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CMV: All teens should get government provided long term birth control. | At age 15 (or whatever age is deemed appropriate by physicians), I think all teens (at the moment it only applies to females) should recieve long term birth control from the government (e.g. IUD, shot, etc.) which can also be requested for removal at 18 if so desired. If they want to stay on long term birth control, th... | 43 | And what happens when some future Congress decides you have to meet some financial standard in order to have it removed?
What happens when, now that they don't need to worry about pregnancy, teens start having more unprotected sex- *because they absolutely will have more unprotected sex.*
| 18 |
ELI5: In the house, why does heat set at 68 feel different than ac set on 68? It’s the same temperature but they feel very different! | 81 | Others have mentioned humidity which can definitely make a difference.
Another big difference is from radiant heat. On a hot day, the heat not only warms up the air, but also the walls of your home as well, and those walls radiate heat back inside. Your body absorbs radiant heat much more readily, thus why you can fee... | 63 | |
[Star Trek] How does the United Federation of Planets deal with Chernobyl & similar radioactive zones? | 19 | Transporters make situations like Chernobyl almost trivial to deal with. The bulk of the hazardous material - already contained within the Sarcophagus and New Shelter - can simply be transported away (either to a prepared safe location, or converted to energy and purged entirely).
As for the fallout and contamination ... | 29 | |
ELI5: How was Germany under Nazi army able to find the money to fund WW2 when their economy was in shambles just a few years ago? | 111 | I just wish to highlight there's a good page on wikipedia that goes into depth about this.
But in short, almost instantly after ceasing powers the nazis reorganized the economy into a state-driven and controlled "free-market", loaning credits to companies and making their rivals illegal. They also relied heavily on "s... | 122 | |
[DC] When The Flash is trying every combination on a keypad, how does he not get mind-numbingly bored? | 117 | That's part of being a hero, isn't it? Flash isn't the big manly tough stoic dude like Batman or Superman. He's a nerd who does nerd stuff and has a scrawny nerd body. Which we love about him because we're nerds too.
You have to get through the door so you try every combination on the keypad. It gets boring. But you k... | 117 | |
[Terminator Series] How many different timelines are there? What is seen to be the most agreed upon cannon? | Possible Dark Fate Spoiler:
After Terminator 2 it seems like their are 3 separate timelines: Rise of the Machines + Salvation (where John Connor is needed after all), and Sarah Connor Chronicles + Dark Fate (where John is not neccessary needed after altering the past), and Genesis (T1, T2, T3 and Salvation all occur i... | 23 | I think the timelines are basically:
T1-T2-T3-T:Salvation
T1-T2-T:SCC
T1-T2-T:Genysis
T1-T2-T:Dark Fate
And that's not including various comics and book series.
In terms of 'official' canon, it's pretty much whichever film series is most current, so Dark Fate at the moment. | 31 |
ELI5: Why does eating strong mint chewing gum clear a blocked nose? | 23 | Basically, menthol (naturally found in mint plants such as peppermint or spearmint), activates the TRPM8 receptor (a protein that in humans is encoded by the TRPM8 gene) and is also the primary molecular transducer of cold somatosensation (touch, position and movement). This nerve cell signals the sensation of coldness... | 11 | |
Eli5: Why will a broken piece of ceramic from a spark plug, break a car window, easier and far more efficiently than a hammer? | 18 | Car windows are made of tempered glass. Tempering is a process during which glass is cooled very rapidly by quenching in water. This causes extremely high internal stresses in the glass, as the outside shrinks and solidifies first. Basically, the glass is pulling on itself very tightly all the time. This gives it the s... | 10 | |
How did the underwater internet cables get there? | There are cables underwater that basically send signals throughout the entire world and make up the Internet. How did they get installed? Did someone have to swim to the bottom of the ocean and put them in place? | 34 | These underwater cables are deployed by boat. It essentially involves outfitting a ship with a large cable reel and sailing from one coast to the other while deploying the cable. The cable is dense enough to sink to the bottom.
More interesting is the process to repair such cables. Because defects happen from time to ... | 92 |
CMV: I believe feminism in America was once a positive movement seeking equality, but has now been degraded to nothing more that shaming men and fighting non-existent battles. | EDIT: I'm going to bed now but I can't wait to read more comments tomorrow! Thank you guys so much for being a respectful community, and have a wonderful day/night wherever you are
EDIT #2: I'm back and can't wait to respond to these comments!
Written below are the culmination of issues I have with modern day feminis... | 44 | Only your first two points are even related to feminism. The rest of your post is wholly irrelevant.
As for those first two:
The wage gap might not be as large as some claim. However, it does exist, and in many places, women are treated unfairly in many professions.
As for your second point, why is it a feminist... | 40 |
ELI5: how is gallium made if it is not naturally found on earth? | 29 | Gallium is naturally found on earth.
It just isn't found in a purely elemental form, but instead only in compounds.
Imagine if chlorine was never found as chlorine alone, but only as salt (sodium chloride). You could then make chlorine by extracting it from salt but it wouldn't occur in nature in its elemental form. | 22 | |
ELI5: why do some fighter aircraft have a Weapons System Officer while others don't(?) (more in comments) | This is inspired by seeing Top Gun: Maverick, where one fighter has a second person in the cockpit as a weapons system officer, while the other doesn't. Does the other aircraft only have a one-seat cockpit? | 777 | There is advantages and disadvantages of having a crew of one or two in a fighter. The goal here is to divide the work load of combat with the plane. The more work load there is the more having a WSO is important. But having a WSO also come with drawbacks since the plane need to make room for him. This can mean less fu... | 1,179 |
ELI5: Why does video production take so long? I have a friend who was in a commercial last year and did two 12-hour days for it, but was only on screen for like 3 seconds. And it wasn’t even an ad with special effects- just him in a car making a face. | 16 | Because they require a lot of people, dozens, possibly a hundred or more in larger productions, all being where they’re supposed to be at the right time.
The lighting crews, the sound crews, the camera crews, the actors, the make up artists, the crews who provide catering to all these people, everyone, needs to make s... | 10 | |
ELI5: how are Forbes able to estimate/calculate the wealth of the people on their billionaires list and how accurate is it? | 352 | >This is our 29th year publishing the Forbes Billionaires list. Though we’ve been at it a long time, it is never an easy task. Our reporters dig deep and travel far. To compile net worths, we value individuals’ assets–including stakes in public and private companies, real estate, yachts, art and cash–and take into a... | 130 | |
Did Top Gear really find the source of the Nile and are they the first? | Reddit seem to be fairly avid watchers of Top Gear so I assume most people know that in their end of season special they attempted to find the 'true' source of the Nile in £1500 estate cars. They claimed that no one had truly found the source and that some explorers have claimed to have found it but that this was not t... | 1,219 | One definition of a river's source is the tributary starting farthest from the river's mouth. Using the point where the Nile empties into the Mediterranean as its mouth the possible sources of the Nile are on the west side of Lake Victoria.
For the Top gear special they redefined the mouth of the Nile from its delta i... | 1,433 |
ELI5: How does Overtime work? How is it profitable for a company to pay it and why is it offered? | Thinking of working for a private ambulance company and they offer a lot of overtime (up to 60+ hours a week). Why would they pay me 1.5x my base salary during my overtime hours, when they could just have someone else do the work for 1x? In addition, why not just give me the extra hours and pay me 1x as usual? | 18 | Paying overtime past 40 hours a week is required by law, otherwise companies wouldn't do it. People died to get labor laws like this to be passed so don't take it lightly.
Staff cost money to train and maintain. Secondary costs like training, benefit, uniforms, insurance, etc cost money and the company has likely done... | 52 |
CMV: Most people aren't educated well enough on most political topics hence their opinion on how things should be done are irrelevant | I've got this mindset that most people, *that doesn't have an academic background in topics that are discussed in politics*, opinions are irrelevant. The only opinions that actually matter, that are relevant to most political issues, are the ones that come from people with an academic background in the appropriate fiel... | 21 | That's a dangerous way of looking at it, what you're doing is consolidating power at the top and taking the worth out of the voice and experience of everyone that doesn't fit in the class you've decided on, an educational caste system.
Farmers are affected by climate change. The food production if cities is affected... | 18 |
CMV: The US H1B immigration system should change from a lottery to a points based system | As background, H1B is the most common type of employment visa needed by foreign nationals to work and reside in the US. The typical route for an immigrant on this visa type is to come to the US for education on an F1 visa, get a job on their OPT status under the F1 visa and get their company to sponsor them for an H1B ... | 44 | The immigration system in the US is already highly subject to so much manipulation and interpretation. Honestly, a lottery seems like it's less likely to be abused.
Plus, a points-based system would probably just perpetute the "pay to enter" problem with immigration that already exists | 19 |
[ELI5] Why is it that homosexuals are considered to be born gay while pedophiles are considered to have a mental disorder? | 666 | Those aren't mutually exclusive options. To be considered a disorder a condition must cause some sort of difficulty that would be improved if it were somehow treated or removed. So homosexuality is not considered to be one by the medical profession as a whole.
That has no real bearing on whether it has a biological ... | 596 | |
CMV: Most of the “Socially Conservative” politicians currently in Washington are huge hypocrites just courting votes do they can execute their pro corporate agenda and it didn’t used to be like that. | Like the tile says. I’m a liberal and do not and likely never will agree with mainstream American conservatism. That’s not what I’m writing about. I want to hear from people who genuinely believe that people like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Donald Trump sitting at the top of the Republican Party truly care a... | 35 | >I want to hear from people who genuinely believe that people like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Donald Trump sitting at the top of the Republican Party truly care about issues like Abortion, Gay Marriage, prayer in schools, what a bunch of NFL players do while the national anthem is playing and so forth.
Do you... | 10 |
People say that a nuclear bomb is equivalent to X tons of TNT. Well, if X tons of TNT were actually there instead of a nuclear bomb, will it have the same effect? | Perhaps without the radiation. But I'm talking more about the shockwave, destructive force, etc. And assuming you can blow them up at the exact same time.
| 17 | It's an equivalency of energy
They could also equate it too calories or joules but tnt they think is more relatable
To answer your question directly no it would not explode the same simply because a nuclear bombs volume is smaller than that many tons of tnt and many other factors | 17 |
CMV:Bodybuilding isn't a real sport the same as custom car or motorbike or PC building isn't a real sport. | As painful as this might be for some please follow my logic before downvoting.
Bodybuilding has a few objective goals which as easy as they are to state will always be judged subjectively by judges, participants and fans.
These goals include
-building muscle mass on the participants body to be larger than genetics wou... | 21 | I challenge your view that judge decided competitions are not sports. Many classical sports are decided by a panel of judges. Gymnastics, synchronized swimming, and diving, are all Olympic sports that are decided by judges.
From the outside, the layman can't really tell what the difference between at 9.8 or 10.0 vaul... | 26 |
ELI5: Regarding the North Korean who fled to Europe with 15 gigs of human experimentation data and plans to testify. How, if at all, will this affect North Korea? | 58 | We really won't know the impact of this until we know what he has to say and what the data contains.
We most likely won't know what the all the data is for decades - unless another wikileaks or Snowden type whistle-blower leaks it. | 32 | |
CMV: Employees Should Not Give Notice When Quitting | A few things first:
First, let me say that there are exceptions. Surgeons probably shouldn't quit without notice due to public health reasons. Attorneys shouldn't leave their clients unrepresented in court.
Second, anyone is free to do as they wish. I'm merely talking about what the norm should be. So on to it:
The... | 25 | You give notice because a good word from past employers of you being a good employee is very valuable to you. If the person you're interviewing calls up and the last thing they remember about you is you leaving without notice that doesn't look very good to the interviewer because it means you could do it to them too. | 28 |
If I keep betting the same number in a lottery, do I have more chances at winning than if I choose different numbers each time? | If the winning numbers are random, and my betting numbers are also random, then there are two random variables, meaning that there are fewer chances for me to win.
However, if I keep betting the same number over an over, there is one fewer random variable in the equations, giving me more chances to win. Is this right... | 15 | Your odds will be the same if you pick the same number or random numbers, assuming a fair lottery.
If the lottery is fair, it means that each winning set of numbers are drawn randomly and are not dependent on any previous set of winning numbers.
Instead of worrying about the specifics of a lottery, consider a simpl... | 30 |
[My Hero Academia] How many quirks would someone be able to inherit from their parents? As in if Todoroki had a kid, would they be able to inherit his Fire and Ice quirks as well as their mom's quirk(s)? | My question pertains mostly to the Todoroki example. Would a person be able to inherit 3 or more quirks from their parents? If he had a kid with someone else who inherited both of their parents' quirks, could they inherit all 4 quirks? | 28 | Technically people can only have one quirk.
Todoroki doesn’t have two quirks, he has one quirk that’s more complicated and intricate than his parents.
Even All for One only has one quirk. It’s just a quirk that allows him to manipulate other quirks.
Bakugo is another example. His quirk is a composite of his parents ... | 40 |
ELI5: why do some medications need to be directly injected into the bloodstream, while others can simply be injected into a muscle? | 192 | It depends on the situation. IV meds that go directly into the blood act faster and the dose can be changed easily. These are typically useful for inpatient care.
IM injections can be long acting medicines that stay in the muscle and slowly gets released over time. Or it could be something like Haldol where someone is... | 95 | |
Eli5: Why do scientific research papers need a hypothesis? Who cares what the scientist used to think before making a decision based on evidence? | 88 | The hypothesis isn't what the scientist used to think, it's what they're aiming to test. Whether they personally believe it or not isn't really relevant, often you'll have a hypothesis you don't believe because you're specifically trying to disprove it.
The point is about the way the experiment is constructed, to give... | 346 | |
[Finding Nemo] Who built the Minefield? | And why? | 24 | The Royal Australian Navy laid thousands of mines during World War II; Japan also laid mines and German surface raiding ships performed a handful of mining operations in Australian waters as well.
Since these were moored contact mines and not airdropped floating mines, I'd say it's likely that they were German models... | 47 |
ELI5 Why are caesium and quartz used for timekeeping? | What is special about these elements that makes them good for clocks? | 115 | The quartz crystals used are piezoelectric crystals. There are crystals, rocks, which produce an electric current when you bend it, and similarly will bend when you apply an electric current to them. So you can hook it directly up to an electric circuit without any additional interfaces. This makes them easy to use as ... | 98 |
[Superheroes/General] Why do Superheroes wear such unorthodox/impractical clothing and have cheesy code names? I get the need for a secret identity but why isn't there even one superhero named "Mark" in jeans and a t-shirt? | Sure, they need day jobs and need to hide their faces occasionally. That doesn't mean they also need to wear spandex and capes. Why not wear something more comfortable? And their names are just ridiculous: Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Black Canary, Green Arrow, Cyborg...are you shitting me? Those are names my 5 year ol... | 60 | A lot of them didn't name themselves but wete named by the media.
Also, most try to craft themselves into larger-than-life personas. How well does that work when you wear jeans and a t-shirt and call yourself Mark? | 75 |
[Star Wars] Can an ion canon form Hoth disable the Death Star? | Or would it only disable partial aspects of the battle station?
Also, if it was shot at a person, would it shock them to a coma or kill them? i.e. Hoth ion canon firing at a defenseless Palpatine. | 16 | > Also, if it was shot at a person, would it shock them to a coma or kill them? i.e. Hoth ion canon firing at a defenseless Palpatine.
Yes it would. Ion canons fire ionized particles (meaning charged particles). So basically it just depends on how much power you put in and it will fry a person.
> Or would it on... | 20 |
Do people bleed out mouth when shot or stabbed like in the movies? | 317 | Blood welling out of the mouth can either be coming from the stomach or digestive tract, in which case it is called haematemesis (vomiting blood), or from the lungs and respiratory tract, when it is termed haemoptosis (coughing blood). Another alternative is that the bleeding is from a structure inside the mouth, such ... | 209 | |
[40K] What happens to wounded Imperial Guardsmen? | Hey there. So I was doing my Guardsman 'thing' and defending a Forge world from horrors so dark that to contemplate them shrivels my will to speak forwards. Anyways. My Lasgun literally exploded in my hands, and my arms required double-amputation. I am now an armless bastard, writing this via dictation to a servo skull... | 30 | They tend to have trained people, imperial guard medics and field chirurgens who have advanced healing technology and bioscanners, and so they tend to be very good at patching up injuries and handling poisons and infections.
But no, you don't get to go home. You're not very highly ranked, and so, unless you did awesom... | 43 |
Assuming there IS silicon based life there in the universe, what would they use as "water" or as their organic solvent? | 50 | If water is available, there's not much reason to believe they wouldn't use it - carbon and silicon have near enough identical chemistry with water.
Otherwise, your options are quite limited. If it's too hot for water, you're really too hot for most simple liquids - you also don't really expect silicon at high tempera... | 15 | |
Does anything have the opposite effect on vocal cords that helium does? | I don't know the science directly on how helium causes our voice to emit higher tones, however I was just curious if there was something that created the opposite effect, by resulting in our vocal cords emitting the lower tones. | 2,270 | Yes. It’s called Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6). Sound travels slower in denser gasses and SF6 is 5x more dense than air so it makes the sound waves move slower through the gas which makes your voice deeper even though your vocal cords are still moving at the same rate. | 1,956 |
ELI5: why do crustaceans turn red when steam/boiled/cooked? | Have always been puzzled about why they specifically turn red no matter what Color they were before they were cooked. | 19 | The shells of crabs and lobsters contain a pigment called astaxanthin. This pigment absorbs blue light and causes a red slightly yellowish color.
When the crab or lobster is alive, another pigment called crustacyanin wraps the astaxanthin and influences the light that gets absorbed, giving it a blue greenish color.
W... | 16 |
How do movie illegal movie streaming site like movie2k, couch tuner, etc manage to even survive and make money? | How do movie streaming sites like movie2k, couch tuner, etc even manage to survive and make any money? I would imagine the hosting, server fees for that many movie would be a huge overhead cost. Then you have the movie studio, etc should be suing the crap out of them. | 104 | I think it's because they don't host the illegal videos themselves, just provide links to them which isn't explicitly illegal (or google would have been tanked under lawsuites). If you notice, the links on the sites go dead frequently. | 47 |
Why is it so difficult to land a position as a full-time professor at a T20 research university? | To my knowledge, tenure-track professorships are increasingly being replaced by contingent faculty, which usually results in many English, philosophy and history Ph.D’s being compelled to pursue positions as adjuncts. Is that…all there is to it? | 79 | Number of candidates is far greater than the number of positions available, even ignoring adjunctification. If top-20 schools are all graduating, say, 10 PhDs in a particular field each year, then that’s 200 new PhDs. TT positions open up far slower — even if each of them hires 1 new TT each year, that’s only one tenth... | 164 |
ELI5: How did the English crown lose all of its power to a modern form of government? | 151 | Well in 1215, King John of England signed the Magna Carta, which stated that his will was not law, meaning that a man couldn't be punished because the King wanted him to be, he had to have done something that went against the law of the land. This was the first step towards a modern form of government.
Henry III was ... | 94 | |
Why do some viruses, such as influenza, quickly mutate (thus require different vaccinations annually), but other viruses, such as smallpox seem to barely mutate at all (or at least much more slowly)? | 6,682 | One reason why is that viruses like corona and influenza are single stranded RNA viruses and small pox is a double stranded DNA virus.
If you have a single stranded genome, there is no repair mechanism and mutations occur much more frequently. | 4,608 | |
[Pokemon] Why are wild pokemon so aggressive? | You cant walk in tall grass without being attacked by at least one pokemon. What makes them so aggressive? | 44 | Well, to begin, many Pokemon are quite territorial, which means they'll chase off anything they deem to be a threat to either their territory or their their young, which often as not can be found in the area. To add to that, most wild Pokemon are afraid of humans (with the number of trainers there are running through t... | 26 |
ELI5:If I always feel mentally and physically better after exercising, why do I still avoid it like a whiny toddler? | Motivation not correlating to effect is absolutely befuddling. | 78 | Because exercising for the sake of exercising is completely unnatural, and our brains resist it. We evolved to have a more active lifestyle than we do now in modern times; for 99.9% of human history nobody was running on treadmills. But they were plowing fields and picking turnips and milking cows all day, and that was... | 100 |
What causes Amino Acids to "fold" into proteins? | 95 | The amino acid sequence of a protein is going to ultimately determine how it is going to fold, and the folding is stabilized by several factors. The biggest factor driving protein folding is hydrophobic interactions.
If you're unfamiliar with this, its basically the same idea as when you add oil to water, they dont ... | 38 | |
[General Sci-fi] I just shot the electronic lock on a door fleeing my captors but it rendered the door useless instead of opened it. Why did the last one I shoot open the door and this one not? | 162 | Different doors made for different purposes.
Your average door is wired so it will open when the electronic lock is destroyed. It's so people aren't trapped inside in case of fires and such, and for rescue workers to get inside.
However, a high security door is wired so it will shut itself tight when the lock is smas... | 158 | |
ELI5: What causes the brain to spaz out and let me chew my tongue/cheek/lip while I'm eating food, even though I'm real good at it after so long? | 370 | Your brain does a lot of stuff in background, which takes a lot of resources (e.g. energy.)
Your brain 'spazes' out either when you are so tired/out of energy that other more important functions are given more priority (breathing >> stability) or when it tries to find ways to save energy.
That last point could ... | 117 | |
How come gasoline isn’t more expensive? Why don’t oil companies jack the price way up? | People aren’t going to stop driving their vehicles if gas prices are higher, and it’s in the oil company’s best interest to make stacks on stacks on stacks of cash. So why isn’t gasoline more costly? They could pretty much charge what they wanted and people would pay; there’s always a demand. | 19 | OPEC did this in the 70s. All the middle eastern oil producers created a cartel, promising to artificially keep prices high. And it worked. For awhile. But the problem with cartels is that there is always a huge incentive to cheat. If just one of the oil producers starts selling oil for a little less than the rest of t... | 90 |
[MCU] Did the snap kill half of all microbial life as well? | Did it only kill the half that was inside people to be snapped anyway? If not, did survivors experience an epidemic of gut-microbe related illnesses? | 29 | Although word of god says that all life was snapped away, plant, animal etc. The fact that we see no deforestation in the last scene in Infinity War proves that, no, Thanos only targeted sentient life/intelligent life. So no microbial life wasn't hurt unless it was sentient or intelligent. | 62 |
Why does the ice in my ice cube tray sometimes climb upwards as if on an invisible wire? | This has been happening for years and years, different ice cube trays and different freezers. I will pour water in my ice cube tray and let it freeze and when I come back one or two of the ice cubes will have a stick of ice about 3cm coming out of the top, a little stick of ice. Is it climbing an impurity somehow? Thi... | 4,068 | The ice first freezes at the surface, and can result in a small "hole" of liquid at the surface, through which interior water is forced as more ice forms. The water so expelled forms the spike as it freezes. | 2,444 |
ELI5: How does a deadly cancer like melanoma actually kill you? | What's going on in your body that actually causes your death? Why are some tumors benign and others malignant? What about a tumor makes it malignant? | 90 | A malignant tumor is one that spreads to other tissues. This can either happen directly to nearby areas, or it can happen by metastasis. Metastasis is when distant tissues can be infected by, for example, crossing into the blood stream via the lymph nodes. There they can spread to dangerous area like the liver or the... | 26 |
ELI5: How does a person's brain respond if they believe they are in a situation where death is inescapable, e.g., plummeting from a great height without a parachute? | 378 | Many survivors of such accidents testify time slowing down a lot. How fast time moves in the brain turns out is not a constant. It can burn more fuel more quickly and increase the resolution of time, in other words slow down time.
Why would the brain want to do this?
It is believed it has to do with the fight or flig... | 421 | |
ELI5: what happens as a banana ages? The more brown the banana, the thinner the peel. Does the peel become the banana? | 25 | If you're only interested in the peel, it's pretty simple. The peel loses moisture through evaporation. It dries out. Since a large part of it is water, if it loses most of the water, it loses most of its mass (and volume), so it becomes thinner. | 20 | |
ELI5: What is a "firing solution"? | In regards to missiles and torpedoes, what exactly do they mean when they are working on a firing solution. Especially when most modern missiles and torpedoes seem to have automatic homing / target funding technology? | 15 | Firing a torpedo involves three or more factors while attempting to maintain stealth.
The directions and speed of the ships, the current, and possibly terrain, means that shooting a torpedo is a tricky bit of math especially when the other ships position speed and such may not be known perfectly.
On top of that, whi... | 30 |
ELI5: How do clothes have so much lint yet there never seems to be a difference in the clothing | 31 | All you need to do is think about that one shirt or pair of pants that was the softest most comfy thing when you bought it, but after a year or two it's now thin, scratchy, and maybe even has a hole or two. Cumulative removal of a small amount material over a long time is not easily discernable, but every time you wash... | 21 | |
US Presidents should serve one six year term without the ability to be re-elected. CMV | As it stands, a four year presidency is a short amount of time to initiate new policies, test to see if those policies work, and foster new plans should they need re-adjusting. Thus, to make any long-lasting impact, each president strategically expends their political capital to make just enough changes as to satisfy ... | 79 | How would changing the executive power, affect the legislative? The congress is the problem when doing new policies, not the president. The president could be God almighty, and the congress would still bicker and crap on changes in the name of money. | 35 |
[Dragon Ball Super] Does the title ''God Of Destruction'' give a boost in power? | So i rewatched the Tournament Of Power not too long ago and that made me wonder ;
Is Lord Beerus really that strong, or does his title as god give him significantly more power than without? Top also gained a great boost in power as soon as he made his decision to become a GoD, but other than Hakai nothing really chan... | 31 | The title alone does not confer additional power, but access to Divine Ki.
Think of regular ki as charcoal: burns dirty, inefficient, takes a lot to produce useful energy. Certain transformations like the Super Saiyan forms make ki generation more efficient: i.e. gasoline: more bang for buck, more energy with less vo... | 21 |
What are the key thought experiments everyone should know about? | Favourites, most interesting, best introductions to philosophy... lemme have them! | 20 | The Turing Test, Chinese Room, Mary's Room, Philosophical Zombie, Twin Earth, Moral Twin Earth, Inverted Qualia, Fading and Dancing Qualia, Swampman, Leibniz's Mill, Utilitarian Monster, Trolley Problem, Survival Lottery, The Veil of Ignorance, Plato's Cave, Bucket Argument, Kant's Left Hand. | 13 |
Couldn't there be a theoretical cap to entropy in a system? | I'm a humanities major, so take it easy on me here... but, according to the [Laws of Thermodynamics](https://www.boundless.com/chemistry/textbooks/boundless-chemistry-textbook/thermodynamics-17/the-laws-of-thermodynamics-123/the-three-laws-of-thermodynamics-496-3601/), if entropy approaches a constant value as we get c... | 59 | Yes, this is known as the Bekenstein bound and basically corresponds to the entropy of a black hole. Within a given volume, the maximum entropy is ~~four~~ one quarter times the number of Planck areas that can fit in the surface of that volume, times the Boltzmann constant.
Systems at low temperature tend to have rela... | 24 |
ELI5: If I moved 1 meter/second below the speed of light, why does it appear to move at light speed from me? | The Speed of Light is 299,792,458 meters / second.
If I move at 299,792,457 m / s why would I witness light traveling at relativistic lightspeed from me? or am I misunderstanding and i'll witness photons moving at speeds of 1 m/s?
I'm quite confused. | 15 | your time will go slower the faster you travel. therefore, if an observer at our "speed" looks at you and a photon he will see you traveling with a speed difference of 1m/s. For you, since one second will be much longer time, any photon can travel through much more space in that second, effectively increasing its speed... | 18 |
[Mass effect] Is there an in universe reason to why ships in the Mass Effect universe are smaller in comparison to other Science fiction series? | The largest ships in mass effect are the dreadnoughts which range from 800 meters to a kilometer. This seems large but when you compare it to the Punic-class supercarrier seen in Halo (4,000 meters longer) it just seems strange. Especially considering the tech level differences in these series. The mass effect universe... | 21 | While you can get bigger, you also have to scale up the size of mass effect fields you have to create for them.
Additionally, the drive cores make a lot of heat and build up a charge that can fry the crew if not discharged, and the rate of both scales with the size of the drive core, and past a certain point you end... | 36 |
ELI5: Why hitler didn't attack the mentally defeated british army in Dunkirk? | 23 | Because he could not, only his armour was in the area, and the terrain was no good for armour, and armour without infantry can be a sitting duck. And the armoured units were low on fuel and supplies. It would take some time for the infantry, fuel and supplies to arrive.
The Germans had some concerns about a possible ... | 34 | |
[Portal] What would happen if you sent a portal through a portal? | Say if the portals in "portal" existed. If you put one of the portals in a box, close the box and throw it through the other portal. What would happen? Imploding sounds like a reasonable thing but I dont know. | 28 | Once the distance between two portals becomes of the order of a few nanometers but before they intersect each other, the Casimir force between them becomes significant and causes the portals to collapse. | 42 |
ELI5:Who ended up deciding the standard monitor resolutions and what's the origin? | One thing I've noticed is that most of them, mathematically make sense, since they're all multipliers of 8. I'll give you some examples.
8 * 96 = **768**
8 * 160 = **1.280**
8 * 180 = **1.440**
8 * 200 = **1.600**
8 * 240 = **1.920**
8 * 320 = **2.560**
8 * 480 = **3.840**
Why the 8 as a multiplier, you ask.
**... | 70 | Back in the olden days a standard screen was big enough to display 80 characters across and 60 vertically (for a 4:3 aspect ratio) and each character was 8 pixels wide and 8 pixels tall. Thus the overall resolution was 640x480. There were smaller ones before but this was considered a universal standard by that point. F... | 37 |
ELI5: Why do companies, like Coca Cola, not brand their products, like Minute Maid, with their names? | 18 | To give the illusion of choice. They don't want you to realize how many products they own and appear as a monopoly to someone that uses a lot of their products.
Also, they have acquired many of these companies AFTER coke and want to keep THAT products name to preserve loyalty and brand recognition. | 24 | |
Could the fact that we can't tell if a black hole is made of matter or anti matter explain the matter-anti matter disparity of the universe? | I'm asking if matter and anti matter could have been created in equal amounts at the big bang, and more anti matter than matter formed black holes, and the rest annihilated, leaving just matter and black holes made of both. | 50 | When the universe was young, it was more homogeneous than it is now (it is quite homogeneous now too). So, the chances of anti-matter clumping together to attain energy densities requires to form a black hole are pretty non existent. | 17 |
[Death Note] If Light was so smart, then why didn’t he use multiple ways of killing people instead of just heart attacks? | I get that at some points he used different forms of killing, but those were mainly for experiments or to mess with L. Why didn’t he just use all different forms of killing to murder the criminals? | 15 | Because Light's entire goal was to be noticed.
It wasn't just about murdering criminals or some black and white version of justice that drove him. Light wanted to be Kira. He wanted to be god. And the best way to be a god is to make sure everybody knows about you, and knows what the consequences of disobeying you are... | 53 |
[GOT] Why do so many of the Wildlings have such finely crafted weapons? | No doubt that they're skilled at smithing, but most use fairly simple, unrearkable weapons. So why do a fair few (Tormund, Thenns) have weapons that look far more decorative and well forged than many of those seen further south.
Are the wildlings simply better weapon smiths than we'd expect from their culture, or did t... | 31 | I think we are seeing the "aristocracy" of the wildlings in most scenes. These are the leaders of the various tribes, they would have claimed the best weapons from plunder as their own, and would pass them down to their children. | 45 |
[Spider-Man] Does Spidey Sense alert Peter about regular, everyday dangers? | For example, if he goes to grab a piece of paper, but the way he’s gonna grab will give him a nasty papercut. Will Spidey Sense kick in and tell him to grab a different way?
Just for example. | 21 | Maybe not, but it’ll probably warn him right before someone opens a door, regardless of their intentions. He probably just knows the door is going to open.
There’s a thing in the marvel universe that Peter makes the best pancakes because his spidey sense alerts him as to when to flip them.
So it seems it can be use... | 16 |
[General videogames] I just felt a shotgun blast to my face, a grenade to my feet and felt off a cliff, but I can somehow move and function at full speed, yet my mind tells me only 2% of my body is functioning, What is happening? Are my senses fooling me? | 33 | **Wall Of Text Incoming**
You are the pilot of a Combat Offensive Drone, a long range infantry robot designed to mimic humans in appearance for the comfort of foreign noncombatants. The C.O.D is controlled via secure satellite uplink to a classified room in an undisclosed location somewhere within the United States. ... | 44 | |
Blood bank pioneer Charles Drew was killed in a car crash in 1950. His injuries were too severe for him to be saved. Per wiki a passenger says a blood transfusion might have killed him sooner. Are there any reasons/conditions why a blood transfusion could kill a trauma victim sooner ? If so, how ? | By 1950, the major blood groups and RH would surely have been known for transfusion, (eg in North Carolina where the crash occurred) | 3,245 | Blood transfusions increase blood pressure. Since his superior vena cava was blocked, blood flow from the head/neck/chest was blocked. But blood flow to the head/neck/chest continued. This causes a spike in blood pressure localized to these regions. A further increase of blood pressure from the transfusion could res... | 2,419 |
[Star Wars] what's the difference between a Sith and a Dark Jedi? | 25 | All sith are dark jedi, but not all dark jedi are sith. Eloquently summed up in the novel *Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil* by Jedi Master Obba;
> "What's the difference between a Sith and a Dark Jedi?" Lucia asked.
> The Ithorian stopped pacing and turned to face them, instinctively addressing his audience like a ... | 30 | |
ELI5: Why can I go to sleep hungry and when I wake up, I don't feel hungry for a few hours | 332 | because when you don't eat for a while your body goes into fasting state which is basically energy saving mode (like on your phone or computer) and then you won't be hungry. it's a nice method if you are on a diet and only eat 2 meals a day with longer breaks in between. | 89 | |
Is Maths a branch of Logic or is Logic a branch of Maths? Why? What does it mean to be a "branch of" a discipline? | 46 | A branch of another discipline would mean everything contained in the branch is a subset of the parent discipline. This would be like calculus being a branch of mathematics since everything in calculus is math but math is more than just calculus. Neither math not logic is a branch of the other since both has a scope be... | 38 | |
ELI5:why do pro gamers retire in their early 20's? Do your reflexes really drop so significantly that early in life? | 61 | Several reasons:
1) you don't really make that much money. Only top players make the big money. For every guy making over $100k a year, there are hundreds who don't. It's kind of like the acting industry. The top 1% of actors make huge money, the other 99% are broke. At some point these guys realize they will nev... | 68 | |
ELI5:How does Thermal Imaging work? | 1,587 | Heat sources emit electromagnetic radiation with a frequency respecting to their temperature. The visible spectrum of EM radiation ranges from red to violet. The sun's surface is about 5000 Kelvin hot and our eyes happen to see this light. Infrared means that the frequency of the EM radiation coming from an object is b... | 664 | |
[To Kill a Mockingbird] Why was Arthur "Boo" Radley stuck inside his house? | Is he imprisoned against his will by someone or does he simply want to be a hermit/recluse? Was he expected to stay inside for the remainder of his life? | 25 | The only detail we get is that his father used to lock him up in the basement, suggesting he was a victim of severe abuse.
Judging from his extreme pallor and strange, halting speech patterns, the implication seems to be that he is in some way mentally ill and not able to handle basic social activity, either a consequ... | 26 |
[DC] Does the Joker like lesser villains that he either might find funny, or have similar taste? | Im thinking of The Trickster, Toyman, are his taste but he wouldnt find them threatening-so no murder possibly.
Kite-man, 10 eyes man, Condiment king-I could see him laughing his ass off at them. | 22 | Nope. He has always hated his "imitations." The only one he considers a peer is the Riddler. He's more playful and less scary when he picks on him. In the War of Jokes and Riddles, Riddler enacts a giant elaborate plan to make Joker (who has been down) laugh. He unintentionally gets the laugh when he tries to stab Joke... | 37 |
Self-studying the history of western philosophy through primary literature, from Plato to Kant | I have been self-studying philosophy for about a year now, but I've mostly been reading secondary literature. Introductory books like Blackburn's *Think* and Russell's *The Problems of Philosophy*, a history of philosophy or two, the SEP and IEP, podcasts, blogs, etc. I'm currently reading Kenny's *New History of Weste... | 44 | I think skipping 1900 years of philosophy is likely to be a mistake. Plotinus and definitely Aquinas would be good inclusions, and their most famous works are the *Enneads* and the *Summa Thelogica* (or maybe the *Summa Contra Gentiles*).
Also, when it comes time to move into contemporary philosophy, do you want to fo... | 13 |
[Captain America 2] Cap' is running at them protecting his torso behind his shield, so why don't the bad guys ever just shoot at his feet? | 82 | Because shooting at small, fast-moving targets is hella hard. Most military/police forces are trained not to aim at the legs at all, but at the torso. Specifically center mass. On no occasion will they ever be trained to 'shoot to wound'.
When they go up against Cap, they fall back on their basic training. Primary tar... | 115 | |
How big would a sphere (or planet) of water have to be for ice to form at the core? | 54 | You must specify what temperature this sphere should have to be able to answer the question. If it was just put in empty space it would cool to close to the absolute zero temperature and freeze no matter what the size. | 16 | |
[The Truman Show] What did they do with that giant set of his after Truman escaped? | 74 | They opened it up to the public as a very expensive theme-park.
After the world watched the producers try to kill Truman to prevent his escape without divers in the water or any other sort of reasonable controls, the process became a legal nightmare as they had to offer Truman a nine figure settlemen... | 91 | |
ELI5: when I'm very intoxicated why does the cold weather not bother me? | 53 | Alcohol dilates (expands) your blood vessels. This makes you feel warmer because more blood (which carries heat) is being pumped to your extremities. However, this is bad because it means you're losing heat faster and your core (heart and other organs) is losing heat which leads to hypothermia and potentially death. | 57 | |
CMV: I believe that professional porn stars and prostitutes (both sexes) are the same, and since one is legal, they both should be. | It doesn't make any sense to me how prostitution is illegal in the US (except for that one area in what, Nevada?) but professional porn companies that pay people to have sex on the camera are completely legal and legitimate businesses. I feel as if these companies are simply exploiting sex workers and that prostitutes ... | 160 | In the result, it may seem they are similar. However, this is how it is different:
Porn is still considered a function of film, and thus creative artistic license. What does that mean? That means it's an issue of freedom of speech. Yes, quite a bit of porn out there isn't really much of a film in terms of how we w... | 50 |
How far is a meteor from an observer? | When I see a shooting star in the sky, how far could it possibly be from me? Clearly, it varies, but what would the maximum range be? | 23 | They become visible around 100 km altitude. So if it's overhead or nearly so then that's roughly the distance to it. If it's near the horizon then it could be much further away. 100 km altitude and exactly at the horizon would be about 1,100 km away. Unlikely that you could see one exactly at the horizon but you asked ... | 10 |
What is the "fiscal cliff"? | I don't know if this has been asked before, but this is something that has ~~peaked~~piqued my curiosity. I hear a lot about this but I don't know or understand exactly what it is. | 44 | There is a day at the end of the year where the big people in charge (congress) must reach an agreement about the budget for the upcoming year, or these things called emergency cuts will kick in. The emergency cuts will roll back spending and cut jobs, even if the workers have been doing a great job.
This is just a b... | 73 |
CMV: The only valid moral philosophy is one that compels minimization of suffering and maximization of happiness. The disdain at the idea of killing someone for their organs is not evidence of a flaw in utilitarianism, but in human evaluation of ethical conundrums. | Since the dawn of moral philosophy, it seems, people have attacked systems of ethics with a variation of this tactic:
Person 1 - "I've come up with a system of ethics. Let me explain it to you. It's based on these principles..."
Person 2, after thinking - "Ok, but imagine y scenario. It feels weird to just allow y sc... | 39 | > Minimization of suffering and maximization of happiness should be the basic goal of all people. Good and bad emotions are the only things that are, in of themselves good and bad.
This isn't well-defined though. Minimizing suffering and maximizing happiness can be in conflict. Consider the following scenarios:
Sc... | 21 |
ELI5: Why are rocket exhaust ports increasing in diameter, while jet engine exhaust ports are decreasing? | 159 | Wasn't going to answer, but a lot of these answers are missing the main point.
​
The point of an an engine is to shoot gas out the back as fast as possible. The faster the gas goes, the more thrust per mass you get.
​
For gas flows below the speed of sound, increasing the pressure makes them f... | 167 | |
This is a really dumb question, and by "dumb" I mean "why would you even want to know the answer," but are there 32 bit integer values whose bit pattern matches the floating point conversion of that integer? | Again, really useless, but I'm more just curious of methods to find out. The easiest way I could think of is to step through integers starting at 1, convert to a single float, and compare the bit patterns. If they aren't equal, then increment. But there's got to be cleverer ways of finding out, right? | 57 | Yes : zero
There's another, kind of : 1318926965
If you convert that to a float, then it has the same bits but has a different value : 1318926976
To answer your question : doing this by brute force took about 1 second.
#include <iostream>
#include <limits>
#include <chrono>
#i... | 42 |
ELI5:how is blood transfusion biologically possible? | i don't know if i am being too stupid right now, but this question used to scratch my head for years. well, as i know due to my school-level biology knowledge, DNA's literally everywhere in one's organism; thus in a blood too.
what i can't get is the fact that blood transfusion is very viral and common in medicine now... | 15 | Actually, red blood cells, RBC for short, mature, their nucleus and its DNA shrinks and disappears. This allows that concave shape that they appear to have, which fills with oxygen/CO2. Only mature cells have no DNA or nucleus.
The thing that gets tricky is the antigens and antibodies associated with the blood types.... | 16 |
ELI5: Why do we get "the bends" when we climb down a mountain too fast but, we can jump out of a plane thousands of feet in the air and land in a matter of minutes without negative effects? | 16 | It's actually in the other direction, going from high pressure to low, that causes the problems.
People who skydive must wait 24 hours after going scuba diving, due to the risks created by blood gases that have not had enough time to return to "sea level" concentrations.
(and it's not the skydive that causes the pro... | 11 | |
CMV:Most rich people became that way by some combination of intimidation, extortion, stealing, cheating, lying and immoral actions that are technically legal. | First of all, this is not a scientific statement, I have not researched the data in full. I'm just intellectually curious and happen to work in the law, finance and real estate sector. I sort of lead somewhat of a double life in the sense of working in an industry that I believe condones/sanctions unethical behavior. T... | 26 | What about those who became rich of of patents?
Or shorting stocks just before 2008?
Or joining a start up that does well early?
Or investing wisely?
Or getting lucky?
All of these are common ways of getting rich and none of them are illegal.
Do you think that those methods are not common? and if you don't think ... | 30 |
ELI5: Why is it that paper cups get mushy and starts to fall apart within an hour when holding cold fluids, but are perfectly okay with holding hot fluids like coffee indefinetly? | The Starbucks I go to ran out of cold cups for my ice coffee. They put in a hot cup instead. In a matter of a car ride, it almost fell apart as I picked it up. This never happens with my hot coffee?
Edit: i get it, I get it. It sounds like my coffee is hot indefinetly. | 4,526 | Paper cups are coated with a waterproof layer on the inside, but not on the outside. When they contain hot drinks, the liquid is touching this impermeable barrier, so doesn't get the paper wet. However, a cold drink cools its container, making water vapour from the atmosphere condense on the outside - that's why your i... | 5,815 |
[Fallout/Elderscrolls] What's a sweet toll taste like? | Can someone tell some of the ingredients so I can eat and gain its power to fight this dragon? | 29 | 1 x Salt Pile
1 x Jug of Milk
1 x Sack of Flour
1 x Butter
1 x Chicken's Egg
Judging by the ingredients, Nords had a pretty limited idea on what was "sweet". They are a hardy people, but not particularly blessed in the kitchen. | 32 |
ELI5: is autism more prevalant these days or has our awareness & diagnosis increased? | If it IS more prevalant, why? | 43 | "Autism" encompasses a much larger spectrum than it used to. Decades ago, many people with high functioning forms of autism would've just been brushed off as weird or awkward. We now know a lot more about autism and can assign it accurately to more people. At the same time, it is misdiagnosed more often because it does... | 35 |
CMV: The actions of “Bernie Bros” who did not vote for Hillary in the general elections are justified (from the perspective of someone who wanted Hillary to win) | Broadly, I think that so called Bernie bros who didn’t vote for Hillary were justified for one reason, and one reason only: by voting for her they are essentially say that they will vote for whoever the nominee is regardless of actual policy. The fact of the matter is that the Democratic Party hasn’t seen a more polar ... | 15 | >and if people on the outside of the American “liberal” spectrum show up to vote for someone who doesn’t represent their politics, the the Democratic Party has no reason to run more liberal candidates that are committed to real reform.
Hillary Clinton *did* represent their politics though. They just refused to ackn... | 21 |
ELI5: How did humans in Asia evolve to have narrower eyes, why did Africans skin stay black while Arabic and European peoples became lighter? | No offense meant, just phrasing the question as best I can as to how some humans evolved with certain traits and how the process occurred. | 202 | If you live in the tropics, dark skin is a helpful adaptation, because it protects your skin from sunlight (fewer sun burns and cancers).
If you live in the northern latitudes where there is significantly less sun certain times of the year, light skin is a helpful adaptation, because it allows more sunlight to penetra... | 139 |
ELI5 : Why aren't we hibernating in winter like most of other mammals ? | 74 | Humans evolved in a tropical part of Africa, and are adapted for existing in that sort of environment. We can adapt ourselves to live in colder environments, but have to provide shelter and clothing to survive there. You can live naked in the jungle with very few tools--ask any of the tribes all around the world who pr... | 80 | |
ELI5: Would we eventually run out of space on the "cloud" to store data? | If I'm understanding this correctly, the cloud is effectively servers that are running in data centers... But as more and more people are storing things in these data centers and that we have to build more, would we eventually run out of places to store them? | 26 | Not until we run out of bigger and bigger and more hard drives, servers and data centers to store them in.
As storage tech gets better, we retire older, power hungry inefficient storage drives and move all our data over to newer bigger faster small devices. So yes, even though the volume of data that that generate ev... | 29 |
Is it illegal to be Sith or was it just frowned upon by the galaxy | 74 | It's not illegal to be a sith, but it is illegal to do many of the things that Sith often do, such as murder people.
It's important to remember that the vast majority of the galaxy are very unclear on the whole Sith/Jedi distinction, conflicts between them are often seen as civil wars between Jedi. | 89 | |
ELI5: why do people go bald on their heads, but not their faces? | Every bald person has a beard....why does the face not go bald as well? | 20 | Baldness, if we're talking the typical male-pattern-baldness you seem to be addressing here and not fringe/rare cases, is caused by the hair follicles found on the scalp reacting to androgens in the body.
Other body hair does not have this reactivity to the particular androgen, dihydrotestosterone (DHT), that the sca... | 14 |
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