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ELI5: In trading, what does liquidity mean and how does it work | 24 | You can think of it as the 'transferability' of a financial instrument (either cash, or an investment). High liquidity means it's easier to use and transfer an item; low liquidity means you're pretty much stuck with it.
Cash is a very liquid thing. You don't need to find a buyer before you can use it, or involve a mid... | 26 | |
What is the difference between a brain when its sexually aroused and when it's not? Could we replicate this to synthesise aphrodisiacs? | 54 | The difference in the brain between one task and another, or no task at all, is activation of a network of brain regions. Most individual brain regions will contribute to more than one task, but the constellation of activation may be different depending on what that task is. Artificially activating one network would in... | 16 | |
[Harry Potter] Are the owls that deliver the mail magic owls with heightened intelligence and such, or are they just regular owls that were trained by wizards? | 75 | There are presumably magical variants of otherwise ordinary creatures found in the wizarding world. For example, in Prisoner of Azkaban, when Ron was shopping for some tonic for his pet rat at Magical Menagerie, Harry and co. ran across a rabbit who was able to transform itself into a top hat at will. And the shopkeepe... | 56 | |
[Batman] I'm a professional strongman, dedicated my life to the gym and eating right, there's surely no way a caped crusader can bench 450kg when spending so much time fighting crime? | But in case it's true, what routine does he use and which steroids that he obviously is on does he use | 137 | Due to alleged connections to a certain Gotham billionaire, the Batman probably has access to supplements that won't make it to the market for years to come, if ever. On top of his already insane workout regimens and consistent training, plus his mastery of martial arts you've never even heard of. He also has the abili... | 146 |
[Game of Thrones] Why are the Greyjoys considered a major house in Westeros? They're essentially pirates, wouldn't that really lend them to being considered scum by the Lannisters or Tyrells? | 45 | The iron islands are considered a nation. Nations have rulers and Greyjoy leads the iron islands. They're considered lesser than everybody else but still accepted to keep them in the greater 7 kingdoms. | 50 | |
ELI5: What causes us to lose consciousness when we go to sleep? | 76 | We don't. You're not unconscious when you're asleep. Your level of consciousness has just being altered. Unconscious means you're not able to react to any stimuli. A sleeping person will react to stimuli that is strong enough, like an alarm clock. An unconscious person won't wake up just because an alarm clock is ... | 90 | |
ELI5: Regular vs Premium vs Ultimate gasoline | 249 | It's to do with the octane rating of the fuel.
In a petrol engine, the charge (fuel/air mix) is compressed before ignition by spark plug.. When you compress a fluid it heats up, if your charge mixture heats up too much before the spark plug fires then you can get detonation when the spark plug fires, or even self ign... | 123 | |
ELI5:If deep freezing only puts bacteria to sleep rather than killing them, then why does deep freezing sushi/sashimi fish makes them safe to consume raw? | I've been told that deep freezing food doesn't kill all the bacteria and only puts them to sleep. However, when I look up about sushi/sashimi, they often say that freezing the fish is one of the things they do to kill bacteria. What's the true story here? | 67 | I think you're confusing bacteria with parasites. Freezing kills harmful parasites like tapeworms and roundworms.
The bacteria you're concerned about has nothing to do with the fish itself and everything to do with who handles it. If there is any harmful bacteria on your sushi, I'd blame your chef for not washing the... | 80 |
ELI5: What's going on in Syria? | After the Arab Spring events in other countries, I've kind of tuned out the Middle East (not that I'm proud of it) but I keep hearing about all these people dying over there and I can't seem to find a concise start-to-finish account. Thanks!
*edit* thanks for the concise answers, guys - much appreciated | 273 | In Tunisia, protests happened, and the government almost immediately collapsed.
Then in Egypt, protests happened, and the government fought them for a while, until the army said "we won't attack protesters", and the government collapsed.
Then in Libya, protests happened, the government fought them, and so did the arm... | 291 |
ELI5: How are high-profile, open marijuana users like Seth Rogen, Doug Benson etc. not pursued by police for breaking the law? | 58 | The police know that prosecuting users doesn't work. Most of the efforts of the DEA and police go towards drug dealers and smugglers.
Also, using Marijuana is not against the law, posessing it is. Furthermore, saying "I used marijuana" is not sufficient cause for prosecution and arrest, especially for entertainers, w... | 45 | |
ELI5: why's it when you put some wet fabric, e.g. a towel, on a radiator, it dries all stiff and crusty? | 1,044 | The little fabric bits on the outside of a towel stick together when wet and tend to remain stuck (hence crunchy) when it is air-dried without air movement. A tumble dryer circulates warm air as the towel dries, which tends to separate the stuck fabric bits and the material feels more fluffy to touch. | 1,286 | |
Do my thoughts feel like they come from my head because I know that's where my brain is? | Or have inner monologues always felt like they're in our head? And of that's the case, isn't it obvious that your brain is the originator of thought? Why did it take Alcmaeon of Croton to come along and tell us all the brain is where thought comes from?
I asked this question yesterday on another sub, but I feel like t... | 194 | your eyes and ears are in your head, so everything you see or hear is naturally referenced to your head position (you also, of course, have a feeling of where your head is);
it follows, then, that your visual and auditory imagery (imagining images or sounds) will be referenced to your head position.
so whatever thou... | 46 |
CMV: Donald Trump suggested his supporters might assassinate Hillary Clinton or her judicial appointments | Donald Trump [said this at a rally in NC today](http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-donald-trump-says-second-amendment-1470771050-htmlstory.html):
>“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the 2nd Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick if she gets to pick her jud... | 35 | I would argue that although it's clear that Trump insinuated that second amendment people can use force to influence her decision, what's not clear is if he meant assassination or just general intimidation.
The vast majority of the time (not an understatement) guns prevent something from occurring, they are never fir... | 24 |
I believe post-mortem organ donation should be obligatory whenever possible, CMV | A few things to justify that:
-You are not your body. Your body is a bunch of flesh and bones. What makes you important is that you have a mind and the ability to function. When you die, you are a rotting corpse and nothing more. "You" seizes to exist (and even for religious people, your soul leaves your body, or what... | 73 | The general reason to oppose it is that when people fear that doctors will not respect their wishes/privacy/etc they are less likely to go to the doctor. Some people are paranoid that if organ donation is mandatory doctors will not try as hard to save them. Such a policy would severely compromise their medical care a... | 37 |
Why does vacuum-energy exist? How can nothing have some energy? | Or maybe I'm just very confused. | 159 | Well any theory that predicts a non-zero vacuum energy also predicts that the vacuum itself has a complex non-trivial structure. Like the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics for example. It can fluctuate, it can interact, it can become polarized.
It is also worth pointing out that from this perspective the vacuum isn'... | 97 |
The two hot leads in a 250 volt electrical circuits are said to be "180° out of phase with each other", but 480v systems are 120° out of phase. How does the 120° phase get turned into 180°? | I recently wired an outlet for a welder that was 250v. From some basic YouTube videos, I understand that industrial applications of electricity often use 480v. If 480v is made in three phases, 120° from each other, how is 250v with exactly opposite phases made for houses? | 17 | It goes back to the transformer feeding the house. They are weird single phase, centred tapped transformers. The primary voltage side of the transformer is fed with a single utility feeder. The secondary side coil is centre tapped, and that centre tap is the neutral. The two legs are connected to top and bottom of the ... | 12 |
[DC] What are some situations in which Flash's Speed Force would *not* be super useful? | It seems like super speed solves everything. But what are some situations where being super duper ultra fast isn't actually helpful? | 151 | Maybe not what you're looking for but the Speedforce can instinctively kick in for the Flash causing everything to seemingly slow down around them. This is usually handy in fights or sneak attacks because it gives Flash time to react before most people are aware anything has happened. Unfortunately for Wally West this ... | 192 |
[Ed, Edd n' Eddy] Is Ed some kind of super hero? | After watching some old episodes of Ed, Edd n' Eddy, Ed in particular seems to be remarkably powerful for a child.
Some of his feats include:
Lifting a house with little effort,
Suspending his full weight from only his tongue,
Being able to force a large bone through his own head with little damage to himself,
Gen... | 70 | Ed doesn't understand things like "the house is heavy" or "your imaginary friend doesn't exist." Everyone in that universe seems subject more to their own understanding of the world than objective laws of physics. Remember, Sarah scares the shit out of Ed, Edd(who understands physical laws) tends to get injured a lot m... | 99 |
CMV: Religious approaches to thinking (i.e. those that have no real facts and evidence supporting them) have no place in our governments and scientific discussions | So, I grew up in a household that was very religious and as a kid it seemed normal. I was personally lucky enough that despite how religious my parents were, I was still given a lot of freedom to do what I wanted, so it seemed that my parents were a bit more open minded than some others.
As I got older though, (as man... | 1,459 | Science can not answer many or most of the questions that politics and governance covers. How can science say anything to the philosophical, moral, and cultural views that are the underpinnings of individuals’ world views? How can you test the hypothesis of individual rights? Religion also does not hold a monopoly on b... | 162 |
[Star Trek TNG] Why are so many high ranking Starfleet officers bad people? | It seems that so much of the time it is the Captain of the Enterprise that has to embody the principles of Starfleet, and the admiralty try to undercut it. How did they get to those positions and, given that they do, how does Starfleet still have these principles?
They hold drumhead trials, lie for ulterior motives an... | 77 | So the main thing is that the history books and documentaries rarely record the actions of the many, many high ranking Starfleet officers who don't break the rules or didn't make illegal schemes to exploit pre-First Contact worlds.
But yes, there are corrupt people in Starfleet. There's some discussion that while the... | 67 |
[GENERAL CYBERPUNK] I'm a regular hacker in a regular hi-tech-low-life world. I'm about to be sent back to a parallel world's 1990s, naked. How can I make lots of money? | Learning the basics about the period goes without saying, but memorizing winning lottery numbers is useless: I have no idea what exactly would be different in that world. I think I should use my knowledge of both tech and social engineering. Some of the problems science struggled with are already solved, and solutions ... | 33 | So, you went FROM a time it is doable to become rich trough hacking, to a time when hacking is mostly a hobby that are Limited to a few machines, since there are no global network to take advantage of.
Why not just save a step in the process of whitewashing money, and become a legal millionare?
If management isn't f... | 22 |
How does the Ptolemaic geocentric model explain the concept of solar "years" when it assumes the sun rotates around the earth once per day? | I was reading an old Arabic book written in the 1200s AD and in one section it was comparing the Muslim calendar which is based on lunar years and the "Roman" calendar (as it so named it) which was based on solar years.
So the author said that "the Roman year consists of 365 days which is the time it takes for the su... | 23 | The Sun moves against the background of fixed stars. If the Sun goes around the Earth once per day, so do all the fixed stars. Except the fixed stars always stay in formation, while the Sun moves about 1 deg eastward against that background during that day. It takes one year to trace a circle all the way around. Th... | 25 |
How did humans figure what the sun is made of? | 141 | When gasses become energized, they release light at a certain wavelength. Similar to how you can use a glass prism to split white light into a rainbow, you can use a glass prism to split light into its individual wavelengths. By comparing the wavelengths of the light from the sun to wavelengths that came off of energiz... | 224 | |
ELI5: Why does the stockmarket exist? | 2,884 | Stocks were invented as a way to share risk. European countries had trading expeditions going to Asia and Americas. These expeditions took months or years and were hugely expensive to fund but when successful they were absurdly profitable. The problem was that a ship could sink or get robbed by pirates, or a number of ... | 3,040 | |
ELI5: Why does sperm show up under a blacklight? | 24 | Technically it's not the sperm that is glowing. It's the semen. All organic material, especially organic fluids glow under blacklight. Phosphors are materials that emit visible light under UV radiation.
Organic (based on carbon) material almost always has phosphors present. There are many phosphors including oxide... | 16 | |
[ELI5] What part of an explosion causes an EMP? - Does it have to be nuclear or would a large enough explosion do it? | 23 | A nuclear detonation produces a large amout of extremely high energy photons (light) called gamma radiation.
Those gamma photons are powerful enough to rip electrons from a large number of surrounding air molecules in a very small space.
That sudden massive electrical charge imbalance in the upper atmosphere generate... | 27 | |
CMV: I believe the fact that women control 80% of consumer spending in our economy gives them power as a sex. | I believe the fact that women control 80% of consumer spending in our economy gives them power as a sex.
I recently had an exchange with two redditors who essentially claimed that the power dynamic regarding earning and purchasing in married couples/unmarried partners (ones where the male is the breadwinner, as is st... | 18 | Deciding how to spend money on behalf of your family and then going out and spending it is not _power_. It's labor. It's work. It takes time and effort out of your day. And it's another in the long list of household tasks ("invisible labor") that women are simply expected to do disproportionately to men. The fact that ... | 22 |
ELI5: Why is cancer so common in some organs, and so rare in others? | You always hear about breast, skin, lung, and colon cancers for example, but things like brain, pancreatic, and stomach cancers seem to be so much more uncommon. Are some types of cells more susceptible to damage than others, or are some more resilient? | 41 | Usually cells that reproduce quickly or are subject to DNA damage are going to be more likely to become cancerous.
Cancer is when our own cells begin to replicate without stopping, recruiting resources to feed themselves. It all begins with a single cell which accumulates the right combination of mutations to do all t... | 74 |
CMV:The Democrats should filibuster any Supreme Court nominee that President Trump puts forward. | Hello there, I'm a very progressive individual who works in the human services field. I found the Senate's decision to not even given Merrick Garland a hearing absolutely awful and inappropriate. He was probably the most qualified, even moderate, SCOTUS nominee that Obama could have picked. And for McConnell to say it ... | 157 | Whichever person Trump nominates tonight will be replacing Antonin Scalia, who was one of the most conservative members of the Supreme Court. Trump can nominate the most conservative person possible, and it won't change the balance of the court compared to what it was before Scalia died.
If the Democrats filibuster or... | 76 |
I read that horses evolved on the great plains of America and then traveled over the land bridge to Asia. that they somehow died out in the Americas and were later re-introduced with the travels of Europeans. Why did they die out in the Americas and thrive in Asia? | 56 | Horse ancestors originated in North America tens of millions ago, and likely migrated to Asia, then Europe around 10-20 million years ago. Around 12,000 years ago, as the climate changed in North America due to the ending of the ice ages, and humans migrated here, the horses died out and the remnants hunted to extincti... | 14 | |
[LOTR Movies] Is the prologue a dramatization, or did Sauron actually try to reach for Isildur instead of just killing him? | If the latter, why?
My headcanon has been that it is the former, told in the way of an epic myth or legend where details aren't as important as the larger story (Galadriel narrating that way helps too). It would also explain things like how Bilbo finding the ring only looks passably similar to the 'real' version. | 15 | Sauron had just killed his two greatest enemies in Middle-Earth - Elendil lay broken on the ground, and Gil-Galad was literally burned to death from the heat of Sauron's hand. Gil-Galad's death was mentioned in the books and was planned for the films, but was eventually left out.
Odds are that in his moment of triump... | 27 |
How do you answer the question "Why should we give you this scholarship?" without sounding pompous? | I'm currently applying for PhD funding, and one of the sections asks for 500 words on why you deserve it, and I can't help but hate myself for every line I write for it.
Do you have any tips for making yourself sound enthusiastic and accomplished without coming across as arrogant?
| 60 | You sound afflicted with a twinge of imposter syndrome colored by a dash of the humbles. But you have to somewhat shamelessly sell your work in the academic world because if you don't, who will?
Conference abstracts, grant proposals, and fellowship applications should have a smattering of the (realistically) grandios... | 45 |
CMV: People and businesses worried about losing their jobs in the oil industry can and should start working in clean or renewable energy. | Maybe I am a little ignorant here, but I see plenty of arguments that shutting down pipelines (Biden executive order, for example) will destroy the jobs and livelihood of people in Canada and the USA. What I don't understand is why these people, who have to know that their employment is teetering as the globe continues... | 35 | Those jobs will not be in the same locations, require the same skills, pay the same, and likely will not be proportionate in number.
And the globe isn't transitioning to clean energy at all, fossil fuel production is not declining nor predicted to decline in any meaningful way. | 25 |
When they talk about mutations “escaping” vaccine protection, is it a sliding scale or all-or-nothing? | I kept hearing that this Omicron variant has the potential to escape vaccine protection, and the word escape to me implies completely avoid it. Is that what escape means in this context, or does escape mean that it reduces but doesn’t nullify the protection of vaccines?/r/ | 161 | Definitely sliding scale. Those mutations make it more difficult for the bodys defense to recognize it as a threat, but the body will still react.
A vaccine make it easier for the defense to recognize the threat and attack the virus early before it gets a foothold. | 138 |
ELI5: Austrian Economics in the context of fiscal policy | So, I've read some former explanations, and they all seem to deal with the monetary policy aspects of inflation and interest rates. I was just wondering if someone could tell me if/how Austrian Economics handles the fiscal policy problems of taxing and spending. And if you want to explain to me just how the Austrian Sc... | 24 | First, the Austrian view of taxing is to do it as little as possible. People are best off when their peaceful trades are interrupted by government as little as possible. Taxes interrupt people who are trading things for money and makes it harder for everyone to get what they want.
With regard to spending, that should ... | 18 |
[DC]Has any comic discussed what will happen when Billy Batson grows up? Will Shazam never age even when Billy grows? Or is Batson's growth just stunted in general? | 20 | It appears that while Billy Batson will continue to age and get older, his transformed form will stay the same age. There's one future where Billy Batson ages into being a dead ringer for Captain Marvel, and manages to convince people that he is transformed when he isn't. | 48 | |
ELI5 Why people don't get sick from using the same toothbrush everyday without disinfecting it? | If I spit on something every day and then kept putting it in my mouth shouldn't I get sick? | 121 | The bacteria that are inside of you will still be the same bacteria that left you (toothbrush) and go back inside you (brushing teeth) again. It stands to reason that if they don't make you sick while they were inside you before, they shouldn't make you sick when they go back inside of you again.
Obviously, the same i... | 99 |
[Superman] Using cold breath, If superman moved quite a distance from earth and blew towards it, could he single handedly slow down global warming? | 46 | > The ice breath is simply due to Superman's increased strength/durability. He can compress great quantities of air in his lungs and expel them as either incredibly powerful blasts of wind or supercooled condensed air.
*Credit /u/CycloneSwift*
For this to work, Superman is going to have to take a *BIG* breath of a... | 52 | |
How the hell does Netflix manage to absolutely block all screenshots (both using printscreen and snipping tool) | I thought it wasn't possible for a browser to retrieve this kind of information from the host (that is, that the host is using an application like Snipping Tool). Isn't that a pretty big security violation if it is possible? | 78 | If you have hardware acceleration on in the browser, it is likely that your video is being decoded with your processor or video card's built-in DRM (Intel Insider, for example), via some technology like HDCP. This let's the CPU/GPU output video to the framebuffer directly after the point the screenshot tool would be ab... | 88 |
[DC] How does the Flash not get bored when performing complex/tedious tasks at super speed? | How does the Flash not get bored when performing complex/tedious tasks at super speed?
For example if he had to count every coin on the ground in a major city, it would take him milliseconds from our perspective but how would it appear to him from his perspective with heightened senses? | 28 | An occasionally cited secondary power is that Barry and Wally have a subconsciously and consciously regulated perception of time, and they can go into a trance state of sorts when doing tedious things that wouldn't be considered mentally taxing. | 32 |
[Black Mirror] Why would sex be coded into a street fighter-esque game? | Seriously though, do age-rating bodies no longer exist? If they do, does this age-rate the game as 18+, as it is essentially a form of porngraphy? Why would you put sex in when it blocks out millions of potential buyers who are under the age of consent? | 578 | A pretty fundamental aspect of modern game development is asset re-use. Presumably at some point, a feature-complete avatar system was created and distributed for developers to use in their VR experiences. (consistency is important for immersion, imagine if your hands "felt" different in every game) Each developer exte... | 458 |
CMV: The foreign policy of the United States encourages unfriendly dictators to pursue nuclear armament as fast as possible if it's feasible and to never give up nuclear weapons under any circumstances. | The United States has a long history of invading/attempting to overthrow the governments of and meddling in the affairs of foreign countries unfriendly to them. This behavior is a consistent trend over it's history, and one that has become more prominent since it's rise as a global superpower. Due to it's desire to ass... | 194 | That’s not enough to get the US coming after you. Take for example: Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan’s an authoritarian dictatorship, its closest allies include Iran and Russia, it’s got a disastrous human rights record, gives Muslims preferential treatment over other religious groups, and it’s even rich in oil and gas. Basi... | 83 |
ELI5: What exactly are skin tags and why do they appear on certain people more than others? | Are they like moles, or warts? Or something else entirely? | 716 | Sometimes a cell can't control how fast it divides. The result is a tumor, or just a bunch of cells where they shouldn't be. This is what a skin tag is, but they are not usually dangerous.
The skin in general tend to get these a lot but heavy use or dry areas get them even more often. Genetics and certain diseases lik... | 339 |
ELI5: Why were the European Colonists not ravaged by American disease unlike the Native Americans who were ravaged by European/African disease? | 1,569 | There's a great CGPGrey video on this on YouTube. Its called Americapox or something.
I think it largely states that it was due to the americas not having domesticated animals which humans stay in prolonged contact with (in densely populated areas like cities), and that most dangerous diseases spread from animals to h... | 1,368 | |
[Joker-2019][Spoilers] Question about Thomas Wayne | Was he really Fleck’s father? Did he plant evidence that Fleck was adopted? Also, how much of Penny’s story was true? | 29 | Thomas Wayne in most incarnations is a kind man who genuinely wanted to help Gotham. A lot of how he appears in Joker is due to Arthur being an unreliable narrator and only seeing him from speeches where he misunderstood what happened in the subway murder (Thomas had no idea it was self defense) and his mother's twist... | 44 |
ELI5: Why are dentists, optometrists, etc. not part of the "standard" medical community? In other words, why doesn't all insurance cover vision/dental? | I know there is a political and historical answer to this, but I don't know what it is. What I do know is that doctors are saying tooth health is related to heart health, and while perhaps teeth are just cosmetic now that we have grocery stores, blenders, and Thick-it, living with no teeth isn't exactly normal or heal... | 74 | Great question! The primary answer is money - if these services were covered, health insurance would cost (significantly) more.
Secondary, there are politics involved. For a multitude of reasons, dentistry and medicine developed as parallel fields. As such, dentistry is treated as a separate and unique entity from med... | 22 |
[Naruto] Is there any difference between "real" Naruto and his shadow clones? | Does it matter which of his versions is the last one standing when all others are dispelled (can he dispell his "original" body)? Is the real Naruto stronger than the others? Is there any benefit to attacking the real Naruto? | 16 | The shadow clones ultimately are still just copies made of chakra. Even the strongest most realistic one is just a portion of his chakra. Nothing physical, no organs or anything like that.
No he can't dispel his original body, through quick movements and distractions he can switch with the clone though. That's basical... | 19 |
ELI5: When you get a "refurbished like new" phone as a warranty replacement from your carrier, where did it come from and what did they actually do to refurbish it? | I'll give you the tl;dr:
My 3 month old Samsung Galaxy s5 broke and the service representative determined it was a no fault hardware failure. They are sending me a "refurbished like new" phone.
.....I'm wondering....since the S5 has only been out since April, why would they have a reliable supply of refurbished phone... | 26 | In most jurisdictions, it's illegal to sell a product as 'new' once someone has purchased it and opened the box, even if they immediately returned the product right afterward.
Many of these 'refurbished' phones are just open box purchases that were returned for whatever reason, so they are sold as 'refurbished' at dis... | 23 |
ELI5: What does "sin", "cos", and "tan" actually do to the calculation? | I've always had a hard time understanding trigonometry because I like to be visual with my mathematics.
Thanks | 37 | Imagine a circle (called a Unit Circle). From the middle of the circle, draw a straight line to the circle. Let's say the line is 60 degrees above the x-axis.
So where does the line hit the circle? (What are its coordinates that is.) If you want to find how high the intersection is, use sin. If you want to find how f... | 31 |
ELI5 how something that seems as insignificant as splitting an atom can create such a large, destructive explosion | 31 | Splitting a single atom releases a very small amount of energy. But crucially if you use the right kind of atoms (such as certain forms of uranium), splitting one atom will cause all the other uranium atoms nearby to also get split. So in an extremely short period of time you will have many hundreds of billions of atom... | 29 | |
CMV: the only reason anyone uses Windows is because it's compatible with all the other stuff made for Windows, not because Windows itself has any merit. | Title says it all: Windows is, at best, adequate. it's only useful as a platform for other people's better software, which was only made for Windows because everyone uses Windows. Windows (in my experience, particularly Windows 10) is full of glitches like broken updates and broken start buttons. The permissions system... | 672 | You can make this argument about any number of things. Is there a clearly superior alternative? What would the cost to switch be?
These questions can be asked for: driving on a certain side of the road, the language you speak, what measuring units you use.....
See part of Windows appeal is it's universality. | 189 |
Would it be possible to link a telescope on Earth with one on Mars to see farther and more clearly the same way that telescopes in different locations on Earth can be linked? | 49 | Yes, but there's a lot of things that make it tricky.
Firstly, you need to know the distance between telescopes down to a precision that scales with wavelength. So if you're doing radio frequencies, you need to know the distance down to like 10s of cm or tighter. That's doable even even across the entire diameter of E... | 59 | |
[Star Wars] Do darkside force users also say, "May the force be with you." Or do they have their own thing? | 550 | "May the force serve you well." - Common one from Lana Beniko.
Edit: Adding some details. The Sith seek to enslave the force, treat it like a servant. The Jedi try to harmonize with the force and be one with it. Different philosophies. | 632 | |
[Pirates of the Caribbean] At the end of Dead Men Tell No Tales, Poseidon's Trident has been destroyed and thus every curse on the sea broken, how can Davy Jones actually be back? (According to the end credit scene) | So at the end of POTC 5, every curse in the sea has been broken and Will is finally freed from the Flying Dutchman and returns to Elizabeth.
In the epilogue, we see Will having a nightmare where Davy Jones walks into his house while he sleeps with Elizabeth. He wakes up, scared, realizes it was just a dream and goes ... | 23 | Potentially every curse being broken means every curse is rewound to a point before it was enacted. So Davy Jones never enacted the curse that allowed him to cut his heart out and place it in the Dead Man's Chest, thus bringing him back to life.
This therefore would mean that he is back to being human though. So there... | 16 |
[War of the Worlds] How did The Martian Invasion affect the 20th century? | In 1898, ships from Mars carrying war machines and an invasion cadre landed in England and killed thousands of people before succumbing to bacterial infection and viral spread.
How did history unfold afterwards? | 18 | Well, there have been numerous interpretations across various universes, so you've got your pick.
* **Global Dispatches**: tells us how several politicians, writers, and elder statesmen of the era were affected by the invasion. Teddy Roosevelt seems to have published a book on how to hunt the big buggers. The Chinese... | 23 |
ELI5: What makes Swiss bank accounts special? | I hear them mentioned all the time in movies about embezzlement and corporate corruption. What makes them easier to use for that? | 63 | Swiss banks rarely disclose information to foreign governments.
So the IRS rolls up all 'we think this guy is evading taxes tell us how much money he has in your bank.'
To which the swiss bank will reply 'lol nope' | 82 |
[MOD POST] Celebrating 100k subscribers and #1 subreddit for comment length and #3 subreddit for reading level | **This is Mod post 42. You can read the previous Mod Post by clicking [here](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1sxuec/mod_post_cmvs_best_of_2013/), or by visiting the [Mod Post Archive](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modpostarchive) in our wiki.**
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10 months ago, /r/changemyview was created ... | 419 | I do find it interesting that we have introduced a novel form of debate, in which rather than trying to defeat a person who has an opposing view, we instead sincerely invite someone to change our opinions. So rather than trying to see who is the best debater, we want to better understand the truth, whatever it may tur... | 93 |
How does orbital resonance really work? What causes them and why are some unstable? | 18 | Lets take, for example, the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt:
For asteroids in the asteroid belt, the biggest influence on them by far is the force of gravity from the sun. There is, however, a very minor effect from the gravity of Jupiter. Because force is proportional to the inverse square of distance, we can mode... | 14 | |
[X-Men] If (movie) Logan would've had his adamantium skeleton removed by, say, magic from Dr. Strange, at nearly 200 years of age, would his healing factor have been able to kick back in? | In theory, would he then have lived longer and not sick by the end of his last outing? | 546 | Yes. If you could totally remove him from the adamantium poisoning and the cure which was diminishing his abilities, his natural healing factor would have brought him back to his usual youth and vigor.
EDIT: Maybe not. u/FallOutFan01 has an explanation that says the damage caused by the cure may have been permanent... | 505 |
CMV: Being profiled by police is not exclusive to racial minorites. | You often hear how people in minority communities are subject to profiling by police and that white people don't have too deal with that. I would like to object to that notion.
When I was younger, (I'm now 30) I would be pulled over by police multiple times every month. This would be in different counties and differe... | 23 | When people talk about racial minorities being profiled and targeted by police, they’re not suggesting that white people don’t get pulled over. Just that white people don’t get racially profiled and pulled over for being white. | 31 |
I believe that homosexuality is a sin, but that they deserve the same rights and respect as everyone else. I don't think that makes me hateful. CMV. | I believe for religious reasons that homosexuality is a sin. I also believe they should be treated with the same rights and respect as every other person. A lot of people criticize my view that homosexuality is a sin and try to label me as hateful. I don't see it that way. I'm no better than a homosexual because we are... | 77 | Telling someone that the way they love another person is sinful is hateful. The term sin implies choice. Sin is a thing to be abstained from. You're telling someone that the way they love and feel sexually attracted to is such a deplorable act that God cannot look at them and that it's so bad Jesus had to be tortured a... | 87 |
CMV: The US military should not reinvade Afghanistan, nor get involved in a new Middle East conflict. | So I know that this is a popular view on reddit. My friend and I got into an argument earlier, and he didn't convince me of his point. So I'm coming here to see if there's a more rational argument.
To be blunt: the US was so scared of communism in the 80's that they funded Islamist extremists to repel the Soviets from... | 40 | One thing you got wrong was that it was Biden’s idea to leave Afghanistan. Both Obama and Trump wanted to end the Afghanistan war and bring our soldiers out of there, but Biden was the only one to actually do it. Lest we forget Bush got us in there to begin with, promising a quick war. | 10 |
Continually revisions feels like torture | I am doing my MSc in wastewater treatment. My dissertation underwent 6 revisions before it was submitted for external review. I also have a paper that has been submitted about the same work which has been through many reviews.
I just got back a lot of reviewer comments on that paper and I cannot bring myself to addre... | 38 | Read the reviewers comments. Then put it all away for a few days. Come back and read again. A second reading after a few days is less emotional.
Plan a strategy how to go about responding. Which ones require simple text edits, which more reading, and if any which require experiments.
Remember that the reviewers a... | 31 |
ELI5: How are "binned" CPU's or GPU's different from their "lower-quality" counterparts? | When a chip manufacturer makes a chip like a CPU, they occasionally "bin" these chips. Some of them are inherently better than others. What about those binned chips makes them better, though? If I were to take two CPUs with the same make and model and crack them open and smack them down under a microscope, what about t... | 53 | CPU making isn't a perfect process. A lot of it relies on purity of the silicon wafer that's grown in a lab. Impurities in the wafer may degrade performance. Secondly, the lithography process in which the chips are made isn't perfect. It relies on the traces to be etched on to the silicon by exposing it to UV light... | 29 |
[Serenity/Firefly] How sentient are the Reavers, do they have any organised hierarchy, how do they fly their ships and do they kill, rape and eat other Reavers as well? | 221 | The Reavers are humans driven mad by an experimental drug. If they are organized enough to wage war and fly starships, then it would be safe to assume they have some kind of hierarchy. I'd wager they organize tribally and probably have a an order based on who is the baddest motherfucker in the tribe. | 210 | |
ELI5 - If the human body replenishes its cells and has a new "set" every seven years, how do tattoos stay intact? | Sorry if this is a stupid question, I feel a bit dopey for asking! I read that the human body replenishes all of its cells as it grows (the Trigger's Broom thing) and that, on average, humans have a new set of skin cells every seven years. If this is true, how is it the case that tattoos stay intact when the skin cell ... | 12,192 | The ink from the tattoo is not part of your skin cells, the ink is lodged in between your skin cells. So you can replace all the skin cells you want and the ink will still be there.
Tattoos fade over time not because of skin cell regeneration, but because the body knows the ink molecules are foreign objects and your w... | 9,545 |
Why is Hiroshima and Nagasaki inhabitable after the nuclear bombings? Shouldn't there be lingering cancer-causing radiation? | Would your answers be the same if more bombs were exploded over those cities? | 45 | There are a few answers here.
First. When the bomb explodes there is a large radiation burst, which then goes away. This would not necessarily cause an area to be radioactive, as the radiation is only there while the bomb is fissioning.
Second. When you fission atoms, the waste products are what cause contamination... | 36 |
ELI5: why does a snapped neck cause instant death?Or does it cause a slightly slower death but Hollywood has played it up to seem instant | 15 | It doesn't always. Many people suffer broken necks and go on to lead normal lives. But if the "snapped neck" severs the spinal cord, the brain is no longer able to tell the heart and other vital organs to continue operating.
Edit: In the latter instance, the brain would probably remain conscious for a short time, bu... | 10 | |
Has a solution been discovered for the curvature of space-time due to the hydrogen atom? | If not, could one do so if the exact locations and momenta of the electron and proton were known using current theory? | 17 | Sure, you could create a stress-energy tensor for the hydrogen atom, plug it in to the Einstein field equations, and see what you get, but the question is "are the Einstein field equations still valid on the quantum scale?" We don't really know how gravity works on really small length scales. | 13 |
[Dune 2021 Movie] why are all Harkonnen soldiers bald? | 31 | Part of what makes soldiers disciplined is looking the same. Uniforms, haircuts, training, etc. It makes your army more effective, and creates a better spirit de corps.
In addition, though, hair makes us look like people. In studies, bald heads creep people out more. It’s an uncanny valley sort of thing.
They’re h... | 62 | |
ELI5 How does Anti-venom for snakebites work? | Growing up, I always thought someday I might be bitten by a poisonous snake (or encounter quick sand as well 😂) and I would read about how people would harvest snake venom in a lab or zoo to create anti-venom- to this day I don’t understand the process- can someone explain? | 21 | So it starts with what venom is. Venom is a specific molecule (or set of molecules) that gets injected into your blood/body and starts causing damage.
To stop that damage from happening, you need your body to be able to target those molecules. Your body normally does this with anti-bodies. The things that stick to flu... | 29 |
[Fantasy] Why do wizards always love to live in towers? | 31 | A couple reasons.
1. Towers are highly defensible, especially if you've got ranged attacks (like, say, fireballs and lightning bolts)
2. Towers are smaller than entire keeps or castles, thus easier to build somewhere isolated where one can devote one's self full-time to studying magic without interference. Especially... | 57 | |
Why is string cheese stringy? | 16 | String cheese is basically a type of mozzarella cheese.
At the factory, when the curd is still hot and the machines (or workers) are manipulating the curd, instead of kneading the curd into itself to form a normal mozzarella ball, they stretch it and knead it into a stick lengthwise, gradually lengthening it over and ... | 49 | |
Never thought about Grad School before but now I'm interested in something pretty specific and think it might be worth a PhD... | I really just need to pitch this thought off some people in-the-know who can set the record straight. I'm really interested in a topic that seems like it'd be worth it to pursue a PhD in. I'm interested in big data/machine learning in regards to genomics and its applicability to medical marijuana. How do I get a PhD... | 19 | If you have a computer programming background and foundational coursework in either biology or statistics, you may be competitive for a PhD program in computational biology or something similar. However, your research interest is currently too specific and needs to be more generalized. Specifically, you should be sayin... | 24 |
ELI5: Why does your stomach hurt minutes after getting hit in the gonads? | Balls. | 390 | Testes originally form in the abdomen near the stomach and kidneys. The nerves and blood vessels remain attached in that region, even after the balls drop. So when a guy gets kicked in the balls or otherwise has his nuts squished, the pain involved travels up from each testicle into the abdominal cavity, via the sper... | 196 |
CMV: i think venice should be evacuated and left to sink | NOTE ~ I CAN'T CHANGE THE TITLE OF MY THREAD BUT SOMEONE POINTED OUT THERE IS ISSUE WITH MY WORDING.
MY ISSUE IS THAT IT SEEMS VENICE *CANNOT* BE SAVED, NOT THAT IT SHOULDN'T BE ABANDONED. {ETA: if you have information on the renovations taking place, cost, other solutions that they have come up with to combat these ... | 290 | There are efforts in place (including a $5 billion Euro floor prevention project that just became operational) that may prevent the inevitable.
Every day there are more than 60,000 tourists visiting Venice. There is also business and commerce. All would be lost if Venice were evacuated.
And how would you handle the... | 271 |
[Marvel] How does Captain America really feel about the culture of the USA today? | The comics generally portray Cap as an accepting individual, and I accept that. But, the world has really changed. Captain America liking black people is realistic and sensible. But, I cannot imagine how Cap might view gay marriage, trans people, the cold war, etc.
I know in the comics, Cap saw the Cold War and hones... | 57 | gay people existed in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s (have always existed). Cap lived in a major metropolitan area, big enough to have a gay community. Trans individuals existed, even then.
The communities at the time didn't advertise, weren't open about their sexuality or gener nonconformity to nearly the same extent, ... | 106 |
[The Lord Of The Rings]How would the War of the Ring would have proceeded if Boromir had gotten the ring and survived Amon Hen? | 71 | Bad.
Considering Boromir was already getting corrupted by the Ring simply by being nearby. Once he had full possession of it, it wouldn't have taken long for him to fall under its sway completely.
Assuming Boromir could master the ring for a short amount of time, Gondor would probably have done better in the war to ... | 55 | |
cmv: Video games have saved millions of lives by distracting and/or supporting players out of desperate real-life situations. | Video games have surely prevented death and injury to millions of people in the world by distracting their players and preventing them from drug relapses/suicide/depression, possibly assault, alcoholism, drunk driving, and possibly hundreds more generally-death or injury prone circumstances.
I believe this argument wo... | 1,611 | Did *video games* save millions of lives, or did *distractions* save those lives? Would all of those people be dead if we swapped video games with books, TV shows, knitting, or any other time-and-attention-consuming hobby? | 435 |
ELI5: What is a “defeat device”, and how does it work? | I’ve just started watching Netflix’s Dirty Money, and the first episode on Volkswagen’s emissions scandal revolves around defeat devices, how the NGO that discovered the lies couldn’t believe at first that the company had put in place such a device, and that while tests showed that the cars complied to emissions standa... | 58 | In this case, it's just a device that senses when an emission test is taking place. When it senses the test is taking place, it alters how the car runs to conform with emissions requirements. In practice, this usually makes the car accelerate less aggressively. So when it isn't sensing that a test is taking place, it r... | 38 |
Why are some fruits segmented? | Why are some fruits segmented (like an orange)? Does this provide some sort of biological advantage? | 970 | It isn't necessarily a biological advantage as much as it is a product of fruit development. In plants, a seed (which develops from an ovule) is analogous to an animal's baby, while the fruit can be thought of as the ovary (which is the same term plant biologists use). For citrus fruits, such as oranges, each segment i... | 499 |
[Half-Life] What exactly does health measure? | Actual health would presumable be too complex to measure linearly. What exactly does the health bar in the HL games measure? | 26 | Expected chances of survival projected across the next 15 minutes updated by the second based on injures sustained (or lack therof) and remaining treatment medications available within the suit's system. | 44 |
CMV: Fox News should be investigated for making unauthorized contributions to the Trump Campaign. | Fox News seems to be the most-watched news service in the US. When you compare their coverage of anything Trump with the other major services they are complimentary toward him and play down or ignore negative stories. The network promotes a conservative point-of-view (which is probably good for balancing news coverage... | 109 | So you want to start a precedent where the government can punish media for reporting with a certain bias while a president is in office who has called the media the enemy of the people for years? How does this not end in the US government shutting down a bunch of networks? | 81 |
Is the universe deterministic? | Read something interesting in an exercise submitted by a student I'm a teaching assistant for in an AI course. His thoughts were that since the physical laws are deterministic, then in the future a computer could make a 100% correct simulation of a human, which would mean that a computer can think. What do you guys thi... | 71 | The universe is not ~~ontologically~~epistemologically\* deterministic. ie, a computer (or a demon as the question was first proposed) cannot calculate the future to arbitrary levels of accuracy.
It may yet be metaphysically deterministic in that even though you can't at all calculate the future, if you were to "play... | 68 |
[Lovecraft] What's the deal with the Dreamlands? | So it's this other world we go to in our dreams, but people seem to live there. The story about the town of Ulther, where no man may kill a cat, suggests that there are whole cities of people living there. Are they dreamers too? Do they live, die, sleep and eat? Do they know they live in a dreamland? Can you dream ther... | 47 | Dreaming is how human consciousness can enter the Dreamlands, other beings may be able to enter in other ways or may have developed there themselves. The Dreamlands are a real place with real inhabitants, though human perception of them may be extremely skewed and unreliable. | 23 |
[ASOIAF] How would somebody like Ser Loras Tyrell fare in the Night's Watch? How does being gay apply to the oath they take? | The oath that every Man of the Night's Watch takes says that they'll take no wife and father no children. I don't think a gay man like Loras Tyrell is likely to do either of those things, so if he decides to get close with another Man of the Night's Watch, would he be breaking his oath?
| 26 | While some parts of Westeros are homophobic (as seen by the comments of Tywin Lannister when he speaks to Oleanna Tyrell), many other regions don't have a problem with it (Oleanna Tyrell's comeback, the passionate Dornish).
Concerning the Night's Watch:
Many straight brothers frequent the brothels in Mole's Town and ... | 35 |
ELI5:Why is multilevel marketing legal when it is clearly just a pyramid scheme? | I've had like four people try to get me to participate in ambit energy and I just cannot fathom how they are allowed to operate legally. | 79 | Because it isn't *just* a pyramid scheme. It's a pyramid scheme with just enough focus on the sale of a product to be legal.
The pyramid scheme is only the recruitment part, and if that was all that it was (getting paid to recruit people), then it would be an illegal pyramid scheme. But attaching a product to be sold ... | 37 |
ELI5: Why is there so much hate against Comic Sans font? | 20 | 1. Comic Sans = Comic style font, sans serif. This is fine.
1. People used it because it looks nice. This is fine-ish.
1. People used it IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES. Unless you're doing the lettering for a comic book, you're using it in the wrong place.
1. The font is hated because it's associated with incompetent comput... | 39 | |
[Stargate] Physics | Matter can travel out only thru a dialed stargate, but "Energy" can travel bidirectionally. This seems to mean non massive particles, or luxons are bidirectional.
If you had a set of transport rings near each stargate, could a person beam straight thru the stargate in reverse? Are they basically energy at that point?
... | 105 | Ring transporters still use a matter stream so they couldn't go both ways through an active stargate.
Asgard beaming might be possible, but you have to have rather accurate readings on the location you travel too. Which usually means a ship or Asgard sensors in range, at which point you have travelled there with a shi... | 34 |
Eli5: If you have a gas stove, is it more efficient to do "slow-fire" or "high-fire" and how does it work? | We're in the middle of a typhoon right now and it would be nice to know how to conserve gas. | 27 | > is it more efficient to do "slow-fire" or "high-fire" and how does it work?
It is more efficient to adjust the size of the fire to the size of the pot.
On the stoves I've seen, the flames are shot out sideways. The higher the flame setting, the more sideways they travel. A small pot on a big flame can be unt... | 49 |
eli5 - when an engine fires in space and creates thrust - was is it pushing against? | 768 | For every action there is a reaction. The spaceship is pushing against the gas that is created when the engine fires.
ELI5. Imagine you are sitting on an inflatable raft in the middle of a swimming pool. You have 100 baseballs. If you throw the baseballs as hard as you can in one direction, you'll notice your raft... | 1,472 | |
Do we have models to predict how rocks fracture? | More precisely, say I wanted to simulate whacking a smooth, round pebble with a hammer so that a crack appears. Do our current models of rocks fracturing precisely predict the exact geometric shape of these cracks that appear?
What are good references for this? | 20 | Rocks are not homogenous isotropic materials. Cracks propagate as microscopic tips. When they interact with grains or crystals it can deflect the crack. So without a perfect 3d model of the rock at micro scale it is impossible to perfectly predict crack propagation. | 11 |
What causes aftertastes? Why don't all tastes occur immediately? | 31 | Taste is caused by molecules in food binding to receptors on the tongue (plus a lot of scent stuff but we'll simplify that away for now because it's a similar mechanism anyways).
Some of those molecules stay bonded for a longer time than others. | 15 | |
ELI5: why are these fake company tweets causing stock value to decrease? | 19 | Investors selling their shares worrying that the company’s value is going to dive and they’ll take a loss, however the volume of these sales is significant enough in such a small window it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where the stock then drops | 42 | |
If a pregnant woman were to end up in a coma, would there still be childbirth? | Say that the woman is now braindead and 8-9 months pregnant, would the child die in the womb or would there be sort of an "inactive" birth where the body takes control? | 53 | Yes. The signal to start labor comes from the fetus. As the lungs (last organ to mature) send out higher and higher levels of surfactant this causes Prostaglandin production to change in the mother and this starts the process of inducing the muscles to contract and deliver the fetus. None of it requires upper motor neu... | 62 |
CMV: Karl Pilkington is fully conscious of - and plays up to - the persona expected of him | Maybe this is an obvious point, but I never really see anyone discuss it on Reddit whenever Karl Pilkington comes up (such as recently, during the viral wedding proposal video).
People seem to take Karl Pilkington at face value. A lot of people seem to think that his lovably bumbling, naive and (sometimes) foolish ev... | 42 | Have you ever listened to the old XFM radio shows? He started out as a producer, and the show was primarily Ricky and Steve talking and playing music, though they would occasionally ask Karl his opinion about stuff. He hadn't been on any TV shows at this point, or even the podcast, wasn't famous, and basically nobody k... | 22 |
Why do we hiccup? | 17 | It's a left over nerve action from when we were fish millions of years ago.
Your lungs used to be swim bladders in fish and fish had an automatic way of adjusting the swim bladder to be higher or lower on the water.
For us this auto system now manifests as hiccups.
What triggers hiccups? Actually can't remember... | 18 | |
ELI5:How do cities know how big to make the sewers for future growth? | Say a sewer system exists but a new development is going to be built. How does the city know how big to make the sewers? And how does it know if another development will occur down the road in 5 years, necessitating an even bigger sewer? Do they have to go and dig up the entire line to make it bigger all the way tot... | 1,410 | Cities usually makes plans further down the line. This is also why developers have to apply to the city planning commission before they build anything. If the utilities are not designed to handle the new development they will get denied and will have to wait for the utilities to be expanded. The city and developers are... | 386 |
[General] Are there any cases of 'a handful of average people saving the day' that are actually known by the populace they saved? | Playing a ton of video games, I'm actually curious whether there're any examples of a ragtag group of people who somehow save the day, and it's known by everyone. FF7 is the one example that springs to mind, or Star Wars. | 26 | The four hobbits in Lord of the Rings are not only crucial players in the War of the Ring, but return to the Shire to lead a rebellion there. They left as indistinguishable hobbits from many others, but returned heroes, and proved their mettle to free their homeland. | 35 |
I don't think we should "respect" the beliefs of religious nut jobs. In fact, I think we should ridicule and reject them until their change their beliefs. CMV | Obviously, I'm an atheist. I'm one of those guys Bill O'Reilly is thinking about when he claims there is a "War on Christmas". For the record, I think it's okay if you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever - as long as it's in the spirit of taking a day off, hanging with family, stuffing your face with turkey and... | 28 | Your premise supposes that if we ridicule and reject them, then they will change their beliefs. In fact, those actions will only affirm their suspicions that you are a self-important asshole. If you treat them with respect then you are more likely to have a relationship and a conversation and change their worldview. If... | 49 |
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