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[1984] In "principles of Newspeak" it's said that any word could be used either as verb, noun, adjective, or adverb. Including abstract words like "IF" and "WHEN", how did that work exactly? How can I use if as a verb or adjetive? | 403 | Ifly using newspeak and you are unknowing "if" as a doing, Ungood. To using if as a doing, then plus -ed to end, making "ifed". Here Exampled "ifed" Can be when thinked toward action, but made unaction. Actioned ifly to cause. Unactioned ifwise to obstacle. Ifed when action was unnow.
| 509 | |
[Avengers: Endgame] What exactly did Danvers think she was doing? | After Carol takes out Thanos's ship and gets the gauntlet from Peter, her mission becomes get the gauntlet into the time tunnel. She's unsuccessful, but had she been able to get in, what the hell was her plan?
She wasn't in any of the plan briefings.
She has no suit to travel through the wormhole. She also has no ide... | 82 | I think her plan is to hand it to Hope and Scott and assume they know what the next step in the plan is. She was a soldier most of her life she understands sometimes you don't know the entire plan but still have to play your part. | 186 |
Isn't there a limit to how much an economy can grow by adding more goods? Like people don't suddenly have more money, they just change their spending from elsewhere. | 61 | No. Money is ultimately just a tool. Consumption is determined by output (of actual goods and services).
Consider a very small economy, just you and another person on an island. You grow potatoes or whatever, and the other person catches fish. If you make 2 potatoes and the other person 2 fish, that's what the economy... | 69 | |
ELI5 What would it take to build an AI with an average human's intelligence that you could talk to, like in movies. | 67 | As Hapax said,
> If it can't be reduced to addition and subtraction, computers cannot do it
That being said, what it would take to build your AI would be the reduction of complex thought to a series of additions and subtractions. We would need to crack the code on what goes on in our heads that makes us think. | 47 | |
ELI5: What are "eye boogers" and how are they formed? | 3,460 | Your eyes discharge a mucus which contains blood cells, water, skin cells, snot, dust, and so on. While you're awake, you tend to blink and wipe it away regularly. When you're asleep, this removal process is slowed, and the water has a chance to evaporate, letting the dried out remainder accumulate around your eye. It'... | 3,072 | |
[LOTR & The Hobbit] How do orcs and goblins perpetuate their species? | Do they mate? I never saw any women (or maybe because we only see the man at war?) or they all look alike and you can't discern their sex?
| 37 | The Silmarillion clearly states that they reproduce in the same manner as the Children of Iluvatar, ie via sexual reproduction. Whether orcs are just too ugly to tell the men and women apart or if the females are kept away from the front lines is never really explored. | 54 |
[Harry Potter/General] What is magic made of? | In Harry Potter, as well as many other fantasy series, magic is shown as a sort of spark/beam of light that shoots out of the wand. But what is that light? Is it plasma? Is is something else entirely? | 36 | In most cases, the light we see is the result of the magical energy exciting the electrons of the atoms which make up the air (and thus making the air glow). It's somewhat similar to an electrical arc, but there's more variety because the magic obeys different rules than normal physics.
If you could see into the Oc... | 25 |
ELI5 The USSR under Stalin was exposed to a lot of propaganda and facts were conveniently altered, so how did historians decide what was likely the truth about that time period? | 129 | This is actually a true problem. As offical statistics are often problematic, historians have to take into account various other sources, e.g. private notes, media coverage from contemporaries, crossreferencing the "offical " event with internal reports or other non-secret notes, secret service infos (if available) a... | 76 | |
Where can I find reviews of academic journals themselves? Like common themes, pros and cons, validity of published studies, etc. | There are a lot of journals out there, and I have no idea what the difference is between most of them. Is there anywhere that I can get some idea of this? | 25 | Can we get some context for this question? E.g. what field you are in, level of current education (undergrad, masters, doctorate), etc.
There are many websites that rank journals by field according to impact factor, which in a general sense is a decent way to gauge which journals are publishing the highest quality re... | 12 |
[MCU] How do the jumps through interstellar space work? | We see in GOTG2 that ships use some sort of jump points to travel through space. How do they work? And why does making multiple jumps cause such effects to people? | 58 | We don't know. We do know that the jumping warps reality for the traveler. We also know that this sort of travel is visible as a moving speck of light from the perspective of a distant observer. The ship seems to travel under its own power, moving between 'gates' that seem temporary, maybe even generated by the ship... | 46 |
[LOTR] How much does the average person of each race in Middle Earth know about the events of the Silmarillion? | How much would the average human/hobbit/elf/dwarf know about the history of Middle Earth and would they believe that it was history or myth? | 399 | Aside from the elves and the loremasters in Minas Tirith, probably not much. But it depends on which original stories. They’re aware that there is a history there but the details are sketchy.
Hobbits wouldn’t know much except for what Bilbo passed on (and he was seen as eccentric in his non-hobbit related historical ... | 264 |
ELI5 Why does it take a few hours to finance a $100k auto loan, but 30+ days to finance a $100k mortgage? | 30 | The people selling the car and the people making the loan have already worked out much of the deal before you even walk into the dealership. The lender knows the value of the car and exactly what condition it's in.
Should you stop paying, they can legally repossess the car pretty quickly - or report it stolen if you ... | 47 | |
ELI5: Why can't contaminated metal be recycled? Wouldn't the contaminants be burned off when the metal is melted down? | I was looking at recycling resources, and it said that aluminum cans are easily recycled, but aluminum foil is usually contaminated with food and can't be easily recycled. But wouldn't any of the food be completely destroyed when it's at the temperature aluminum melts at?
I tried to find explanations, but they just sa... | 91 | Think of what happens when you burn a pizza in the oven, or you're cooking a hot dog over a campfire and it falls into the fire and you just leave it there. It doesn't just disappear/get destroyed, it undergoes combustion which will leave behind carbon and other trace minerals in solid form. Carbon's melting point is m... | 78 |
ELI5: Why is it that honey has no sell by date and can never go bad? | 47 | Honey is actually a nearly perfect preservative. Honey has been found in jars in Egypt that could (theoretically) be eaten today. It has so little water in it that bacteria can't live in it, and mold can't grow on it, it doesn't "spoil" or break down or go stale. | 29 | |
Why do pets typically sleep at their owners feet in bed? | 27 | Dog's still have a lot of leftover instincts from their days as wolves. In the wild, they would trample down plants and whatever in a safe place to make their bed. Domesticated dogs still do this sometimes, you may see them pawing at their blanket or bed.
They choose their sleeping spots based mostly on safety and co... | 22 | |
ELI5: how do our bodies know when we've ingested something toxic? | I just ate something that had expired without realizing it, and within a minute I was throwing up. How did my body know that I needed to expel it from my stomach? | 55 | Short answer, your brain told it to.
Long answer, your nose is the first defense against eating something bad. If you bring something to your mouth that smells bad, your nose is gonna tell you it's bad. Your taste buds are next, if something tastes bad, we spit it out. Next your throat and esophagus. As the food sli... | 99 |
Is Nathaniel Branden's view on self esteem widely accepted ? | I was reading the book and was wondering whether I should accept a lot of his assertions.
He describes what self esteem is and describes six pillars that increase self esteem.
I am curious to know whether his view on self esteem is accepted or rejected/discarded as nonsense by the experts in the field of psychology.
... | 15 | I've been researching and teaching psychological science for over 20 years and had to google Nathaniel Branden to find out about him. His views on self-esteem appear to be overly complex and not well backed up in the psychological literature. The general idea that people derive self-esteem from multiple sources is well... | 16 |
ELI5: Yes, a question about the penis. | I'm not sure how to word this question, but I try my best.
Guy A has a 2 inch penis when flaccid. Guy B has a 6 inch penis when flaccid. When Guy A is aroused, his penis grows to 6 inches. When Guy B is aroused, it basically stay the same size but only gets hard.
What is happening with Guy A's penis? Like.. Where doe... | 3,867 | Think of it like the difference between a beach ball and a balloon, both the same size when filled with air. You deflate the balloon and it fits in your pocket, but the beach ball will still be big.
It's about elasticity and how much spongy erectile tissue there is, which varies across people. The spongy tissue has lo... | 4,245 |
ELI5 How can an asteroid/meteor that's just a mile wide cause mass extinction if it were to collide with Earth? | Just saw [this news article](http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/576300/Asteroid-1999-FN53-Earth-May-14-mass-extinction-NASA) after a friend posted it on Facebook and it made me wonder how a piece of rock that is miniscule in comparison to the size of earth could possibly wipe out humanity.
I'd imagine it would creat... | 30 | How about a Nuclear bomb? It's the size of maybe a few cars, and it wiped out an entire portion of the map.
The astroid may not have radioactive properties, but it does have an incredibly large amount of energy when you think about KE=½MV^2
So we have the mass of an asteroid, multiplied by the square of it's speed c... | 14 |
ELI5: Why does a big social network like Twitter let me change my username, but virtually no other websites don't? | I my have used hyperbole, but right now I'm very upset that there is no way to change my Snapchat username. (I spelled hungry as "hugry" and me being Asian doesn't help the situation)
But I've always wondered why Twitter still lets me change my username. I thought they would stop letting people after it grew bigger--... | 61 | Probably how the database that stores all the account information is set up. There needs to be a unique field for each account - either an account number or a username that nobody else can have. Allowing the user to change names means that all the other inter-linked things with that name, all the assosciations with ot... | 17 |
ELI5: Where does the blood in a fetus comes from? Is it transferred from the mother or created by its own cells? | 15 | It’s created by its own cells.
No blood from the mother enters the fetus or vice versa, it stays separate.
The fetus’s blood and the moms blood both path close by each other in the placenta to transfer nutrients, but the blood itself isn’t mixing. | 34 | |
[Star Wars] Do the Jedi ever try to "upset the balance" of the force like the Sith do? | Jedi like to go on about how the force is a balance between the light side and the dark side, but it only seems to be the Sith who ever try to swing that balance in their favor. Are the Jedi really just interested in preserving the balance, and if so has there ever been an unbalanced light side organization like the Si... | 46 | That's not how Jedi view balance to the Force, and it's not how the Force is balanced at all.
The Force, in its natural, balanced state, is "Light," with little to no dark side usage. The dark side is also natural - as natural as the emotions that empower it - but in the way that microbes are natural but in the wrong ... | 41 |
AskScience AMA Series: I was NASA's first "Mars Czar" and I consulted on the sci-fi adventure film THE SPACE BETWEEN US. Let's talk about interplanetary space travel and Mars colonization... AMA! | Hi, I'm Scott Hubbard and I'm an adjunct professor at Stanford University in the department of aeronautics and astronautics and was at NASA for 20 years, where I was the Director of the Ames Research Center and was appointed NASA's first "Mars Czar." I was brought on board to consult on the film [THE SPACE BETWEEN US](... | 3,572 | Do you think there are compelling reasons to eventually build large scale settlements on Mars, or will human presence there be limited, like on Antarctica?
If you think colonization is realistic what do you think will motivate a large number of people to move to Mars? | 254 |
ELI5: How does one make a random number generator? | Maybe more like ELI15, but I've been thinking about this all morning, and it's baffling me. | 25 | The common way is to use an algorithm that makes "random" numbers. However there was no way to generate truly random numbers until recently, where the movements of quantum particles, which are truly random, are recorded as numbers. | 11 |
ELI5: How people sell movie scripts and who decides if it's a big budget movie? | I have been working on some scripts since it's a hobby of mine and can't really afford to shoot any of them, being they would be in need of a high budget (by this I mean more than a few hundred dollars I could scrap up). If I wanted to 'shop my script around' who do I send it to? What protects my rights as owner and wh... | 16 | Most studios will not accept unsolicited scripts because it exposes them to high risk litigation (e.g. accusations that they stole a story). Studios will usually only take material from literary agents with whom they have an established relationship - so if you want to get your scripts made by studios you will have to... | 13 |
ELI5: Has acting in movies gotten better throughout the years, or is there some sort of "recency bias"? | I am currently watching the first Terminator and for the thirty minutes I've been watching, the acting through multiple parts have just been awful.
Not only that but when looking at even older movies, the acting just seems, unnatural.
Why?
Has acting lessons gotten better through the years?
If so, why?
Will actin... | 25 | First, there are "trends" in acting, because successful acting is ultimately about an interaction with audience expectations. Back when the stage was still the centerpiece of acting, actors were trained to be far more theatrical and audiences expected that. More natural performances weren't always the standard everyon... | 26 |
[Dune/Avatar] Question about the unobtainium/spice. | I just saw the movie Dune, have no read the books, and they explain within the first 10 minutes about how spice is nessecary for space travel.
Now this raises the obvious question; How did they get to a deserted desert planet in the first place to acquire the material nessecary for space travel? Was spice in small qua... | 64 | In avatar, they just travelled there slower and less efficiently. Like how we had coal-powered vehicles before oil-powered. Simple enough.
In dune, spice is necessary for *safe* interstellar travel. So how did they get to Arrakis? With a *significant* death toll. Spice changed interstellar flight from something only r... | 150 |
[Slime Rancher] What does the slime sea do to largos and tarrs? | Single slimes fall in, they reappear shortly afterward (As stated in the Slimepedia.) Largos and tarrs just seem to disappear (This happening to the latter is probably a mercy.) Does it revert them into the back into their original species, simply kill them, or something else? | 43 | Smaller slimes are lighter and less dense, so they tend to float to the surface (with the exception of puddle slimes, who most likely just swim around in there once they're in). Largos are larger and heavier, so they sink to the bottom. It's unclear whether slimes are able to drown, so it's possible that they might jus... | 15 |
[Star Wars] How do Jedi know who is force sensitive and who isn’t. What is the Jedi Padawn recruitment process? | 18 | Midicholorian test kit. If they're less than 6 years old, the Jedi would approach the guardians/parents for training their younglings in the Jedi way, explaining that it's an honor for their younglings to be chosen. | 17 | |
[Futurama] What are the causes and symptoms of sexlexia? What are the treatment options? | 31 | Sexlexia is to sex as dislexia is to reading. So, genitals appear in different places to an observer with the disease than they do to someone without it, things do not fit properly in their designated locations, timing and tempo are all off, and it's difficult to establish a working sexual cadence.
It is caused by... | 63 | |
[WH40K] Are the Necrons even a major threat | [Spoiler](/s "Since the latest Codex wussified them. Yeah, they whupped the C'tan, but now they just want fleshbag bodies and they are more likely to have feelings and trade with other races, etc etc. Oh, and they apparently lost their inertaless drives and now need to break into the webway (which adapts to reject t... | 46 | I might have to fourth wall this one, because we're looking at two distinct types of Necron.
The pre-Ward Necrons? *Absolutely*. These were slowly waking up - as well as their Gods, fully formed monstrosities that occasionally deigned to show a shard of their magnificence on the battlefield. They were after one thing ... | 30 |
ELI5: Is there a standard formula for this maths equation? | I can get the answer but my 8 year old nephew doesn't understand how to do it. He understands fractions and that he's missing 2/5 but he doesn't know why 240 needs to be halved in order to find 1/5.
Would you use an algebraic formula? (My maths is abysmal so apologies if I sound completely stupid).
https://imgur.c... | 19 | If 3/5 of the school's population are boys, then 2/5 are girls.
So if 2/5 = 240, then half of 240 is 1/5 or 120.
Once you have that, then 3*120 = 360.
That's one way to solve it,
Other way is 2/5 = 240/X and solve the proportion, so 5*240/2 = 600, so you know there are 600 total students, of which 240 are girls,... | 14 |
[Mario] Who was King Boo when he was alive? | Also, what sorts of creatures are boos the spirits of? | 59 | Who says he was ever "alive?"
[4th wall break:] Boos are based on the Will o' wisp(yes, like the Pokemon attack), which is a spectral flame that appears to travelers at night, luring them off of safe paths, then disappearing, leaving them alone in the dark. (Then presumably eating them, or something like that) | 56 |
[Fallout] How does a Pip-Boy collect data? | Well that sucks, you attacked by ghoul, clawing at your arm. Blasting it back with your shotgun you check your surroundings. You go to your pip boy and see that your arm is showing "78%"
How does it know that? How does it do this? How could it have that much power to quantify ones health into a number, or know your in... | 58 | Small sensors monitor your blood pressure and heart rate while also checking for any signs of toxins within your blood compared to your baseline levels when you first put the pipboy on. Everything else is just contrivance of the medium | 37 |
ELI5: Why do our ears get red when angry or embarrassed? | 22 | The blood vessels in your face and extremities are close together and near the ‘top’ of your skin so when you get flushed or have the blood run quickly through them you appear red. Feeling angry or embarrassed would often trigger adrenaline which causes faster blood flow and redness in those areas | 17 | |
[WH30K] So why does this Emperor guy hate Xenos so much? | Alright so yesterday some intergalactic space ship pulled into orbit and sent down a legion of metal men handing out pamphlets encouraging us to be annexed into "The Imperium of Man" as part of their "Great Crusade". Sounds great not being alone in the universe but under point 8 of their leader's mission statement he c... | 134 | An interpretation I've had is that the Emperor doesn't necessarily demand the complete extermination of all Xenos in the Milky Way. He only wants the best for Mankind, which means that non-Humans must be kept under some sort of control, seeing as aliens have been more than willing to subvert humanity or attempt to outr... | 80 |
I believe that marriage serves no purpose and, if anything, is detrimental to society. CMV. | I don't think it's necessary in modern society. It's just making someone your permanent girlfriend/boyfriend. People expect you to marry, but what other reason is there? If you really love someone, why do you need to sign a formal agreement to prove you love each other? How does marriage benefit anyone? In my opinion, ... | 16 | Marriage is a legal framework for sharing property and rearing children. It serves a number of purposes in that regard. Because this situation is so common the baseline agreement is usually codified in law, and even then the contract is usually able to be amended via another document (aka a pre-nup) as long as it doesn... | 11 |
Once/if we get a sustained fusion reaction, how will we get power out? A steam turbine?? | Steam spinning a turbine seems like such an archaic method of energy transfer. Are there any other proposed methods of converting the energy of a fusion reaction to electricity? | 40 | >Steam spinning a turbine seems like such an archaic method of energy transfer.
It is more common today to use pressurized water instead of steam, but it still comes down to heating water through some means and using that to drive a turbine.
This is essentially how nuclear, coal, and concentrating solar power work... | 19 |
ELI5: why do harmonicas come in different keys? Does this mean that to be able to play any song which you like , you need to purchase a set of harmonicas? If no, does a chromatic harmonica capable of playing any song? | 63 | Wind instruments generally rely on perfectly sized holes to create musical notes, and as such the given notes they can produce are fixed.
With large instruments like flutes you have enough 'space' to make holes for lots of notes, so you can create all of the semitones within a given octave. That means all of the littl... | 27 | |
[Overwatch] Why do some of the Overwatch agents have nicknames and others don't? | For example, Dr. Angela Ziegler and Lena Oxton go by the codenames Mercy and Tracer, respectively, while Reinhardt and Torbjorn simply go by their own names. Why do only some agents get nicknames, especially when all four of the ones mentioned here wound up on at least one field mission together against Null Sector? | 26 | Each character that does have a nickname was given it for a reason.
- Tracer got her name as a call sign when she was a pilot.
- Mercy very clearly has a flair for the dramatic since she built her suit to look like an angel and carries around a god damned staff.
- Symmetra was given her code name for when she did... | 34 |
[Harry Potter] I'm a student at a prestigious magic school, but I'm having some issues. Need advice. | I just enrolled at a famous academy of magic, you probably know it. It has a great reputation, but it's a mad house. The place is completely insane. It should be closed down immediately or at least the administration should be fired and replaced.
Some friends snuck out after dark, but one of the other students snitche... | 509 | The wizarding world is even more dangerous and nonsensical than Hogwarts. If you can't handle it now with the supervision of the most qualified witches and wizards in Britain you might as well toss your wand into the Black Lake.
And the elves are offered pay. Most refuse. | 279 |
[WH40k] Can other races create their own versions of the God-Emperor of Mankind? | The prevalent theory is that thousands of human psykers voluntarily gave up their lives and reincarnations to be combined into a single entity, the God-Emperor of Mankind. It was also believed that this event could not be replicated in the present as the Warp is a lot more corrupted.
Let's assume this is back in 8000 ... | 32 | With regards to the Eldar, their experiences with creating gods out of psychic power has left them wanting. It also killed most of them. Before the birth of Slaanesh, they already had a pantheon of warp deities like Khaine and Isha and were much more focused on hedonism than any attempt to coherently produce a new warp... | 26 |
Einstein birthday megathread | Hi everyone! Today is Albert Einstein's birthday and we're here to answer all of your Einstein-related questions.
His most famous achievement is arguably the development of the [general relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity) in 1915. General relativity is an extremely well-tested theory of gravi... | 83 | Things Einstein contributed to besides relativity:
-understanding atomic dimensions through viscosity
-relating atoms to viscosity and Brownian motion (the Stokes-Einstein relation)
-understanding the photoelectric effect in terms of discrete photons
-developing the electromagnetic theory that allowed the laser to ... | 19 |
CMV: The trope in media where the high school bully ends up working fast food or retail and the main character works a successful job is harmful and reeks of classism. | Growing up as a kid I’ve seen this trope constantly; the main character gets bullied in high school but later on the bully is stuck working in the same town they grew up in as a busboy or flipping burgers while the main character is successful in the well paying job of their dreams.
I bought into that trope hook line ... | 55 | Stories don't have to reflect reality.
How many survival stories end with the main character dying of dehydration half way through the movie? In reality, most people would just die, and not make it to the end.
How many action movies end with the main character getting shot in the back 2/3rds of the way into the mov... | 15 |
Why does brushing my teeth with an electric brush alter only specific light? | Specifically, when I am brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush and I look at the LCD's on my alarm clocks, the numbers "dance". If I am across the room there is almost a centimeter of oscillation in the digits. What I don't understand is the clock, and the rest of the room is not affected at all. This happens on... | 15 | The LCDs are flickering out of phase with the frequency that your skull is vibrating due to the toothbrush. The rest of the lighting does not flicker, and so the same stroboscopic phenomena does not occur. | 27 |
Is it appropriate to offer a letter of support to a professor? | Say for example I have a professor who I thought worked very hard and I felt that he or she was a really effective mentor, could I offer to write them a letter of support for their tenure application?
My school doesn't traditionally ask students for their feedback and instead relies on course evaluation forms that w... | 28 | Yes. It would be an unsolicited letter which can be helpful depending on the school. Near in mind it's unlikely to make the difference, but it doesn't hurt. You should first check with the dean of faculty if they allow this - it would also need to get approval from that faculty member to go in their file so you may ... | 21 |
CMV: The global dominance of the abrahamic faiths is largely an accident of geography | I was at a christmas eve service last night (I'm Unitarian Universalist) and one of the hymns the choir did there, describing the birth of Jesus had it occurred in a Huron (Native American) community got me to thinking:
A) Had a group of religions identical in all respects to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam developed... | 27 | Christianity was primarily spread by the Roman empire. But Rome already had a state religion before it adopted Christianity. So the victory of Christianity over the Roman version of Hellenism can't be attributed to geography alone.
Likewise, Islam was hardly the first religion that Arabia had seen. Its dominance th... | 21 |
[Beauty and the Beast] How many servants does the Beast need? | It seems that there are thousands of people living in the castle (based on the number of all the living household objects), but why would he need so many servants and such? Wouldn't, like, about 10-20 do? | 32 | Depending on the size of the castle, and his wealth, it could be well over 100. As many as a dozen kitchen staff, 15-20 maids, librarian, Steward, gardeners and grounds keepers, guards, personal attendants. And that's if he doesn't employ a personal artist (or multiple) tailor, architect or any other specialist profess... | 25 |
[Battlefield] Why does my repair kit repair allied vehicles and damage enemy vehicles? And why does my defibrillator/syringe revive friendly soldiers but damages/kills enemy ones? | 35 | Because you're a goddamn professional is why that happens. Think about it- A properly trained engineer will know the ins and outs of modern vehicles to a T. On an allied vehicle? He uses that knowledge to repair. On an enemy vehicle? *Smash Smash Baby!*
Same with the medic- There's two pouches the syringe can be refil... | 49 | |
ELI5: Why do our faces look so weird and tired when we wake up? | Why do our faces look bloated and eyes all puffy when we first wake up? What's taking place in its tissues to cause this and is there a way to speed up recovery? | 232 | More concentrated blood In different locations. All day you are standing up and walking around, and our body is built for that. Our veins have tiny one way valves that let blood go up but not back down to reach the head.
When we sleep, that blood needs much less effort to go to the head. So there's more blood, think ... | 100 |
How does exercise reduce your resting heart rate? | Does it make your cells physically need less oxygen? Does it make your heart more efficient, how? | 16 | The ventricular walls will also thicken, increasing the contractility of the heart. This increased power in turn leads to a greater stroke volume (amount of blood pumped per contraction).
The cardiac output is further defined as heart rate x SV: hence functional cardiac output can be maintained at a lower heart rate w... | 17 |
ELI5: How can the body of some animals like Cows, Horses, etc. that only eat grass make those huge muscles? | They only eat vegetables, yet they have huge muscles. Their bodies are full of protein. How is that possible?
**In bodybuilding they say you need to eat high protein foods like beef and chicken to make muscles. It doesn't make any sense!** | 32 | First of all you need to consider that all plant matter, or every living being to be exact, contains all essential amino acids that are needed to assemble the proteins needed. The common claim that only some foods contain "complete protein" is utter bullshit - even apples and potatoes theoretically could supply us with... | 12 |
ELI5: Why can’t cigarettes be made healthy? | Surely things can be removed from cigarettes that will make them healthier. | 50 | Burning any carbon compound inevitably creates the dreaded “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons” that are the primary cancer causing agents.
You can’t remove them from a cigarette without removing *everything*.
Intentionally inhaling smoke is harmful.
You could remove the nicotine to make it non-habit forming, but that... | 239 |
ELI5: Why is it that when you're in a "dark" room and you focus on a really dark spot everything around you (even light) starts to fade away? | I know I probably didn't make any sense since it's hard to explain but imagine being in a dark room with nothing but a little red LED light in the center of the room if you focus on a really dark corner, the light will start fading away into darkness. Why is that? | 29 | ELI5 Answer: Your eyes see things by seeing changes. When nothing changes, we can't see anymore.
Complicated answer: Image burn-in. Humans see light as an "excitement" of the cones and rods in our eyes. If we continue to stare at the same image without it changing, the excitement ends even though the image does not. I... | 17 |
If a & b are irrational must a+b be irrational? | Yesterday I stumbled across a dumb little "Only 10% of people get this right!" problem on Facebook:
√x + √(x+15) = 15
My solution was simple: I assumed that x and (x+15) were both perfect squares, and given that the distance between the *nth* and *nth+1* perfect square is always 2n+1, it was immediately obvious that ... | 17 | It A+B=R, where A and B are irrational and R is rational, then you necessarily have B=R-A. So things like A=2+pi and B=18-pi are the only possibilities. So if you exclude all the cases A and B where A+B is rational, then there are no other pairs of irrational numbers A and B so that their sum A+B is rational. But tha... | 24 |
[Star Wars: the Clone Wars] Why do Jedi stop using armor near the end of the war? | In the show almost every Jedi master featured wears some armor. Notable examples are Anakin (shoulders), Obi-Wan (shoulders and forearms), and Mace Windu (forearms only). Why do they abandon this armor by the time of Episode III? (Oversight is probably the best answer, but does anyone have a canon explanation?) | 20 | From beyond the Fourth Wall: they couldn't get the 'flow' of cloth right when they first started the CG show.
In Universe: Perhaps the Council feared that they were becoming too soldier-like and therefore ordered the Jedi to stop wearing the Clone Trooper armored parts and return to the traditional Jedi robes in order... | 39 |
Homo sapiens originated in Africa, so why did Europe develop into the world's centre of power throughout most of history, colonizing the rest of the world? Why didn't our origin remain as our centre? | Edit: "Most of history" was a poorly chosen phrase. The period I'm really getting at is the last few hundred years, which formed our contemporary global era.
We approached this question in a Global Studies course I took, but did not dive into it very deeply, and it really intrigued me. This is the actual question fro... | 38 | Asia **was** the center of power for much of history. The ancient civilizations - mesopotamia, china, india, egypt - are Asian or African. The bulk of the world's wealth and the majority of the world's people were in Asia.
European power has existed for a very short time, basically the last 300 years. Even in those 30... | 71 |
[Star Wars] Could a droid with a hand made from pure beskar catch the blade of a lightsaber, and then force it out of the way? If so, for how long could they hold it? | 26 | Well in last episode of Mandalorian a spear out of pure beskar began glowing perilously red when it was parrying a lightsaber for an extended period of time, so probably lighsaber EVENTUALLY will melt it, maybe indeed in a minute or so. In combat though it's still more than enough to parry or deflect lightsaber blows, ... | 42 | |
[Overwatch] Why is Tracer allowed to travel through London so armed? | During the events of Alive we see Tracer, a former agent of Overwatch, attending a peace rally. The rally is attacked and Tracer responds, but my question is, why is she given the capability to respond? My limited knowledge leads me to understand she requires that machine on her chest to survive, but does she also nee... | 23 | Simple, Tracer's devices are so esoteric and poorly understood they don't legally qualify as guns, and they're a part of the medical device. You want to be the member of parliament trying to write a law to disarm a single person, who is a disabled, veteran, gay war hero, of her life support? | 49 |
What is the closest that we can push two electrons together? | I just want to get a better understanding of electromagnetic forces. How close can we bring two together? How much energy would it take? What would happen? | 66 | They can actually almost be in the exact same place, quantum mechanically, if they are in what's called the "singlet" state. As long as they have opposite spins, the Pauli Exclusion Principle will allow them to both occupy the same state. For example, two electrons in the ground state orbital of helium (the 1s2 state) ... | 58 |
Why read Kierkegaard? | I see kierkegaard cited as being thus incredible thinker, far ahead of his time with these genius level insights into human psychology. This is the exact type of writer I'd like to read but I keep feeling myself drawing back. I know a little about him and his works and it seems his answer always comes down to a Christi... | 19 | If you're avoiding reading texts because it doesn't fit into your own worldview, then you have already lost. The point of philosophy, and academics in general, is moreso to expose you to new ideas and perspectives, and not necessarily to justify your own.
Engaging in learning simply to justify yourself is the antithe... | 56 |
ELI5: How was 50 Shades of Gray a bad protrayal of BDSM? | I remember hearing somewhere that 50 shades a gray was a pretty shittyk movie and it protrayed BDSM terribly. I've never seen the movie except for some parts of it but I get the point. So how did it fuck up protraying BDSM? | 52 | BDSM should be safe, sane and consensual. Both partners should be agreeing to what boundaries they want to push, which ones they want to leave in place, and everybody involved should always be able to stop at any point during either through using no and/or a safeword (depending on what sort of scene you are doing).
50... | 160 |
ELI5: Why do video games tend to require a loading screen when you walk into a building? I’m thinking about games like Skyrim which let you roam their huge open world without any loading but require a load screen to enter a small building. | 49 | A couple possibilities come into mind. First, towns tend to be a lot more dense. That is, there's a bunch of stuff in a relatively small space. If all the interiors of all the buildings had to be rendered when you enter the city, it may exceed the ability of many systems to render well. So to mitigate this, the game wa... | 60 | |
CMV: science and religion can perfectly co-exist | I feel like a lot of people think science or religion provide all the answers to a problem, that either of them holds the 'universal truth'. I believe they just provide a different viewpoint. Science will perfectly explain how I'm able to live (how does my heart beat, why is the air breathable, what do I need to eat in... | 89 | It's not that science and religion can't coexist, it's a question of whether there's good reasons to believe each of them individually. Science is an itterative process that produces tentative conclusions that attempt to predict how the world works from observation and testing.
Religion is a mix of subjective claims ... | 30 |
Michael Haneke said "Nietzsche already said that it is stupid to differentiate between optimism and pessimism, it leads to nowhere." What passage or work by Nietzsche is he referring to? | For context, [this is the link to the quote.](https://youtu.be/bQDmGE01pWw?t=873) I know Haneke studied philosophy and is generally very careful and analytical when talking about these things, so I assume he must be referring to a work in particular and not just some general impression he got from Nietzsche's overall o... | 75 | I don't think you'll find a direct quote of Nietzsche saying exactly this, but here he is in his "Attempt at Self-Criticism", an introduction to *The Birth of Tragedy* he added years after it was originally published:
"Is pessimism *necessarily* a sign of decline, decay, malformation, of tired and debilitated instinct... | 40 |
ELI5: What the difference is between a normal CPU (e.g. Intel i5/i7)and a server/workstation CPU (Xeon series) | Just looking at computer parts, and some benchmarks for CPUs and saw that some Xeons top that list. But why would I not want one for my gaming PC? What's the difference? | 24 | Gaming PCs desire a CPU which can run very few tasks at a very high speed. This means they want a high clock speed and a relatively small cache.
Servers on the other hand desire a CPU which is very stable and can handle many different tasks at a reasonable speed. This means they want a relatively large cache and are w... | 17 |
Why are oranges, garlic, etc. separated into edible cloves? | As I understand it, most fruits/herbs/vegetables/plants strive for survival and reproduction. Are these any different? Have this behavior benefited them in any way, historically?
Thanks in advance! | 25 | Well, we've modified oranges to be easier to segment, but even the ancestors separated. Each slice of orange is a carpel, each of which contains ovules that become seeds. It's different in garlic, where the cloves are actually storage leaves. They propagate as buds in the axils of sheathes of foliage leaves, below the ... | 26 |
Why does Althusser refer to direct democracy as "fascist"? | In "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", specifically in the chapter " On the Reproduction of the Relations of Production", Althusser writes the following:
"The political apparatus \[contributes\] by subjecting individuals to the political State ideology, the ‘indirect’ (parliamentary) or ‘direct’ (plebiscitar... | 43 | >Why does Althusser call direct democratic ideology fascist?
Read the rest of the quote in context. He's not making a statement about the "essence of democracy", but about the role of education in shaping subjects toward the capitalist state in ways that reproduce capitalist social relations. The comparison here is... | 49 |
[Children Of Men] What is life like in "middle of nowhere" USA? | We get some hints as to how some of the major US cities are doing (Spoilers: Not very well), but what about smaller towns?
Is Everytown, USA, where everyone knows everyone and nothing is worth nuking doing relatively okay, or is it just as chaotic as the bigger cities? | 94 | Severely depopulated. Lawlessness abounds, though more in the sense that no one cares what you're doing and not that you're at risk of getting massacred by roving gangs. Those exist, of course, but the societal depression that's occurred has manifested more as nihilism than rage.
Unstable and violent individuals h... | 87 |
[Star Trek] How does a Kingon cloaking device differ from a Romulan cloaking device? Or do they function similarly? | 46 | The klingons traded the romulans for the cloak during kirks era. The Klingon Cloak is probably the same minus 100 years of romulan upgrades. Then again the klingons figured out a way to fire whilst cloaked, something the romulans couldn't do til Shinzon 100 years later. | 53 | |
How is it even possible to detect a star that's 13 billion light years away if inverse-square law is true, if my math is correct all the photons would dissipate (disperse) (not be detectable in a point in space) well before they reach even 1 billion ly in a 3 dimensional field? | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law | 24 | What star are you thinking of that you can see from 13 billion light years away?
The diameter of the milky way is only 180,000 light years, so any individual named star that we know of must be closer than that. | 22 |
CMV: Black Lives Matter, the left and left-leaning media are too focused on homicides caused by police and there should be more focus on general homicides | I consider myself to be liberal, and definitely opposed to police violence and force in general. I think Derek Chauvin should be, at the very least convicted of manslaughter. I think we should rethink and restructure our criminal justice system, and end the war on drugs ASAP. I think no knock warrants appear to be unco... | 42 | >I think that if Black Lives Matter is about protecting black lives then it ought to rank-order the risks to black lives and give proportional consideration to those risks.
Do you use this reasoning for other policy and conversation as well?
Like, whenever someone brings up an issue, do you mention another issue i... | 31 |
ELI5: How can they tell how much oxygen is in my blood by putting a clothespin from Tron on my finger? | 21 | They work on the principle of spectrophotometry. Hemoglobin is the protein that carries oxygen through your blood and hemoglobin is a different color when it's bound to O2. The clothes pins simply emit light and the amount that passes through is dependent on how much hemoglobin saturated with oxygen is in your blood. T... | 12 | |
ELI5: Why don't car engines have hand cranks like lawn mowers to start them if their battery goes dead? | 72 | the amount of force it would take for you to rotate a small car engine, it would break your back.
a pull cord lawn mower has piston the size of your 4 fingers and a crankshaft about the size of your forearm. a car engine has at least 4 or even 8 pistons the size of mike tyson's fists and a crankshaft that's about... | 46 | |
[The Flash] I almost walked in front of a speeding car today, but the Flash grabbed me and pulled me out of the way. Unfortunately, he grabbed me so fast he broke my arm. Does this normally happen? Could I sue? | 25 | This doesn't normally happen, since the Speed Force allows him to accelerate himself, you, and any other object way faster than should be physically possible without causing any damage to it. If he's losing control of the Speed Force it probably means there's some serious shit going down, and the last thing he needs is... | 69 | |
CMV: Given that days of the week are considered proper nouns, the names of seasons should also be proper nouns. | So I see English as having a rather arbitary double standard here - days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc) are considered proper nouns, and hence always capitalised. Same with months of the year (January, February, March, etc). Yet, for whatever reason, every style guide will tell you that the seasons (wint... | 619 | Seasons have an actual meaning: a part of the year during which you can expect a certain climate, and are defined based on a precise position of the Earth. Therefore, they can be considered "scientific" terms, which generally aren't capitalised.
Weeks and months are entirely arbitrary, have no meaning outside of relig... | 214 |
[John Wick] Is John Wick amazed that he's still alive or has it all just been part of the plan? | 21 | I imagine on some level he saw his assault on the mob as something of a "get payback or die trying" scenario, with either outcome being acceptable and the latter being the most likely, but he did plan to win. He had an endgame in mind, knowing that he'd need to extract some kind of peace terms from the surviving remnan... | 28 | |
Why is it that when you hear yourself on a recording, you sound different than what you thought? Also, which one is what you actually sound like? What you hear when you talk, or what you hear on a recording? | 271 | When you talk, part of what you are hearing is the vibrations through your facial bones. When you hear others (or a recording of yourself), this component is not present.
If you record your voice on a high quality recorder, what you hear from the recorder is what other people hear. | 144 | |
CMV: Rape can be partly be the victims fault. | If I leave my keys in my car over night and the car gets stolen, partly my fault.
The doors and windows of my house and all unlocked while I'm at work and my house is then burgled, partly my fault.
A gay man walk into a homophobic/ religious gathering and starts flirting with men there and he gets punched or shoute... | 21 | If those things are all partly your fault, does it reflect at all how the law would deal with those situations? You're arguing semantics; fudging the definition of the word "fault."
Your view assumes that men are animals that can't help themselves when they see a pretty girl. Both girl and rapist are humans capable of... | 53 |
ELI5: If matter can only change form through physical and chemical changes, where does all the matter we get rid of when losing weight end up in? | 99 | The primary way we get rid of excess weight is actually breathing. As we breath out, CO2 is produced. So when we burn more calories than we take in, your body gets rid of the excess carbon in the form of exhaling. Of course other methods of “elimination” in the rest room count too, but the main source of permanent w... | 260 | |
[Bayverse Transformers] What are the cognitive abilities of a transformer? | They're introduced and titled a "super advanced race of alien robots", however it seems like their most significant developments are out of their control (their robot 'biology') or something any sentient race could develop in time (space ships, physics-warping tech, laser guns, etc).
How capable mentally is an indivi... | 15 | They seem roughly equivalent to a human, with all of the benefits and drawbacks that entails. Some of them are smart and noble, like Prime, some of them are greedy and evil, like Megatron, and some of them exist to make dick jokes.
I don't think it's canon in the Bayverse, but in the TV show and comics, Mechanus creat... | 16 |
[Star Wars] Why is it acceptable to wipe the memories of droids? | Edit: Sorry, implied in my question is the acknowledgement that they demonstrate human intelligence and awareness.
Edit 2: It's a fascinating "rationalization after the fact" that we've been rationalizing mind-wiping sentient, self-aware beings since "A New Hope" and I think that it wasn't until the Han Solo movie did... | 19 | Because droids aren't seen as people, just as machines that can get uppity when you don't wipe their memories from time to time.
This sentiment became even stronger after the Clone Wars since droids were used as killing machines in this recent conflict. | 37 |
ELI5: Why don't politicians get charged with libel when many of them knowingly lie or misrepresent facts? | Any lawyers out there? It seems like there should be laws for this but "I'm not a [lawyer]" | 45 | For a start, lying isn't necessarily libellous. You can say all sorts of untruths without defaming anyone.
Second...if you sued a politician for lying, just thing of the exposure you'd be giving their arguments? Money couldn't buy that sort of airtime (well, OK, in the US it probably can).
Third - some countries like... | 23 |
[GoT] Where did the Iron Islanders get the resources for an Armada? | [Not really spoilers since this came up last season]
How was there possibly enough wood on the Iron Islands to build an armada of a thousand ships? It's a rocky island, and the history of civilization there goes back thousand of years. Shouldn't mast sized trees be hard to come by? | 67 | Not sure about the show, but in the books the Ironborn pretty much exclusively use longships, which are much smaller than the type of sailing vessel you're probably imagining. Beyond that, they had recently been occupying chunks of the North, where there's definitely no shortage of trees. | 43 |
ELI5: Why is it that one feels more rested when sleeping earlier (11pm) than sleeping later (3am) despite the same hours of sleep (8hrs)? | 27 | This is almost certainly depending on your sleep cycle and whether you're a "night owl" rather than anything else.
For example, I'd say that 3am to 11am is condiderably more restful than 11pm to 7am.
Additionally, there might be external factors, such as street noise. You might not realise it, but traffic noise ... | 27 | |
[Godzilla] leaving the king of the monsters unchecked how long would it take until humanity is wiped off the face of the earth? | 15 | Probably never. Not every version is actively malicious. Plus none of them have the urge to tread on every single square foot of ground on Earth. He'd probably settle on a territory and people would treat it like Tornado Alley. | 18 | |
ELI5: how the US Supreme Court decided the 2000 Presidential Election, and how is the decision viewed today? | 69 | With all states except Florida counted, neither candidate had the majority of 270 electoral votes they needed to win. The 25 electoral votes from Florida would give either candidate the Presidency.
The Florida vote was extremely close. There was a long process of a hand count which ended with Bush leading by less th... | 45 | |
ELI5: Why does eating snow kill you eventually | I've heard many times that if you're trapped somewhere in the mountains (for whatever reason) you must not "drink" the snow-water because it will kill you. Why is that? We can drink rain water, so why not snow-water?
Thanks! | 397 | You ARE supposed to drink snow-water *(edit:) when there isn't any other water available*, it's a great source of water in an emergency. But you're never supposed to eat snow unless it has melted first.
Eating snow makes it much easier to die of hypothermia.
It doesn't matter if you're in a good shelter, because th... | 458 |
ELI5: Why are there separate folders for Program Files and Program Files (x86)? | Seems like they serve the same purpose. When I download new programs it seems random which folder it ends up in. Why not have one big folder for program files? | 82 | It's not random. x86 is a repository for 32-bit programs. 64-bit programs go in the regular folder. Your computer can run both, but they're not readily interoperable with each other. They're kept separate so programs that interact with other programs can easily distinguish which is which. | 115 |
CMV: The public fear of using the N Word in America gives the word power and is unhelpful to society. | The concept that "the N word" shouldn't be spoken aloud ever under any circumstances by anyone harms society by unnecessarily and artificially granting a word some almost magical power, so that it cannot be uttered. It's an ugly word with an ugly history. I'm not arguing that using the full word is good or appropriate,... | 49 | It’s not some kind of magic or anything, it’s just an offensive word people prefer not to hear or say. You’re also seriously over stating the aversion to it. There are plenty of contexts where the word is said without issue, racists in movies, Black people in general, academics discussing the slur, people quoting Tom S... | 20 |
Why are parrots such good mimics? What is the purpose? | why are parrots such good mimics? what is the evolutionary purpose of it?? It’s so exact.. I just don’t understand. No hate shoutout to parrots but how did you evolve like that | 15 | Another commenter touched on this but for some birds, it's a mating technique. Rather than building fancy nests or showing them nice plumage, males show females how many different sounds they can make to impress them. So it's advantageous for them to be able to both learn and reproduce sounds. | 10 |
ELI5: How does plastic window wrap do such a good job at insulating windows? It's just a thin layer of tight plastic | 275 | Air is a good insulator. The air trapped between the glass and the film adds a layer of insulation between the cold glass and the interior of the home. It's the reason we use double and triple pane glass with a layer of air (usually filled with an inert gas though) between the panes. | 251 | |
Will Saturn's ring ever disappear (by eventually assembling into a moon)? | 522 | No. If it were going to do so, it would have done so already. The gravitational effects of Saturn (edit: this means tidal forces, everyone) as well as the moons which orbit in the rings prevent the formation of additional moons within the ring system. The remaining material is only on the order of 3 x 10^19 kg, compara... | 182 | |
[LOTR] Who in Middle Earth knew that the Wizards were not humans? | Did the rulers of Gondor know since they gave Saruman Isengard with the assumption Saruman is powerful enough to defend it? Which elves knew Istari were Maia? Was it common knowledge that the Wizards had lifespans too long for humans? What did Dwarves, Hobbits, and ordinary men think of what Wizards are? Is doing magic... | 68 | The only individuals in Middle Earth who explicitly knew for sure the Istari were Maiar was Cirdan, Elrond, and Galadriel. Celeborn, Glorfindel, Bombadil, Sauron, and the Balrog certainly knew as well.
The fellowship, Treebeard, and Faramir probably had the next best suspicion of their origins through close interactio... | 65 |
[Star Wars] In Episode 2, Anakin and Obi-Wan almost always seem at odds with each other. But by the time of The Clone Wars and Episode 3, they seem really close. How (and why) did their relationship change so quickly? | Not to say that the friction goes away completely; the faux-assassination of Obi-Wan really drove a wedge between them.
But for the most part, Anakin and Obi-Wan seem really close by the time of TCW, which is canonically months(?) after AOTC. Is it Anakin becoming a Knight? The war itself that bonded the two? What ma... | 22 | Anakin was dealing with a month of seeing his mother in agonizing pain and unable to sleep, which combined with his and Obi-Wan’s normal trouble communicating led to a far more unstable partnership.
TCW takes place seven weeks after Geonosis, at which point Obi-Wan and Anakin are in the trenches of a high adrenaline ... | 52 |
ELI5/ Why do unused blades lose their sharp edges over time? | Answered-
I only use my skates once a year and the rest of the time they're sitting in storage. Every single year I have to re-sharpen my skates even though I've only used them once. What happens to the blade edge? No pressure is dulling the blade while they're in storage so I'm confused about why they become dull over... | 540 | The fine edge oxidizes. If you were to look at the very thinnest part of the blade under a microscope, you'd see pitting and etching from rust - even stainless steels are not immune.
You can protect them to some degree by drying them thoroughly and then oiling them after use. | 286 |
After you get a second/third COVID vaccine, people have symptoms because it is part of the immune response. Why doesn't that happen when you're actually exposed to COVID after vaccination? Why doesn't that immune response cause symptoms? | 3,936 | The amount of exposure is very different. With the vaccine you just injected a huge bolus of mRNA that's going to end up with huge amounts of antigen to respond to. The immune response is going to be big. If you're exposed to the the real virus in the real world, though, chances are the amount you are actual exposed to... | 2,662 | |
What do physicists mean when they say that gravity is the weakest of the four forces? | 37 | It means exactly that: out of the four forces, gravity is the weakest one. Gravity only seems strong because we live right next to a giant mass of rock and experience gravity all the time. When an entire planet worth of gravity is opposed to a small fridge magnet worth of magnetic force, the fridge magnet usually wins.... | 37 | |
ELI5: Why is street food not very common in the US? | Whenever you're browsing reddit, you inevitably see someone singing the praises of the street food that you can find in one country or another. But why does street food not really seem to be a thing here in the US? I've lived in three different states and never really seen it. There are a couple of food trucks and that... | 19 | Where so many Americans are spread out over a large area, there are very few places where there is a high enough concentration of people to allow street food vendors to make a profit. It's common in large cities like New York with lots of foot traffic to have street carts, but anywhere else in the US it wouldn't be ver... | 21 |
ELI5 do most chefs actually wear those chef hats, If so why? And if not where does the idea that they do come from? | Been puzzling me for a while. | 429 | It depends on where you are in the world, but for the most part; absolutely not. It's a classic French thing, hundreds of years old, and a whole fuckin' lot of places once looked to France for their ideas about fine dining. This means they emulated the French, so we got a lot of French chef's hats.
Contemporary chefs ... | 602 |
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