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ELI5: as someone from the UK, I have no idea why obamacare has been getting so much hate. explain.
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I really just have not clue.
| 655 |
Obamacare mandates that you buy healthcare insurance, or apply for free coverage from the government if you're poor enough or old enough to qualify. It gives subsidies based on income.
Long story short, there are a lot of Americans who think that the free market is the best solution to all problems - healthcare included. They view Obamacare as evil for two reasons: 1) it forces you to purchase something against your will, and 2) it runs contrary to free market principles.
Many (most?) of these people also tend believe that healthcare in the US is significantly superior to that which exists in the UK/Canada/Switzerland/etc.. Thus, any move toward a European model is viewed as a degradation of current services.
| 510 |
$121,602.51 per US worker?
|
If we imagine the US as a village where everyone works to produce grain, where that grain is divided evenly at harvest among every person who worked to produce the grain, how much grain would each worker in the US get?
If we divide the [Gross Domestic Income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDI) by the [participation rate](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000) times the [labor force](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11000000), it comes out to $194,922.93 per worker.
$19,690,094,000,000 / (0.627 * 161,115,000) = $194,922.93
Is there really that much money to go around?
TL;DR the answer to my question is **$105,856.95** per worker. Read on to learn more.
EDIT: Honestly, who downvotes someone for asking a question?
| 34 |
One unit of currency goes from hand to hand more than once a year.
Also your calculation is incorrect if you want to find "GDP per working person"
You would do:
GDP / [labor force*(1-unemployment rate)]
In your formula, multiplying the participation rate times the total population would work. By multiplying it by the labor force you are basically taking the ratio twice
| 17 |
ELI5: How did Duck Hunt for the NES know where you were pointing the gun?
| 7,137 |
When you pull the trigger the screen goes completely black, and after a white box appears where the duck is. The light gun is just a light detector. It looks at the black screen and if it sees the white box after is registers it as a hit and the duck dies. This process happens in less than a second so you may not notice it without looking for it.
| 9,246 |
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ELI5: Why are semi's not more streamlined?
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Why is it when I see a semi 90%+ of them are very boxy? I feel like when hauling long distances, you'd want to be as aerodynamic as possible to save on fuel costs.
| 18 |
In the US trucks used for long haul work usually are pretty streamlined. They need that large flat grille to suck air into the radiator during the summer, but the rest of the cab angles back. Some companies even put fins on the bottom and back of the trailers to disrupt vortex formation and lower drag.
Trucks that do more local hauling don't usually go fast enough to warrant any aerodynamic improvement, so other concerns like cost, maintenance accessibility, and length determine the shape.
| 18 |
Why does Euler's number appear in physics?
|
I understand that Euler's number is an infinite sum of 1/n!, but what I don't understand is why things like the decay and growth of nuclear radiation can be perfectly modeled by this number. I guess you can have this discussion with pi, but to me it is more obvious why pi comes up in physics, whenever the circumference of a circle is divided by its diameter, it's the nature of a circle, which come up often. But why do things in nature work by this infinite sum of reciprocal factorials?
| 28 |
It all boils down to
d/dx ( e^x ) = e^x
e is the only base for which the above is true. e^x being invariant under differentiation means this function will be paramount to the solution of linear differential equations, which are the heart of physics. In fact, you can see that e in physics almost never appears as anything else than the base of an exponential.
| 31 |
ELI5:The glass broke off of my microwave, but the faraday cage is still intact, why is it, or is it not, still safe to use?
| 67 |
The glass in the microwave might have small strands built in for a second layer Faraday cage. It is hard to say if it is still safe to use. It is better to be on the safe side. If you are worried you might try with a wet towel placed on the outside of the door and around the edges. It it gets hot in some areas then you should not have turned on the microwave. Also if you have problems connecting to the wifi when the microwave is on then it is not safe to use.
| 55 |
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What does Duhem mean when he says that no theory or hypothesis in physics is ever falsifiable?
| 27 |
Here's what Duhem wrote in *The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory*:
> The prediction of the phenomenon, whose nonproduction is to cut off debate, does not derive from the proposition challenged if taken by itself, but from the proposition at issue joined to that whole group of theories; if the predicted phenomenon is not produced, not only is the proposition questioned at fault, but so is the whole theoretical scaffolding…
This is an account of scientific discovery from observations, which invoke a modus tollens. Suppose the truth of a theory, P, implies the observation of some phenomenon, Q. However, if Q is not observed, then P can't be true:
P → Q
¬Q
∴ ¬P
This means we have to reject P. However, Duhem's idea is that there is always one or more more auxiliary theories, a, in conjunction with P. This changes our result to:
(P & A) → Q
¬Q
∴ ¬(P v A)
Where, A=(a1+a2+…+an).
Hence, there is no way of deciding from this logical schema whether P or A or both is the cause of ¬Q. ¬Q only implies that either P or A or both is at fault. According to Duhem, there is no way of isolating any P of auxiliaries and therefore it is in principle impossible to ever falsify any P beyond doubt.
As for Quine, i *think* this is pretty close to what he means by
> …our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body
How should we then decide between two competing theories given that neither is strictly falsifiable? According to Duhem, the best we can hope for is that:
> The day arrives when good sense comes out so clearly in favour of one of two sides [of conflicting theories] that the other side gives up the struggle even though pure logic would not forbid its continuation.
| 19 |
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ELI5: To the baseball experts, why do some say that it's better for the first baseman to be lefthanded?
| 94 |
Lefties wear their gloves on their right hand. When you're standing on first base facing home plate, your right hand is on the second base side, and your left hand is near the foul line.
If you're a lefty, that means any throw coming from the field is slightly quicker - because they don't have to throw quite as far to get it into your right hand. It's a matter of milliseconds, but sometimes that makes a difference in a close play at first.
| 46 |
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[Marvel Comics] What does Norman Osborn/Green Goblin think of the other Spider-Men/Spider-Themed Heroes (Miles Morales, Ben Reilly, Miguel O'Hara, etc.)?
|
Recently rewatched "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker", and throughout the film Joker views Terry as an annoying wannabe punk, refusing to acknowledge him as Batman.
Considering Norman/The Goblin has an obssesion with Spider-Man on par with Joker's, does he have a similar mindset when it comes to other people who take the mantle of Spider-Man or a similar title? How does he treat them compared to Peter Parker?
| 44 |
The Ultimate universe's Norman considered himself Miles's creator and felt entitled to his loyalty as a surrogate father. Miles, naturally, did not agree and fought him alongside a recently-returned Peter Parker.
Other Normans generally do not care about Miles.
| 20 |
Why do dogs stink?
|
I never bathe my cats, and they don't stink. But if Fido goes a month or two he smells awful. Even indoor, dainty dogs who would never deign to eat poop or roll in dead stuff, smell foul after a while, and dogs don't sweat, do they? So what gives? What causes that funky dog aroma?
| 55 |
Hi there !
Dogs have natural odors used for animal recognition and for scent-marking territory. Actually all canids do (wolves, foxes, coyotes, etc..). They produce these odors through their nose, ears and paw pads.
They also produce unnatural odors and this may come from very diverse reasons :
* Breath (kidney failures or diabetes may cause a change in breath odor)
* Dental diseases and gums can also produce a foul odor
* Infected ears
* Flatulence
* Anal glands or Anal sacs. This is the more common cause of stinkyness. Dogs have 2 small anal sacs near the anus. They can become infected or impacted and they'll secrete a smelly oily substance on the surrounding fur causing very bad odor.
You need to be able to recognize an odd odor from your dog so that you can take him to the veterinarian, even if you're not sure.
*An ounce of prevention is definitely better than a pound of cure.*
| 48 |
ELI5: ELI5: How does a scientist go about quantumly entangling two photons
| 22 |
There are a couple of main ways:
* When you put calcium atoms into a specific kind of energized state, it will emit two photons in random directions. When those photons are emitted in opposite directions, they will be entangled.
* You can take a single, high-energy photon, and emit it through a special crystal, and it will split into two lower-energy photons that are entangled.
| 16 |
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[Wrestling] I have no sense of smell. What is the Rock cooking?
| 20 |
The Rock is an avatar of Strength and Destruction.
When he asks "Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?" there is no one particular scent, it is different for all of us... perhaps to some it is a pleasant scent meant to lull them into a sense of safety while others may inhale a rotten and vile odor meant only to signal their inevitable defeat.
| 19 |
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[SUPEHEROES] Which is harder. Becoming a member of the Justice League or the Avengers?
| 79 |
Avengers, easily.
The Justice League at one point had two teenagers with no powers and their dog as members. And they got replaced by the Wonder Twins who at least had powers, but were very very inexperienced.
| 113 |
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ELI5: Why does the last minute on the washing machine always take several minutes?
|
I put on a wash, and it says 40 minutes to go. I come back in about that time, and see there is 1 minute remaining so I stick around to transfer the clothes to the dryer or rack. Several minutes later, there is still 1 minute remaining. Why does the machine lose sense of time in the last minute?
| 40 |
It's because the first half of the wash (the tumbling and the soap and the water part) is times. The second half is based on a state the machine is in. Once the timer finishes (it's set to finish with 1 minute remaining), it starts draining water and spinning hard to get most of the water out. This takes a couple of minutes, but it's not timed on the machine's clock.
(The above is an educated guess. All washing machines work differently.)
| 14 |
[Meta/40k] The Emperor discovers this sub/40k in the present and realizes it is a prophecy... what can he do with this knowledge?
|
Basically the title, The Big E discovers this sub/40k in general and through whatever act determines it is at least very likely the future that awaits him.
Can he use this information to change the future and avoid any disastrous scenarios to the Imperium's advantage? What would he do with this new found advantage?
By the Karma of Sanguinius!
The Emperor posts.
| 43 |
Possibly. There are a few major things he could have done to avoid the heresy:
Make Sanguinus warmaster instead of Horus. Even Horus himself says the angel would have been a better choice.
Be less of a dick to Lorgar. The Emperor didn't like was Lorgar was doing, which was fine, but he could have shared it in a better way than sending the smurfs to glass the capitol city of Lorgar's favorite planet.
If the Emperor had *very* exact knowledge then he could do some even more targeted actions like rescuing Horus from the anathame or the just smothering Erebus as a baby.
The problem with foreknowledge though, is the moment you act on it the future changes and your knowledge is useless. Even if the Emperor had access to every piece of 40k fluff ever written, the moment he acted on it things would change and Chaos would find a new way to worm its way in.
| 40 |
[Avengers: Age of Ultron] How did Strucker get his hands on Loki's sceptre?
| 34 |
Hydra has agents everywhere. It would be easy to have it fall off the back of a truck in transportation or have the wrong form filled out at shield and have it sent to the wrong facility for study. Not to mention at this point they are shield at least in part.
| 25 |
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ELI5 The Illuminati
| 1,150 |
Depends on what you mean.
The idea that the Illuminati are a shadowy organisation who secretly controls the world order comes from a triology released in the 70s by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea called the Illuminati Triology. The books are based on the idea that _every_ conspiracy is true...all of them. That series is obviously a work of fiction but since the triology was released, may have jumped on the idea of a secret world order.
There was a real organisation called the Grand Order of Illuminated Seers which was founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt. The Wikipedia entry on that Illuminati gives a pretty good background.
| 566 |
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[Marvel] I'm a junior research assistant at a secret government facility and I'm wondering if I should request a transfer.
|
I'm a little worried because lately we've been testing the durability of vibranium which the senior staff won't even tell us where they got it. Anyways one test in particular is making me worried that I won't be going home to my family after doing it. The test involves using electromagnetic rails to propel two 1kg balls of vibranium into each other at high speeds. I think the method outlined 3 collision speeds test one at 300 two at 3000 and three at 10000 kilometers per hour. I'm afraid this test will be essentially a bomb that would destroy the collider facility. My supervisor said I don't need to worry but when I asked him how I'll be assisting he said that he'll be instructing me to perform the test from a remote location. I'm extremely worried. I can't tell my wife about what's going on but she and the kids can sense that work is troubling me. Am I worried about nothing or should I try to transfer to a different site?
| 35 |
Don't be such a pansy, this is for *science*, man. If they want to shoot vibranium balls at each other in order to generate mega-zeta waves or tear a hole in the fabric of reality with harmonic resonance cascades, or whatever, it's your *duty* to assist them.
And if you happen to forget your clipboard in the collision chamber and need to rush back in at the last second to get it before the experiment, don't hesitate. Go back in and get it. Even if there's a lightning storm outside and the lights are flickering, even if you're taking unlicensed herbal products grown near the Fukushima reactor, and even if you're an orphan whose first and last name start with the same letter.
Dammit, man, humanity is counting on you!
| 39 |
[Star Trek: Prime Timeline] What happened to brands on Earth?
|
There are more than a few brand names that are centuries old as of now, but by the time of Kirk and company, there don't seem to be any at all. Even if you've got replicators, I'd still expect to hear someone order a Coke once in a while. Is Earl Grey tea the only consumable with a name left in the future?
| 17 |
Much was lost during WWIII, and after that the world pretty much united after First Contact. The Federation is a socialist utopia (or dystopia depending on how you view it) so there's no such thing as private companies.
Generic soda may have fallen out of favor - we do see Quark serve root beer once, but most seem to prefer synthohol. As far as kids go, maybe they stick with healthier options?
| 20 |
[Mass Effect] How do Asari pay off their student loans?
|
Is that why so many maidens take up stripping and outlaw work?
| 40 |
>Is that why so many maidens take up stripping and outlaw work?
No, they do it to satisfy a desire to meet people and experience adventure. The Maiden period of an Asari's life cycle is basically all about having fun, however they personally want to.
As for the main question... The same as everyone else. Eventually they grow up, get real jobs, and start paying bills.
| 60 |
How does the cell synthesize all of the proteins of a protein complex at stoichiometric ratios/numbers? (eg synthesize all proteasome proteins at the appropriate ratios to which they are used)
| 21 |
Hey, translation expert here. Translation is the key limiting step of the gene expression process and some complexes are built co-translationally to ensure stoichiometry.
It is called co-translational complex assembly. So basically mRNAs coding for proteins of the same complex are translated in cluster. The not fully made proteins of the complex start interacting between each other as soon as the nascent peptide chain goes out of the ribosome (so only after 50 amino acids have been assembled) while ribosomes continue translation. This is how some complexes are assembled.
Actually it is a really important process. Some proteins won't make a complex if the proteins are first fully made because they won't fold properly without interacting with their partner during translation. The partners play here the role of a chaperone. If they are not folded properly, they will be degraded so we only end with proteins assembled into complexes.
This is true for some complexes like the proteasome. However, many complexes don't follow that rule and their proteins are not in the same number in the cell.
| 14 |
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[The Culture]Are the inhabitants of universes simulated by the Minds considered Culture citizens with all the rights and protections thereof?
|
I know very little about this universe, but I understand The Culture is supposed to be this benevolent utopia. But I understand the Minds like to create simulated universes, and I wonder how this works if it would mean allowing the intelligent inhabitants of those universes to suffer.
| 22 |
This is discussed at length in *Surface Detail* and to a lesser extent in *The Hydrogen Sonata*.
The short version is that it's very mixed, and left to the discretion of the individual minds performing the simulations. The majority of minds consider simulated life to be at the same level of moral consideration as all other forms of intelligent life, and will elect to minimize suffering as much as possible, and will prefer to keep simulations they have created running indefinitely rather than all all of those simulated lives to die.
On the flip side, most biological denizens of the Culture do consider simulated life to be slightly lesser than biological life. Surface Detail describes a war that is fought entirely by mind-copies in a simulated battlefield, with one character having at least a dozen copies of himself fighting side by side on the front lines. This is considered to be preferable to a "hot war" because its entirely a simulation. Although at least one character argues that this is preferable because everyone fighting has actively chosen to take part in the hostilities, and there are no innocent bystander casualties, and not because simulated life is less worthy of moral consideration.
To add more to the mix, other non-culture civilizations who discover mind-uploading technology have decided to use it for imprisonment and punishment purposes. A few religious civilizations have actually gone so far as to create virtual hells, and have uploaded the minds of criminals and heretics into hell so they'll suffer for eternity, just as the good book says. The cause of the war in Surface Detail is that certain factions of the Culture find this to be so reprehensible they're willing to fight a war to force those civilizations to stop it.
>!The driving conflict of the story is that someone is attempting to drag the simulated war kicking and screaming into the real world, where the Culture would have much more of an advantage.!<
| 22 |
[Star Wars] How often do Sith go over to the Jedi way of life?
|
Obviously Darth Vader went good at the last minute. But how many other true sith ever went bad then switched over (going evil for an hour then realizing the error of your ways doesn't count).
I don't read much of the EU so I truly want to know how often this has happened.
| 29 |
It happens very seldom. We hear about more Jedi going to the Dark Side, because they are more in the public eye. It is also easier to slip into Dark Side thoughts, as the Jedi hold themselves up to higher morals.
There are only a handful of Sith or Dark Jedi who have come back to the light, though. Zekk, Tahiri, and especially Vestara being the three most notable in the modern time.
| 18 |
[Star Wars] Im a smuggler in the cantina in Mos Eisley when Obi Wan uses his lightsabre. Is the subsequent silence in anyway due to everyone being in shock at seeing an “extinct” jedi or just shock at seeing an old bald human attack a walrus with a weird laser sword?
|
I suppose the question is whether people in the outer rim knew about the history of the jedi/sith and the significance of Obi Wan publically using his lightsabre.
| 184 |
Most people probably just went silent because someone just got de-limbed; there's a similar silence after Han Solo fries Greedo. Even for Mos Eisley, that kind of stuff draws attention, y'know?
But there probably were a few people in there who'd heard the legendary tales of Jedi, and put two and two together. Remember, Jedi were an absolutely minuscule fraction of the galactic population... but their impact was outsized for their numbers.
| 168 |
I believe Fat Shaming is terrible thing to do, and it doesnt help the person being shamed lose weight. CMV
|
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54uSD67M-Zo
The Above link has most of my points and opinions.
I used to be an obese Teenager, and i am currently overweight (5'10, 210lb and 17) and I believe people who made fun of me and Shamed me had absolutely nothing to do with my weight lost. If anything they had slowed it down, nearly make me kill myself, and made my self-esteem go much lower.
Here are some points i going to make
-Fat shaming doesnt help motivated the person to lose weight, if anything he/she will eat more like i did.
-any points he makes in the video also are mine
So CMV
EDIT:Sorry for any random capitalization of words
EDIT2:
Fat Shaming is not
- Doctor recommendation
- Friendly discussion and help. (Not joking about it)
Fat shaming is when
- You make fun of someone for being fat
- Saying they are less human because of it
Its is mostly bullying but with your weight as the topic.
EDIT3: the View has been changed thanks to /u/DrDerpberg
| 90 |
I agree that bullying, hurtful comments, looking down on overweight people, etc. are all bad things. But keep in mind that a hard "anti-shaming" stance is often taken to the other extreme, where it is considered bad to try to help someone get into shape, or where facts (I.e.: being obese is more unhealthy than being a more normal weight) become taboo. Fat *shaming* is terrible. But public awareness of health and nutrition is disastrously low, and this is the first generation in centuries whose children will likely live less long than their parents. It isn't shaming for schools to try to push kids towards physical activity, healthy choices in food, or to try to help a close friend or family member to take care of themself.
| 83 |
[Elf] How did Buddy survive on an elf diet?
| 63 |
While eating a lot of sugary foods can cause weight gain, Buddy seems to be extremely active and appears relatively fit. Diabetes is not actually caused by what you're eating so he should be okay in that regard.
His biggest issue would be cavities, but it appears that by the time Buddy was around Hermey had successfully instituted a good dental program at the North Pole.
| 65 |
|
[The Truman Show] How didn't the actress who tried to reveal Truman the truth about his life got sued to the point of uttet financial ruin? Surely she signed a contract and there is no way she could beat the corporation that owned The Truman Show in trial.
| 352 |
The ACLU has been fighting for Truman's rights almost since he was born, and there's a substantial "free Truman" movement on the outside that regularly donates to the cause. If sued, she'd have some of the best representation available.
Beyond that, the corporation tries to keep Truman's legal status out of the courts as much as possible. It's bad PR to sue your actors, and the company would have to defend against the accusation that what it is doing to Truman is actually illegal (kidnapping, false imprisonment). A contract that forces you to conceal illegal activity is unenforceable.
| 397 |
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[Scott Pilgrim vs the World] Just found out my Ex Girlfriend is dating again, good for her! But...
|
Yeah so, Gideon (Another one of her exs) is putting together a group of Evil Exes to make her yada yada yada. Their are 2 problems here, 1-I am not evil, and me and her left it on good terms, and 2- They gonna kill me if I don't help, and since I cant fight very well Scott Pilgrim would probably kill me too. How do I handle this?
| 22 |
If you can, try to be the second to last encounter (last before Gideon). Show that you're extremely hesitant, and then tell Scott that you're not willing to fight as you ended things amicably. Instead, suggest you'll aid him against Gideon (even if it's just emotional support during the final fight).
Then you should be fine. Hopefully, unless Gideon kills you to prove how ruthless he is.
| 23 |
Why is it so hard to find an internship as a statistician?
|
I’m currently an undergraduate student that is majoring in statistics, and entering my sophomore/junior year (on pace to graduate in 3 years). Every internship I see on LinkedIn, Indeed, etc requires 2+ years of experience, a Bachelor’s degree and to be in a Master’s or PhD graduate degree. Where can I find internships for undergraduate degrees, so I can gain experience?
| 18 |
Just a guess: most businesses or business units only need relatively low-level stats to solve their most obvious problems, whereas they need multiple software devs to implement/maintain the solution.
So you might as well just ask the software engineer to perform the basic stats, OR grab a contractor on a short engagement.
| 14 |
What traits are considered "masculine" vs "feminine" (among humans) and how much does this change from culture to culture?
| 64 |
Females are associated more with jobs that allow them to be in one (or very few) places throughout the course of the day. Not surprisingly, this has to do with child rearing. What they lack in mobility, however, they make up for typically in the variety of tasks that are assigned to them.
On the flip side, men tend to venture further away from the home base. This is seen in activities such as hunting, fishing (from boats) and even in the wage labor system (which is now becoming more blurred as a gender specific activity due to increasing industrialization). These activities that are "masculine" are also those that individuals tend to focus, or specialize in, because this situation opens up the potential for a more single minded focus than the situation of the typical female role does.
Gender roles do vary between cultures, but the basic idea of women being more constrained to the household because of child raising, while men (unconstrained) take on the jobs that require more travel. A good example of this would be Pacific islander men fishing for weeks at a time on the ocean from vessels, while the women of these cultures fish from shore as a sort of dietary supplement.
Some traditional farm based chores will vary from place to place as well. For example, who tends after small animals verses large animals, or who is associated with the different stages of the agricultural process.
edit: very to vary.
| 36 |
|
ELI5: in the military, what happens when a lower ranking officer has to arrest/detain a commanding officer?
|
You see it all the time in movies and video games - a high ranking officer turns out to be the bad guy and they eventually get found out and arrested. When the order is given for their arrest by a subordinate officer, the bad guy always says something along the lines of:
"I am your commanding officer, you can't arrest me!"
When (if) this happens in real life, say the US or UK military, how does this play out?
Sorry if my terminology is a bit off!
| 70 |
This is a movie magic trope, not reality.
If some weird crazy thing happened where a senior officer was being arrested (probably for being accused of some major crime, like maybe they are accused of rape for example) the military police, would come in and arrest them. These are basically the same situation as any police force so rank doesn't matter, they're cops. It would not be his own unit, they aren't cops, the cops would do it.
If you're thinking some crazy scenario where a junior officer thinks their boss is doing something weird and has their troops detain him, thats movie magic.
| 115 |
Why do we breathe irregularly while crying?
|
I just don't get it. Why do teary eyes and a runny nose cause irregular breathing?
| 18 |
Teary eyes and a runny nose don't cause irregular breathing, but they share a common cause.
Sobbing is a form of hyperventilation, which can happen in cases of extreme stress. The more stressful the situation, the more likely you are to hyperventilate. We don't usually sob while watching sad movies or when crying "happy tears" because those situations are not particularly stressful, compared to say, a bad break-up where you are so stressed out you're literally losing your mind. Hyperventilation is believed to be a psychological phenomenon rather than a physical one, so it really is only dependent on your mental state.
| 18 |
eli5 what are Computer “Drivers”
|
After painstakingly installing printer drivers for a thermal printer at work I realized I still don’t truly understand what I was installing. (Bonus points if you can cover video card drivers too cause idk what drivers are In that sense either)
| 2,555 |
Drivers are the middle man between the Hardware and the Operating system. their job is to translate the OS's instructions into something the Hardware can interpret and then translate the output into something the OS can show you.
OS> Driver > Hardware
think of them like the " user manuals" the Operating system needs ot be able ot use the hardware, or if you want ot extend an analogy to us humans: picture it as you needing a manual for your brain to be able to command your limbs and understand the stimulus it receives from them.
without drivers, software would need ot directly program the hardware and considering how many different models of any single device exist out there this is impossible(or at least would be impactrical in terms of programming time)
| 3,273 |
[Star Wars] Was Princess Leia pregnant in Return of the Jedi?
|
So I was trying to find out when Kylo Ren was born, and from the info I could find, it said he was born in 5 ABY. When I looked up what year Return of the Jedi took place, it said 4 ABY. If this is correct, would that mean that Princess Leia could’ve potentially been pregnant in Return of the Jedi?
| 76 |
Short answer: No.
According to the Star Wars wiki:
> Ben Solo was born in 5 ABY in Hanna City, Chandrila on the day that the Galactic Concordance was signed between the New Republic and the Galactic Empire, formally ending the Galactic Civil War, one year and four days after the Battle of Endor
Immediately following the Battle of Endor, Leia and Han were busy mounting other resistance efforts so likely didn't have time to be intimate. Likely, he was born around the time his parents married.
| 85 |
Why is there a social stigma about living in your parents house in Western countries?
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Im not sure if someone already asked this before but why is this a thing on western countries? (US/Canada) Im Asian M23, grew up in Asia and me and my family moved in Canada when I was 19. I made friends at school and work and I’ve been asked few times where I live and every time I live in *redacted* with my parents there’s always something wrong with their reaction about it. Back in my country it’s perfectly normal to live with your parents until 30 or even older. Some people even get married and live with their wife (if you’re a male) in his parents house. I live with my parents here in Canada but I never asked them for money and anything. I give my share of utility payments, buy and cook my own food, pay my own car payments and credit card debts and student loans and I dont see anything wrong with that. Also, I don’t think I can afford with my current financial situation. I earn around 3kCad$ per month and around 60-70% of those goes to those stuff mentioned above. Usual rent in my city is around 700-1000 even with a roommate. I’m not lazy and I’m not trying to sound rude and ignorant but these people who asked me that are living on their own lives literally cheque by cheque and struggling to make ends meet. I dont see the point on moving out of your parents house when youre not financially stable and has some money saved up. Im not saying that im plannig to live with my parents forever but im going to wait to atleast have a decent paying job and money saved up. Atleast 2-3 years from now.
| 143 |
To follow up, is there much research on prestige hierarchies in general? If there's pressure woven into the psychosocial fabric to demonstrate an ability to pay for things that aren't necessities and to dress them up as if they are necessities to cover up the aforementioned fabric, would we ever find out about it? Are some things too ingrained for an experiment to tease out the contributing factors?
| 20 |
[ST:ID] The Borg find Khan's ship.
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How do they react?
Do they assimilate it as standard, destroy it, or would they further examine the genetic engineering potential for use in drone development?
What about any of the other galactic powers?
| 23 |
They would probably assimilate the crew like any other species, but you have to understand that even augmented humans were considered weak compared to some of the naturally larger alien species that the Borg have assimilated. The genetic engineering technology along with the technology of the ship is actually quite primitive (it was made during the 1990s), and the Borg generally use cybernetics and nanites to enhance assimilated captives.
The Klingons actually did uncover some augmented human embryos left over from the Eugenics Wars, but trying to replicate human genetic enhancement technology to fit Klingons caused a plague that didn't enhance the Klingon race, but made them look like humans.
| 20 |
ELI5: What makes things transparent (glass, water, nylon, etc.)?
| 149 |
Light comes in packets of energy of certain sizes, and when a packet hits an atom if it is of the same 'size' as that particular atom the light packet gets absorbed. If it is not the same 'size' (the atom is too 'big', for example) then the packet is allowed to carry on unhindered and pass out the other side.
Non-EL15: Energy is quantized, meaning it only comes in discrete quantities. When a photon strikes an atom if it has exactly enough energy to make an electron 'jump' up to the next energy level then the photon will be absorbed to do exactly this. In transparent materials like glass, the 'band gap' of the electrons in the material is simply too big for the photon to provide the energy to make an electron jump, so the light carries on straight through.
| 49 |
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Moral Realism: How can the normative affect the non-normative? How can we know of the normative by non-normative means?
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Similarly to substance dualism within the philosophy of science debate, moral realism seems to invoke a sort of dualism.
There are normative ("Killing is wrong") and non-normative properties and utterances ("Jim kills Tom") which are both real, and normative properties seem to affect non-normative ones in particular ways. After all, assuming moral realism to be true, we don't banish normative properties to an isolationist existence within the normative realm never to affect anything non-normative, e.g. whether Jim actually kills Tom or not, as in whether his neurons are fired in such a way or not that he actually does kill Tom or not.
As moral realists, we want "Killing is wrong" to affect "Jim kills Tom" (preferably, in a way for the latter to be wrong as Jim refrains from killing) and we don't want "Killing is wrong" to be purely subjective or even non-normative, e.g. as in "My neurons are arranged in such a way that I dislike killing".
However, there is no "ought" value of neurons or the such. It either fires or it doesn't. How do normative properties affect non-normative ones? How do they determine or increase the likelihood of neurons to be fired in such a way that Jim kills Tom or not? Or even more importantly: How do we even know that "Killing is wrong" in the first place if our whole capacity of knowing is based on a very much non-normative instrument, the brain, consisting of very much non-normative entities, neurons, who either fire or not, but surely don't "ought" to fire or not. How can normativity arise from such non-normativity?
| 34 |
There's a lot to say here. First, not all realists agree that normative and natural properties are distinct. Naturalist normative realists argue that normative properties just are natural properties. But you seem like you're assuming some form of non-naturalist normative realism that denies this, so let's work with that.
This leads to the second thing, which is that no non-naturalist normative realist thinks that normative properties have causal powers that work at the physiological level. It's our *beliefs about what we have reason to do* that move us to act, not *the reasons themselves.* The reason that we are moved by our beliefs about what we have reason to do is that we're rational agents.
Some normative realists have argued that normative properties themselves figure in causal explanations (as opposed to our beliefs about normative properties). For instance, common examples include that Hitler's depravity led him to orchestrate a genocide, injustice causes revolutions, and trust engenders friendship. But usually those normative realists who accept these views are naturalist normative realists who think that depravity, injustice, and trust just are natural properties, and hence there's no puzzle about how they can cause people to do things.
Regarding your remark about how we know that killing is wrong since the brain is a physical mechanism, the framing here is problematic. Obviously our brain is a physical mechanism, but it's not your brain that grasps and responds to reasons. It's rational agents that grasp and respond to reasons, and while our rational agency depends in someway on our brains, it's a mistake to conflate the two.
| 18 |
Photons are emitted and absorbed instantaneously from their perspective. What's happening to the photons at the edge of our expanding universe?
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Perhaps I'm running into a cognitive block dealing with the infinity that seems to arise from the expansion of our universe and the photons at the edge that would never seem to be absorbed by anything. My understanding is that from a photons perspective time doesn't exist. Their entire existence lasts an instant. But in a seemingly ever expanding universe, what's happening with the photons at the edge with nothing to absorb them?
| 71 |
Two things: first, it's not completely correct to say that time passes instantly for a photon. It's tempting to say that when you think about the limit of what it would look like for an object traveling closer and closer to the speed of light with respect to the rest of the stuff in the universe, but in fact it doesn't make sense to consider the perspective of a photon. In relativity photons do not have rest frames, and so they cannot have a perspective.
Second, it is a common misconception that when scientist talk about an expanding universe they're referring to a universe of finite size that's expanding outward in space from some central point. In fact, that's not how it works at all. The universe, as far as we know, is infinite in size (at least, we have no reason to believe it isn't infinite in size). Nevertheless, it's expanding. What is meant by the expansion of the universe is not that the total amount of space in it is getting larger but rather that the distances between objects on large scales like galaxies and clusters of galaxies are constantly increasing. In a sense, "new space" is being created in between everything. The point is that as far as we know there is no "edge" to the expanding universe.
| 47 |
ELI5: How does one not become severely injured when jumping from extreme heights into a small amount of water?
| 28 |
As the saying goes, it's not the fall that hurts, but the sudden stop at the end.
The trick, then, is to make the stop *less sudden.* If you fall onto something soft, rather than coming to a stop suddenly, you stop more gradually as the thing you're landing on deforms or displaces under you.
But water isn't all that great for this. Water is *incompressible,* meaning it doesn't squish like a pillow when you land on it. Instead it has to move out of your way, which it can only do so fast. So lowering your hand into a sink of water hardly feels like anything at all, but doing a belly flop into a pool stings like a mother.
That's why diving is hard. It's not just the fact that a well executed dive looks good and all that; it's that you *have* to enter the water in just the right way to keep from getting bruises or even broken bones.
So the short answer is that water *can* slow you down safely and effectively, but only if you use it just right. Use it wrong, and it's not that much better than plowing full-speed into concrete.
| 20 |
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[SW/Mandolorian] Why are the Jedi suddenly so mysterious?
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If I have any problem with this series so far it's the weird way they address stuff like the Force and the Jedi.
I mean, Luke knew who the Jedi were, the Republic was heavily dependent on them, and it's not like it was THAT long ago it fell, Mando remembers the Clone Wars. And yet when he asks the Armorer about it, she acts like this is an ancient legend and super mysterious.
IS it just not common knowledge to the hoi poloi? Mando is supposed to be pretty well informed, how is it that he's never heard of this super important group?
| 28 |
Jedi *were* rare. Incredibly, extremely so. Like, not even a rounding error's worth of any major world's population. Ten thousand Jedi in a galaxy of hundreds of trillion citizens (even quadrillions), and millions of worlds means that most people wouldn't know anything about them, even on Republic worlds.
Mando also takes place after two decades of a concerted propaganda campaign set against them, not to mention three years where the public that *did* know about them grew weary of war and saw the war as the Jedi's fault.
| 52 |
ELI5: What EXACTLY is a 403 (b)
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I am being offered a retirement plan for the first time ever in my working life. I know it would be a good thing to do but I have zero idea how it all actually works. What happens to the money after I put it in? How and when do I get it out? What happens if I switch jobs? TIA for your help!
| 38 |
403(b) is just a 401(k) for nonprofit employers, so you can find a lot more about 401ks on the internet.
Your employer contributes money into an investment account, and you can contribute too by having the money deducted from your paycheck. For a traditional 403b this money doesn’t show up on your tax forms as income, so it’s tax-free going in.
When you retire you can pull out the money — plus the investment returns — to live on. You do pay income tax on it when you pull it out, but since most people have a lower cost of living in retirement, the tax rate will be less.
At the very least don’t pass up the employer contribution, that’s free money, but usually it makes sense to max out the employee contribution if you can.
While the money is in there, you usually have a lot of freedom to decide how it gets invested, but you’re stuck with the investment company your employer chose.
If you switch jobs, the 403b is still your money. You can keep it in there, or “roll it over” into an IRA, an individual retirement account, which works basically the same way except it’s not tied to any employer. Generally you’ll get a new 403b or 401k for each new employer, so if you switch jobs a lot the rollover IRA simplifies things and gives you the freedom to choose your own investment company if you like.
| 39 |
[DC] Are cosmic entities and higher (e.g. the Endless, The Presence…] affected by universe reboots
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For example, are the Endless and the Presence pre-Flashpoint the same beings as the post-Flashpoint ones?
| 21 |
Dream remembers when the dominant species on Earth was cats, so no. The presence shouldn't be affected at all seeing as he made the universe but then he left and then came back, and it gets a bit complicated.
| 23 |
[Star Wars] Is there any restrictions a Jedi has on the color lightstaber they have depending on their rank?
| 19 |
Lightsaber crystal colors mostly mean nothing. They especially mean nothing for "ranks."
A lightsaber's color is only meaningful insofar as when the user attunes to the crystal inside, it changes the color of the crystal - the most common colors are blue and green, but obviously those are not the only ones.
A dark side user gets their red crystals by forcing the crystal to bond with them, in essence the crystal is "bleeding" from this interaction.
| 24 |
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CMV: I don't see the big deal about poetry.
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I don't understand the importance of the subculture of poetry: readings/contests, memorizing it, and praising it.
Most of it is repetitive: hardship and love.
If you want something philosophical, I feel you should stick to essays.
If you want something artistic, I feel you should stick to art and other craft.
I feel poetry fails to combine these two elements diversely, and most of the poems that are praised only revolve around the two topics stated: love and hardship.
Yes, there are very nice and interesting poems that don't fall in between these two spectra, but they are not as well-known or as praised.
I have read some good poems, and I do have a few I like, but I don't see the big deal about it.
For instance, why do Russians rely heavily in poetry and teaching their kids to memorize them. What about poetry is so respected?
Edit: I got some really really wonderful and great responses here, and I thank you for the plentiful suggestions. I can't pinpoint exactly one individual of you whose 'changed my view', so I thank the wonderful lot of you. I will try to take time to thoroughly answer each one of you.
| 361 |
It seems like your main problem with poetry is the repetition. It's true, most of poetry is about love and hardship. So are most paintings, so is most of literature, as is most of television, most of cinema, and most of life. They're two incredibly powerful, incredibly broad topics that are inextricably linked to humanity, so it makes sense that a lot of art would touch on these topics. It's not fair to single out poetry alone for going back to this (rather deep) well. What other topics do you feel get ignored in most poetry that are not ignored in most of any other medium?
Poetry can do in a few stanzas what it takes many essays pages to do. In many poems, the meaning is something that must be constructed by the reader, while essays are much more explicit about their meaning. When you synthesize your own interpretation of a poem, the message you take away from it ends up being much more personal, and because of this, often stronger. For example, the message of futility that you take away from Shelley's Ozymandias conveys in 14 lines what it takes some authors hundreds of pages to get across.
In terms of artistry, no form of prose can compare to poetry. In terms of use of language and rhythm, poetry blows all forms of prose out of the water. It is common to see that only very rare sections of prose compare favorably to similar sized samples of poems. Poetry is less diluted than prose. As far as the rest of art goes, words and pictures/sounds are non-overlapping magisteria. There are things you can express with music that you can't express as elegantly with words, but there are equally things that you can express with words in ways that you can't express as skillfully with music. If an artist wants to use words as their medium without filling hundreds of pages, poetry is a strong choice.
Poetry is something that is easy to write and iterate upon. If someone writes a novel, it takes ages to even finish the first draft, and ages beyond that to revise. A poem can be written in an afternoon and improved for the rest of eternity. It is easy to see in even some great novels parts that could have been improved or expanded by revision that there simply wasn't time for. The limited scope of poetry shrinks the time from draft to draft to the point where every syllable of the final work can be polished to perfection.
Since poetry is often the pinnacle of elegance of written language, it makes sense that it should be studied. It is incredibly helpful for students to see their language at its best. Memorizing poems can give students an appreciation for the flow and rhythm of language, which will help improve all of their writing. Poetry isn't just useful as an art form for the writer and as a dispensary of meaning for the reader, but also as a learning exercise for the student.
| 290 |
ELI5: Why has no one crossed a dandelion with a carrot or parsnip, thus creating a nutritious vegetable that grows wild as a weed?
| 246 |
A few things. First, dandelions *are* nutritious vegetables that you can eat lots of ways.
Second, a weed is just any unwanted plant - they typically grow more aggressively than cultivated plants because they are evolved specifically for the environment in which they are found and because they don't waste any energy producing something extra for humans. For example, there are wild carrots, they just don't produce as large and tasty a root as cultivated carrots. Cultivated carrots need more support, because we've bred them to be *inefficient* as plants in order to be efficient as food. It's hard to get the weedy-ness of a weed and the wasteful extravagance of cultivated plant.
(Also, it's typically only possible to cross plant varieties of the same species or at least the same genus. Otherwise you're crossing wildly different species - it's like trying to get a chicken and a pig to successfully mate. Maybe it would produce delicious bacon flavored wings, but too bad cuz it ain't gonna happen.)
You might be interested in heirloom plants varieties, though - these are older varieties of cultivated crops that typically offer a lot more variety than more modern versions and tend to be more adapted to specific areas.
| 182 |
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CMV: the tobacco industry is behind the push to outlaw vaping.
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A few people have died from vaping recently and there are a large push to outlaw vaping. I think the tobacco industry is behind this for two reasons:
1. No one knew how popular vaping would be. It is taking a lot of business away from traditional cigarette makers.
2. Cigarettes kill almost half million people per year and no one is suggesting they be outlawed. Yet a few people die from vaping and suddenly there is a rush to protect health?
It seems obvious to me the industry losing customers to a new alternative is the obvious championship for outlawing the new product.
| 110 |
Here is a list of companies that own vape brands:
* British American Tobacco
* Stada Arzneimittel Aktienge-sellschaft
* Huabao International Holdings
* Japan Tobacco Int
* Imperial Brands plc
* Philip Morris Int. Inc.
It's also a list of major tobacco corporations. The most well-known e-cigarette brand is Juul, which held three-quarters of the U.S. e-cigarette market at the end of 2018. In December of that year, the cigarette company Altria — the parent company of Philip Morris USA — bought a 35 percent stake in Juul. Similarly, the brand Vuse came in second in the e-cigarette industry with 10 percent of the market share at the end of 2018. Vuse is owned by R.J. Reynolds Vapor Company, a subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc, which was acquired by British American Tobacco in 2017. These same companies specifically lobby congress against legislation that would regular e-cigarettes. For instance, Altria Group, Ballantyne Brands, Hay Island Holding, Reynolds American and Swedish Match AB, have all opposed legislation to regulate and tax e-cigarettes.
Given this reality, your theory seems a little far-fetched. Why would the tobacco companies, which own or have huge investments in the vaping industry, sabotage their own profits by seeking government regulation of their own products? Tobacco companies love vaping. They already have the internal structure needed to manage, produce, scale, and market this kind of product. Even better, vapes are not regulated or taxed anywhere near as much as cigarettes are. The profit margins and ease of business are way better in this industry than in tobacco. They have absolutely no reason to do what you are suggesting they are doing. They aren't losing any customers to a new product. Their already existing customers are simply buying one of their other products.
| 74 |
[Star Wars] Would Anakin and Padmé eventually gotten divorced, regardless of what happened?
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In ROTS it seemed as if their marriage only had the war to support it. Plus, they were young when they married, and neither of them had the most 'stable' upbringing. Anakin is also insanely possessive, even before he fell to the dark side.
Would they have really lasted more than a few years, especially after the war ended?
| 17 |
I think that's giving Padme too much credit, to be honest.
I think they would have continued with the marriage, spiralling into ever darker depths of codependency, each alternately hurting the other and then having tearful, dramatic reunions
| 24 |
CMV: Thank-you notes are outdated and unnecessary, and serve no real purpose except to signal "good raising".
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The holiday season is a shit-show of obligation and expectations as it is, and then once all the festivities are over, we're all expected to sit down and write formulaic cards: "Dear Grandma, thank you for the lovely sweater. I will wear it often."
I assume, of course that thanks were given at the time of the gifting, and that proper appreciation was provided. Why on earth is yet another thanks required? What purpose does it serve, other than checking an arbitrary box in the manners checklist? I have received several thank you notes from my family since Christmas and haven't even gotten around to opening them; I know what they say, and it just feels hopelessly impersonal and staid.
A true gift should be freely given, and other than a thanks at the time of giving, should carry no additional obligation along with it.
| 284 |
I feel bad dragging your point down to this level, but... Isn't that the same with literally every social nicety in existence -- to signal your intentions/status/good upbringing/etc?
There's no point in saying thank you, or giving a thank you card, or doing literally anything in the world of communication with other people, except to show that you're a special person, and to get them to like you more. No?
| 71 |
What is the purpose of utilizing screws with a Phillips' head, flathead, Allen, hex, and so on rather than simply having one widespread screw compose?
| 11,618 |
There are a lot of factors here. Slotted screws are easy to damage if the screwdriver slips or doesn’t fit perfectly.
Phillips head screws were designed to limit how much torque is applied by “camming out” in the factories before power tools were torque limited.
Now that power drivers are designed with torque limiting clutches the emphasis is on securely fitting the driver without slipping off.
Everything in engineering is a trade off and screw heads are a perfect example.
| 6,402 |
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How do large scale shops/malls supply WiFi on such a big scale?
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How do shopping malls and big supermarkets supply a (considering it’s size) stable WiFi connection across such a large area? Sent using a shopping centres WiFi with a solid 20mb download.
| 21 |
This could be a very long reply basically involving a course in wifi engineering, however, in simple terms it looks like this.
1. They use multiple commercial grade access points which are all controlled by a central controller device. This keeps track of connected devices and ensures the device connects to the ap with the best signal as it roams.
2. AP placement is carefully calculated to provide consistent coverage as well as load balance number of devices per AP.
3. Radio channel space is carefully planned to prevent interference (CCI)
4. AP are all connected to central controller by a fast (at least GB) wired netowrk.
5. The entire netowrk is connected via 1 or more fast broadband/ethernet internet circuits
There is a lot more to it, but that is the basics.
| 23 |
Are conferences something you GET to do, or something you HAVE to do?
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My colleagues generally seem to get really excited to go to conferences, but I don't really see what's appealing about them from a personal perspective. It just seems like its travelling a long ways and spending a lot of your employer's money so that you can spend 10 minutes talking about your work to people who are mainly just waiting for their turn to talk about their own work, fielding some narcissistic questions, and maybe getting a decent dinner as part of the deal.
I'd just as soon not bother with the whole exercise. But it's still early in my career, and I can't quite tell whether that would reflect badly on me. This is particularly the case since most of my colleagues talk about conferences as a fun thing, rather than something they do as a job obligation.
So what's the deal? Can I get away with not going to conferences? Or should I see it as another job duty?
| 28 |
Conferences have several benefits for attendees:
* If you present, this is an opportunity for you to gain name recognition, both within your field but also at larger conferences outside of your immediate field.
* Attending other presentations informs you about the most recent work done in the field, which may not yet have been published.
* Collecting many experts in your field in one location provides an excellent opportunity to network with potential future employers or collaborators, depending on just how early in your career you are. Getting face time with these people goes a lot further than a simple email will. This includes both meeting people on the conference site, as well as socializing over meals or drinks (it is a long-running joke in academia that many proposals are written on the backs of bar napkins!).
* Many people treat conferences as a sort of vacation, skipping talks or sessions they find less interesting to spend the time sightseeing. Some academics will even bring their spouse along to enjoy time away from their children. For many, the business of an academic schedule affords little time for a "proper" vacation, so they will take whatever opportunity they get.
You *can* get away with not going to conferences, but it will more likely than not just make it more difficult to advance in your career. If you really dislike conferences, you can always attend for only a day or two, just enough to present your work, attend the most relevant talks by others, and perhaps meet with one or two key colleagues to discuss potential collaborations or job opportunities.
| 47 |
What happens after a failed suicide attempt?
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What happens when someone is hospitalized after a failed suicide attempt? I've heard of "suicide watch". What exactly is it, and what goes on during it? How long does it usually last, say if someone tried to OD on pills? What happens afterwards? Outpatient care? Inpatient? How long is someone typically in the hospital after a suicide attempt, such as an overdose? Would it be different for a more violent/severe attempt?
edit: I mean in the United States, if that makes a difference.
Note: This is not a cry for help or any need to be concerned, it is curiosity. Also, I'm sorry if this is the wrong subreddit. I wasn't sure where to put this.
| 17 |
Most states have laws that allow a police officer, a doctor, or a specially trained social worker or nurse to sign a form that allows someone to be held against their will for 72 hours, so that the person can be evaluated to see if they are sane enough to take care of themselves.
How it usually works in practice is this: The person commits the act, and someone calls 911. The police and paramedics show up, and take the person to the hospital. Someone along the way will sign the mental health evaluation form. If the person is really sick (from a serious OD, for example), and requires an extended hospital stay, they will be treated for the condition in the hospital as usual, they just won't be allowed to leave and they will get psychiatric care while there. If the person isn't that sick, they will be evaluated in the emergency room and transferred to a locked psychiatric facility for evaluation. If you live in a large urban area, there is also a possibility that you will be held in the ER for those 72 hours simply because there isn't anyplace else that will take you, as psychiatric wards are not money makers, so there aren't enough to meet the needs of the communities.
In theory, a psychiatrist is supposed to evaluate the person's mental health within that first 72 hours, and determine if they are a threat to themselves or others. If they are, they can hold the person until they are no longer immediately dangerous; if they are not, they release you.
Most people, even those who are seriously depressed, are so fucking sick of getting the hospital runaround by this point, that they are well past the idea that killing themselves is a good idea, so they get released once they are evaluated.
| 11 |
ELI5 everyone knows there’s a hurricane coming when Jim Cantore shows up in your city. But how did people brace for hurricanes before the Weather Channel and modern day hurricane prediction methods?
| 21 |
Hurricanes start forming pretty far out in the Atlantic Ocean. Ships would encounter the early storms and then report on them when they returned to port. This caused the news about the formation of a storm, as well as its progress, to spread pretty rapidly throughout the Caribbean. As you get closer to the year 1900, telegraph and radio stations were also setup to make this process faster.
Hurricanes also follow a predictable path in which they pass over the islands of the South Eastern Caribbean, then head west to Cuba, then either head north to the US or further west to Mexico. When they first pass over the South Eastern Caribbean they aren't very strong and the gradually gain in strength as they progress.
This means that the areas that are most likely to be hit by them when they're at full strength are also the areas that get the most warning. Conversely, they're usually not that powerful when they hit the areas that don't get much warning.
| 12 |
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ELI5: Wouldn’t the outcome of any random event generator (coin flip, dice toss, wheel spin, etc) depend on the starting conditions, therefore them not being completely random?
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I’ve just recently thought about this.
How can a random event generator truly be random, if they all depend on the starting conditions. Sure, you can flip a coin and make it so it flips 50.5 full rotations in the air but depending on whether the coin starts on Heads or Tails, it’s going to determine where it lands.
Same with drawing a “random” name out of a list, or a hat, or whatever. It all depends on how the order/placements of the entire pool of names is initially set.
How is anything ever truly “random”?
| 379 |
Often, calling things random in real life is based on knowledge. Say there's a shuffled deck of cards in front of you. You peek at the top one and see that it's the 3 of diamonds. If someone else comes in and draws a card, for you, it's obviously not random. They're going to draw the 3 of diamonds. However, from their point of view, they have no information about the deck. There's nothing in their mind that suggests that any card is more likely than any other to be on top. So, it makes sense for the other person to call it random; they have no way to predict the card that would work more than pure chance.
Same thing with flipping a coin. Which face it lands on is going to be set once it's flipped, but it depends on the coin's position, velocity, shape, as well as the state of the air around it and where it lands. None of these can be precisely measured (or precisely controlled) if you're just flipping a coin by hand, so neither heads nor tails is more likely than the other from your point of view.
At a more fundamental level, we don't even know if events are always set by starting conditions, which is a concept called determinism. At a quantum mechanical level, physics seems to be truly random, with even apparently identical systems doing different things. It's possible that there are factors that we just haven't been able to measure that do make physics deterministic, but conceivably it might be nondeterministic.
| 1,001 |
CMV: There is no evidence for the existence of free will.
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On a macroscopic level the universe appears deterministic, e.g. if you throw a ball and know the initial conditions you can predict where it will land.
Although I do not know the specifics, I am aware that there are some events on the quantum level which are truly random which would mean that determinism is not valid. However, randomness is not equivalent to choice. For example, if you roll a die to decide what to do you are not making the decision, hence no will is exerted.
From this premise, I would conclude there is no free will as everything which happens is the culmination of the causal chain started with the creation of the universe, with some events that occur being random in nature.
As such, while I do not believe that if we had perfect knowledge we could predict the future, there also does not seem to be any evidence for free will's existence in our current scientific understanding of the universe.
Therefore, any belief in in free will is unfounded and entirely faith based.
&#x200B;
| 25 |
Is "free will" as you mean it in your post a comprehensible and possible thing? Sometimes people imagine "free will" as something that's not logically possible, in which case this is like saying there's no "evidence" of four-sided triangles.
So, tell us a little bit about what Free Will is to you and what you imagine evidence for its existence could possibly look like.
| 16 |
Will Voyager 1 eventually crash into a star or a planet, or will it continue on forever?
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I'm just interested in ball park probabilities here: if not found, is it more probable that it will eventually crash into something, or is it more probable that it will travel on forever (well, until it dissolves)?
| 60 |
This is going to depend on what you mean by "eventually." All satellites are gravitationally bound to our galaxy, so it is necessarily going to fall into something at some point. Because assuming it doesn't hit anything before, it will have to pass through the core. There the gravity will be intense enough that it will get pulled into something, and even if it doesn't it will keep oscillating through the core until it hits something.
That being said, it will most likely sail for thousands of years before it even has a chance of hitting anything else. There's just not much around it right now. Its last big hurdle is the Oort cloud (which might not even exist!) but even that is so sparse the chance of it causing a problem is basically zero (don't believe the pictures you see of the asteroid belt, Kepler Belt and Oort cloud being dense- those are illustrations to show you they are there. However, if they were properly drawn, you'd never see anything there cause they are so small and sparse). After the Oort cloud it is basically in free space, and will be for thousands of years before it has a chance of getting close to something else.
**Edit:** Corrected spelling of "Ort" to "Oort"
| 59 |
ELI5:Why do cars have displacements of, for example 2,997cc instead of just exactly 3,000cc?
| 36 |
There are several reasons. The displacement of the motor is simply the swept volume of the cylinders. The designer of the engine builds to a certain performance and size target, as well as maximize the use of off-the-shelf, common parts (like bearings and piston rings). There is no advantage mechanically to hit an "nice even number". However, in some cases, insurance for example, is impacted by engine size. Your insurance policy may state over a certain size is more expensive...so designers build the maximum value just under that line. Motorcycles are particularly impacted by this. In motor racing, (e.g. F1 2015 limit is 1.6 l ) classes of cars are often limited to certain engine sizes. Again, building to a maximum size *just under* a limit keeps you in spec.
| 21 |
|
ELI5: Why has nobody rethought the idea of supersonic flight for transportation and designed a newer, better Concorde?
| 139 |
You can't operate supersonic planes except over the open ocean, so they could only be used for trans-oceanic jumps. Most notably trans-Atlantic runs since the Concorde didn't have the range for useful trans-Pacific runs (such as LA -> Tokyo).
Flying that fast burns enormous amounts of fuel, requiring a huge increase in the ticket price that traditionally people are unwilling to pay.
The 'value add' of the speed is relatively low. Spending 6 hours gate-to-gate is not substantially better than spending 10 hours gate-to-gate when either trip effectively kills the day anyway. Considering that this speed also comes at the expense of comfort, the type of wealthy passenger the Concorde requires would be just as likely to take first class at more conventional speeds.
| 103 |
|
[Legend of Korra] Does "Korra" truly exist?
|
Raava tells us that the Avatar exists because she merged with a human spirit and created Avatar Spirit. The Avatar Spirit is the thing that gets reincarnated with each death.
So what does that mean for individual identities? Is "Korra" really a true, individual person, or is it just an identity slapped onto the same consciousness that has existed for who knows how long? Are all the Avatars just repaints of the same consciousness? And what happens to the past Avatars when they die? Do they cease to exist until their present incarnation remembers them? Was Aang sentenced to an eternity behind Korra's eyes, doomed to never go to heaven with his friends?
| 32 |
It's Wan's soul, reincarnated over and over again, but that doesn't mean Korra and Wan are the same *person*. A person is a soul tinted by their individual upbringing, life experiences, personality, etc. Wan's and Korra's essence is the same, but this core is coated differently. This coat is what characterizes a person.
What happens is that when the Avatar dies, the coat is removed but "stored" within Raava itself, which is what allows the different Avatars to exist as different entities that can talk to each other. When Raava was destroyed, all the coats—that is to say, the information that is added onto Wan's soul to produce an individual—was lost forever.
---
As for previous Avatars being doomed to never go to heaven: as far as we know, there's no afterlife in the Avatar universe. There are no ghosts or mediums, nor any reference to an afterlife. Everyone seems to reincarnate, it's just that they don't have a coat rack Raava, so the information of their previous past lives is lost when they are reborn.
| 32 |
eli5: Why is the Kessler effect so dangerous? Won't the space junk eventually fall out of orbit or drift off into space?
|
I saw the opening of *Gravity* and it was pretty terrifying, but to quote Billy Bob Thornton in *Armageddon*, it's a big-ass sky.
| 17 |
Yes, the space junk will eventually deorbit. But "eventually" is a long time and, before it does, it will take out most of our satellites.
It's so dangerous because it's an expontential growth problem...the likelyhood of a collision depends on how many bits of junk there already are, and each collision creates more junk. You can reach a tipping point where the frequency of collisions goes up very abruptly and the probability of any particular thing getting hit goes from effectively zero ("big-ass sky") to something meaningfully high. j
It's taken decades and tens to hundreds of billions of dollars (possibly trillions) to build our existing space infrastructure. A runaway Kessler effect could wipe all that out in months, far faster than we can replace it, and it would render low-earth orbit effectively unusable for years/decades. It would ruin our ability to do a lot of stuff that we currently take for granted without \*tons\* of effort and money.
| 32 |
[DC Comics] How does Bruce Wayne explain his proteges to the public?
|
If children were seen in public with the very single Bruce Wayne, how does Bruce explain this to them? More specifically, Jason, Tim, Damian, and Cassandra. I knew Dick was taken in by Bruce and acted as a surrogate father when his family died.
| 15 |
Bruce's tragic past is so well known it's basically part of Gotham's identity. Even people who live far away from the city are at least aware of the fact that Bruce was made an orphan in a particularly horrific way.
Bruce has historically donated gigantic sums of money to orphanages and other youth programs meant to help children in situations just like his. Every so often, he'll find a child whose experiences particularly resonate with him, and he'll personally sponsor them. Some are supposedly sent off to an extremely private and ludicrously expensive private school where they mostly disappear from the public eye. Others are seen at his side in public, and it's assumed he's giving them some life advice. Or at the very least using his limitless bank account to buy them some good things after a lifetime of misery.
So with Bruce's well known past, as well as his history of helping children like him, no one bats an eye when he spends a little more money on one specific young person in order to improve their life. If there are people with any qualms, the majority of them would be upset that Bruce is OBVIOUSLY using them as a PR stunt to improve his public image after the last time he drunkenly crashed his Lambo into a public park after a week-long bender with an Egyptian supermodel.
| 37 |
CMV: everyone has a moral obligation to think critically, to the best of their ability
|
It is my strong belief that everyone has the moral and social obligation to think critically about the news, things they read and hear, and things happening around them, to the best of their intellectual, developmental, and educational ability.
I concede that children and people with certain disabilities (including but not limited to dementia) may have limited capacity for critical thinking, but their obligation is to do it to best of their ability.
I acknowledge that some people lack the time and education, but again, to the best of their ability.
I'm very open to hearing divergent perspectives. CMV?
| 148 |
The problem with crtical thinking so to speak, is that it's not a skill you simply possess, but rather is a skill that has to be learned.
To be able to think critically, you need to have inherent knowledge about the things you actually consume and are critical of. Anti-vaxers are an example of such an issue. Being critical of things you fundamentally don't understand, wheather it is politics, vaxinations, economics etc. Serves no one any good and will only lead to confusion. The sad truth is that "the best of ones abilities" often is not good enough when it comes to critical thinking, because it often leads to more harm than good imo.
I would personally have reframed the argument to "thinking critically of things you already have some degree of grasp of".
| 44 |
ELI5: How does an icicle form?
|
Always wondered how the water can freeze in a downward motion..? Idk
| 16 |
It starts with a one water droplet hanging off of an awning. The droplet is held on to the surface with surface tension, then it gets cold enough for it to freeze. Then a second water-droplet flows down the frozen water-droplet, hangs on to the tip via surface tension, then freezes. Repeat over and over again, eventually it gets bigger and bigger. Ta-dah! Icicle.
| 22 |
Why is there such a sharp drop of protons as Voyager I leaves the Solar System?
|
I was reviewing [this article](http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/10/more-evidence-that-voyager-has-exited-the-solar-system/) and I noticed the second chart shows this dramatic drop in protons. Why isn't there a more gradual drop in protons instead of this sharp wall? Do they have a specific range that they can travel or is something keeping them from passing whichever threshold Voyager I crossed?
| 59 |
OK, so it's easy to misread this data if you don't key into the important specific details.
There are two graphs here and both show the flux of protons and other atomic nuclei. One graph shows high energy protons (> 70 MeV/nuclei) and the other shows low energy protons as well (> 0.5 MeV/nuclei).
The Sun doesn't produce many very high energy protons, most of those come from exotic events in the galaxy such as supernovae and whatnot. Those particles are high enough energy to penetrate through the Sun's magnetosphere and even impact Earth, but the magnetosphere does stop some of them. Also, low energy protons from outside the Solar System won't travel very far on a galactic scale because they will be turned more by galactic magnetic fields and such, so most of the low energy protons near the Sun are coming from the Sun. So what you have is a situation where the flux of low energy protons that are a big part of the magnetosphere of the Sun (which both make up and are carried by it) is falling away at the edge of that magnetosphere and at the same time more of the high energy protons from galactic sources are coming through.
Think of the magnetosphere, or heliosphere if you like, as a bubble that is inflated by magnetic, plasma, and gas forces from the Sun. And here we see the boundary of that bubble as it is reaching the limit of "pressure" relative to the equivalent forces from the interstellar medium. This is known as the heliopause.
| 45 |
[40K] Is Chaos at all concerned with the Tyranid threat?
|
The forces of Chaos have certainly been making considerable gains recently in the Warhammer 40K universe, but as I understand the Tyranid threat is still present as ever. Beyond that, there's really no telling when more tendrils of the great devourer might encroach on the galaxy from any direction. So, as the title suggests, are the Chaos gods at all worried about the implications of this? What happens if Terra is not toppled by the ruinous powers, but rather a Tyranid swarm? Surely such an outcome is undesirable to Chaos. What will sustain them when all intelligent life is consumed by the mindless Tyranids? Bearing all this in mind, could we ever see a Chaos campaign against Tyranids?
| 18 |
While true that a Tyranid victory would mean the Chaos gods run out of food the Nids are a surprisingly difficult enemy to fight. They can’t be possessed or corrupted so you can’t pull a space bug version of the Horus Heresy on them. Demon flesh doesn’t count as food for the bugs so they will actively avoid wasting energy fighting them. Throwing a horde of demons at them works but since the Gods can’t feed off of Nid emotions any battle turns into a net negative. The Gods have had some victories though, Ka’Bandha killed a moon full of Nids while the blood angels were being besieged by a hive fleet and Nurgle poisoned a planet so much that not even the Tyranids could out adapt it. No major campaigns that I’m aware of though.
| 27 |
ELI5:What is the difference between regular soap and shampoo? Is that long list of chemicals actually doing a better job of cleaning my hair?
|
Thanks for all your comments! My hair and scalp shall be cleaned accordingly.
| 3,397 |
Short answer? No. At the most basic level, soap and shampoo both do exactly the same job and can be used in place of each other - your hair will be equally clean using shampoo or hand soap. In fact, the first commercial shampoos were just shavings of soap that had been boiled up and had had herbs added, turning the bar of soap into a nice-smelling liquid.
Nowadays, the two products are chemically very different, but main active ingredient is still a "emulsifying surfactant" - a chemical that allows oil and grease to bond with water and wash away easily, taking any dirt with it.
However, your hair may not look very nice or feel very nice if you wash it with hand soap. Most of the extra chemicals are there for other purposes - to make the shampoo pearly-white and foam up, and to make your hair look glossy, feel smooth and smell nice.
| 2,848 |
[Every movie ever] Why would anyone put the keys on the fucking sun visor?
|
Like, leaving your car either unlocked, or locking your keys in your car so that you can more easily have your car stolen.
Not only that, you’re surely invalidating your insurance for what doesn’t even seem more convenient than keeping your keys in your pocket or in your house.
This is common enough for so many vagabond heroes to use it as their first port of call (including two separate terminators).
| 126 |
A lot of those vehicles are company or community vehicles - fire trucks, work trucks, etc - and are stored in secured lots and are meant to be shared by multiple drivers. It's sufficiently secure.
Plus, many places exist where cars just don't get stolen. In many rural places, the chances of you forgetting or losing your keys are much higher than of your car getting stolen.
| 140 |
Why do viruses, such as smallpox, chickenpox, and monkeypox, cause random lesions and blisters?
|
Viruses like smallpox lead to blisters, rashes, and or lesions on the surface of the skin. How does the virus cause this an why do the 'pox' tend to appear randomly on the body. What decides the location of these marks and their density or cluster formation?
| 2,103 |
For chicken pox, you inhale the varicella zoster virus, and it replicates in your lungs. As your body fights back, T cells come into the tissue and become infected by the virus. These T cells then get reprogrammed by the virus to traffick to hair follicles, where they cause secondary infection, and spread in the skin layers there, causing the "pox". So each pox was an infected T cell that found that specific spot. Incidentally the virus then infects the nerves that innervate this region, trafficks back to the ganglia, and goes latent for years to decades. It can then come back to that same patch of skin(dermatome) when it reactivates as shingles.
| 959 |
When starting to read philosophical works, it is better to read the work, think about it, and turn to secondary sources, or it is better to start with secondary sources first?
|
As in the topic, I think. I'm quite new to philosophy and I want to read Descartes works. While I know the basic things about his philosophy, I wonder what is better in order to understand it better. Should I first go into secondary sources - primers about him, or just read the works and then turn to them for further explanation?
| 20 |
In most cases, primary first. You get better at philosophy by first forcing yourself to think about and try to understand the text in your own terms. Then, when you do come to the secondary text, you can also actually lay it beside what you thought in your head and see how it matches up.
| 21 |
ELI5: How there can all the gold ever mined only add up to three swimming pools worth
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Maybe I'm underestimating the size of an olympic swimming pool but in this [TED Ed video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf_4z4AKwJg) they say that all the gold we've ever mined in all of history would fit into three olympic size pools. How is this possible?
I understand that a lot of the jewelery and things we see aren't made completely of pure gold, and most gold coins these days aren't gold at all, but surely like the treasures of egypt and israel alone would fill a swimming pool by itself right?
Edit: Sorry for the atrocious typo in the title. That's just how confused this makes me!
| 39 |
An Olympic swimming pool is 132,430 cubic feet. A standard gold bar is 44.4 cubic inches. You could fit 5,154,032 gold bars in *one* Olympic swimming pool.
Fort Knox has 147.3 million ounces of gold. With one bar weighing 400 ounces, that pool contains 2,061,612,972 ounces of gold. 14 times the amount held in Fort Knox. In just one pool.
Edit: By the way, the value of the gold in that pool would be over 87 billion dollars,
| 37 |
If I'm on a planet with incredibly high gravity, and thus very slow time, looking through a telescope at a planet with much lower gravity and thus faster time, would I essentially be watching that planet in fast forward? Why or why not?
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With my (very, very basic) understanding of the theory of relativity, it should look like I'm watching in fast forward, but I can't really argue one way or the other.
| 3,581 |
Yes you will, and you don't need *incredibly* high gravity for that. Just precise measurement tools. Normal Earth gravity is enough. You can actually observe how time goes ever so slightly faster on the Moon, or on GPS satellites. Though with the GPS satellites the effect is offset somewhat by time dilation due to special relativity, the overall speed up is still positive: a GPS satellite clock goes faster than an Earth bound clock by 45 microseconds a day.
| 2,168 |
Eli5 - does boiling water work as efficiently to put out a fire as cold water or even room temp water?
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Or does the molecular structure change in a certain way once heated, and in turn can steam put out a fire.
| 267 |
It would be marginally less effective, but not to any degree you might notice without testing in a lab. fire needs three things heat, oxygen, and fuel. tossing water on fire deprives fire of oxygen by displacing the air as a liquid and as water vapor, and it removes heat because it takes a very large amount of energy to heat water up. so even water at boiling can still absorb more heat and turn into steam completely removing two of the three things fire needs to exist. it honestly is less of a chemical reaction and more of a physical one, thru displacement and heat absorbtion, so the temperature of the water would not affect it to any noticable degree. ELI5 no it doesnt matter because water is really good at putting out most fires.
(note with oil and some other types of fire it wouldnt help no matter what temperature)
| 213 |
[Supernatural] Why is Castiel so disgusted by the Scooby Doo character called Shaggy?
| 21 |
Well for starters, the whole SPN crew is really put off by how juvenile the Scooby gang is. That, on top of the huge feats they've accomplished (saving the world aprx. 8 million times), makes it hard for SPN folks to take them seriously, especially because they're fictional and trying to tell them how to do their job. Sam and Dean are used to covering up the truth, dealing with nonbelievers and are really just interested in getting the job done, but a ghost is a little above Cas's pay grade. He said himself that he's led armies and is now paired with a cartoon and a talking dog. He's also incredibly old and one of only 9 surviving angels, he has bigger things to worry about than a real estate scam.
| 17 |
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Would a mass driver built on the moon make space exploration much easier?
|
I remember having a book as a kid talking about astronomy and exploration, and had a picture of a magnetic mass driver built on the moon. I know it would be costly to build, but after that humanity could basically fling many missions into the solar system and beyond, right?
Also, would it be ideal to build it completely around the moon so that a payload could be accelerated to great speed gradually? Or would centrifugal force still come into play?
| 30 |
Not really, if that's the only thing you have on the Moon. The hardest part is really getting to Earth orbit. Let's say you want to get something first to Earth orbit and then out of the solar system completely. We can calculate how big the rocket needs to be in multiples of your actual payload mass. It turns out that you need about 30 times the mass of your payload as propellant. Of this mass, 27 parts is needed to get to Earth orbit. 3 parts is needed to escape the solar system. So if we first need to get something from Earth to Moon, then that's really most of the work done already. Actually it might be more than the whole work since soft landing on Moon isn't that easy.
On the other hand, if you had a space ship factory on the Moon, then that would help tremendously. Even more so if you have some kind of mass driver or similar to help getting off the moon. But even without that, just building the space ships on Moon would make things easier.
| 14 |
What makes teeth come up through the gums?
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I've got a little baby who is teething, and I'm just wondering why teeth are there dormant but come up at such a range of times. Anywhere from 3 months to a year old for the first ones, and then on from there. What biological nudge is the body getting for these teeth to erupt? And again for adult teeth?
| 25 |
There’s actually little agreement among the dental scientific community on what the actual force is that causes tooth eruption.
Teeth begin as little buds, like flowers, and develop in a sac, slowly laying down calcium and developing nerve tissue and vascularity.
When the time is right, cellular signaling begins the process of moving the tooth into the oral cavity. Some think the surrounding developing bone plays a role, or the periodontal ligament (the PDL), or both. The PDL holds teeth in the socket and is separated when removing (extracting) teeth.
| 29 |
[Harry Potter] If a metamorphmagus became an animagus, would those abilities interact?
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I.e. Would they be able to change their animal form's appearance? Or transform in to multiple animals?
| 24 |
Being a metamorphagus is an inherent genetic trait. Being an animagus is a learned skill. Turning into an animal also magically temporarily alters the wizard's base structure. It is likely that upon turning into an animal via their animagus skill, they would lose the metamorphagus ability while in that form, because changing their appearance is a genetic trait (like a veela's enticement ability) and not a spell (which animagus animals also can't cast).
| 20 |
ELI5: What is happening inside of the eye as vision worsens?
| 16 |
To explain like you're 5:
There are muscles in the back of your eye. To focus on things, they squeeze and stretch out your eye to the proper shape to see it best.
Your eye has a lens on it. With these muscles changing and bending the lens, you can see things closer or farther away better.
Over time and age, the muscles in your eye can start to stiffen up. They stop being able to change focus from near to distance as quickly or easily.
Doing certain activities for a long time, such a reading a lot of books right in front of your face or staring at a close computer screen or playing gameboy, doesn't require the muscles to change and move a whole lot. They can sort of get used to being in that position over time, so that's the position they feel most relaxed. Once they settle into that position, they can pretty much be stuck there permanently unless you get surgery.
| 14 |
|
ELI5 - If China were to lower its tariffs on goods coming from the U.S, would this help bolster the U.S economy?
| 24 |
It would increase exports to China. It may or may not help the economy depending on specifics of what tariffs were relaxed and the industries and specific firms and such operating there.
The book answer: It would increase exports to China. The real answer: Overall effect is unknown.
| 10 |
|
ELI5: Why is Braille dots and not letters? Is there a reason why Braille needs to be dots and not the alphabet?
| 9,480 |
Our letters are made for looking at. They are drawn on flat and have complex curves and lines. They’re easy to distinguish visually. But it’s not ideal for feeling them.
It’s easier to make the raised dots than the raised letters. It’s easier to feel and distinguish the raised dots than the raised letters.
| 8,186 |
|
[worm]( minor jack slash spoilers) In terms of Jack Slash's power, what counts as a "blade"
|
I was thinking about it and started wondering what his power would or would not consider a blade. At what point does a piece of metal become a blade? Does it have to be a metal blade? What about wood or obsidian or stone blades? Would defiant's nanothorn knife count as a blade? Would a lightsaber? Does it depend on wether he sees it as a blade?
| 33 |
Seeing as powers are completely arbitrary, it probably counts anything he thinks of as a cutting edge.
A lightsaber would probably not work, because its cutting power comes from heat rather than sharpness, and nanothorn knives are more a cloud that dissolves things than a blade.
| 14 |
ELI5: Can black holes "eat" matter indefinitely or is there a limit? Do they ever have trouble absorbing large masses or is it always the same?
| 1,529 |
A black hole is not a hole. It's just stuff. A lot of stuff. It's more stuff than you can possibly imagine stuffed into a very tiny point. Stuff attracts other stuff, that's gravity, so a lot of stuff has a lot of gravity, even if it's in a tiny container.
Imagine a one ton elephant in a hydraulic press, crushed down to the size of a sugar cube. That sugar cube still weighs one ton, and contains all of the bits that used to make up that elephant, just really really really tightly packed together and you wouldn't want it in your coffee.
Now instead of an elephant, imagine our sun, pressed down to the size of a football stadium. It still weighs as much as the sun, and all of the planets still revolve around it at the same distance, so nobody's getting sucked in, but if anything came close to the edge of where the sun *used* to be, it's going to experience the same gravity as the sun used to give at that point.
This is the start of a "black hole"; it's just so much stuff that it has so much gravity that anything close to it is going to get pulled in and become part of it, but it doesn't look like it should have so much stuff in it because it's been crushed down to a tiny ball.
You could, if you could push it around like a Katamari, use a black hole to "suck up" (i.e. crush into a thin shell) the entire universe, but since you can't and since everything in the universe is so far apart from each other, it's only going to ever be able to "eat" what's very close by, as there's much much much much much much more space (i.e. not stuff) than stuff in the universe and it tends to move apart from each other.
| 2,991 |
|
[The Hobbit] Why is Galadriel much more powerful than Saruman, Gandalf and Sauron?
|
She isn't a Maiar or Valar like Saruman, Gandalf or even Sauron (The Necromancer) but instead just an Elvish women from literally the same origins and bloodlines of Legolas and Thranduil... what made her so powerful that she was the only one capable of vanishing Sauron out of Mirkwood?... while Gandalf and Saruman just stood there scared and motionless
| 31 |
Power is an inherent trait but also Galadriel is of the Royal house of the Noldor and was born in Valinor under the light of the Two Trees. She is considered to be one of the most powerful elves ever.
Is she more powerful than Gandalf or Saruman? No but she doesn't have the restrictions that they have. Gandalf or Saruman cannot challenge Sauron personally, but Galadriel can.
And remember Sauron wasn't driven off, it was basically a Tactical Retreat, he left Mirkwood to enter Mordor
| 54 |
CMV: The Fat Acceptance movement/concept is based on flawed reasoning and harms the health of its followers.
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My understanding of the Fat Acceptance movement and its values are that there is a centralized belief that it’s possible to be fat and healthy at the same time. What I hear in media linked with this movement is that being fat does not put someone at greater risk for obesity-related diseases and also that individuals who are fat can be just as healthy as those in a more ordinary range. There is also a tonality within their claims that echoes self-victimization, pointing their fingers at society for being unaccepting of their body image.
Now, I feel that the Fat Acceptance movement in its entirety is illogical and completely counteractive against progressive health and lifestyle improvements. I would like to keep anecdotal references out of my views, but would still like to mention that I have seen obesity spawn a multitude of other problems in some of those close to me.
What concerns me about the movement is that it refutes scientific evidence and really any form of commonly-understood concepts regarding health and weight that doesn’t justify being fat. This to me is blatant confirmation bias. From a medical standpoint, the detriments of being overweight or obese far outweigh any potential benefits, both physically and psychologically. And I believe it comes down to stubborn self-confirmation of the idea that being fat is no worse than being physically fit.
Fat Acceptance creates more issues by allowing poor lifestyle habits to be approved over and over again, and the more misinformation that is disseminated by the movement, the less likely overweight people are to adjust their lifestyles. This is because now they have something to point to and say: “hey, my lifestyle choices are accepted here, even if they’re killing me”.
I understand that there exists societal biases towards overweight individuals and I do believe any form of bias or discrimination is non-progressive. Additionally I realize some individuals see the movement as accepting a person’s conditions. I acknowledge the importance of realizing one’s own bodily health (whether its weight or health in this case), but I find that denying the effects and consequences of said condition to be self-defeating. Posing obesity in a positive light only deters change.
As humans, it is commonly understood that we seek to be accepted, and while some positivity movements can aid in providing acceptance to a possibly ostracized group, I find issue with the Fat Acceptance movement as this form of positivity only reinforces detrimental lifestyle choices.
I would love to hear different perspectives on the matter and really get a better understanding for why this movement has become so steadfast in these beliefs and where I may be misunderstanding or wrong in my own perspective.
| 28 |
If you hate yourself because you're fat and that causes you to binge eat as an emotional coping mechanism, then fat acceptance is the first step in losing weight. Only when you accept that your intrinsic value as a human being is not tied to your weight will you not need to emotional coping mechanism of food. That is, in many cases the first step of losing weight if you are an emotional eater is loving yourself as you are, even though you are flawed (in this case in your eating behaviors and emotional coping mechanisms). The second step is changing that behavior because you now have the love for yourself necessary to motivate it.
This initial self-love is what the fat-acceptance movement is, in an ideal world, about.
| 22 |
Is the old adage 'it's not the volts that hurt you, its the amps' true?
|
I've even asked an electrician about this, and he wasn't sure.
People claim that say... a car battery will hurt you more than 120 volt home circuit will, if you get shocked. Having been shocked by both I can say it appeared the car battery was MUCH stronger. This makes sense though, as most car batteries push 500+ amps at 12 volts. This is 6000 watts. A home electrical circuit is usually 20 amps at 120 volts, that's only 2400 watts. Is it really the total power that hurts you, and amps or volts is irrelevant? This makes sense but as I said, even an electrician I talked to seemed confused by this. I said a 20 amp circuit at 120 volts should 'hurt' or be as dangerous as a 10 amp 240 volt circuit, but most people I ask say the 20 amp circuit would be more dangerous. That doesn't seem to make sense.
| 70 |
yes, amps are what kill you. BUT... you need a high voltage for the current to overcome the resistance of your skin.
you can touch both terminals of a car battery and not get shocked because its only 12 volts.
also be aware that even current less than one amp is enough to kill you if it pass through your heart
| 54 |
CMV: The "you are doing that too much" feature on reddit should not apply to users with registered emails.
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Let's take a look at me. Before today, I had positive karma in every community that I post on in this account and two alternates. This account and one of my alts have verified emails. I posted the below thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/4i4ssq/cmv_people_who_care_about_singlepayer_should/
that resulted in a lot of downvotes. As a result, even though I am confirmed to not be a spammer, I am limited to one post every ten minutes until I get positive karma in here. My other two accounts, which share only an IP address, face the same queue down to the second. I think this is a serious design flaw and may need to move to voat and/or boycott certain subreddits.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*
| 369 |
So now, spammers can just register a throwaway email, get their account registered, and spam to their hearts content?
I dont see how this benefits ANYONE.
If posts that a user submits gathers a LOT of downvotes, i don't see a single downside to limiting how often they post. Taking off this limit is basically saying "hey we see that you are posting content people dont like, so its completely fine if you keep doing that as much as you like!"
| 107 |
[Civil War] [MCU] What side of the Civil War would Hulk and Thor be on?
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I know in the Civil War movie, Hulk and Thor were off in space(Hulk fighting for the Grandmaster and Thor was doing...whatever he was), but I'm curious, how do you think each of them would react to the Sokovia Accords and what their stances would be on them? I thought that Thor would be Team Cap, as he never liked being told what to do, especially by mortals, and Bruce would be team Iron Man, as he believes Hulk needs to be controlled, as he built the Hulk-Buster armor alongside Tony. What are your thoughts?
| 26 |
> Stark: It'd be great if we had a Hulk right about now. Any shot?
> Romanoff: You really think he'd be on our side?
> Stark: Nah.
Banner's first major adventure involved fleeing General (later Secretary) Ross and preventing the Hulk from being weaponized. There's no chance he goes Pro-Accords.
| 51 |
[Middle Earth] Does Tolkien's legendarium have a concept of other planets? Also what are the stars supposed to be?
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(sorry if this breaks the fourth wall, I probably should've asked in /r/tolkienfans)
| 30 |
The stars in Arda were created by the Valar Varda, Manwë's wife. They're literally just little bright lights in the sky. One of them is a silmaril, and one of them is actually a guy on a magical boat. The sun is just a brighter light source the Valar used to illuminate Middle Earth after the 2 trees died.
| 33 |
[Mass Effect] We are the Norgi. We just recently discovered the Mass Portals and now found finally our way to Citadel Space. What do we have to do to become part of the Galactic Civilizations?
| 21 |
Sparatus (Turian): “These Norgi are reckless! They activated a dead relay. Who knows where else that thing leads? What else did they connect to our network?! This is too much like the Relay 314 Incident.
Udina (Human): “You mean the First Contact War! It is an outrage you refuse to recognize-!”
Valern (Salarian): “Not a productive use of time. Not the topic either. These Norgi are to be discussed.”
Tevos (Asari): “Yes, they are here now. All are welcome to the Citadel Council. They are free to send representatives to the Citadel to form an embassy.”
Sparatus: “There are certain…requirements that must be met. All species with an embassy must sign to the Treaty of Farixen.”
Udina: “An artificially limiting piece of-!”
Tevos: “Ambassador! Please! Yes, The Norgi must sign to the Treaty. It is a pact among the council races as to the military forces we may deploy throughout citadel space.”
Udina: “And it is unfairly slanted! For every dreadnought we are allowed, the Turians are allowed five!”
Valern: “It is a reasonable balance of forces, especially given your recent carrier expansion programs.”
Tevos: “All species who have signed the Treaty are welcome to have an embassy here, where they may petition the Council. We have other standardized systems that council races are encouraged to adopt, but these are not required for membership in Council space.”
Sparatus: “Council seats and Full Membership on the Council is a much harder prospect to come by. They are granted once a species has exhibited a great contribution to the galactic community, and is deemed ready to join the Council itself.”
Valern: “Spectre candidacy is a good indicator. Acts of great galactic worth. Experience. Can take many years.”
Sparatus: “As a Council race, there are certain matters we would require they adhere to. The ban on AI development. An injunction not to wage war on another Council race."
Udina. “You speak of the Quarians, and the Batarians.”
Valern: “Again. Not the point. These Norgi are welcome? Shall we vote?”
*Bing. Bing. Bing. Bing.*
Tevos: “It is decided. These Norgi shall be accorded the status of Council race, conditional on their acceptance of the Charter, and the signing of the Treaty of Farixen. Let us hope that one day they shall join us as full member of the Citadel Council itself.”
| 41 |
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CMV: People who can't afford to have kids shouldn't be allowed to have them.
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I had a long discussion about that topic with my sister and my dad the other day and I would be interested to hear what other people might have to say, since their arguments couldn't convince me.
Having a child is a huge responsibility and costs a lot of money. Some people just don't have the necessary resources to take care of a child. There's a good reason that you're not allowed to adopt a child if you can't afford to pay for the stuff the child needs (childcare, food, christmas presents, etc), so why should you be allowed to make a new child of your own?
My sister and dad said, that having children is a deep rooted and fundamental need for humans, just like food, water and shelter. I beg to differ, since there's tons of people who don't ever want to have children, thus it can't be an fundamental human need to have them. In my opinion, having children is a luxury that should be limited to the people that can afford it.
A poor person without a job can't go to a bank and get a 200k loan to buy a nice house for themselves, but they can go ahead and make a child that will cost about that much in the span of 20 years without even thinking? I think that's just stupid.
"But what if they are using contraceptives and still get pregnant?" - Well, there's still abortion and adoption, so there's that.
Why should people who can't afford children be allowed to have them anyway?
Edit: I see that people are downvoting my replies in the comments. You might disagree with my points, but that's not a reason to downvote my comments. Let's have a discussion instead, okay?
Edit 2: Alright, I have to go now. I've awarded a couple of Deltas for changing my mind in specific points. The main view remains the same for me. Thank you for the interesting discussions!
Edit 3 (8 hours after posting): I just engaged in some more discussions, but I feel like now it's starting to move in circles. I'll disengage now, since I don't have unlimited time to discuss and I never imagined that my thread would get this kind of attention. I appreciate all of your arguments, some of which managed to change my view regarding certain aspects (see Deltas). Thanks for the discussion and have a great day, y'all!
_____
> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*
| 556 |
It's already done.
If a family can't take care of a child, CPS can have the child removed from that home. Whether it's because they're economically unable, are abusive to the child, or other reasons.
If a family can take care of a child, despite being poor, then what's the problem?
To me it seems the best solution possible: not overly intrusive and results based. No arbitrary wage cutoffs or anything of the sort, but based on whether you actually manage to do what's needed with your resources.
| 152 |
ELI5: Why do cold/flu symptoms get worse at night?
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Fevers spike, cough and congestion gets worse, body pain intensifies. Is it about the circadian rhythm?
| 21 |
Your immune system's inflammatory response is heightened at night. Sleep is when the body and brain do work to repair themselves. This means your symptoms worsen and your temperature raises to fever in an attempt to kill the virus or whatever bug you have. Even allergy symptoms like to get pretty bad at night with congestion. This is often why the PM version of medication has ingredients to help you sleep through it all.
| 15 |
[Interstellar] Is the Gargantua system physically possible?
| 22 |
Yes, because we have direct observation of it from the *Endurance* mission.
(You're looking for AskScience, AskScienceFiction deals with in-universe answers. Asking if an in-universe thing is possible from an in-universe perspective is a bit redundant.)
| 26 |
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ELI5: From a single cell to a human - is every cell's behavior, task, etc all governed by DNA and more importantly, how does DNA interact with the cell to control it?
| 15 |
So the cool thing about biology is that we're all just "chemistry buckets". We're just a lot of very advanced chemistry, and chemistry dictates everything we are.
Proteins are a family of molecule that are actually very diverse. They can make structures, like cell walls and fingernails. But again -- just chemicals. They're not "smart". A protein has a job to do, and it does it. Keratin, which is one of the proteins that make up hair and nails, is shaped so that it lines itself up into structures.
Other proteins carry "messages" from one place to another. Really that just means that some protein is sent into the blood, where it travels the whole body -- cause again, just a sack of chemistry -- and eventually it'll find a place that it fits. And when it does "fit" into something, that something may react, maybe by producing other chemicals.
Proteins also break down other materials (enzymes), can attack pathogens, and do lots more.
DNA itself is the protein cookbook. It's also just a chemical; a huge one, but a chemical nonetheless. In labs, to inspect DNA, they actually grow more of it. You just take DNA, and throw it into a soup of other chemicals that replicate DNA (those same chemicals found in the body) and then you cook it, and boom, you have a lot more DNA.
Either way, there's another chemical that interacts with DNA. It latches onto a bit of DNA, takes its shape, falls away and then another chemical comes in and builds a protein from that shape. It's almost like taking a cast and then a mold of something you want to sculp. The DNA is huge and "codes" lots of different proteins -- all your proteins, in fact -- but the RNA only needs to interact with a section at a time.
And remember still, nothing "smart" is happening here. It's just several chemical reactions, one after another.
But because DNA is the template for every protein your body uses, it defines your whole body. There's one protein that causes the gold flecks around the ring of your iris (in your eye) -- some people have it, some people don't. But at no point do these biological tools make "decisions"; the DNA doesn't "control" a cell in the sense that it's directing traffic. It's just a very complex system of different chemicals interacting with each other and producing different effects.
| 10 |
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[Fallout] Why are there still skeletons just lying around in populated areas?
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I understand that the people in Paradise Falls might not care, it adds to their image. But the bathrooms in Little Lamplight have a skeleton just lying in the middle.
I was also wondering, in the many decades since the bombs fell, why do people still hold onto burnt/destroyed books? The Brotherhood don't bother with them, they even pay strangers a hefty fee to recover Pre-war condition books.
| 18 |
A destroyed world is all most people alive today has ever really known. It doesn't occur to them to clean up everything - and there isn't much nice to fill the space. Most places do move their skeletons at least, but there's still tonnes of rubbish and debris that get left because its just so normal for them to be there. Maybe the kids in Little Lamplight just don't want to touch a skeleton, maybe they believe in ghosts and that they shouldn't be disturbed.
With the books, nobody wants to just get rid of them because there are still odd scraps of letters in them here and there. Even if msot information is lost, maybe one day a page or two that survived may be useful. Plus they can be used to help teach children to read.
| 30 |
CMV: Attraction isn’t a choice (but interest in the potential partner can grow)
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I’ve been taking a lot with other people about this recently, and I’ve come to learn that for some women “attraction” can be very different from men.
I am male, and I’ve begun to learn that for many women they were not instantly smitten with their future husband, but became more interested as they got to know the character of the man on dates.
Unlike men, women often feel things more on an emotional level, than basic visual attraction toward outer beauty and physical appearance, so maybe the statement “attraction is not a choice” doesn’t entirely work for women, but I do believe it works for men, speaking from experience.
HOWEVER, I still feel that what women have described could very well be different than attraction, because I feel like attraction involves sexual appeal based on appearance and personality whereas they are trying to get to know the character of the man in order to trust him and may have an easier time overcoming the “look” of the man, his features, because they like his heart. I could see getting past the appearance of the women to be much harder for most men.
However that’s different from finding him attractive from the get go. Also, people can make themselves more attractive to a person depending on if they are motivated to enhancing their appearance (getting a good haircut, losing weight, good hygiene etc). Nonetheless women, and men, could easily agree that someone who is naturally good looking and appealing to them can be labeled under “attractive” compared to someone they have zero sexual attraction towards.
We have certain traits or features that we find appealing in the people we are attracted to, compared to those we do not wish to enter into a relationship with. There are certainly people who are attracted to the same gender as themselves or are into other sexual orientations, all of which do not make the conscious choice to sexually desire these people. Same is true of straight people.
It seems that our attraction comes from a deeper place than just our thought life where we imagine and crave a future partner. Rather who we find attractive may instead come from our genetic makeup or early development and childhood behavior. Maybe we had a crush as a kid, the same age as us, and those traits (brown eyes, brown hair, skin color) just appealed to us and transferred over to adulthood. But it’s certainly not simply a choice who we find attractive.
| 18 |
Women and Men are human beings, not hive minds. You cannot lump all of them into the two baskets of ‘attracted to looks’ and ‘attracted to personality’.
Women have one night stands and find guys sexy without knowing anything about them and men have deep emotional binds with a girl after getting to know her before dating.
| 38 |
Will a second covid infection necessarily be milder?
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If someone gets infected with mild illness, recovers and also 6 months pass (no more antibodies) and then get infected again, will the immune system still necessarily react better (mild/even milder illness)? What if the second infection was a new (more dangerous) variant?
| 2,648 |
So there are two types of immune responses
There’s your antibodies floating around. These tend to dwindle over time and you can have a decreased immunity
There are however also memory cells. Where even though your antibodies dwindle they will produce more antibodies in response to the invader.
They make it more likely that your will have a less severe infection. But there is no guarantee.
This is also complicated by the fact not all the symptoms of COVID are from the virus itself but are due to an over reaction of the bodies immune system. This is why we give medications like dexamethasone to prevent inflammation in the lungs that makes them stiff and hard to ventilate.
TLDR. You’re less likely to be as sick. But no guarantee.
Edit: some bad grammar
| 1,674 |
CMV: The USA should not give foreign aid to countries when our country itself has social and economic issues.
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The USA should not give foreign aid to countries when our country itself has social and economic issues.
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I do not think the USA should be giving away $23 billion of foreign aid (https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2013/05/06/how-much-foreign-aid-does-us-give-away/) when we have 1/5 of children on food stamps (http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-16.html) and 578,424 homeless people (http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/snapshot_of_homelessness) or 610,042 homeless people depending on whose statistic you go off of (https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/ahar-2013-part1.pdf)
EDIT : My view has changed. /u/peacockpartypants Pointed out that it would be better to fix a broken system than to shift around money to add to a broken system.
| 27 |
Giving away aid ends up benefiting the US and its people in the long run.
First, giving aid puts us in "good standing" with many key strategic nations. A country receiving a billion dollars from us annually is more likely to help us out when we need to put a military base somewhere, or gain access to certain oil markets, etc.
Secondly, giving aid helps stabilize nations. An unstable nation that collapses often will be a breeding ground for dangerous and aggressive regimes that will destabilize the world economy.
| 29 |
[Marvel/DC] You must pick 3 or more Marvel superheroes to fuse. Which heroes do you choose for your creation to be the closest to Batman?
| 18 |
As close to batman as possible? tony stark, captain america, moon knight.
Stark for the smarts part, cap for the physcial, moon knight for the "running around in a onecolored suit at night beating people up" part
| 35 |
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It has recently been shown that light can be brought to a stop within a Bose-Einstein condensate (link in text). If light has an infinite momentum, wouldn't it take an infinite amount of energy to do this?
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http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/people/hau.cfm
| 129 |
Two things- light does not have an infinite momentum. A photon has a momentum of h/lambda (Plank's Constant divided by the wavelength). You might be thinking that it has infinite momentum because as an object with mass approaches the speed of light, it's momentum grows without bound. But since a photon has no mass, its momentum does not grow this way.
Secondly, this is a mis-leading article. Photons never travel less than c, and certainly never stop. The only thing that can slow down is the propagation of a light wave. This is because the photons move at c, get absorbed by an atom, and then re-emit and get absorbed again. This process takes some time, which slows the propagation of the light.
Of course, the light itself hasn't stopped, otherwise you wouldn't be able to see it. The only way you see the light is because the photons travel from the Bose-Einstein condensate to your eyes, so the photons must still be moving, but the light is no longer propagating through the material.
| 146 |
When I turn on the rear defroster in my car I hear the engine RPM drop. Does increasing the demand on a generator increase the force needed to rotate it? If so, how?
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Edit: the rpm dips only for a fraction of a second and then comes back up
| 5,379 |
>Does increasing the demand on a generator increase the force needed to rotate it?
Yes. The alternator converts rotational mechanical energy into electrical energy. Increase the electrical load and you, mostly linearly, increase the mechanical load the alternator has on the the motor.
Essentially you have a spinning magnet inside a bunch of coils. If there is no current flowing in the coils, i.e. no load, surrounding the spinning magnet, then there is no magnetic field produced by the coils. This allows the rotor magnet to spin freely and offers very little mechanical load to the engine.
When there is current flowing through the coils around the rotor, i.e. a load is connected, then the load current creates a magnetic field that opposes the motion of the spinning magnet. This makes it harder to spin the magnet. This is seen as a mechanical load on the engine.
That's the basic concept. Some details that missing are that the rotor is usually not a permanent magnet, the field winding is usually three phase, the rotor induces the load current that opposes its motion, the rotor and field windings create the rotor and field current...etc.
In diesel locomotives the alternator is often capable of stalling the engine, ~4 *thousand* HP.
| 2,538 |
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