI5: Why are some plugs ungrounded? | I know that grounding a circuit is a way to ensure that people won't electrocute themselves every time they plug or unplug a wire from the wall. However, some plugs in my house are ungrounded, such as my toaster wire or laptop charger. Why is this allowed? Isn't an ungrounded plug dangerous? | 46 | The ground exists to prevent a short circuit in a device from electrifying the case, which would shock you if you just touched the device. Basically, the ground is attached to the case in such a way that it if the case somehow becomes electrified, the ground is the shortest path for electricity to travel to your house... | 44 |
What are the neurotransmitters responsible for humor reactions? | You know, when someone tells a funny joke and you laugh and laugh? What causes that? What causes that wonderful, carefree feeling? | 82 | Too many to list.
Serotonin involved with mood, dopamine reinforces pleasurable behaviour, neuropeptides such as endorphins can be involved.
Humour will be formed in the cortex. Signals will be sent with glutamate, modulated by GABA/serotonin, dopamine and/or endorphin pathways likely next. There's noradrenaline inv... | 17 |
ELI5:How come people can't be cryogenically frozen safely as the ice crystals destroy the cell membranes, but sex cells such as sperm are kept frozen for long periods of time yet remain functional? | 4,582 | Sperm is frozen in liquid nitrogen, and the water in the cells is replaced by glycerol (basically antifreeze) as a "cryoprotectant", which displaces the water and does not form the crystalline structure that damages cells.
However, the freezing and thawing process is still pretty harsh and many sperm don't survive. L... | 2,251 | |
ELI5: How do bar codes work? | The entire system is complete wizardry to me. The laser itself is witchcraft but the most amazing part is the database. I could imagine that stores somehow associate a code with a product when they add it to their inventory system but what prevents two manufacturers from using the same bar codes on different products. ... | 25 | When a manufacturer produces a product it has to pay for each of those number codes that are attached to the bar code scanned at checkout. Yes each product has a unique barcode for itself. From type and size (think different size boxes of the same cereal at the store) the manufacturer pays for them. It’s a long number ... | 15 |
CMV: Using FGM to defend, minimize or even mock circumcision is absolute bullshit | It's a shame, because I thought better of that sub. But I just read through \[this\]([https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/gl2bxe/i\_hate\_the\_fact\_that\_female\_issues\_cant\_be/fqux2jz/](https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/gl2bxe/i_hate_the_fact_that_female_issues_cant_be/fqux2jz/)) and I... | 18 | Can you link us to the actual comments in that thread that you object to? Or to some comments elsewhere that illustrate the behavior you are trying to talk about? From the post you linked to, there doesn't seem to be anyone defending circumcision; they're almost entirely saying "don't bring up circumcision when talking... | 16 |
Odd question about the '==' and '==='. | I'm quite curious about these two operators.
So far I only know that:
== : this comparison operator, can compare two variables and it will just ignore their data types if both of them are the same (e.g. 55 == "55" is true)
=== : this comparison operator, can compare the two variables but it will return false if the var... | 25 | `==` doesn't ignore data types, it performs type coercion. This is behavior consistant (lol) with other operators (eg. +) in JavaScript. `===` is the exception.
Now the *real* question is, why is this true:
`'' === [] + []` | 26 |
ELI5: How do fish in fish tanks keep each other entertained? | Do they not go insane from being confined? | 28 | It's important to keep fish in the correct size tank, and with the correct number of fish (the rule of thumb is 1" of fish for each gallon of tank).
It's also important to give them something to be active *with* - plants and decorations are good for that (plants are also vital for filtration - which is *another* thin... | 54 |
what's Plotinus reading from? | don't you just love when someone reads from a source or references one but doesn't tell you what it is? In Plotinus Enneads 1.8.4 Plotinus says:
> it is, we read, the Soul that has entered into the service of that in which soul-evil is implanted by nature, in whose service the unreasoning phase of the Soul accepts e... | 15 | The Loeb edition translates this section as:
> Which, then, is the evil soul? It is the sort of thing which Plato means when he says "those in whom the part of the soul in which evil naturally resides has been brought into subjection,"^**1** that is, it is the irrational part of the soul which is receptive of evil,... | 12 |
[DC] Are most Amazonian women without a relationship and single and virgins for their entire lives, or do they ever have relationships with one another? | 174 | There are different versions of Amazons throughout the years in the comics.
In the modern version (New 52), the Themyscirans raid ships on the high seas and copulate with men. At the end of the mating, they take their lives and throw their corpses into the sea. They raise the female offspring, but the male children we... | 163 | |
[Half-Life] Is the G-Man a good guy? | I know "good guy" can be kind of vague. If you'd prefer it rephrased, what's the G-Man hope to accomplish? What's his goal? | 18 | He works for a group, only known as his employers, who have a vested interest in Earth. They may be more powerful than the Combine, but we really do t know.
His current task seems to be ridding Earth of the Combine, or at the very least using the Battle for Earth as the starting point for a larger war against the Comb... | 22 |
[Star Wars]If the way that Sith progress is by offing their mentor, do the Sith ascend like the Jedi do? Proud that their apprentice killed them? | I use ascend but I don't know what the appropriate term is for what Yoda and obi did...thanks | 79 | Sith cannot become true Force Spirits like the Jedi do. It is a skill that is described by Qui-Gonn, one of the first to discover it, as a skill that requires "release of self, not the exaltation of self. It comes through compassion, not greed." It's an attitude the Sith would never be able to truly accept, since their... | 60 |
How possible is degrowth? Is it just a nice tought? (X-post NeutralPolitics) | The degrowth movement proposes downscaling of production to battle social injustice and enviromental issues. I'm wondering about the idea of [degrowth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth) and would like some balanced thoughts about it. Is it just a fringe idea, or is there any possibility to move in this direction? ... | 23 | "The role of knowledge in economic growth is so paramount that predicting The End of Growth is tantamount to predicting The End of Thought." -Philip Cross
Economic growth, to put it simply, is our ability to do more with less. It's the byproduct of our ability to generate a greater output with less time or with fewer ... | 15 |
ELI5: why does the moon look big to our eyes but when we take a picture it’s really small | Edit: thanks for the awards guys. I’ve never gotten them before :) | 18,604 | Others are right about your brain's ability to focus, but also many cameras (including until very recently basically all mobile phone cameras) are very wide-angle. This is great for fitting in all of your friends from just arm's length. It's also absolutely awful at capturing things at a distance, since such a tremend... | 7,987 |
CMV: It is more likely the life of Jesus, as told through the Bible, is embellished rather than representational of the truth. | Jesus of Nazareth is widely accepted as having existed. However, specific details of his life are met with heavy controversy.
It is my view that it is more reasonable to assume the miracles, resurrection, and similar details of extraordinary claims are to be assumed embellishments by the authors, or from those the st... | 108 | In your view would you say that the earlier followers saw/believed that something incredible happened?
To me, it seems fairly reasonable to think that at the very least the early followers believed in a literal resurrection of Jesus. After all, if they didn’t then it would be extremely anti-Jewish for them to think he... | 16 |
How can Kant claim that the realm of the thing-in-itself is the source of freedom if things-in-themselves are unknowable? | If the subject can not even conceptualise himself "as he is", only as he is for himself, how can Kant claim that it is reasonable to assume there is such a thing as human freedom or God or whatever even if Newtonian physics governs the realm of appearances? What is his reasoning?
"There is this realm which I know noth... | 16 | In the *Critique of Practical Reason*, Kant argues the the moral law is a "fact of reason", i.e. indubitably binding on us by virtue of our reason. Now, since we must be able to do what we ought to do, and since freedom is required to be able to do what the moral law tells us we ought to do, then we must be free.
The ... | 11 |
ELI5: What is the pay-off for those that deny the holocaust? | 26 | There is no 'pay off'... I'd say a lot of these fools genuinely believe it didn't happen. Therefore it just coincides with their political beliefs.
Other reasons could be that it allows them to continue the 19th century tradition of blaming the Jews for everything and demonising them as liars and untrustworthy. | 14 | |
[Dune] Would making a human mind in the likeness of a machine be allowed? | In the Dune universe genetic engineering/manipulation is a thing so it could be possible to breed or design a human with mentat like abilities but without the personhood. This biological computer of sorts could then maybe be installed in something like an ornithopter and take over tasks that we have performed by comput... | 33 | A mentat is essentially a human computer, so I'd say "yes." You could push the hypothetical to a point where people in the Dune-verse might push back on some kind of needed distinction between man and machine, but it gets speculative. | 56 |
[Werewolves, General] A pregnant woman turns into a werewolf... | So, a woman is either pregnant and becomes a werewolf, or already was a werewolf and becomes pregnant: when she transforms into a wolf, does the unborn child also become a wolf? If she gives birth under a full moon, does the baby remain a wolf cub or does it change back into human form once disconnected from the mothe... | 38 | Short answer yes. If Lycanthropy is a disease transmitted through blood and saliva like rabies or std’s then a mother would transmit that disease to her baby. However, if the nature of the disease is to change under the full moon then it wouldn’t matter when she gave birth. If she gave birth in wolf form, she would hav... | 35 |
[Harry Potter/MCU] How did the Wizarding World react to The Snap? | 21 | The problem about saying "the wizarding world" is it's the same as saying "how did 21st century Earth" - there are a lot of nations involved in that description and there isn't going to be a unified response to anything.
However, in general terms the response can be characterised like this:
1. Panic
Initially, wi... | 26 | |
Is getting tongue-tied a very minor form of aphasia, or are the causes completely different? | 395 | The phenomenon is so common it actually has a clinical shorthand, a "TOT state." It occurs when the left temporal and frontal areas of your brain temporarily fail to work together to retrieve words or names stored in your memory, or other information, like where you left your keys. | 120 | |
ELI5: Why does scratching feel so good when it ends up in a much worse rash than before? | 28 | Scratching sends a low level pain that distracts your brain from focusing on the itching. It can also help to slap the itchy area so that you can get the same distraction without causing damage with scratching. | 19 | |
ELI5 - With all the concern about potential brain injury and sport team liability, it seems like soccer/football 'headers' would concern people more. Why isn't this practice frowned upon at a professional level? | 34 | People are well aware of the danger. Many youth leagues ban headers for that exact reason.
But, sports in general tend to be conservative when it comes to safety changes, which likely explains the lack of action at the professional level. | 39 | |
New to Econ, is socialism rejected by mainstream economics? | Like the title says, I just started looking into to Econ for the first time and I was curious: as socialist economics are described as heterodox, does that mean that mainstream academic consensus is that socialist economics don’t work? I understand the rejection of Central planning given its well documented failures, b... | 41 | Terms like socialism, capitalism, etc. are generally not particularly well regarded because they are imprecise to the point of saying nothing at all. So in that regard, it's neither accepted nor rejected.
In practice there will always be situations where more or less state intervention leads to more desirable outcomes... | 175 |
ELI5: Why do countries have problems with low inflation (Japan, Canada now)? Can't they simply print more money to keep inflation in the desired range? | 40 | Two reasons:
1. It is politically unpopular. Some politicians don't see low inflation or even deflation as a problem, and it's easy for them to score points against their opponents for "devaluing [constitutents'] money" even if that is the appropriate course of action.
2. When interest rates are very low, it can be di... | 23 | |
ELI5: Why don't trickle down economics work? | It just seems to work so well in theory, and family members swear it's the only thing that will help our current economy. Why is trickle down, or Reaganomics widely considered to be a non-working, economic fallacy?
| 259 | When wealthier people get more money, they don't necessarily have much incentive to spend more since they already have their needs met, especially, if there isn't increased demand and they can easily use it to buy products overseas or expand there. Cutting taxes and social safety-nets hasn't really worked historically... | 326 |
ELI5:What exactly happens if you put diesel into a regular engine and vice versa? | 28 | In ELI5 terms... this...
What we call "Gasoline", that we put in our cars at the Gas Station, is a highly flammable and potentially explosive substance. Diesel fuel, while definitely flammable and potentially explosive, is not nearly as much so as gasoline. Jet Fuel, or kerosene, is another substance, like diesel fu... | 23 | |
ELI5: What does the term "identity politics" mean? | This is super embarrassing -- but it comes up all the time and I don't totally get it.... | 235 | "identity politics" are political idea or efforts to encourage political activities based on someone's membership in a particular "identity" group. The most common examples in the U.S. are race, religion, and gender.
The term is most frequently used with a negative connotation -- the idea being that "identity politic... | 192 |
[Injustice 2] How much would it take to incapacitate/kill Superman after he bonds with Braniac's ship in the Superman Ending? | 31 | I doubt much. Brainiac wasn't a powerhouse in combat, he was extremely intelligent. If anything, Superman after the bond is pretty much him but now with the knowledge that Brainiac possessed, which is kinda scary. I'd assume someone who could outsmart Brainiac and outbeat Superman would have the upper hand.
Superman'... | 17 | |
ELI5: Why are such such small (<1C) changes in average temperature enough to trigger large scale climate change? | Many places experience daily variations of at least 10C, and seasonal variations of at least 20C, so a very small change in long term average does not seem like it would make much difference:
How do these small changes cause large scale effects? What are the mechanisms which link temperature to visible climate change ... | 32 | This of it this way:
Let's say temperature goes up, everywhere, by an average of 1C for a whole year. Water freezes at 0C. The average temp in Los Angeles, annually, might be 22C, which means after a 1C increase, it's now 23C annual average. Not that big a difference, not that important.
Now let's consider somewhere ... | 13 |
[Star Wars] What exactly do moisture vaporators have to say that you need a droid to translate? | Couldn't a simple screen with columns of numbers handle pretty much all of the relevant communications for a giant dehumidifier? | 72 | Look at it this way, if you tell a Binary Loadlifter to "stack boxes over here" it will continue to stack boxes until the floor collapses under the weight of them all, even if it has to actively leave the area to find more boxes of things to stack. And then, even without a floor, it will continue to stack boxes in the ... | 118 |
ELI5: How is it that humans can see a new object once and then be able to identify it in images with extreme precision, but the best computer vision algorithms need thousands upon thousands of examples to be able to pick specific objects out of images? | 1,123 | If you ignore the metaphysical (spirit, soul, etc.) and assume that the brain is a biological machine, then there are basically two arguments:
1. The human brain is (in some ways, at least) much more powerful than the computers we can build and/or it runs much better image-recognition software than we can write.
2. W... | 566 | |
ELI5 - How come there aren't as many owls out there as there are crows, seagulls, robins, and other common birds. | I can recall one time in my life I seen an owl. | 88 | A couple of reasons. First, an owl is a carnivore, and any particular ecosystem can support far fewer carnivores than other types of organism - there really are fewer owls than, say, omnivores like the seagull. But also, most owls are nocturnal. They're out at night, where you aren't. Add those things together, and... | 155 |
CMV:Water is wet | The Google definition of "wet" is: "covered or saturated with water or another liquid." I don't understand how a molecule of water that is surrounded by other molecules of water in not surrounded by water. If you simply Google "Is water wet," it will come up with an article from The Guardian. I feel that the text that ... | 18 | Water is not always wet, but it _can_ be wet. Here are some illustrative examples:
* Frozen water is not typically wet. When you take ice out of your freezer, it's usually not wet.
* Take that same frozen water and put it in a drink though, and now it is wet. It's wet because it's covered by a layer of liquid water. ... | 20 |
What makes steam visible? | 18 | You're not actually seeing steam/water vapour/gaseous water - you're seeing tiny droplets of liquid water that have condensed and are hanging in the air, distorting the passage of light into your eyes. You're essentially seeing tiny warm clouds. | 15 | |
[The Purge] What is legal? Examples inside. | Happy Purge! In honor of the first one, I have some questions about the legality of certain actions. Assume that it's many years from now and these issues have all been settled. Also, I haven't seen the movies, so apologies if some of these are real easy.
1. Can a doctor perform a medical procedure/give treatment with... | 25 | 1. Indeed they can.
2. Nope, as long as all illegal actions took place during Purge Night.
3. She has... But how could you possibly prove it?
4. The conviction wouldn't stand and any sentence would be revoked.
5. That's illegal, because they are still committing a crime *after* the Purge.
6.... | 14 |
Is solar power viable in the U.S.? | 128 | You roommate is making a blanket black and white statement. They are almost never correct. :) The truth is usually in the gray area. We don't have to only choose solar for the sole energy source of the USA. We can implement it where it will work and where it doesn't have to be transmitted too incredibly far and do o... | 73 | |
Why is chocolate poisonous for dogs and not humans? | 16 | Short answer: humans have insanely overpowered livers and we can break down a ton of things that are poisonous to other animals. Other things we are unusual in our ability to handle in more than the most minuscule amounts are caffeine, alcohol, plants in the onion family, and NSAIDs. | 21 | |
[Da vinci code] So now they found the descendant of Jesus, what changes? | 44 | "Hey, you know the person 1/3rd of the planet consider a literal deity incarnated in human form? Here's his heir, carrying the bloodline of the Lord!"
The idea is to use the descendent of Jesus to leverage control over the world's Christians- after all, who are they to say they know better then the literal descendent ... | 64 | |
How close does the energy of a photon have to be to the energy jump of an electron for it to absorb the photon? | If an electron can only absorb all or none of a photon and can only jump up to specific energy levels, the energy of the photon would have to be equal to the energy level of the electron. But, I am assuming that there can be some error, otherwise it would rarely happen. What is this error and why is there one? | 16 | The answer is if you are going to transition between two bound states (energy levels) the energy of the photon and energy of the transition must match *exactly* for non-scattering interactions.
That being said its not "rare" because we are typically measuring ensembles of many many atoms. These ensembles have statist... | 12 |
[Star Wars, BSG] An X-wing and a Viper engage in a dogfight. Who wins? | 37 | (Assuming we're talking about the BSG reboot)
The main advantage that the Viper has is its maneuverability. X-Wings simply fly around like WW1 or WW2 style fighters, in long slooping arcs. The Viper pilots are much better trained to take tactical advantage of space's lack of orientation, and they freely spin their fi... | 61 | |
[Alien] Ripley and gang come back from Hadley's hope with hard evidence of the infestation. Given the cost of the colony, WY decides to attack with a special task force of Marines, instead of a nuclear strike. How would you train and outfit this team to best fight the Xenomorphs? | 33 | Normal training is fine. A briefing on the acid blood and general xenomorph tactics is probably all the special attention that's required.
Really the only reason the original team couldn't handle it was the loss of the dropship, which prevented them from being properly equipped. So, you know, a reminder that these ... | 32 | |
[Star Wars]Why did the empire continue to use Victory class Star Destroyers yet retire the Venator class? | 29 | Due to Tarkins Doctrine of Fear, ships wouldn't be commissioned as much for their effectiveness in battle, but for the ability to dishearten would be rebellions. The *victory* class is not only more heavily armed the the *venator*, it also looks like a miniature *Imperial* class star destroyer, perfect for putting fea... | 23 | |
Could you have FTL but no time travel if your FTL could only take you to places that were in the future (or simultaneous) according to a fixed universal reference frame? | So there would be some sort of aether that, although irrelevant for any known physics, everything could be measured as moving "relative to". With the reference frame of this aether determining the "future" according to this FTL method.
To break it down, 1: Is this even coherent? 2: Is there somehow still a way to do t... | 217 | There is no "fixed, universal reference frame"; it doesn't exist. But anyway, if your worldline only ever intersects events in the absolute future, you are by definition not moving FTL. Your worldline is timelike, which implies that your speed in any inertial frame is less than c. If your worldline is spacelike (imposs... | 191 |
Are dreams and nightmares any less “real” than our waking conscious experience? | If so, is everything equally real phenomenologically speaking? I feel as if it’s a silly question but i’ve pondered other things which I presumed were also silly and apparently ended up finding it wasn’t. So here’s my question.. | 77 | The phenomena which you can experience during a dream are of course real in the sense that they are phenomena which you are experiencing. But that does not necessarily mean that they are real in the same sense that the phenomena which you experience while awake are. The question is pretty complex, but one sloppy way to... | 31 |
ELI5: Who decided that we need exactly 12 years of grade school? Seems like kind of a random number to me. | 30 | OP, /u/Teekno has some decent points, but his information is a bit inaccurate. Unfortunately, all the people arguing over his inaccuracies have failed to actually fill in the holes those inaccuracies present in answering your question.
The PRIMARY reason that school ends when you turn 18 is because 18 is the age that... | 18 | |
ELI5: What chemical reaction do drugs have (in particular MDMA) that makes us more sociable and why can’t people just “be like that” when they’re sober? | Does it remove that anxious social barrier or it something else? Really intrigued as to what goes on in the mind. | 137 | There are stuff in your body and brain called neurotransmitters. These are molecules that some cells secrete and some cells take up, this is how they communicate. The most notable are probably endorphines (your bodys own painkillers), dopamine (reward molecule, it gets secreted when you do something that is beneficial ... | 131 |
How long does it take UV rays absorbed by your skin to be converted to vitamin D? | I have a vitamin d deficiency so I've been sunning myself every day for thirty minutes. Only for a couple days so far though.
How long does it usually take for the absorbed nutrients from the sun to convert to vitamin D in one's body? | 27 | The conversion is is pretty well finished in an hour, and absorption is rapid. But your skin doesn’t hold much of the precursor to vitamin D. So the best way to get more vitamin D from the sun is to lay in the sun with as much of your skin exposed as possible for about an hour. Note that sun from behind a window is nea... | 11 |
ELI5: Why isn't tax included in the price prior to check out? | 30 | A) Allows them to advertise lower prices
B) Allows them to advertise the same prices for all stores - in the US, sales tax can vary across city, county & state borders
C) Allows them to mark the price once - sales tax rates change, by small amounts, fairly often | 28 | |
ELI5: If Amber, containing preserved insects, lasts for tens of millions of years, why aren't we up to our necks in the stuff? | 48 | I don't think you appreciate how large the area of land is on the earth relative to the number of trees that produce amber (and the amount a tree could produce).
If every person on earth stood shoulder to shoulder they would fit in the space of a city like London, Mexico City or the area of San Francisco + Bay Area. ... | 52 | |
CMV: SJW's did not ruin Star Wars (nor much of any media). It's just bad writing. | **Edit**: Head is spinning with this topic and I feel I got some good view changes, so I'm going to stop responding. Sorry if I couldn't make it to your message.
Disclaimer: Anyone who enjoyed the sequel Star Wars is allowed to. I'll even throw you a bone and say there were some good moments and cool ideas in them.
... | 66 | Bad media example, please look up Marvel's "The New Warriors". That is not merely bad writing, that was the result of building something from the ground up as SJW nonsense. Morbidly obese superheroes, a pair of nonbinary genderbended black twins unironcially named "Snowflake & SafeSpace". You can't say that wasn't ... | 51 |
ELI5: Can anything capable of sleeping also have the ability to dream? | My dog sometimes moves his legs like he is running in his sleep and will make noises. So I assume that's dreaming, but does this mean any animal that sleeps can also dream? Or is there a certain intellectual aspect/capacity that must be present in order for the process to occur? | 32 | Tough to answer because what does 'sleep' mean? Is a bear hibernating sleeping? The late-fall spider that pretty much shuts down on cold near-zero nights, what is its brain doing and is that 'sleep'? Then you get into weird cases like dolphins that would drown if they went fully asleep so they only sleep with one-half ... | 10 |
ELI5: Why is it better to keep my iPhone apps "running" instead of turning them off (by swiping up) when done with them? | 20 | Modern smartphones are able to effectively manage their own resources, and they do a fairly good job of it. So, for example, it may take more battery power to "re load" an app than it does to simply maintain it in memory.
The phone makes the choices of what apps to shut down and what ones to keep running based on you... | 16 | |
Refuting Eliezer Yudowsky | I’m sure many people here are familiar with Eliezer Yudowsky and his ilk over at LessWrong. One of the most defining aspects of their philosophy is of what I’m going to term, for want of a better name, ‘literal utilitarianism’. That is to say, you do exactly what the utilitarian maths suggests, with no regard to whethe... | 24 | It seems like you’re less concerned with Yudowsky as an individual and more concerned with “literal utilitarianism”, so I’ll talk more about that instead of why Yudowsky’s beliefs in general tend to be wrong.
The biggest “non intuition based” argument against the form of utilitarianism you outlined (which to be clear ... | 24 |
If our solar system had 2 suns like depicted in Star Wars on Tatooine, would life be possible or would this be too much radiation to sustain life as we know it? | Meaning humans wouldn’t be as we are, or plants, animals, etc would be different? I know we haven’t found life elsewhere in the universe, yet, but it seems that situation would be difficult. And if it’s possible to sustain life with two suns, how? | 1,462 | It's totally doable.
For instance, if the two suns are in a close orbit, they basically just feel like one big sun, and you can have a nice stable orbit without huge variations in temperature. If they're both about as bright as our Sun, you'd just need to be a bit further away so that the temperature is okay. Or, the ... | 1,210 |
ELI5: The Ship of Theseus Paradox | I thought I understood what it was about, "if you replace all the parts of a ship with new identical parts, is it the same ship?". But the more I think about it, the less I understand *why* this is a question. It can't be the same ship, it doesn't have the original parts. But everyone says it's one of the greatest phil... | 49 | If it’s a different ship. At what point is it no longer the same ship? 51% 55% 99.9999%
But what about if some of the replacement parts have been replaced?
It’s a question that asks whether experiences and memories makes us or merely our component parts such as the structure of our brains. | 53 |
ELI5: Why do wasps build nests in hexagons if they do not store honey? | 37 | The honeycomb shape is designed to store eggs. After the queen lays her eggs, they're moved to the honeycomb where they're sealed inside the hexagons until they hatch.
Hexagons happen to be the most efficient for this task. It needs to be a tesselation, meaning you can put several of them next to each other un a repea... | 39 | |
[Star Wars] In The Last Jedi, why did the rebels even use those weird sand rider vehicles? They weren’t capable of disabling the Walkers right? So why even jump in them? | just to buy time?
in empire the rebels used those small snow craft with the Cables to trip walkers
but the sand vehicles from TLJ didn’t seem to have any ability to disable a single walker
like it could be 20 rebel vehicles vs 1 Walker and the walker would win... | 20 | When they were gearing up the sand skimmers, the plan was to hunker down, call in the cavalry (all the assorted allies of Leia and the Resistance who they were trying to contact), and then stall for time until backup arrives. The little craft weren't qualified to hurt a walker, *but the Walker commanders don't know tha... | 28 |
If two cars are traveling at 100 mph towards each other would the impact be the same as one car hitting a wall at 200 mph? | So if two cars hit each other going 100 mph would the damage be the same as one car hitting a wall at 200 mph?
Edit: you guys are really awesome! I found the answer and you guys are helpful. | 63 | You mean in total? Because in one case you have one car (and a wall that would escape relatively unscathed) and the other case you have two cars.
Or do you mean to the passengers in the cars? In this case the 200 mph case would be worse. The total speed makes no difference. What matters is the momentum change to... | 76 |
[DBS] How come Beerus didnt know who Majin Buu was? | When Beerus meets Buu for the first time, he seems to think that its just some fat pink guy who wont give him pudding.
Yet, buu is millions of years old, and almost killed all the kais, which would have killed Beerus. Even freiza and his dad knew about him, how come Beerus didnt knew about the extremly old being that... | 45 | Because Beerus is a temperamental slacker who naps for decades or centuries at a time. He probably slept through the entire massacre of the Kais. And as long as Shin survives, so does he.
When he woke up and discovered what happened, and that Buu had been 'dealt with', he probably just chastised Shin for being carele... | 54 |
[General Sci-fi] If a person is sent back in time and gets amnesia, would they recognize anachronisms? | Let’s say tomorrow I’m some how sent back in time to roughly the 1920s, or even the 1950s, and develop amnesia, either immediately upon arrival or as a result of the trip. I wouldn’t know who I am, but I would be able to use a computer, smart phone, and have basic understanding of how modern technology works. But would... | 26 | A lot would depend on the kind of amnesia you have, but you would likely feel out of place. If you retained procedural memory or general knowledge, you'd constantly be in search of things that were not available decades ago. For example, upon arrival in the past, you might have the impulse to call 911 for help (if yo... | 22 |
[Star Wars] Why did the empire choose the AT-AT design? | I was thinking about design and history of the Empires military technology. And while there is a clear lineage to the republic era equipment some of the choices puzzle me.
In particular the AT-AT and AT-ST vehicles. Both use walking systems commonly found in terrestrial species for locomotion in order to carry thei... | 47 | The Empire has a fundamentally different military doctrine than the Republic, especially compared to the Clone Wars era Republic military. While the Republic was in the business of efficiently waging war against comparable enemies, the Empire rules over a period of relative peace and as such it's military focuses on al... | 48 |
ELI5: Why is "Ye" the only word we ever see with Y replacing the "thorn" character instead of th? | I understand the history behind how the thorn ( **Þ** ) character was replaced with Y in printing presses, which is why you saw signs like "Ye Olde Pub" instead of "The Olde Pub". Yet almost every word that used to have thorn in it now uses "th". The only usage that remains seems to be the word "Ye".
For instance, the... | 1,016 | Part of the reason is confusion. Ye (not to be confused with Þe) also exists/existed in English (currently depending on different dialects of English). It also appears in older texts such as, "Ye of little faith," which in most English dialects would be translated as, "You all of little faith."
So people have confus... | 951 |
ELI5: How do anti-malware programs determine what is malware and what isn't? | Title.
How does software like that determine malware from its harmless file counterparts? Is there any chance it could remove/quarantine a harmless file/program? | 33 | One of the oldest methods is the signature based detection, this is basically a big list of "this file is bad", unfortunately malware creation kits allow people with no skill to pump out vast numbers of new malware so this method is not viable any more.
Another old method is the heuristic detection, rather than lookin... | 17 |
CMV: If you tell people that the rioting is okay because businesses have insurance, you promoting terrorism. | Terrorism is defined by dictionary.com as the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for popitical purposes. Burning down businesses is illegal, voilent, done for political purposes. Many people when talking about the protests just will say, "if you are white, its not your fight. Check your pri... | 60 |
I think a dictionary definition isn’t the best way to go about understanding a nuanced concept like terrorism.
In the USA, terrorism is defined in Title 22 Chapter 38 U.S. Code § 2656f as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agent... | 10 |
[Star Wars] "Obi-Wan is a great mentor; as wise as Master Yoda, and as powerful as Master Windu.". ―Anakin Skywalker | Had the events of the Revenge of the Sith never taken place and Obi-Wan continued his knowledge and training under the Jedi Order before it fell, would he actually have become the most powerful Jedi to exist (second to Anakin of course)? With more time under his belt, could he have ever been a match for Palpatine alone... | 234 | Obi-wan was The Jedi's Jedi. He embodied everything good and noble about the Jedi order, everything that made them the legendary protectors of the Republic. He was kind, humble, self-effacing, decisive, a terror to fight against, and benevolent in victory. Had the order not fallen, he would have taken Yoda's place as g... | 355 |
[DC] So I think my boss Lex Luthor is a supervillian, what do? | So!
I'm a security guard at Lexcorp, and I was recently assigned to protect some new project we were working on. It's a decent paying job and everything is on the up and up- sure, there's rumours of supervilliany but it's never been proven that giant mech suit wasn't for legal purposes.
Anyway, I was patrolling... | 33 | Let me get this straight, you think your boss, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, is secretly a super villian who spends his days plotting to kill Superman, and you get on the internet and post about this on a open forum? | 55 |
ELI5: Why does rain not hurt when it hits you, even though it falls from an average height of 2 kilometers (around 6500 feet)? | I was wondering why rain doesn't hurt when it falls on you from such a large height. I was thinking if I were to drop other objects of equal size from this same distance it would definitely hurt.
Thank you! | 30 | every object falling through the air has a terminal velocity based upon air density, object density, and frictional forces.
A drop of water weighs so little, and falls through the air at relatively low speeds, that it hardly has any force behind it at all. | 47 |
If the liver can regenerate, how do people die from liver failure? | 2,370 | Liver failure can happen in two ways. First, the acute damage can simply be too serious for liver cells to deal with before the person dies. Second is a more protracted process, where damages accumulate.
Suppose that the liver has taken damages from infection/drug/alcohol/etc. **Then, instead of liver cells regenerati... | 1,421 | |
ELI5: How do terrorist groups like ISIS convince young girls in western countries that life is better in Iraq/Syria? | 16 | Generally, they have luck with any group because of outsider politics. Plenty of people feel marginalized and useless in Western society. Groups like ISIS preach a very well-defined set of social rules, in which these marginalized people imagine their life can matter.
While objectively, people seem to be giving up a w... | 20 | |
Why is snow white and ice clear? | Sometimes it 'snows' ice too. What's the difference between snow and ice? | 18 | Snow is made up of many tiny pieces of clear ice, with air in between the crystals. This causes light to bend in every direction like it has no idea what it is doing. It does this to all colors of light about equally, so the light that comes back to your eyes appears white. It is roughly the same reason why scratches i... | 16 |
ELI5: Why is it such a concern when Russia fights ISIS in the middle east but when the US do it(along with other things in the area), no one gives a damn. | 41 | Plenty of people object to US involvement in the Middle East, including a lot of the people who live there.
Russia was especially unhappy about it, but we didn't hear much about that.
Also, when Russia does anything outside it's borders, it stirs a very deeply programmed American phobia that goes back to the Cold ... | 43 | |
[Emperors New Groove] Who would have been the better ruler, Yzma or Kuzco | Before Kuzco's change of heart of course. From what we saw both seemed terrible. | 35 | Probably Yzma... While yes she may be a terrible dictator she worked for it. What did Kuzco ever do? He was born into a life of luxury and into the world of the elite, he had zero reference to plight of the common man.
It basically comes down to would you rather your leader be ineffective or totalitarian?
\#MakeInc... | 46 |
CMV: A good voting system should NOT fulfill the Condorcet criterion. | My problem with voting systems that fulfill the Condorcet criterion is that it allows people to vote such that A > B, B > C, C > A. There is no instance in life where a sound mind would have such a preference. I think the only way to have a preference order like this would be to accept a contradiction and to h... | 18 | I think you're confused about how the Condorcet criterion works. There's nothing about the Condorcet criterion that requires that people can express circular voting patterns. Indeed, many of the standard proposals that satisfy the Condorcet criterion don't allow such votes. For example, in the Kemeny–Young method, v... | 12 |
[Dr. Strange MoM] *Spoiler* Free Food | Do most dimensions actually have free food, or is it possible America has been stealing food in most of the places she visits because she didn't know any better? | 29 | The technical answer is: "We don't know because there is not enough information."
The likely answer is she is telling the truth as she sees it. Its very possible she jumped into a lot of universes where food is free and assumed it was the norm. Its possible this is not true and she was stealing the food every time and... | 62 |
[Star Trek] Can Borg assimilate corpses? | There's not much to explicate about this question; if the Borg came upon the corpses of beings deemed worthy of assimilation, could they put them back into commission as drones by means of cybernetic augmentation/substitution? And, perhaps, what degree of decay could Borg implants compensate for? | 35 | The Borg don't even revive beings that they've already deemed worthy of assimilation, and already invested resources into augmenting. They just grab a couple of pieces out and leave them.
I doubt they'd have any interest in corpses. They may analyze the technology left behind by a dead civilization, but they're appare... | 22 |
[Marvel / X-men] Magneto's powers | **Edit: for fourth wall rule i didn't see**
So i think in the last few decades Magneto has been struggling to decide if his powers are "Controls metal" or "Controls magnetism"
I much prefer the master of magnetism to be just that.. Control over magnetism.
I was really looking forward to [these](http://www.youtube.c... | 29 | Magneto has complete control over magnetic fields. He can create them, manipulate them, perceive them (with his eyes).
Furthermore he has some control over Electromagnetic force in general. To give you an idea of what this means read the following:
> With the exception of gravitation, electromagnetic phenomena as ... | 18 |
Is there any serious research into antigravity? | I know NASA was interested in the 90s to replicate the russian experiments (superconducting rings or something similar) but I don't know if it lead to anything. Magnetic fields are one thing but is the cancellation of gravity being seriously explored? | 39 | There are three ways to answer this question.
The first is simply to say no, none at all. With the advent of general relativity, we now know that antigravity would be exactly equivalent, both mathematically and physically, to doing backwards in time.
The second is to get slightly liberal with our definitions and talk... | 45 |
CMV: Alienation of affection laws should be repealed. | In five U.S. states, you can sue the homewrecker in civil court if your spouse cheats on you. I am linking to a recent case of a North Carolina man who won three quarters of a million dollars from his wife's boyfriend. [https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/02/us/alienation-of-affection-laws-north-carolina-lawsuit-trnd/index.htm... | 15 | In the 5 states where it’s still legal those voters have decided their morals and/or financial value of allowing those laws is worth it. The laws should stay For the simple reason that those voters want it and it’s violating federal laws.
The idea seems pretty simple. It requires that the marriage seemed happy and wa... | 12 |
'Luxury' drinking water is a bunch of BS and people who claim it "taste better" are pretending so they fit in or feel cool. CMV | 21 | > They all taste like what they are. Water.
Yeah, that's actually not how chemistry works. Unless you've sealed your water in a vacuum, it's been absorbing gases from the air. The most important contributor is carbon dioxide, which forms carbonic acid, which means "pure" water stored in air quickly becomes rather b... | 30 | |
ELI5: Why don't fitness centers harness energy that its patrons create when exercising? | We go to the gym and same story, usually packed during peak hours and everyone is on a weight machine or some form of cycle. Is the amount of energy expended not quantifiable or can it not be captured? Or would the short answer just be that its cost prohibitive? | 15 | An excellent idea! The bad news is humans are too puny. From the Wikipedia page on human power *... adults of good average fitness average between 50 and 150 watts for an hour of vigorous exercise.*
So you on a treadmill could barely power a lightbulb or two. Sounds crazy, but there it is.
Some cardio machines have d... | 24 |
ELI5 How is it that if you put a piece of paper really close to loudspeakers, the speakers will push away the paper at high frequencies but suck it in at low ones? | Edit: a lot of people answering have gone off of the topic of the difference of the frequencies of the speakers' output and instead explained different sized speakers and other a bit out of context rattling. I appreciate all answers but if anyone really knows why different frequencies create different pulling and pushi... | 9,443 | Imagine the paper is a kid in a swing and the speaker is an adult pushing them.
There's a very specific frequency of pushing that will result in the biggest swings. It's pushing at the rearmost point of the swing arc. Speakers pull air as well as pushing, so you'll have to imagine pulling the kid at the front of the... | 1,026 |
What is it about a curing process of meat, drying of fruit etc. that makes the food last longer and allow you to store it unrefrigerated? | 24 | Microbes and fungus rely on the moisture present in their food to survive. Lower that moisture, and you lower then number of rot causing microbes and fungus spores the food can support this extending the shelf life of the food. | 34 | |
Why do cats go limp when their scruff is grabbed? | 19 | The scruff is primarily used in two situations. 1) when a mother cat moves her babies and 2) mating. It's easy to see how injury to wigglers in the first case and lack of reproductive success in the second case may have influenced the strengthening of this response among the cat population. | 14 |
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