post_title stringlengths 5 304 | post_text stringlengths 0 37.5k | post_scores int64 15 83.1k | comment_text stringlengths 200 9.61k | comment_score int64 10 43.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|
[James Bond] Besides recovering from his injuries does 007 receive any downtime between his assignments or does he start another one right after the last? | 41 | Think of 007 more as a pointed instrument meant to finish a job or to express Her Majesty's will in the most express physical terms.
007 is only activated for missions that require his particular skill set, namely his license to kill and general stealth and mayhem causing. It is one reason he always identifies himsel... | 66 | |
[Discworld] What makes the River Ankh so polluted? | It is said that the river is so polluted running through Ankh-Morpork that you can walk across it, and that it's the only river where you can draw a chalk outline.
However, in our world, such pollution has only come as the result of industrialization, where factories, sewage systems and large scale agricultural runof... | 61 | The entire Sto Plains drains into the Ankh. While that's mostly farmland and small cities, there are still some areas there affected by the Mage Wars.
When rain falls on Sto Helit, water flows into the Ankh. When rain falls on the Forest of Skund, you get the magical equivalent of toxic waste. Sometimes it's more or l... | 60 |
[WH40K] Has the Imperium ever performed exterminatus on an Eldar Craftworld? | I mean if their goal is to purge the Xenos, why not find the Craftworlds and obliterate them? | 31 | They have, but the consequences of doing so aren't worth it.
There have been 3 known attacks on Craftworlds by the Imperium. One resulted in the loss of an entire sector fleet, and was unsuccessful. The second, while successful, caused extreme loses and the counter attack wiped out multiple chapters. The third, had i... | 35 |
ELI5 why are wooden barrels "barrel-shaped" (i.e., wider across the middle than at the top and bottom) rather than cylindrical? Wouldn't cylindrical containers be easier to build, store, and transport? | 65 | Barrels that are full are VERY heavy. That's a lot of liquid. So you want things that are easier to handle, not just move. And barrels have that bulge that makes they way better for this than a cylinder that's shaped like the cardboard in a toilet paper roll.
First, a barrel that has a rounded-outward middle is actua... | 117 | |
During its creation, how exactly did the Earth cool down? | As far as I've known the heat energy from the creation of Earth has to go somewhere for Earth itself to cooldown. Where did all that heat go? | 73 | Radiation going into space.
Every object will emit electromagnetic radiation, with the spectrum and intensity depending on the temperature of the object. This is called thermal radiation. On the other hand, in the solar system objects also receive radiation from the sun. Ultimately, an equillibrium will be reached whe... | 37 |
Is it possible for other 'big bangs' to have happened outside of our universe? | Our universe is inconceivably large, and is constantly expanding. We have no idea what is outside our universe, and so we assume there is nothing. But I was wondering if it would be possible for another big bang, or several other big bangs, to have taken place in that space.
thanks /r/AskScience xoxoxoxo | 22 | In standard cosmology (that is, practically everything serious) there is no such thing as "outside of our universe". Universe is taken to be all there is. So, if you want reasonably scientific answers, it (usually) makes zero sense to talk about it. Otherwise it's just science *fiction*. | 13 |
ELI5: The "It's my body" argument for pro-choice. | [DISCLAIMER THIS US NOT AN ABORTION DEBATE THIS IS INFORMATIVE PURPOSES ONLY]
Why is it okay for a women to say "It's my body" to justify an abortion? Because the fetus living inside her is NOT her body, rather it's just dependent on her body to survive. Like a parasite it's a separate organism. | 30 | In the same way that you're not legally required to give a kidney to someone to save their life. In the US, we generally have the right to choose what medical procedures we will have, even if someone else's life depends on us. | 102 |
ELI5: How do screens smoothly scale resolutions that aren't multiples of each other? E.g. playing 1080p or 720p video on a 900p screen, or reducing my phone's resolution from 1440p to 1080p? | 15 | There are complex algorithms that will combine pixels with their neighbors in certain ways. If you have a higher resolution screen being scaled down such that a pixel should be 70% one color and 30% a different color, the calculation would yield a combined color of the appropriate proportions. | 20 | |
[Naruto] Do evil ninja have to develop special creepy techniques, or do ninja who naturally develop creepy techniques just embrace being evil? | 101 | It goes both ways. Take for instance the 'creepy' snake thing that Oricmaru does. He used to be good kind of sort of, but he's always had this ability. In that same vein he's a known creator and studier of forbidden Jutsu.
Plus really those who create a forbidden jutsu, just don't do it, or choose to do it and be labe... | 48 | |
[The Matrix] What if Neo had helped the agents in taking down Morpheus? | [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D7cPH7DHgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D7cPH7DHgA) You probably know this scene. Now what would have happened if Neo accepted Agent Smiths offer? | 27 | Every move the machines made was by design, to push Neo into accepting his role as The One so that he would eventually choose to enter the source. They knew he had a problem with authority, and that he would defy them no matter what they asked. Their real intent in that scene was to push Neo even closer to Morpheus, or... | 31 |
CMV: Psychological Disorders are more common today not because we are better at identifying them, but because we as a society are more prone to coddling the fragile, coupled with the increased value of being a victim | I'd like to say it is due to both, but from my personal experience I see that more people are claiming to have a disorder because being a victim makes them more valuable/important. (ie. my identity is strengthened because I have more concrete facts about myself; and I am a victim, therefore I matter)
Dale Carnegie ela... | 27 | You realize that psychological disorders still carry a pretty heavy stigma with them don't you? You get judged for it, it may hurt prospective friendships, it may hurt your ability to get a job. Why do you think that most people would choose to be marked with this stigma just for some ambitious victimhood status? Why ... | 39 |
Training in asking Socratic questions. | How can I practice the skill of asking Socratic questions? How do I keep myself from bullshitting as I practice? I get the feeling that working with other people in the flesh is 100% required for both of these, and that the Internet is a waste of time for anything (curses!), is this true? | 17 | If you are referring to the Socratic Method as it is practiced in the dialogues of Plato, then reading those dialogues (especially the early, so-called “Socratic” ones) is likely the best place to start. You might train yourself in the Socratic Method the same way the youths around Socrates did, by observing it in acti... | 12 |
[Star Wars] I am a formerly Republican, now Separatist Senator during the Clone Wars and one of the other Senators is proposing a bill to invade a planet protected by a Republican treaty. How should I act? | Recently, I have joined the Separatist Alliance, not because I wanted to but more out of necessity.
My people were starving and the Republic Senate did not convince me that they could send help on time. Currently, one of my fellow Senators is proposing a bill to invade a neutral planet. That planet, located in the Out... | 33 | Well as a member of the Confederacy, you should realise that you are no longer bound by the Republic's treaties. Also, as an Outer Rim world, it is already likely under the jurisdiction of the Confederacy, whether they know it or not.
Your dilemma seems to be based mainly around a legal system you have chosen not to r... | 27 |
Why so many organic substances containing NO2 groups are explosive? | 224 | The N-N triple bond is immensely strong - it's the second strongest diatomic bond.
Forming these triple bonds releases a lot of energy. If you have a compound that contains a lot of nitrogen, you can cause it to release a lot of energy by decomposing into N2 and other products. NO2 groups serve two functions - stabili... | 94 | |
ELI5: if humans know stuff by instinct I.e. babies sucking a teet for milk, why can't more information be given to us in this way? | 20 | Because it’s not essential for survival and/or too complex. Instinctive behaviors have a survival value; babies who didn’t have suck reflex didn’t survive. They are not behaviors that are transmitted by an external action (I.e. a mother can’t wish for her baby to be born with knowledge of Pythagoras’ theorem) but behav... | 28 | |
I believe that the world needs the United States more than the United States needs the world. CMV. | Without the United States of America (USA) policing the world, the world would find itself worse off than it currently is with the USA not policing the world.
Reasons why USA policing the world is necessary:
Europe can not be relied upon to provide stable leadership for the world. This is not Europe's fault, there a... | 21 | >China must be contained by somebody. China often argues that it is "rising peacefully"; however, China's conduct in the South China Seas disproves that, especially when when one looks at this map. Let's also not forget about what China calls the Diaoyu Islands and Japan Calls the Senkaku. China has become more and ... | 48 |
ELI5: Why does the price of name brand foods vary at different stores but the price of electronics such as video game consoles are the same at every store? | 122 | Food is fairly cheap to produce and the markup is pretty huge depending on the food. A bag of chips that costs 50 cents to make will sell for 2 bucks. That's a sweet margin. And it gives room for discount stores to cut prices and have sales, etc.
Additionally the price of food often fluctuates. The 2 dollar price is ... | 63 | |
ELI5: Why do we get earwax??? | 22 | earwax, or cerumen, is produced in the inner portion of the ear canal. It migrates out of the ear canal, and falls out. It does this to clean the ear canal of any small debri and bacteria and to an extent keeps water from pooling inside the ear canal. Cerumen has antibacterial properties that can kill bacteria trying ... | 45 | |
ELI5: The logic behind raising taxes for the poor and cutting them for the rich? | Thanks for the answers! It makes a lot more sense now. | 382 | The logic, albeit flawed, is that the "poor" (who generally work for the "rich") don't pay their fair share (to an extent this is true), and that reducing taxes on the rich encourages them to invest it into things that create jobs for the poor. The idea is that by making the rich richer, wealth will "trickle down" to t... | 434 |
I'm uncomfortable with my husband visiting strip clubs. Please CMV. | There have been a number of posts devoted to porn, but I'm hoping for a slightly different perspective. Some background: I'm a very sexually open, adventurous person. My husband and I have a very playful sex life, and luckily our libidos are similarly high, so the frequency is great. We are both open about using porn w... | 25 | I'd actually say it's perfectly valid for you to feel uncomfortable, and that your husband should at least be aware of that.
I'd also say that CMV is a terrible place to get relationship advice, and that you should post this in /r/relationships. We can't engage in rational discourse about a stranger's marriage. If yo... | 79 |
[Marvel Comics] How Advanced is Tony Stark's Tech Compared to the Rest of the Universe? | Including, but not limited to the Endo-Sym armor, the shiny new Model 52, and larger constructs like Sol's Hammer.
1) How does it compare to our universe
2) Compared to the rest of Marvel Comics earth
3) Compared to alien species like the Badoon, Shiar, Kree, Skrulls
4) Compared to DC Earth | 64 | > How does it compare to our universe
He could revolutionise almost every aspect of our lives, from prosthetics to energy generation, to medicine.
> Compared to the rest of Marvel Comics earth
Near the top, but still gets edged out by Latverian and Wakandan tech
>Compared to alien species like th... | 38 |
ELI5 Are milk substitutes just several plant juices that happen to be white/made to look that way or is there a reason to call them milk? | 22 | The concept is to have the salt, fat, and protein levels match the target (cow's milk). Most almond milks are very close, perhaps a little low on protein, so they work the same in some cooking operations. It's not just a drink alternative. | 25 | |
ELI5: Can a pilot traveling faster than the speed of sound hear his own engines behind him? | I'm guessing he'd feel the vibrations and the vibrations might make some noise, but does the pilot experience some sort of doppler effect from the engine noise as he approaches the speed of sound and then silence once he breaks the sound barrier? | 33 | A little.
The speed of sound in solids is faster than in air, so some of the engine noise will be conducted by the plane itself.
> does the pilot experience some sort of doppler effect from the engine noise as he approaches the speed of sound and then silence once he breaks the sound barrier?
Yup. The engine noi... | 23 |
ELI5: The theory that we're a computer simulation | 37 | Another one that others haven't mentioned is quite a simple argument.
1) Do you believe at some point in there future computers will be good enough that we can run simulations have people in it?
2) Would it be an integral part of that simulation that those in the simulation do not know they're in one?
3) Has more th... | 28 | |
ELI5: Why is it that if something bothered me really badly and had me thinking about it all day, do I wake up and feel completely fine and not as effected? | How does 'just sleep on it' work?
Also this is more for day to day issue or occurrences. I'm sure more serious problems don't just go away when you sleep (I.e. loved ones passing away, unemployment etc) | 26 | Something only is a problem when you make it one, if you are fixated on a bad situation you will focus on the bad parts, not the good parts.
eg: you get fired today, your day is ruined and you spend most of your day pondering about why, how, really???
You go to bed, sleep, shut off the worrying part of your mind, you... | 14 |
I believe the vast majority of libertarians care more about money than people, I want to have some faith restored in humanity, please CMV | I identified myself as a libertarian for a short period of time, but after considering and analyzing the consequences of my beliefs, I went in the completely opposite direction (my political opinions fall most in line with the US Green Party's platform). I was also appalled by the beliefs of many of the libertarians I ... | 73 | The libertarian ideology is not about money, it is about freedom from coercion. The ideology favors individual liberty and upholds individual rights at all cost - generally held to be up to the point where that individual's rights infringe on another individual's rights. This makes the individual the most important ent... | 51 |
ELI5:Why do you die when you are injected with air? | When someone injects another person with a needle, and it is filled with air, why is it that someone would die from that by heart attack (or cardiac arrest?). | 20 | Air causes bubbles, which are surprisingly strong and difficult to force through tiny blood vessels. As the vessel gets narrower, the bubble gets pinched against the sides and it forms a plug. When the plug is in a critical place, like a heart or brain blood vessel, plugging it up can kill you. | 17 |
ELI5: What is happening when i stare at the same spot(usually in an already dark place) and all remaining light slowly fades? | 20 | Eyes use 2 types of receptors, one type for brightness and one type for colors (there are three distinct subtypes for colors funfact: theres a mutation where people have 4 types of color receptors - tetrachromatism)
These receptors only work for a few milliseconds before the chemicals, participating in the chemical r... | 12 | |
ELI5:Why hasn't there been a viable 3rd Party in American politics to date? | 253 | It's because of the "first past the post" method of determining the winner. Whoever gets the most votes wins, rather than the candidate having to secure a simple majority of 50% plus one. Third parties end up skewing the results and acting as "spoilers". There have been successful third parties — the Republican Part... | 165 | |
ELI5: How did currency exchange rates form in the very beginning? | I was wondering how exchange rates formed in the beginning. As in, when the first two countries came together to exchange a monetary deal, how did they know how much of their money equated to the other countries money. | 40 | Countries often initially had their currencies locked to a precious metal (typically gold or silver). For example pound sterling (GBP) derives its name from when 20 shillings was literally a pound of sterling silver, under Anglo-saxon rule. These are pretty easily exchangeable because the international value of that co... | 31 |
ELI5: How does super glue (or any such products) don’t stick to the equipments making them? | 1,006 | It's tough.
I worked in a place that made a isocyanate glue for our products.
We used a ton of replaceable plastic items in the production line. Plastic buckets, replaceable hoses, etc.
We tried to limit the availability of the reactive agent (water in the air, in our case) that the glue comes in contact with.... | 952 | |
ELI5: Why does Congress want control of net neutrality so badly? | 81 | The telecom industry has made significant donations to help elect or re-elect many, many Congressmen. The telecom industry also stands to lose a huge amount of money if net neutrality continues. The Congressmen, who want to continue to receive their donations, are fighting against net neutrality to save their donors'... | 85 | |
ELI5 Why do I never hear thunder during a snowstorm? | I've never heard a snowstorm with thunder before. Is there something about snow that prevents it from being like rain in that lightning and thunder can accompany it? | 18 | Thunder is caused by lightning discharging. Generally, lightning requires wet air to conduct the electrical potential from high up in the sky to the ground. Dry air isn't very good at conducting electricity.
During the winter, when it's very cold, the air cannot hold that much water. Most of the water will condense an... | 10 |
ELI5: How does a computer turn itself on when it's off during a restart cycle? | 25 | The CMOS battery has nothing to do with it. The other response is from someone with a little knowledge but not enough...! The CMOS battery just keeps the BIOS settings from being wiped, which includes the system date and time, when you power off.
A "soft" reboot doesn't power everything down. A "hard" reboot does, and... | 17 | |
Why do comets leave tails behind them when the sun's heat melts the ice? What slows the melted ice so that it trails behind the comet? | I would think, given Newton's first law of motion, that the comet might just develop a cloud of debris that moves with the comet instead of that debris trailing behind the comet. | 45 | They are blown away from the sun by Solar Wind; the sun ejects little particles which strike the comet and take little pieces with them. The tail does not trail behind the comet as it moves; it always points away from the sun. | 26 |
[IT] What is pennywise, what is his backstory? | 232 | In the Stephen King multiverse there exists an indeterminate number of universes. There also exists empty space between these universes. Many monsters and demons are born and reside in that space between the universes. *IT*'s true form, the Deadlights, reside in that space between the universes known as the Todash dark... | 469 | |
ELI5: How can you tell if a large body of water is frozen enough to walk safely on? | I'm thinking a lake or something like that. I've never lived in an area where it snowed, and always wondered.
| 19 | There's no surefire way to test it. Most people who go out on frozen lakes do it annually and they just 'know' when the time is right. And even they get it wrong sometimes.
For what it's worth, all it takes is a few inches of solid ice to support an automobile. Corollary: all it takes is one feeder creek to make a ... | 14 |
Why do philosophers say that Immanual Kant’s ideas were like the Copernican Revolution of Philosophy? | In science, the Copernican revolution was the insight that forever changed how we viewed ourselves in the universe. We began to view ourselves more humbly and realized the universe did not revolve around us.
Why do people say Kant’s ideas were like the Copernican Revolution of Philosophy? From what I know about Kant... | 163 | Its just a metaphor, or equivalence. The Copernican revolution was the paradigm shift in cosmology away from geocentrism. Kant's work was (according to this formulation) a paradigm shift in philosophy - especially in epistemology.
What was the Kantian paradigm shift? Instead of imagining our cognition conforms to expe... | 108 |
ELI5: Why does your face physically change (E.g. Get puffy or bags under the eyes) when you get little sleep? | 129 | This may be caused by the blood vessels under your eye. When you don't get enough rest, the blood vessels under your eyes can become dilated, bringing them closer to the surface and causing the area underneath the eyes to swell (causing puffy eyes) and/or appear purple, blue or even blackish in color (which causes dark... | 27 | |
Should I Major in Economics if I Just Want a Bachelor's Degree? | I'm a sophomore in college and might major in Economics (BA). I've read online that those with just a Bachelors in Economics don't get paid, on average, that high. If that's the case, are there chances that someone with a Bachelors in Economics can get paid $90,000 or more? On the other hand, others have told me that a... | 31 | Supplement your economics major with either statistics or computer science and learn to code. Economics will teach you how to think about problems, stats or comp sci-fi will give you the tools to solve them. Very employable combo right there | 25 |
How does drano unclog drains? | 32 | The major ingredients of Drano are sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and, in many cases, aluminum flakes (Al). When dissolved in water, the NaOH reacts with Al to form hydrogen gas bubbles, which help dislodge clogs. The NaOH solution is also strongly caustic (highly alkaline), which helps chemically degrade proteins (into small... | 62 | |
If we can see 13.2 billion light years away with the Ultra Deep Field, does that mean that the universe was that big 13.2 billion years ago? | So first let me say I am so excited to find this page, I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time.
So the universe started x number of years ago (13.6 billion?) and so that is the limit of what we would be able to see. Ultra deep field I believe saw up to around 13.2? Billion light years away (essential... | 166 | So the current understanding is that the universe is infinite, and expanding at an accelerating rate. This might be counter-intuitive, but it's best to think of it as "everything is always getting further away from everything else" rather than as a bubble with a fixed edge that's expanding into... something.
This mean... | 74 |
ELI5: 2045 Avatar Project | Can someone explain the 2045 initiative? What are the goals? How will they achieve the goals? | 148 | If physicalism (the belief that all phenomena are physical in nature) is true, then consciousness — which seems so very unphysical — is also a physical system, or is caused by one.
Now, what constitutes ‘you’ as a self-aware being? Is it your body? Or is it your consciousness, memories, mind etc? Most of us identify t... | 131 |
ELI5: Why does alcohol make your heart beat faster, make you out of breath and sometimes blush? | 104 | Alcohol makes your blood vessels dilate (they get wider so the area through which blood can travel is larger). This answers 2 of the parts of your question. It means that the blood vessels take up more space, so blood vessels close to the skin get even closer to the skin, giving off some heat to the local area and mayb... | 47 | |
ELI5: When people are talking about something unpleasant, why do they laugh for no reason while doing so? | A good example is in this video:
http://youtu.be/YsV4y905Xdo?t=1m59s
She's basically talking about how her girls' lemonade stand got shut down because city ordinance didn't approve of it. Almost everyone agrees this was a tragedy for crushing the children's dreams, but the MOM OF THE CHILDREN laugh about it right at ... | 62 | I think people turn to laughter to avoid displaying vulnerability. They don't want to cry, for instance, so they push out a laugh instead.
I have a coworker who has taken this so far that she laughs almost every sentence, as sort of a defense mechanism. | 38 |
If i put water in a microwave it heats up. If I put plastic in a microwave it doesn't heat up. But I assume power draw is the same. Where does that energy go? | 35 | The energy is always spent in microwaves (or usually macrowaves) and they bounce around in the microwave. Any such radiation that doesn't get adsorbed by what you put in the microwave eventually gets sunk into the metal lining the entire inside of the microwave (including the inside of the glass panel) and just pushes... | 11 | |
ELI5: Why are MRI's so huge? why didn't they get smaller in size like computers did?. | Computers went from the size of a room to fit in our pockets, so why are MRI's any different?. | 15 | MRI's require a strong magnetic field around your body. Making a strong magnetic field requires a large magnet. In some cases, the technology has gotten better and there are "open MRI" machines where what can be made smaller has been, and you no longer travel through a tunnel to get scanned. At the very least thoug... | 12 |
[Star Wars] With No sith and one jedi and a whole bunch of force users coming into powers what does the galaxy look like 100 or 1000 years after The Rise of Skywalker. | Not a question of if the film was good or bad but accepting it as "historical fact"
given we have a Single jedi on one backwoods world and what looks to be a ton of force sensitives and force users coming into powers what does the galaxy look like 100 or 1000 years
Rey Can't train them all. | 475 | I'd like to see 'The Jedi' and 'The Sith' as simply 2 factions in several 'Force' factions that have risen up, they're everything from pure good, through the shades of grey to pure evil. With the deaths of Sidious and Luke Skywalker, good and evil factions alike can say "The Jedi//Sith failed/stopped being a thing for ... | 277 |
[Deadpool] Where did Wade Wilson get those swords, and who taught him how to use them? | [movie] They penetrate into concrete and deflect axe blows from a mildly superhuman guy without breaking, so these definitely aren't run-of-the-mill katanas. And Deadpool is highly proficient with them, but swordsmanship isn't part of any North American special forces training that I'm aware of. He wasn't carrying th... | 337 | Good question. Mix bag of answers here. Also makes some assumptions for the movie.
So historically Deadpool's Katanas are only special because they actually tie into his suit. Utilizing a function of his suit creates an energy field around his Katanas that make them more durable and able to cut through diamond, thoug... | 408 |
[Super Mario Sunshine] Why wasn't Luigi invited on the trip to Delfino Island? | It seems plenty of Toads were, along with Toadsworth and Peach. I can't imagine Luigi deciding to pass up a relaxing tropical island getaway, especially with the crap he has to put up with in his day to day life. He can't have been busy with his mansion then as Mario beats him to the mansion, so either Luigi's Mansion ... | 80 | Maybe Luigi was invited, and just decided not to go?
Think about it from his perspective, whenever he tags along with Mario somewhere he gets dragged into some BS adventure having to save Mario's girlfriend (or Mario himself, in the case of the Mansion). He figured that this "relaxing island vacation" would be anythin... | 80 |
[40k] Ork technology runs on low-level reality warping - Ork guns, for example, are random collections of junk that only 'work' because the Orks believe they do. Is there some critical mass required for this? If enough Orks on a planet are killed, will the guns used by the survivors stop working? | 49 | The ability of an Ork to project a Gestalt field expands to the shoota it is using, thus a shoota will always work as long as there's an ork to pull the trigga. A shoota is something small and orky enough for the user to always project a field upon.
An example of an Ork construct no longer functioning due to the ab... | 66 | |
[DC] Earth destroys itself in nuclear war while Superman is off planet, what does he do next? | So everyone one on earth is dead and the planet has been rendered uninhabitable for centuries. Earth wars caused its own destruction so Clark doesn't have anyone to like darksied to take out his rage on. What does he do? Does he join a Corp? if so which one? Does he just find a different planet with a native species he... | 247 | If any human Green lanterns are around, they'd probably take him in as they mourn over their loss. He'd definitely take up farming on some isolated planet for a while until Darkseid comes by, revives Earth, then threatens to destroy it again or something. | 311 |
CMV: If I can't buy a gun without a background check at a gunstore, I shouldn't be able to buy a gun without a background check at a gunstore/private purchase | I'm pro-gun but I don't see a valid reason for being able to purchase a gun without a background check.
A simple solution would be having to get pre-approved at the entrance at a gunshow or have someone stand around and approve people for gun purchases.
If for example you are selling/giving a gun to your best friend... | 837 | >Someone who has a criminal record and a list of mental illnesses couldn't be able to purchase a gun at a gun store legally, but he is able to buy a gun from a gun store legally.
No, he's not. You have a misunderstanding of the "gun show loophole".
When selling a gun as an FFL, there *has to be a* 4473 and a back... | 241 |
[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers] How important is it that the teenagers have "attitude"? | 53 | It's critically important for them to have attitude because zordon wanted the kids to be outsiders, the kind of kid that can turn up missing without raising too many questions. The kind of kid that no one would believe when they claimed to be involved in an inappropriate relationship with an extraterrestrial column of... | 72 | |
ELI5: Why are we still not able to accurately predict the weather? | Why with all of the technology advancements and computer processing capability do we still consistently get it wrong? | 71 | The weather is a very very very complicated system thats why. Theres no simple formula. Its a chaotic system. A small change in one input can radically change the predictions.
That said weve honestly gotten pretty good at predicting the weather a day or two out. | 36 |
ELI5: How does something like a complex theoretical equation get turned into a real world application? | This is such a brain-smoother for me that I don't even know how to really easily word the question, so I'll try to give an example of what I mean:
In some books I've read in the past, there have been things where they've said stuff along the lines of "If we figure out the necessary equation, we could potentially fold ... | 72 | >real world application?
Let's... Use a real world application as an example, rather than FTL travel.
Let's say you want to build a wall, and to prevent it from falling over you want it to be vertical.
If there isn't any wind, you can hang something heavy from a string to show you what vertical is, but if you'd... | 43 |
ELI5: Why didn't the Ent, Dwarves, and other races help in the battle for Middle Earth in LOTR. | I've often wondered why the other races of middle earth didn't help in the battle against Sauron. Also, why didn't the other wizards help (I know there are only a few, but still).
And While I'm at it. Why did Aragorn release the Dead Men of Dunharrow before storming the black gate?
| 184 | Aaragorn released the dead because that is what he promised them he would do. He could have tried to back out of the deal and try to command them to continue as their king, but that would be a dick move. | 69 |
[Star Wars] Why is technology so advanced, yet so seemingly outdated? | 59 | Unequal distribution of technology and resources. Xenophobia and limitations due to biological differences in adapting technology. Prolonged periods of technological regression from war and calamities. | 62 | |
ELI5: How it profits cable companies to not unbundle their channels? Why don't they just charge high prices for the few people want individually and cut all the crap channels that no one watches, wouldn't that lower their costs? | 18 | It's not the cable company that profits, rather, it's the networks. Many of those networks are owned by a handful of companies. They require the cable company to sell it as a bundle to ensure that their less popular networks get channel space.
Remember that your local cable company offers little if any of their own c... | 13 | |
CMV: People complaining about the Electoral College are missing the point of why it exists | To start off, I am liberal and yes, I'm bummed out by the presidential election. I'm also from Idaho, however, and I'm used to living in a state that is a smaller voice in the crowd because of our population. Part of that is fair, we don't have 10/20/30 million people, so a state with not even 2 million shouldn't be le... | 44 | This is fundamentally a question of how you think the American voting population should be viewed - as a collection of states, or as a collection of people.
While the "collection of states" view certainly has validity, it's much less important than it was when the country was founded, when communication and transporta... | 90 |
ELI5: At times of water scarcity or contamination (say Flint), why can't we make water using hydrogen and oxygen? | Not a chemistry whiz, but hydrogen and oxygen, in whatever form required, could create water, right? Or other chemical reactions that leave water as a by-product? We can harness nuclear energy, surely we can do this? | 19 | This is a little like asking "If polar bears are made of meat, and we can eat meat, why not keep polar bears around with us so we can eat them if we need to?"
Like a pet polar bear, hydrogen is extremely dangerous. Like a pet polar bear you would need special containment systems in order to carry hydrogen around with... | 36 |
[Star Trek] How do officers from Starfleet and other races understand how to use foreign computer systems almost immediately? | There are some exceptions, like when Data had to work out how to use a computer. And when the DS9 crew spent a while training to learn the Jem Ha'dar system.
But for the most part they seem to be able to walk straight onto a ship of a species they've never encountered and know how to use a system they've never seen ... | 38 | At the turn of the 21st century earth had already amassed dozens of computer programming languages, hardware schemas, database structures, and other complex computer systems.
By the 23rd century, imagine how many more distinct systems that humanity alone must have designed.
Starfleet has access to not just all of h... | 24 |
What causes hair to turn grey? | 4,511 | Pigment cells called melanocytes naturally die as people age. These cells are part of the hair follicle which produces the individual hair strands. When the melanocytes die, the pigment that affected the color of the hair will be present in a less or non existent concentration, which makes hair translucent or, when cou... | 3,145 | |
[Hellraiser/ event horizon] are there nice pleasure dimensions too? | Like where people are just eating ice cream and having orgasms and riding roller coasters and hitting home runs all day long? Why do we only find the fucked up chaos torture dimensions? | 35 | It seems like when humanity opens an interdimensional door, it's the chaotic entities that most eagerly clamber through it. They pounce on any opportunity to expand because they're not content alone. To even approach satisfaction, they need to be torturing, changing, mutilating, converting, enslaving, subverting, or ... | 27 |
When two stars merge, why is the mass of the newly formed star less than the sum of the two stars that created it? | I was reading [this article](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141209-starstruck-monster-star-merger-space-astronomy-science/) which says:
> The two hot, blue stars, weighing in at 38 and 32 times the mass of our sun, complete orbits of each other in less than 1.2 days. That is so close that the team ... | 17 | This could very well just be a typo in the press release. On the other hand, it might be the authors of the paper being conservative in their estimates when they gave the interviews for those articles.
I read the actual paper, and the authors make no predictions for the merger event other than to say in the very last ... | 11 |
ELI5: why does it takes 7 months to reach Mars but 2 years to come back? | If humans are to travel to Mars using today's technology, it would take them 7 months to reach Mars and another 2 years to come back. Why does it takes longer to come back? Source: strip the cosmos. Saw it on discovery but they didn't really explained why it took longer. | 37 | The Earth and Mars are both orbiting the sun. Earth makes more trips around the sun then Mars does in a similar time period. As a result if you launch at the perfect time to transfer to Mars, by the time the craft got to Mars, the Earth would have moved out of position for the perfect trip back.
So you either have to... | 39 |
ELI5: Why do we need to attach one negative cable to bare metal when jumping a car? | 17 | Lead acid car batteries can emit hydrogen gas (hydrogen sulfide typically) under certain conditions which is flammable. Since we are taught to attach the negative last, it usually creates a spark. Attaching the negative to a point of the car away from the battery puts distance between the spark and a potential (albeit ... | 23 | |
Why not hurl the Parker solar probe into the sun at the end of it's mission instead of letting crash into Venus? | I know at the end of the mission, the solar probe is supposed to be crashed into Venus (or so I think). So, if it's just going to be trashed, why not hurl it directly into the sun and continually take measurements and send data so as to see how close to the sun the probe can actually get before all gadgets stop working... | 149 | In terms of the amount of fuel required to get somewhere, the sun is actually the hardest thing to reach in the solar system. The Earth is orbiting the sun at about 30 km/s, and given the size of the sun in comparison to the distances involved you would have to cancel essentially all of that velocity in order to hit th... | 157 |
[Star Wars] How long would Han Solo live in carbonite? | Jaba seemed to want to keep him like that indefinitely. How long would he have lasted? Would he last forever? Could he Philip J Fry himself forward in time for thousands of years? | 207 | If they were using a proper carbon freezing unit, Han likely would have kept for decades or longer. But they weren't.
Before hyperdrives were a thing, carbon freezing was used to keep starship crews alive long enough to reach their destinations. Of course, the process was rough, and it was retired ASAP; spacers would ... | 177 |
ELI5: Why is internet.org a bad thing for India? | People are commenting that this is a bad thing. But surely a small slice of the Internet is better than no Internet? | 70 | Do you understand why net neutrality is important? Because that's key.
**Net neutrality in general**
In short, common carriers such as phone companies and mail carriers don't normally discriminate based on who is sending or receiving traffic. If they get more traffic, that's good for them because they can charge for ... | 66 |
ELI5 Why didn't humans develop the ability to store protein? | Since our ancestors relied on hunting to survive (before learning how to farm etc) and there wasn't a prey to hunt Everytime they would've benefited from being able to store protein to keep their muscles so that they can hunt effectively right? So why didn't we? | 19 | Muscle mass doesn't help you hunt. Look at any hunter gatherers around the world and they're all very slight and built for long range endurance not raw strength. Cleverness makes you a good hunter and our brains require a tremendous amount of energy to function properly, and the most efficient form of stored biological... | 41 |
CMV: I don't care about endangered species | 16 | The problem is when species go extinct that support a whole ecosystem.
Most people only care about extinction of an animal if it's cute. There are whole campaigns to save the pandas, tigers, polar bears, etc. Ultimately it's not that big of a deal if these species go extinct. As you said, species go extinct if they ca... | 34 | |
[Doctor Who] How is The Doctor (and companions) viewed to the peoples they save? | We hear time and time again how the Doctor's enemies view the Time Lord. However, how do the people the Doctor (and companions) save view the Time Lord - particularly regular joes? | 21 | As a warrior. It came up in the devil's run episode, a girl who's people had been saved by the doctor joined one of the universe's greatest militaries for the sole purpose of meeting the doctor and it worked. In fact those people word for warrior was doctor.
While he may argue that he's non violent and doesn't like to... | 16 |
ELI5: What is the difference between bandwidth and download speed? | 19 | bandwidth is how much data can go through the pipe the way you're trying to use it.
trying to upload? your uploadspeed is your bandwidth
trying to download from a source providing the data at high enough speeds? your downloadspeed is your bandwidth
trying to download a huge file from your friends private homepage he... | 15 | |
When someone is sentenced to death, why are they kept in death row for years? | 727 | Because they're appealing their case. The government is very lenient about allowing death penalty appeals to go forward (and even *requires* them a lot of the time), because it's impossible to undo or compensate for a mistaken execution. | 719 | |
[Star Wars] What kind of active maintenance does Luke's hand require? | Does he need to lubricate his hand's joints? Every day or just every once in a while?
Does it ever need to be recharged? Any servomotors to be replaced, etc.? | 47 | Technology in the galaxy can last a really long time with little to no maintenance. You can find ships that are centuries old and robots can last for decades. Seeing how he doesn't have a lot of access to tools where he's hidden in The Last Jedi, I'd say just keeping it from too much percussion is enough for it to last... | 32 |
[Team Fortress 2] How have half these guys kept their jobs? | I'll admit, a good number of the mercs can have their places on the team justified by either uniqueness or demeanor: Engineer is an unparalleled multi-disciplinary scientist, Medic's skilled enough to literally resurrect the dead, and Sniper, Heavy, and Spy are all professional (if quirky) and don't usually go out to ... | 32 | Because they get results.
The Scout hurts people like grass grows, birds fly, and the sun shines. He excels at quickly getting to the people who need to be hurt, and then hurting them.
The Demoman's a good demoman because if he were a bad demoman, he wouldn't be sitting here talking about it.
The Pyro is insa... | 43 |
[Dungeons of Dredmor] I can pick up this boulder drop plate trap and carry it around. It functions wherever I place it. Does this mean there are boulders hanging from the ceiling to drop on every square in the dungeon? | And by extension, diggle hell and Dredmor's realm. | 16 | The trap is a combination of mechanical and magical devices. Tripping the mechanical trap plate causes a magical portal to open at the nearest surface which is linked to a portal under a boulder.
(Sorta like Portal) | 10 |
ELI5: Why is Russia so homophobic? | Why is Russia so anti-gay? It seems to have come out of no where. | 594 | Former russki here.
There are three main reasons why Russia is homophobic.
1) Russia is a country *far* from the forefront of modern psychology. It has historically viewed homosexuality to be a *psychological problem*, akin to disease. Russian mentality would dictate its easier to "lock these people up" than to unl... | 1,011 |
Why can a baby live on milk only, but not an adult? | What do adults need that babies don't? Or would it technically be possible for an adult to live on milk alone? | 18 | Babies can live on breast milk which contains far more fat than cow's milk. In some countries children as old as 4 or 5 still consume breast milk.
So... when you ask - are you asking about this are you asking if an adult could live on human breast milk? | 10 |
[Netflix MCU] Where does Nicolas Cage get his name from? | In the real world, Nicolas Coppola goes by the stage name Nicolas Cage in tribute towards Luke Cage, a fictional comic book character.
In the Netflix Marvel world, Luke Cage is a real person, who first appeared in the public eye as a hero of Harlem about thirty years after Nicolas Cage became famous as an actor. Wher... | 54 | His name was either always Nick Cage, or he picked the name for unrelated reasons. Perhaps a different obscure comic book character. Or Johnny Cage, from Mortal Kombat (who must have been a pre-existing character for Nick Cage to have a career in the 80s with that name, since the video game came out in the 90s).
Jus... | 66 |
ELI5:Why do I have so much trouble staying awake in class yet the moment class is over I no longer feel sleepy? | So I'm sitting in lecture and it is sooo hard to keep my eyes open when the professor is talking yet as soon as class is over I instantly feel awake. Why is that? | 72 | Because sleep is directly tied with brain activity. When you are sitting in a class (especially one you are not interested in) your brain has very little to do. You have 60 minutes +/- to sit there and take in information from very little sensory input. Combined with almost no physical activity you can see how this sta... | 115 |
ELI5 what is actually happening when the air above a hot surface shimmers? | 22 | The air densities are different. The air right above a hot surface is hotter than the air higher up. Hotter air is less dense than cooler air, so the hot air rises and it mixes with the cooler air. Since the air has different densities it doesn’t mix uniformly (at least not right at the surface) and so the light refrac... | 20 | |
What is dialectical thinking? And how can it be applied to the world today? | Help! Trying to find a simplified explanation of the dialectic, with examples if possible. | 23 |
So there are quite a few thinkers in history who have used dialectics-- Aristotle, Plato, Kant etc...--however the thinker(s) most people will associate the dialectic with is Hegel, and later, Marx. The dialectic can roughly follow this path: There is a subject/idea/condition that exists known as the *thesis*. This th... | 17 |
ELI5: Entropy, please oh god please. | I have read COUNTLESS explanations, countless examples, countless ELI5s. But I still have no fucking idea what entropy is. I’m **not** leaving this earth before I understand what it is. Thank you. | 63 | Over time, shit changes to the temperature of the things next to them. This is true for literally everything, so the temperature of the earth is slowly equalizing to the temperature of the space next to it ( which is very technically not a vacuum since there's tiny particles in it).
"Entropy" is that idea. Things slow... | 53 |
Are pterodactyl bones mostly cancellous? | In my Anatomy course, we were discussing cortical bone and cancellous bone. My professor brought up that a lot of flying animals have a lot of cancellous bones in their body in order to lower the weight of their skeletons in order to be more efficient for flight.
If this is the case, has it been found that flying din... | 25 | 1) pterodactyls are not dinosaurs. They are pterosaurs, an offshoot of archosauria, but not part of dinosauria. They are more like dinosaur cousins. They did live in the Mesozoic, but that does not make them a dinosaur.
2) Yes, pterosaur bones were exceptionally thin, hollow, and light. Practically paper-thin walls in... | 10 |
ELI5: why do people say that diabetes has a low incidence, but a high prevalence? | 100 | Incidence: New Cases
Prevalence: total cases.
Incidence and prevalence are both proportions to the total population, where incidence is new cases that developed during a time period, while prevalence is the total existing cases during that time period.
Basically, it isn’t like diabetes is infectious, so just a small... | 150 | |
ELI5:When I put pressure on my eyes for an extended period of time I see really cool patterns that alternate. What is that? | Also what are those little squigglies that you can see in the corner of your eyes but never directly look at? | 62 | your eye is full of liquid called the vitreous humour. when you press on your eyes, you're increasing the pressure of that fluid inside the eye; that in turn causes pressure to be applied to the nerves in the back of your eye, on your retina. those nerves get confused and start sending out random signals that you see a... | 26 |
In many models, dark matter WIMPs are their own anti-particles. How are they expected to generate photons on annihilation if they have no coupling to the EM field? | 17 | Via loop processes or intermediate particles. An example that we have observed is the Higgs decay to two photons. The Higgs doesn't couple to photons directly (they don't have mass and the Higgs doesn't have an electric charge) but both couple to top and W. | 19 | |
Why do electrons have discrete energy levels they can occupy, and jump from between orbitals, yet do not revolve around the nucleus in orbits? | In class, I learned about the Bohr's model, which introduces the concept of discrete energy levels that electrons can occupy. However, Bohr's model is not accurate anymore as it only applies to the Hydrogen atom, hence debunking the fact that electrons move around the nucleus in fixed orbits, and instead exists in prob... | 15 | An electron in an atomic bound state has a well-defined energy, but not a well-defined position or momentum. It’s in an eigenstate of the energy operator, but not of the position or momentum operators. | 23 |
[Star Wars] Why did the Y-wings die after a single hit from the TIE fighters in the trench? | Aren't Y-wings supposed to be well shielded and take a lot of punishment? | 51 | A combination of a number of things:
* Y-Wings were notoriously hard to repair. Maintenance crews had to basically take the entire ship apart to put in new hull plating on anywhere but the cockpit meaning that they were exposed from behind once their shields were down. (Importantly, they were getting hit *only* from ... | 79 |
Why isn't the universe perfectly symmetrical? | I'll start off with my own limited understanding of cosmology to make sure I'm not making horribly incorrect assumptions to begin with....
After the big bang, basically what happened was that massive amounts of energy were released in all directions, over time the universe cooled to allow the formation of hydrogen, an... | 17 | The current idea is that the seeds of non-uniformity were produced during inflation, a period of accelerated expansion in the early universe. Quantum mechanics tells us that on very small scales there's fundamental uncertainty in things like a particle's position or its velocity. This means there's no real uniformity o... | 20 |
[Hancock] If Mary wanted Hancock to survive and be a hero that the Earth needed, why didn’t she just die and let him be sole survivor? | Watched the movie and it was pretty cool. Their weakness was kind of dumb though. So why not just die and let Hancock be the only survivor? | 15 | Because they're inexorably tied together. If she dies he dies. The longer and closer they are too each other the weaker they become until they're mortal but if somehow one were to die the other would die at the same time. | 18 |
ELI5: The sun heats the earth, and it takes 8ish minutes for the sunlight to reach earth. Does any of the light from all the other stars we can see heat up the earth, even the tiniest bit? | I hopes this makes sense. English isn't my first language. I've spent 10 minutes trying to phrase this sentence coherently but it still feels like a weird sentence. Let me know if you don't understand and I'll try and explain my dumb question | 42 | Yes, any wave from any part of the EMF spectrum will technically add energy to whatever it comes in contact with. Of course it's going to be extremely neglible since the energy transfer follows an inverse square law, the same as gravity. | 27 |
ELI5: What happens when a power company generates too much power? | When a power generation station produces too much power what do they do with the excess? Who pays for, what I'm assuming, is wasted output? | 41 | When you take electricity from a generator, it becomes stiffer to turn. If the engine turning the generator keeps producing the same amount of power, then if the electricity taken from the generator reduces, then the generator (and engine) will speed up - like how if you are driving a car at steady speed with the accel... | 19 |
Why does oil shine in all rainbows colours when it is in contact with water like rain? | I have seen it plenty of times when I have filled my car with gas. | 48 | It forms a very thin surface layer on the water. It's so thin that its thickness is in the order of magnitude of the wavelength of visible light. That in turn allows for interference between light reflected on the oil/air boundary with light reflected at the oil/water boundary. What wavelength constructively interferes... | 53 |
ELI5: How or why are people so strong when they do PCP? | I've heard and read a ton of crazy stories about people doing alien-like strong and violent things while they are on PCP. Is this a Hollywood myth or is there a reason? (I have no plans of doing PCP) | 172 | Humans are much stronger than our day-to-day activities suggest. Normally our bodies limit themselves to keep us from injury, but when these limits get removed you get seemingly superhuman feats of strength.
Examples of this are when you get thrown across a room from touching a live wire—it's actually your own muscle... | 182 |
ELI5: Why does light have speed? Why isn't it instantaneous? | 26 | The speed of light is the speed of causality. It is the fastest speed by which any event can affect anything else in the universe. It is also the defining property of the universe that gives rise to time.
Let me explain.
Imagine a clock. This clock is made by holding two perfect mirrors exactly parallel to each other... | 21 | |
Have we no viable alternative to the use of gunpowder in conventional firearms? | My (very) basic understanding of the use of gunpowder in a conventional firearm is that fundamentally, a certain number of powder grains are packed into a shell, above a blasting cap, and on top of that sits the bullet itself.
Is there no alternative to the use of something as inconsistent as gunpowder and its grains?... | 178 | Gunpowder hasn't been used in modern firearms for about 100 years, it was replaced by Cordite from the late 19th Century, then by a mix of other propellants from about ww2 onwards.
If you mean no alternative to chemical propellants, then although there are designs for railguns or gauze guns, there isn't viable alterna... | 163 |
ELI5: Why is it during storms that the lights flicker and then the power goes off? Wouldn’t the power either stay on or get cut off? (Hope what I said makes sense)? | 21 | The lights flicker because there is a fault, either a short or a surge. They stop flickering because a protection device has cut in to protect your electrical equipment from harm. Alas, it does this by disconnecting you from the power plant. Most protective devices are auto-resetting, they turn themselves back on af... | 35 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.