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Is everything humans do natural?
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We are part of nature, so is what we do natural?
| 64 |
This question pivots on whether we have a clear consensus about what it takes for something to be "natural" - once we have that in place, we can determine which, if any, human behaviors count as natural.
Importantly, natural and good are different concepts. Usually there's an implicit assumption behind questions like this that what is natural is acceptable or right or praiseworthy -- which is just a variation of status quo bias.
| 55 |
ELI5 3D printing
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I've come across these things making living organs to guns. How could such a machine possibly exist. Considering its so far over my head, the only thing I can compare it to is a genie in a bottle.
| 56 |
You know how a standard inkjet printer works by laying dots of ink down on a page? A 3D printer is that, just times several thousand
Consumer 3D printers are filled with plastic that is used for the construction, and it goes molecular layer by molecular layer laying down a little dot of plastic wherever the blueprint tells it do. It builds up and up and up, until it's done! For guns, you just replace the plastic in the machine with different metal inputs for different elements, and with organs you follow the same process, but with living cells instead of plastic. They're pretty flippin cool
| 20 |
[Marvel] Why Doesn't Doom Get Surgery To Fix His Face?
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I understand the 60s were a different time and medicine wasn't advanced, but with modern medicine it sounds totally do-able.
Doom is one of the most powerful men in the world, and it's clearly something he cares about. He's done it in the past on a few occasion, such as when he had the power of The Beyonder.
| 18 |
You don't understand- it's irreparable.
The scars, they're so bad, they're beyond fixing. No doctor Doom would respect could ever repair him to his former glory, at best he'd be a pale reminder of what was once beautiful.
It's better that he be known by the mask and what remains of the face his heritage gave him than to be seen with his face so further mutilated.
Only when Doom has ultimate power and is content with his rule will he attend to such momentous issues. Until then, there is only DOOM.
| 23 |
[Star Trek] Why does the Enterprise have little windows? Why isn't the entire outside made of transparent aluminum so that everyone has ceiling-to-floor views?
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Also, nine times out of ten all there is to see is black with twinkly bits. Couldn't they simulate something far more interesting via holograms?
Plus: Shouldn't the main control area be deep inside the ship to protect it from attacks? Why does it need to be in the front?
| 17 |
I think at least as far as your last point, both shields and weapons are so good that it doesn't matter where in the ship you put the command deck, and furthermore, the thinking is that the farther away it is from the warp core the better
| 11 |
How do other political ideologies respond to Rawls' veil of ignorance?
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[newb] Rawls' thought experiment seems really convincing. However, I'd like to hear the opposition's response to what he's saying.
Also, critiques of social liberalism are welcome. Thanks for your help!
| 19 |
There's a lot that's been said about the implausibility of the original position. Here are two criticisms.
First, Rawls fiats that parties behind the veil of ignorance know the "basic truths" of human psychology, sociology, political science, economics, and so on. Critics point out that there are hardly established truths in these fields, and so Rawls is caught in a dilemma: either enumerate exactly what these truths are (and thus open himself to criticism on this front) or don't, rendering his theory too formal to be of use. The idea here is that Rawls has really punted the difficult questions of social organization down the line while giving the impression that he's come to substantive conclusions. For example, he himself thinks his theory supports both socialist and capitalist modes of organization. If a theory of political organization doesn't decide between something so fundamental to the structure of a society, then what good can it be? (says the critic).
Second, Rawls thinks that there's going to be *deliberation* behind the veil of ignorance which leads to conclusions about the structure of society. But, given that parties behind the original position are formally identical (e.g. minimally rational, with no contingent features influencing their decisionmaking, etc.), it's hard to imagine what this deliberation would look like. It'd be like one person deliberating with themselves. But what does that even mean? Surely they would just agree with themselves, on pain of self-contradiction.
I believe Robert Paul Wolff's *Understanding Rawls* makes these critiques.
| 12 |
ELI5: How google makes profit with some of its services that seems completely free like Maps, Translate or Gmail
| 18 |
They provide these services for free because those services are only secondary to how they make their money.
They made their money with advertising and data. Data which is used to make better advertising, targeted advertising.
You are not Google's "customer". You are the product.
| 46 |
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ELI5: Why television and media cameras are so big, despite the same level of picture detail being achievable on much smaller devices?
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What's all that 'extra camera' used for?
| 383 |
Much higher quality sensors and optics. In order to fit a small camera on the back of your phone, there's a lot of compromises that need to be made so that it will fit in that limited space. That will affect the sharpness, clarity, and detail of the image, and when you're getting paid for top quality shots, a camera phone just doesn't cut it.
| 247 |
[Punisher] Which legal code does the Punisher use to judge whether someone should be "punished"?
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Is it U.S. federal, state, or municipal law? Would he kill people for actions that were considered legal where they lived - e.g. selling marijuana in Colorado? Or owning a slave in Mauritania?
Or does he follow a "higher" code of justice?
| 48 |
Short answer: **His own**
Long answer: Frank really only punishes those who have violently hurt others. He probably won't care if you're just an average heroine user, but he will go after you if you're a dealer or a trafficker who sells to users/addicts and (to arguable extents) gets people addicted in the first place.
As for your examples, he'd really only be interested in Mauritania. Legal drugs aren't really a concern to him, especially just weed, but he believes the trading and owning of humans is unforgivable, regardless of its local legal status.
| 59 |
eli5: Why is co2 the gas used to pressurize drinks. Why can’t something like nitrogen or atmosphere air be used.
| 2,781 |
Carbonated water creates carbonic acid which gives a little sting and sourness to your drink and tickles your nose when the bubbles burst at the top.
Nitrogen infusion gives a creamy texture and it's used in beer and coffee.
Oxygenated water is advertised as having health benefits, but at high amounts of infusion you start getting hydrogen peroxide, with is not good to drink.
Just using regular air is basically nitrogen and oxygen.
| 4,293 |
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CMV: It doesn’t make sense that good people who don’t believe in God go to hell anyways.
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My boyfriend is very religious so I’ve tried to keep an open mind to Christianity. Personally, I think we live in a simulation. Not going to explain all the details since it’s not the subject but it’s not very far from being religious: if we’re in a simulation there is a “creator” and if we’re conscious we might just change realities when we die. So the idea of God isn’t that far fetched especially when taken metaphorically.
I just don’t get the part about Christianity where non-believers are automatically thrown to hell no matter how good of a person they were. I don’t get the “devotion” part of it where it’s more important to believe and pray than to be a good person. Why would God wants to have this place in our lives? And if we don’t do that we’re just not good enough. I feel like it defeats the purpose. An omniscient God would know we have barely any proof to believe in him so he would not really hold it against us would he? But no, for most religions being a good person isn’t enough and you’re expected to do all these things in addition otherwise bye bye.
It only feels like it’s this way to manipulate people into believing. If there was no fear of hell I bet a lot of people would stop believing. Why would we need to be coerced into believing?
There are many other things I find not so logical but this one is a pretty big one.
| 42 |
Alright, hear me out.
In Christianity, hell is for people who screw up. Anybody who has ever screwed up is supposed sent to hell. Which is basically all of us.
Then Jesus comes along, and sacrifices himself to cover the cost of our screwups. Basically each person's sin accumulates a debt, and any debt gets you sent to hell. But Jesus' sacrifice is now like a infinite check. God, through Jesus, mailed us an infinite check to cover our "sin debt" because, you know, he loves us. Doesn't want us to go to hell forever.
God told us about the check. All you have to do is believe that he sent it and go the mailbox, pick it up, and cash it. But we all have free will, and if we decide not to cash this check (or not to believe that we have any debt in first place), that's on us, not God.
That's the gist of the main idea of what Christians actually believe.
| 14 |
Why do peoples nipples get hard when its cold outside?
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I don't know how much more I could elaborate on this.
| 26 |
They are trying to preserve heat.
When a nipple is exposed to cold temperature skin reflexively contracts, causing the nipple to become smaller, wrinkled and "hard." The ultimate function of this reflex is to decrease the amount of surface area on the nipple that is exposed to the cold.
Decreasing surface area is the ultimate reason why nipples get hard in the cold. It is not caused by erectile muscle, but rather by simple contraction of smooth muscle. The process is most similar to that of a hair follicle standing up on end...
| 14 |
[Legend of Zelda] How would the events of Majora's Mask have panned out if it were Adult Link instead of Child Link?
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Simply put, after defeating Ganon in the future and making sure he's locked away before he can rise to power, Link decides to check out what the future is like now that Ganondorf isn't going to be an issue. Upon arriving and seeing everything is peaceful, Navi decides Link doesn't need her anymore and leaves (a la the ending of Ocarina of Time). (Now an Adult) Link decides to go after her and begins the events of **Majora's Mask** as an **Adult**. What happens differently? Does Adult Link fair better? And for the purposes of this hypothetical scenario, all doors/holes that Young Link is small enough to enter are enlarged so Adult Link can fit through (to prevent a "well he fails instantly because he can't fit though [insert passage]").
Bonus (to avoid flooding /r/asksciencefiction with questions): How well would **Wind Waker Link** do in Majora's Mask? And vice versa, how well would Child/Young Link from MM do in Wind Waker?
| 21 |
Kid link had all the experiences of adult link at that point. He retained his memories of the future when zelda sent him back to the past. That's how he was able to warn the king about Ganon's plans.
So probably not that much different. Adult link is slightly stronger than kid link so he might have had an easier time fighting enemies but not by much. Link in MM was able to use the items that he wasn't able to use in OOC.
| 16 |
ELI5: How did the Nixon Shock cause the change in the Productivity-Pay gap?
| 19 |
It didn't, or at least you're not going to find many economists who agree that it did. Pay and productivity didn't begin diverging until 1984 - 13 years after the Nixon Shock.
The overwhelming consensus as to the cause of the Productivity-Pay gap is that in 1983 the US re-designated China as a "friendly" nation. This both allowed for the export of advanced US manufacturing technology to China and significantly reduced US trade barriers to imported Chinese goods.
Following that change, US workers began having to compete against Chinese workers, who were working under a system in which the government fixed their wages to be the equivalent of ~$350 per year, with workers in small, private Chinese factories often earning less than that.
The world before 1990 was a much different place than it is now. Outside of the US and Europe infrastructure was generally non-existent, governments were wildly corrupt, and guerilla movements were widespread. China was one of the only third world countries with a functional government, well developed infrastructure, and no ongoing guerilla war within its borders. What prevented it from developing was its international isolation - the West didn't recognize it and the Soviet Union was openly hostile towards it.
China was able to rapidly develop once the US opened up to it. This injected a billion ultra-low wage Chinese workers into the international economy who were roughly as productive and competent as those in the West. If you're an unskilled laborer in the West then you're competing for jobs based on the wage you want to be paid.
After China opened up, you suddenly found yourself competing against ~5 times as many laborers for the same number of jobs as you were before, which exerts an extremely strong downward pressure on wages. This downward pressure has gotten even worse as you get closer to the present and more third world countries have been able to develop their governments and infrastructure to the point that they're able to participate in the global economy.
| 15 |
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Are solar systems known to collide with each other? Is it possible?
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As we're sat here merrily spinning around the galaxy, is there the possibility that we could collide with another solar system? Would two star systems get close enough over time that the conflicting gravitational forces of the respective stars throw both sytems into chaos or maybe even 'strip' one star of its orbital bodies and place them around the star with the greater gravitational pull?
I assume this would have been more common in the distant past?
| 108 |
Yes, they can 'collide', but it's unlikely any body would impact another. This is because a galaxy consists mostly of space. (think about how big our solar system is and the relative size of the sun and planets for that massive volume).
| 48 |
eli5: What do CEO's actually do?
| 130 |
Depends on the company but generally it is their job to make their company succeed. That does not translate into internal management 9/10 times. It translates into raising funds, hiring an executive team, creating long term corporate visions, and making executive decisions - i.e. we have 200M in the bank, do we hold it for a rainy day, do i invest and grow company, do i give raises or our stock price went down by 50% do i fire or stop hiring etc. which department do i dissolve which department do i invest in
| 325 |
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ELI5: How do systems on the other side of a phone call know what buttons you're pressing.
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For example: I just called a phone number to activate a visa gift card, and the system told me to enter the number of the card on my dial pad. How does that system know what buttons I'm pressing?
| 21 |
Your phone beeps when you press the buttons - the same beeps that tell the phone company which number you're dialling on a landline. The system on the other end listens for the beeps and knows which button you pressed. Each button actually makes two tones together - one for each column and one for each row.
| 13 |
Do imaginary numbers have any practical applications?
| 55 |
Of course, why wouldn't they? They're just as real as normal numbers, which is to say not at all. Complex numbers are a nifty way to encode 2D translations, 2D rotations and scaling compactly as addition and multiplication. Very convenient.
Electrical engineering, fluid dynamics, quantum mechanics and much more all explicitly use them.
At the core, though, Complex Numbers are just the part of the basic vocabulary needed to speak "math". This is true of everything in math. All the math that you learn in high school and college is just the basic vocabulary of math. And *that* is the real application: To make you fluent in a complicated and precise communication scheme.
| 87 |
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Why don't the armed forces in Attack on Titan use shotguns, explosive flechettes, or some other ranged weapon to destroy the weak spot on the necks of the titans?
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By armed forces I mean the ones with 3DMG, who are getting up close and personal to the titans.
| 15 |
They don't seem to have advanced much in personal firearms tech. The guns they had in the anime were breechloaded flintlocks.
That means slow rate of fire, horrific accuracy, inability to be loaded while moving or being jostled around, and no special munitions.
| 27 |
ELI5:If I develop a website for a wedding photographer, the website belongs to the photographer, because it's a work for hire. Why, then, if he takes photos of my wedding, do the photos not belong to me?
| 212 |
You could work out a contract with a photographer where they assigned the copyright to you. But most photographers don't do it that way because reasons. Mostly because if you ever wanted reprints back before digital they could charge whatever they wanted.
| 69 |
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[40K] How did Astropaths navigate the Warp before the Astronomicon?
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So it seems to me that the Golden Throne was built during the later stages of the Great Crusade, for the purposes of constructing the Human Webway project and projecting the Astronomicon. I believe that the Emperor could navigate the warp without the Astronomican, but what about his other expeditionary fleets?
Edit: Please replace 'Astropath' with "Navigator" in the title.
| 32 |
So first off Navigators are the ones who navigate through the warp, not Astropaths. Astropaths send messages through the warp.
To answer your question it is possible to travel through the warp without the Astronomicon, it's just slower (Rogue Traders sometimes have to do this when traveling to areas beyond its reach). Without the Astronomicon's light you basically have to travel in the "best guess" direction and then drop out of the warp every few light years to check your location and reorient. Navigators are still helpful here since they can use their powers to give a better estimate for the ship's travel then a normal human could but they are still a lot less accurate than they would be with the Astronomicom.
| 43 |
CMV: The use of pharmacological stimulants as a treatment for non-chronic obesity and binge-eating disorders is unfairly socially stigmatized, and because of this is underutilized by patients and medical practitioners in a non-trivial amount of cases wherein it would do more good than harm overall
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To start off, my scenario: I dropped like 35 pounds in 2 months using stimulants for weight loss with absolutely no effort. I had no history of addiction to amphetamine derivatives, no heart or cardiovascular conditions, had the capability to pay for my stimulants and medical consultations financially, had no major side effects or pharmacological contraindications, and had short-term weight gain due to the bad mental health that came with COVID over the past 2-3 years.
I understand that I have very specific circumstances. However the argument that I'm making is that due to social stigma specifically, there exist a non-trivial proportion of obesity cases wherein drug treatment does not come to mind or is otherwise not considered by both patients and medical professionals, even though it could be determined more probabilistically likely than not that it would have done more good than harm than the alternative treatment (or lack thereof) in that specific demographic:
Many different people use and are prescribed by medical professionals traditionally addictive drugs to treat conditions they were both meant and not meant to, and for reasons they were and were not originally synthesized for.
Why is weight loss the only scenario wherein people who are uninformed pharmacologically outright reject the treatment for themselves in situations where it may have caused more good than harm overall, and pass judgement on people who have specific circumstances where they state that it was the best medical decision?
Obesity kills so many fucking people per year, imagine if people reacted to medical therapy for heart disease or vaccines for inectious diseases in the same way they reacted to drug treatment for weight loss.
It's not as if stimulants aren't prescribed for binge eating disorder and obesity, it's just that it doesn't happen widely. The idea that "there's no magic pill that will make you lose weight without effort" is literally false, it's just that those magic pills come with negative side effects that will a decent amount of the time outweigh the positives.
| 27 |
I think there are two main reasons that stimulants aren't used a lot more for obesity. First, obesity goes hand in hand with cardiac complications and there are no stimulants powerful enough to affect weight loss without placing significantly increased strain on the heart.
Second, stimulants can be very useful as an aid to weight loss, but they do not cause weight loss without behavioral change in vast majority of cases. Doesn't matter if you take Adderall or vyvanse if you also eat 2 buckets of KFC for every meal plus ice cream and constant snacking. You still have to do *some* calorie restriction, otherwise you won't lose any weight at all. This is especially true when you consider that the patient will eventually go off the stimulant and will need to make behavioral changes to maintain any weight loss. So the majority of cases, stimulants do not eliminate the need for underlying behavioral change, they just make that part easier and improve results somewhat.
Ultimately, that means for many if not most overweight or obese people, stimulants can present significant risks without much possibility of long term reward. Or at least no reward that couldnt be achieved with behavioral change by itself. Which is why stimulants aren't used more frequently than they are currently.
| 25 |
Are most advancements in AI from better hardware or more advanced formulae?
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Theoretically, a computer could brute force a problem to figure out every possible optimal solution, but that is absurdly infeasible in most instances, so systems use tricks such as classifiers and error minimization to get a "best guess."
When new milestones such as Deepmind's recent victories are reached, is this more due to faster processors allowing for deeper/wider searches with existing algorithms, or have the algorithms themselves improved? (I'm sure it's a little of column A and a little of column B, buy I'm asking for a little more specific than that)
| 19 |
Most of today's computer science theories were created way before the creation of efficient computers. But ANNs (Artificial Neural Networks) only began to be a research topic in the 1960s.
The new powerful hardware allows the researchers to think of new algorithms that previously seemed ridiculously inefficient, so it's a bit of both. Without good hardware, no one would bother to do ANNs, and without new theories, no amount of hardware would produce these results.
Also note the impact of the Internet : many ANNs are trained using massive amounts of data (especially ANNs that use images), and most modeln data storage and manipulation algorithms were created in the wake of the creation of the Internet.
| 10 |
ELI5: How does acid dissolve things?
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Can't understand what Google gave me :(
EDIT: Thanks for the help!
| 25 |
Basically, aacids are really attractive to other molecules/atoms, to the point where they will leave their current bonds to combine with the acid. As parts of the material break off to bound with the acid, it dissolves
| 63 |
What is the likelihood of a major food crisis? How can we stop it?
| 44 |
Due to the oil intensive nature of modern agriculture, major food crisis will likely be precipitated by significant disruptions to oil markets and supplies, i.e. trouble with Iran and the Straight of Hormuz. Modern agriculture is increasingly consolidated into the hands of fewer and larger companies. Really the only way to avoid large scale food crisis is to promote decentralization of food production such that a significant portion of food production is shifted into ones own backyard or neighboring small farms. This will mitigate the oil reliance and the risk of putting too many eggs in the mega farm basket.
TL:DR-Grow a garden.
| 12 |
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ELI5: How does "my bones hurt when the weather is changing" work? (scientifically)
| 71 |
It has to do with the changes in air pressure. When the weather changes from higher to lower pressure it usually brings bad weather, but also the joints in your body expand just a little bit and that can allow for more inflammation to occur.
| 97 |
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ELI5: What Fermat's Last Theorem is and why its important that it's solved.
| 57 |
Fermat's last theorem states that for integer values a, b and c the equation a^n + b^n = c^n is never true for any n greater than two. So for example a=1 b=2 c=3 n=4 gives you 1+16=81 which is obviously false. This is rather simple, but proving that it was true turned out to be an utter bear.
Proving Fermat's last theorem itself wasn't all that important, although it was very interesting since the proof had eluded mathematicians for nearly 400 years. Which actaully makes that pretty important in it's own right given that Wiles managed to solve something some of the smartest people in the world had failed at, and had mostly given up on as unsolvable.
The more obviously important part comes from the methods Wiles' used in the proof itself, which involved approaches and tools brand new to mathematics. In particular those tools could be applied to solve other difficult problems. Wile's didn't just prove Fermat's last theorem, in doing he kicked open a whole new door in the field of mathematics.
| 45 |
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ELI5: What happened to Blackberry and why did they go from a sensation to being a rare sight?
| 90 |
They failed to adapt.
Blackberry was the *only* option for business users, really.
Then the iPhone came out and suddenly everyone wanted a friggin iPhone. Now us IT people went "Dude, Blackberry has a lot of business and, more importantly, *security* features that are really, really important, so no, you can't have an iPhone" which was OK for a while... but then the middle-managers wanted iPhones, and then the managers, and then the VPs, and then the CEOs... so suddenly the iPhone was an option for business users, too, and Blackberry seemed -- rightfully -- old and clunky.
Blackberry didn't take the threat seriously, and when they finally got up and did something it was too little, too late and too crappy (Blackberry Storm, anyone? Ugh).
The real surprise is that they're still around at all.
| 47 |
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[Marvel/DC] How would the avengers react to Green Arrow's Chili
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incase you dont know Green Arrow's Chili is one of the spiciest entities known to the general superheroic community. like supes has to use his freeze breath on it to atleast make it not hurt as bad and aquaman feels instantly dehydrated when taking a bit of it and martian manhunter is reacting to it akin to how martians react to fire in the DC universe so this asks my question
How would the avengers react to Green Arrow's Chili? as i am curious what peoples take on that would be
[also heres a pic featuring the chili to help give more context](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/5/5b/Green_Arrow%27s_Chili_01.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090712184716)
| 32 |
Hawkeye would eat massive bites of it and pretend it's not hot at all because there's no way he'll let that bearded weirdo archer ever claim he could do something better than him. He's taking bites, sweating horribly, obviously in pain despite pretending not to be.
Hulk like beans! But beans too hot! Why Funny Beard Man make beans hot?! HULK SMASH FUNNY BEARD MAN!
Thor enjoys it, asks for seconds.
Captain America tolerates it, but politely declines another bowl. Even with super soldier serum, he's sweating a bit.
Scarlet Witch hexes it to be less spicy.
Black Widow has had worse.
| 54 |
[WH40K] What would happen if a tyranid hive fleet attacked Cadia?
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Would the pylons on the surfice fuck with their hivemind?
| 34 |
Tyranids have shown to be highly resilient to standard Psy defences and attacks, so there's a good chance that their 'Silent Shadow' thing would fuck over the pylons, leaving it down to a purely military scrap.
The Imperium would win that fight, after a looooong grind. We won by the skin of our teeth at Maccrage, and Cadia is better defended, has more troops and is a higher priority than that planet. That part of the galaxy is occupied by way more SM Chapters than the space around Maccrage, and Cadia itself is strong enough to be the lock on the door to Chaos's bedroom.
Like any good fight, billions die and humans win in the end.
| 46 |
ELI5: If an amputee, such as Oscar Pistorius, goes to prison, are they allowed to keep their prosthetic limb since it could be used as a weapon?
| 60 |
This is going to be a country specific answer. In the United States, both 42 USC 1983 and the Americans with Disabilities act are the controlling law.
Basically, a state actor like a prison guard can not abuse prisoners. Not giving an amputee some means of mobility would be abuse. Therefor, a wheelchair, prosthetic, or crutch would need to be given. It may not be THEIR blade runner leg, but it must be some means to get around.
| 26 |
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[Dragonball Z] Did Goku know what was happening when he was going Super Saiyan for the first time?
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When he transformed fighting Frieza it was because he was angry. He stops and struggles with what seems like his emotions as a storm surges, and he screams, transforms, then was "calm" (as calm as you can be in that situation I guess) and gets ready to fight
Did Goku realize what had happened to him? Was he somehow able to know that a transformation was coming?
| 42 |
He was only thinking of one thing. Revenge. He was so emotional because his friend was dead and he knew he could do nothing about it. Frieza would then kill his son and himself. Goku fully believed he had lost.
After the transformation Goku has a lot more power. He doesn't know why he has more power, he doesn't care why. All he cares about is going after frieza.
| 62 |
ELI5: Why do sparsely populated areas tend to vote Republican/Conservative?
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You can see this on a state level:
http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results
If you zoom into any red or blue state, the sparsely populated counties usually end up red. Is there a simple reason why?
| 43 |
It's all about population density.
In an urban area, having a lot of people around is the norm. This has benefits and disadvantages. It means help in any number of ways is usually nearby (police, fire, you need a jump from your neighbor, etc).
It also means that other people's behavior can adversely affect you because you live in close proximity to them. If your neighbor constantly plays loud music, this can greatly impact your quality of life, so you need to rely on local government and society to regulate that person's behavior (noise ordinances).
In both cases, whether trying to get help or prevent other people from negatively impacting you, government has the power to make your life a lot better because you and all your fellow city dwellers are concentrated in one place.
Compare this to the rural lifestyle. Your nearest neighbor might be 10 minutes away by car. In this case, you would regard a noise ordinance as anything but helpful. Your neighbor couldn't buy speakers loud enough to bother you, so of course you'd take umbrage to some cop hanging around your property line telling you to turn your music down all the time when it hurts no one.
Similarly, government benefits are of reduced value to you. The average area that must be covered by the local fire department might be hundreds of times bigger than your average city precinct. Even if you do call for help, logistically, you realize it could be a long time until they get there. So naturally it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to rely a lot on government services that require you to be relatively close.
All of this adds up to: rural areas tend to be more self-reliant and mistrusting of government, while urban populations tend to be willing to rely much more heavily on government services and regulation. But: **only when locality matters.**
What does that mean? Well, note that rural areas are perfectly happy to rely on government services when those services can be rendered at a distance. For instance, farm aid. Washington DC can cut a check from thousands of miles away to help a farmer grow crops. In these cases, rural areas tend to like government regulation when it benefits them.
So what "big govt / small govt" is really about is which population is better able to extract utility from government. This is why Republicans tend to favor government involvement in things like farm aid even though that's inconsistent with their "small govt" core message.
| 83 |
Is there a scientific reason that the hexagon is 'nature's shape'?
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I saw this [picture](http://www.flickr.com/photos/lagodigarda/96477237/sizes/l/in/photostream/) in Earthporn, and this one of [Devil's Postpile](http://www.appstate.edu/~marshallst/photos/boone_photos/devils_postpile/Devils_Postpile-030.jpg) and it reminded me hearing somewhere that the hexagon is nature's shape. Is there a scientific reason for this?
| 82 |
Hexagons represent the shape with the lowest possible energy when nested / packed. If you imagine a soap bubble, it pulls itself into a sphere for the same reason - the sphere is the least possible surface area which contains the maximum volume - the lowest energy shape. If you subsequently nest soap bubbles together, the membranes between cells pull themselves into straight walls forming hexagons, as this is the lowest energy configuration. Similarly, this is why bees evolved to construct honeycomb cells in their hives. The close packed hexagons use the least amount of wax in their construction than any other possible shape, conserving energy.
| 85 |
ELI5: With most countries so far in debt, how does China have all this money to loan other countries like the U.S. and U.K.
| 665 |
That's not how sovereign debt works.
Sovereign debt exists as bonds. A country offers bonds on the market, and other countries buy them as investments. A bond is basically a contract between the bond issuer (usually a government) and the bond holder (whoever buys it) that says "The issuer agrees to pay the holder the value of this bond plus X% interest on [DATE]." US Treasury Bonds are seen as a **very** safe investment because the US **always** pays when and what it says it will pay. This means that the US can offer incredibly low interest rates on its bonds.
A US T-bond is safer than a bank account, safer than gold, hell it's safer than burying your money in the yard. If you have a whole bunch of money and you want to keep it safe for a decade or so, you can't do better than buying US bonds.
| 290 |
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ELI5: Some jobs are unpleasant but fundamental to society (eg: janitor, bus driver). Why aren't these the best paid jobs?
| 36 |
Because anyone can do them. They are low skill and lots of people can fill that role.
Sometimes they do get better pay because the job is undesirable (I think trash collectors get paid decent, at least compared to minimum wage).
| 86 |
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CMV: It’s understandable why many vegans are so loud and preachy about how bad consuming animal products is.
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If you had really come to the conclusion that billions of animals are slaughtered every year, animals who are conscious and have souls and experiences and emotions and feelings, obviously you would want to let everyone know the moral tragedy that they are partaking in every single day by consuming animal products. In fact, if you really thought that millions of innocent beings are dying every single day and the world is basically doing nothing about it, I would be surprised if you didn’t try and tell every single person you met and interacted about it, and how being a vegan is the only moral choice one could make.
Of course, for those of us who don’t really care to much about animal murder and stuff like that, this all comes across as really annoying, but I at least get where they are coming from. I think a lot of the hate directed towards vegan communities and such which are simply trying to spread their message (from their perspective, a very noble message) to the outside world is unjustified as we all have our moral convictions which we attempt to impart on those around us.
| 1,384 |
This is exactly why evangelical Christians proselytize. Millions of souls go to Hell each day and they're just trying to prevent it.
Do you like when Christians proselytize by telling you your going to Hell? Is it effective?
This is the same for anti-abortion advocates as well.
| 1,080 |
I have a volume slider on my headset, a volume silder on youtube, and a volume slider just on my computer. Which one should I maximize for the clearest audio?
| 23 |
Youtube should be at maximum.
PC volume as high as possible without clipping/distortion. That may be all the way up.
Control listening level with headset control.
You want to use all the dynamic range of your PC's digital to analog converter. Then attenuate it as needed with the headset control.
In practice, just do what's most convenient. Youtube and other streaming audio is compressed and not super high quality, so why bother?
| 11 |
|
How do/can black holes "grow"?
|
Perhaps this has been answered here or elsewhere, but I can't seem to find a clear answer.
Maybe this is a dumb question, and maybe I've already read the answer before and forgotten, but: How is it that black holes can "grow" by consuming matter/mass? If matter beyond the event horizon is "gone" (though, I guess Hawking radiation would suggest otherwise?) why should the ingestion of matter after creation of the singularity cause the black hole to "grow" or otherwise become more dense? It makes sense to me that the aggregation of massive objects would do so, but does a singularity have mass, in the traditional sense? I guess what I'm struggling with is the idea that such mundane rules could apply to something so seemingly peculiar - is it just that simple, or is the actual phenomenon also appropriately exotic?
| 44 |
Are you asking about a mechanism?
Because if so, they just *do,* by conservation of mass/energy.
When matter (or energy, such as photons) cross the event horizon it is absolutely doomed to end up at the singularity. That's just the way spacetime works in the black hole. Basically, geodesics (which are orbital trajectories in general relativity) terminate at the singularity. It means that stuff just piles up at that point. By conservation of mass/energy, the mass/energy of the particle that went in is now a part of the singularity, and thus the black hole.
| 16 |
ELI5: How is it that Manhattan doesn't collapse under all the weight of its buildings?
|
As a non-engineer, I wonder how it is possible that Manhattan, with hundreds of massive skyscrapers and high-rises, does not simply collapse. There are a series of tunnels underneath that go quite deep, and even if they are in a grid and don't run directly underneath the buildings, I still can't wrap my head around it.
EDIT: Removed the word "island" so the question would not be misconstrued. Sorry for the confusion.
| 24 |
If you replaced the Empire State Building with a similar mass of granite, it would only be about 50 feet high.
Bedrock is thousands of feet thick. It has no problem supporting buildings because it has not problems supporting itself.
| 36 |
CMV: The bodily autonomy argument for abortion isn't really valid because most people in society agree that bodily autonomy can be broken for multiple reasons
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I want to premise this by saying I am very pro-choice. I believe anyone who is pregnant should have the right to an accessible and safe medical abortion at any point. I believe that no one should be allowed to use another person's body parts without that person's consent, even if it would be medically necessary. I am a woman and have also been in a situation where I had to consider abortion for non life-threatening reasons.
With that out of the way, I want to argue that the pro- choice argument for bodily autonomy as the primary reason why abortion should be legal is flawed. For example, we vaccinate children, the majority of whom would likely not want to be forced to have needles puncturing them. I would argue that quarantining a non compliant patient with a deadly and highly contagious disease is also ethical but also breaks bodily autonomy.
Furthermore, if someone were to be severely mentally ill and likely to hurt themselves (but not others), I would argue that breaking their bodily autonomy by intervention and mandatory psych holds are the ethical course of action.
Things like mandatory seat belts in cars and helmets while riding bikes break bodily autonomy, but most people wouldn't disagree all that strongly with such mandates.
While I don't believe *bodily autonomy* itself should be the reason abortion should be legal, I do agree with set precedents like McFall v. Shimp that no one should be able to use another person's body parts without their consent, even for medically necessary reasons. This includes organ/blood donation, pregnancy, breast feeding, or sexual intercourse. I also don't believe in torture and believe that denying necessary medical treatments like abortions should be considered torture. However, arguments that argue for complete bodily autonomy as the main reason why abortion should be legal fall short. CMV
| 33 |
So you gave two examples of bodily autonomy being violated but they're both flawed.
We don't actually have mandatory vaccinations. We have vaccination as a mandatory step to participating in certain public goods. You don't have to vaccinate your kid, they just can't go to school if they aren't vaccinated.
And quarantine is about your ability to travel, not your physical autonomy.
The autonomy argument is that the state doesn't own your blood and organs
| 38 |
CMV: Ghosts don't exist
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Science tells us that once we die, we cannot come back to life (excluding the exceptional cases of people coming back to life a couple minutes after their death). Our body decays and our brain too. Our "soul", i.e. memories, ideas, thoughts, knowledge, etc. disappear. And there is no scientifically rigorous way to assert that the mind somehow survives and continues to exist in the world.
All alleged pictures and videos of ghosts can, I believe, be explained by logic, whether it is optical illusions/defects on the camera, stuff that looks like a ghost, smoke, combination of air and light in special ways.
Moreover, to my knowledge, no one able has been able to photograph or record a ghost regularly; the only documents we have are 1-time shots. If ghosts existed and wanted to communicate with us, they would manifest themselves more often, and we would have ironclad proof of their existence. This is not the case (hence the CMV). If they existed but didn't want to communicate with us, why would they "scare" people and be in settings where people are likely to notice them?
_____
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| 607 |
Let's start with your basic premise. "Science has proven that...". Science doesn't work that way. Science is ever changing and is not immutable. Science is a great way to explain things, but can be changed based on data as it is discovered. A "soul", for lack of a better term, is not something that science can either prove or disprove at this time. We do not have the technology or understanding to do so.
Now onto your multi conversationalist ghosts. What makes you presume that they are trying to communicate with us? Could it not simply be that they exist like any other animal? The gorillas which were no more than folk tale until a century ago were much the same. People would bring photographs back and it was explained away. They couldn't exist, people would argue. Scientists would agree. Then they were discovered and their habitat founded.
To state with absolute certainty that ghost don't exist, is anti-science. A better way to say is that you do not believe ghosts exist based on what little data we have. Take some other scientific truths and replace ghost for them. Aliens exist. We know this because science has concluded that they should based on the near infinite amount of universe that exists. Does this mean we can definitively state that Aliens exist? No, we have no evidence to show that they do. Nor do we have any that they don't.
What about Bigfoot? Could a small tribe of human sized apes live on Earth without having been detected like the gorillas previously mentioned? A small tribe of 20-50 that have near human intelligence and avoid contact with humans? We have no evidence that disproves their existence but none that proves it either.
The short answer here is that, if you believe in science, you should neither believe that ghosts exist nor believe they don't exist. You should believe that there is enough scientific evidence that they don't exist but remain open to the possibility of their existence if proven otherwise.
| 441 |
ELI5: Can you own land on the moon? Could a nation form on Mars?
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What laws get in the way of these things? I know that no nation can claim the moon, but is private ownership restricted, and if not, how does that play into activities such as the mining of the moon?
| 27 |
Right now all of space is more or less agreed to be neutral territory. Whenever the day comes that someone starts forming permanent colonies on extra-terrestrial bodies, there will likely be a very serious and very important global discussion on how ownership of these bodies will work. Right now there is no clear plan in place.
| 13 |
CMV: Canceling student loan debt is not a progressive priority. Warren, AOC, Sanders, etc shouldn't be championing it.
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Hey peeps. I'm a progressive voter who supported Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren (I'm in MN). I have a masters degree and about $20K in student loan debt. However I don't understand why canceling student loan debt is a progressive policy that is being championed by the likes of Warren, Bernie, AOC, and others. Change my view that this is a policy that won't address underlying issues with student debt but it will further divide class lines.
I understand that total student loan debt (>$1.5 trillion) has now surpassed total credit card debt (<$1trillion) to become the second largest form of debt in America (after mortgages). I acknowledge that's a concern. This has been driven by increases in the costs of higher education, increased/eliminated caps on borrowing for students and parents, the rise in for-profit colleges, the increasing number of people attaining college and especially graduate school, and more.
However, only about 1 in 8 Americans has student loan debt and the average amount is about $32K. While I understand that some people drop out of college and get the debt without the benefit, that is not emblematic of people who have student loan debt in general...an individuals who graduate college tend to make significantly more than those who don't (\~$75K/year vs $45K/year). Additionally there are income-based repayment plans for student loans that are an option which tie your repayment to your discretionary income and forgive anything you have left after a set number of years. Why should we cancel, on average, $30K in student loan debt for citizens who make, on average $30K more per year than non-college graduates?
So, again, why is canceling student loan debt seen as a progressive policy being championed by the likes of Warren and Bernie and AOC, etc?
Someone change my view that it would be more progressive and effective strategy to:
1. Address underlying issues causing the increase in student loan debt. Simply canceling student loan debt simply resets our debt back towards zero but then it will start accumulating all over again. Congress needs to address how we got in this situation.
2. Give every American a big ol' check. If someone wants to spend their big bailout on paying off a bunch of student loan debt, that's their prerogative. And if I want to spend it paying down credit card debt first, that's my choice based on my biggest need. And if a low income family wants to use it to buy a car to have reliable transportation to a better job, that's their opportunity to get ahead.
If we could lift every American out of poverty and provide universal healthcare and check a whole lot of other boxes then I'd be all for moving down the list to eventually forgiving student loans...but I don't understand or support why it's an issue that is getting so much attention now.
Forgiving student loans will disproportionately help middle and upper class Americans while providing no benefit to our most impoverished and marginalized citizens, and it will do nothing to address the systemic issues that created the debt in the first place. Change my view.
| 394 |
Part of the priority, is that it is actionable. The debt is owed to the federal government itself, and hence can easily be voided. Other than the process of debate itself, the act of doing this would only take a few minutes.
This is in contrast to other problems, such as addressing underlying problems, solving poverty, solving homelessness, etc. These problems cannot simply be solved by a single act of congress, in a matter of minutes.
Do the easy things first, get a few wins under your belt, and then move on to some harder things, Go for the low hanging fruit first. You get the idea.
| 226 |
If you put a live power cable in the sea, how far away could it electrocute someone?
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What got me thinking about this in general was wondering about my house flooding and whether or not the electricity box becoming compromised with water could cause all of the water to become electrified.
Also, I remember a scene from Ozark, the Netflix show starring Jason Bateman, where something similar to my original question happened in a large body of water.
| 34 |
Electricity goes from high voltage to ground. If you put a live power cable in the sea it would act a little strangely. If you included a ground the electricity would run from between them.
Current kills, but depends on a lot of factors. You could wear a chain mail suit and would be safer because the electricity would run through the chain mail not you.
If instead you grabbed a live wire with one hand and ground with the other, you might die. The current would pass through your heart and cause cardiac arrest.
If you stepped in the water and got shocked, your muscles could seize up and you could drown.
| 14 |
[Final Destination / Final Destination 2 / Final Destination 3 / Final Destination 4: The Final Destination / Final Destination 5] Why can't Death simply give people heart attacks or brain aneurysms, rather than concocting elaborate (and potentially defeatable) kill traps?
| 61 |
The entire point of the Final Destination is that those who cheat Death don’t do so for long. To that point, Death is incredibly pissed that they cheated him in the first place. For all intents and purposes he is a sentient and malevolent force hellbent on claiming his due in the most vindictive and vicious way possible, usually with a healthy dose of irony thrown in. The point isn’t just to kill them; it’s to drag them screaming into the afterlife.
| 61 |
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ELI5: Why if a man and woman are both drunk and have sex can it be considered rape? Isn't he equally unable to give informed consent?
| 51 |
There's a bit they generally leave off when they're talking about rape in that scenario. Simply having sex with someone who is intoxicated is not rape. Having sex with someone who is intoxicated *and would otherwise be unwilling to do so* is rape. It's not automatic just because sex occurred while intoxicated.
| 35 |
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Has anyone worked with IBM Watson? How is it like?
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Has anyone worked with IBM Watson? How is it like?
Is it a set of programmable APIs?
| 21 |
In terms of branding, "Watson" is like "Docker"; it refers to a set of different and unrelated things under the same umbrella name:
* Watson Assistant, an API for building chatbots and virtual assistants
* Watson Studio, an IDE for AI modeling and analysis
* Watson Knowledge Catalog, a storage engine optimized for data collection
and so on. With a few exceptions, all of these tools and services are effectively separate things and don't have anything to do with each other.
In general the tools are proprietary, aren't open source, and can't easily be trialed or downloaded except through an enterprise sales contract. So no one has any experience with them except IBM. Effectively this means your company pays IBM a boatload of money to be expensive consultants to train you on their own tools.
| 15 |
(Astronomy) When fusion begins in a star, is at an immediate happening where the entire star bursts to life or does it slowly build energy and therefore light emission?
| 463 |
The main thing to understand here is that fusion is not on/off effect. Its probabilistic effect. And it depends on temperature/density. So the more dense the gas, the more probable it is for it's atoms to fuse and more energy is produced.
This means, that as the proto-star grows more dense, the rate of fusion increases and so does amount of energy produced. Then at one point, the star reaches equilibrium between energy pushing out and gravity pulling in. Also, this equilibrium changes over time, as composition of the star changes.
| 190 |
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As Voyager leaves the solar system, is there any chance it could still be carrying active biological contaminants?
| 282 |
Well, it's hard to say that the probability is 0. So yes, there is *any* chance. Although NASA takes care to sterilize its probes, it has been shown that life can survive a trip through outer space.
| 85 |
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ELI5: Why have major countries not taken to teaching Esperanto in classrooms to allow people to communicate internationally?
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To rephrase my question; Why haven't we all agreed on a language that everyone should know so every human on Earth can talk with one other?
| 16 |
Because English largely fills this role, albeit incompletely. In general it's far more practical to get everyone to speak a language that at least some people already speak. It's at least incrementally harder to get people to speak a language that essentially _no one_ speaks.
As for why we aren't "all in" on this, it's largely because it's vastly easier and feels better to communicate in a native tongue. Would you give up the ability to have a natural communication with your child in order to satisfy some utopian global communication ideal? Would you divert what little resources are already available for education in much of the world in order to learn a hypothetically useful language? Or...would you spend those resources on something more immediately practical?
| 32 |
How did the cicada's mating cycle come to be 17 years long? Wouldn't a cycle of only a few years be necessary to avoid lining up with predatory mating cycles?
| 46 |
It's very beneficial to take a prime number as the length of your mating cycle. If you'd take 4 years for example, any predator that has a cycle of 1, 2 or 4 would eat a large part of the population. If you take a prime number like 7, then predators with a cycle of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 will all miss you.
The bigger the prime number the less you will be eaten. 19 would probably be an even better cycle, and 23 even better.
If a predator's cycle happens to synchronize with that of the cicada, they will probably evolve to have a different cycle again (or they will shift their cycle by one year.) 18 years won't make it better though, so they will probably choose 19 years.
| 18 |
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[Harry Potter] Why do the Dursleys resist sending Harry to Hogwarts?
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Okay, I get that they don't want any interaction with magic at all, and refusing for awhile I can understand-but by the point they were moving to a shack on a small island in the middle of nowhere, surely it would have just been easier to send him and, as a bonus, have him out of their hair for entire years at a time? Why were they so desperate to hang on to him?
| 28 |
**Wall Of Text Incoming**
Petunia explains the Dursleys' motivations really well in both the movies and the books.
When she was a small child, her sister Lily discovered that she was magical, and shortly thereafter was accepted to Hogwarts. Petunia wrote a letter to Dumbledore begging to be accepted as well, but was turned down because she couldn't do magic.
Every school break afterwards, Petunia had to watch as Lily came home from Hogwarts with stories of these fantastic powers she was developing and amazing experiences she'd had, seeing and learning and doing things which Petunia could only imagine in her own wildest fantasies, stuck in the Muggle world.
What was even worse for her was that her parents absolutely doted on Lily and gave her endless attention and support, while Petunia was left so far in her sister's shadow she thought she'd never see daylight again. As a consequence of all this, Petunia developed a deep and bitter hatred for Lily.
She married Vernon precisely because he was the exact opposite of Lily: a very ordinary, very boring man with no special powers or aspirations. She cut off contact with her sister and tried her best to pretend she didn't care about her wonderful magical life.
Things became complex when Voldemort was defeated. Dumbledore more-or-less coerced her and Vernon into taking Harry in, both for his own safety and for the future of the Wizarding World.
From Petunia's perspective she'd spent her whole life running away from magic and magical people, trying to be her own person instead of standing outside in the cold, tearfully pressing her face against the window of a wonderland she would never be allowed to enter.
Now all of a sudden here comes the man who denied her the opportunity to enter that world all those decades ago, who has now dropped a child off on her doorstep with a note saying that he's her nephew, her sister is dead, and now she has to accept him into her home or there will be *consequences*.
She can't say no, can't protest. These people have powers beyond her comprehension and could do serious harm to her and her family. So she talks to Vernon and they take Harry in.
They don't treat him particularly well because they never wanted him in the first place. Petunia sees so much of her hated sister in him, and Vernon resents being compelled by a stranger to take care of a child that isn't his own.
It's a shitty justification for mistreating Harry, since aside from being a child who doesn't deserve to be abused (no child does), he also had no choice in the matter and didn't become part of their family through his own volition. But that family history is there, and it runs deep.
But in all of this, there's still one hope Petunia clings to. That it's possible that Harry is like herself, a non-magical child born into a family with magical members. That, despite the fact that he has her sister's eyes, he didn't automatically inherit her ticket into that wonderland that she was denied.
On his 11th birthday, that hope is finally taken from her. Everything after that is her (and Vernon's) last desperate attempt to pretend that it isn't true, that the magical world will finally leave her alone and stop tormenting her with visions of a life she'll never get to lead.
By the time they've moved to the island, it's just pure spite. Fuck the world, fuck magic, fuck Lily, fuck Harry.
If that world wants him but not her, then they'll have to at least do her the honor of showing up in person to spit in her face.
| 69 |
ELI5: Why do some cuts leave a scar and others don’t?
| 29 |
A big reason some injuries leave scars is the depth of the wound. The more layers of tissue damaged by a knife, for instance, the more likely a more prominent scar will result. Also, some people have more of a tendency to scar than others.
| 23 |
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ElI5: How do they make machines that make proprietary product?
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i was watching How It's made, and there was a dedicated machine for a particular part of the product something as little as a proprietary bottle cap. and it was a huge machine. Who got the time to sit and invent the machine for that little piece. think of the variety of such designs, so does that mean you need a different new machine for any other special design?
also machines that make machines like robot machines making robot machines.
| 221 |
Engineer here. We design these machines, we've got the time to do it because it's our job.
It makes sense for the company to employ us to do this because of scale. 1 or 2 things being made, it's probably faster and cheaper to do it by hand. Thousands or millions of these being made, you're going to want a machine that makes it.
>does that mean you need a different new machine for any other special design?
Yes, kinda. Many machines share 95% of their design, concepts, etc with other existing machines. So we usually start with a bunch of the work already done.
| 349 |
ELI5 how does paper get softer when you crumple it up?
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I just don’t understand it and idk what lost flair to make this
| 55 |
Some of the fibers holding the paper together have been broken. If you look at the creases very closely you can sometimes see stray fibers sticking out of them. Break the fibers enough and you've essentially turned the paper into felt. A very water sensitive felt but very felt like.
| 45 |
ELI5: how are smart phones and tablets able to keep getting faster without ever needing a fan, when older computers with the same performance needed big fans?
| 16 |
The reason for this is that the electronics get smaller. Smaller electronics have less electric resistance, so they're able to do the same work without consuming as much power and therefore also without developing as much heat. Processing power has doubled without increasing power consumption every 18 months on average for the past 40 years. Within the last 10 years, power-to-performance ratio got good enough to allow us to develop phones that are as advanced as we have now.
That said, the CPUs mobile phones and tablets are well behind the performance of laptop and desktop CPUs from the same year. They don't have the same requirements for multitasking and long term performance. A phone isn't pushed to its limits over a long period of time. It loads a website or an app, which consumes a bit of power for a very short time, then the cpu goes back to power saving.
A desktop computer from 2012 is still more powerful in raw computing performance than a 2017 flagship phone. It's just that mobile phones never need that level of performance to do the tasks a phone typically does.
If you make a mobile phone keep processing at 100% capacity for a long time, it will soon get very warm,and the performance of it will be more and more limited to avoid overheating.
A laptop or desktop computer, on the other hand, are designed to be able to run at 100% capacity pretty much indefinitely. To achieve this, they require much more extensive cooling solutions, usually with active fans to remove the heat.
| 10 |
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[LotR] If the Shire is a county, then what are the Farthings?
| 21 |
>The Shire was divided into four quarters, the Farthings already referred to, North, South, East, and West; and these again each into a number of folklands, which still bore the names of some of the old leading families, although by the time of this history these names were no longer found only in their proper folklands. Nearly all Tooks still lived in the Tookland, but that was not true of many other families, such as the Bagginses or the Boffins. Outside the Farthings were the East and West Marches: the Buckland (p. 129); and the Westmarch added to the Shire in S.R. 1452.
- The Fellowship of the Ring, Prologue, Part 3: Of the Ordering of the Shire
| 25 |
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ELI5: Why are there so many homeless veterans?
| 23 |
A disproportionately large percentage of the homeless in general have severe mental issues. With homeless veterans that translates to PTSD to a degree severe enough to make getting by with a day-to-day job difficult if not impossible.
The process of getting help and benefits from the VA can be years long. Too long to keep many of the worst afflicted off the streets.
| 28 |
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ELI5: Why is it usually recommended not to take medicine on an empty stomach?
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(Sorry if I used the wrong flair, didn't know whether this was a biology question or a chemistry one)
| 17 |
Some medicines require that you take medicine after a meal as the medicine may cause nausea or stomach irratation when taken on an empty stomach.
Some medicines require the opposite, that they be taken on an empty stomach and this may be due to precise dosage affected by food or vitamins/chemicals in the food reacting with the medicine.
| 28 |
[Star Wars: Attack of the Clones] Dooku says to Yoda that their fight cannot be decided with the knowledge of the force but via lightsaber combat. Does this imply he was as strong as Yoda in the force? Or was he just trying to get Yoda to stop using the force?
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I got a bit confused with the scene. Surely Yoda can wreck his shit up anytime right? Is Yoda holding back? Is Dooku trying to change the subject so to speak by making Yoda fight with a lightsaber instead of the force? Or did he really master the control of the force greatly?
Aside from the films I don't really know of Dooku's skills so forgive me. I just felt that when Dooku said the combat can only be meaningful with a lightsaber fight, he meant the force feats were useless since they might be on the same level.
Someone please explain.
| 119 |
Against just about anyone else, Dooku's force lightening would have been enough end the fight. Yoda blocked his attack with his bare hands so clearly Dooku's skill with the force was not able to defeat Yoda, so he switches to a lightsaber because Dooku was also a master at lightsaber dueling. This doesn't necessarily mean he was stronger than Yoda with the force, just that his offensive force tactics were ineffective against Yoda.
| 141 |
[Marvel/MCU] Is Captain America the smartest a human can possibly be?
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I know the combination of the super soldier serum and vita-rays was designed to make everything about him the peak of possible human perfection, but does the same apply to his mind as well as his body?
On that note, exactly how much did the process effect his personality and way of thinking? Is he still the same person as before or is he someone new?
| 27 |
It gave him a peak human mind as well as body, but it did not make him any smarter technically. It really just made him a genius, in the sense that he has the ability to learn faster than the average human. He has used this ability to be a great battle tactician and pretty much a leader among any ranks.
It has changed his thinking to that of a more easily taught person. He might in the past go into a battle situation with a plan, and I'd that fails he regroups and thinks of a new one. With the way he is now he would go in with a more developed plan, that develops even more so over the course of the battle, and if he inevitably did have to retreat, he'd be retreating with a plethora more infor action than he would have gotten previously.
He's a new person, a greater version of himself.
| 46 |
CMV: Only those who previously registered to be an organ donor should be entitled to receive an organ transplant when/if needed.
|
Most countries have a chronic supply issue in the area of organ donation. Over 8,000 Americans die each year because they can’t receive the life-saving organ they require.
In the USA, only 45% of American adults are registered organ donors. Organ donation is, in theory, supported by nearly 90% of the general public. Why the disparity?
To fix this, I think a quid pro quo is in order:
When you register for your driver license, you decide whether or not you want to be an organ donor. Same process we follow today. You can change your mind later, just as you can now.
However, if you receive a diagnosis later that requires an organ donation, your eligibility for that donation depends on your own status as an organ donor. If you are registered as a donor, you’re placed on the waiting list. If you’re not on the donor registry, then you’re not eligible to receive a transplant.
A system like this will create more equitable outcomes, and no doubt will lead to higher rates of registration. Everybody wins.
Finally, there will be a caveat for those who wish to be a donor but due to health reasons are unable to register (have a disease, etc).
EDIT: children who were not yet old enough to register would not face less preferential treatment in their ranking status (in other words, this would apply >18 years or whatever).
EDIT: registration need not be predicated on registering at the time of driver license renewal. It’s clear there needs to be an easier way to sign up. Perhaps you could do so at the grocery store, or online, or at work or school. There would be plenty of opportunities to register, if desired.
| 284 |
We will just ignore all the ethical problems with this idea.
This fails immediately for anyone who has read the Constitution. Some religions prevent the removal of organs. So, any law that prevents transplants to those who aren’t registered donors discriminates against some on the basis of religion. 1A violation, law gets tossed, we all move on.
| 181 |
[Call of Cthulhu] What were the beings Jack met/became under the farm and before entering the city of Dagon?
| 16 |
Those were Yithians, also known as the "Great Race of Yith" in some other works. They existed over 200 million years before humans did, and had strong psychic abilities and precognition. Yith itself was destroyed in a war against another, evil race known as the Flying Polyps (seen themselves in the game), but the Yithians were able to escape their fate through a limited form of time travel. By sending their consciousness forward in time they could swap minds and inhabit the bodies of species from the future, including humans. The minds of creatures hosting a Yithian are transported back to Yith in their place, where they basically can enjoy a relatively normal life (by Yith standards) once they overcome the culture shock. By doing this the Yith have gained untold amounts of knowledge about nearly all species both past and future, and store it in great libraries which visitors can access in exchange for cooperation with the mind swap thing. When the Yith eventually swaps back the host loses all memory of their time with the Yithians, save for scraps and bits of knowledge in dreams.
As said, Yith was eventually wiped out but the species lives on in some form. Knowing their doom was unavoidable the entire species up and disappeared. No one knows what became of them, but it is speculated they may have swapped with some other species from the far far future. Most physical traces of the Yithian society have been lost to time, but be careful who you talk to, lest they be a Yith in disguise.
| 12 |
|
[Star Wars] How bad is life under the Empire for the average joe?
| 21 |
It depends a lot on what planet you are on and what species you are.
If you're on Coruscant, it's probably indistinguishable from the heyday of the Old Republic, but with more racism against non-humans. If you're non-human, you're more likely to get shunned to the slummy lower levels.
If you're on a fairly important and independent planet, like Corelia, you'll witness a lot of aggravating police-state actions. Imperials insert themselves into government and law enforcement, against the will of the people, perform warrantless raids on anyone they suspect could be a rebel sympathizer, that sort of thing.
If you're on an unimportant planet, things are probably fine. There's probably some local Imperial governor, but they probably don't really have enough power to affect most people's lives. Without having some interest in either acquiring or eliminating something, the Empire is simply too busy to go around mucking with the lives of average yokels.
If you're a Noghri of the planet Honoghr, then your homeworld was deliberately contaminated and kept in a state of ecological disaster by the Empire. The Empire tricked the Noghri into providing their services as skilled assassins, by convincing them that they were helping repair their world, when in fact they were making sure it remained dependent on the Empire.
If you're on Thyferra, the supplier of bacta (super medicine), then you're living the dream, because you are such a hot commodity that the Empire will even tolerate you playing both sides of galactic conflict. You're making money hand over fist.
If you're an Alderaan, then your life will be very explodey and abbreviated.
| 49 |
|
How can audio be sped up without increasing in pitch?
|
For example, say that you increase the speed of a recording of a voice. Normally, the pitch of the voice would increase as the sound gets sped up, but some software allows you to increase the speed of an audio file while maintaining the pitch. What's the difference between these two functions regarding how the sound waves are behaving?
| 22 |
Understanding Fourier analysis is key to knowing how this works. Any complex wave signal (like a sound wave) can be represented by a sum of pure sine waves at varying amplitudes. This collection of equivalent waves as a sum constitutes the frequency spectrum of a sound at a given instant.
The frequency spectrum is constantly changing, as pitch, volume, and sound quality change over time. However, in small slices (say, 10 milliseconds), the spectrum is relatively constant.
What the software is doing is finding the frequency spectrum for a chunk, and reproducing that spectrum for a slightly shorter amount of time. So say for each 10 millisecond block, it generates that spectrum's wave for 8 milliseconds and then moves on to the next block, giving you a 20% increase in speed without changing pitch or sound quality.
This process isn't perfect. It causes distortion with low sounds, distortion with rapidly changing sound, and distortion from errors joining the chunks together which will naturally alter the final spectrum. It can be improved with sliding window averaging, clever joining of sections, dynamic chunk sizes, or any number of tricks.
| 24 |
[Batman] What happens if Batman takes someone under his wing to be a Robin and it turns out they’re just not….good enough? What job does he give them?
| 197 |
Tim Drake started off doing research and figuring things out from inside the Batcave to keep him out of danger. If he'd never gotten up to the physical abilities necessary to be Robin, he'd probably have become backup and assistance for Oracle.
| 232 |
|
ELI5: Why does a word no longer seem like a word to our brain after we say it so many times?
| 112 |
It's not fully understood why, but its called semantic saturation. Effectively the part of your brain that knows the sound of the word and the part of the brain that knows the meaning of the word are different. Through repeated use, the pathways between these two parts get "tired" and so you don't associate the sound to a word right away. You brain hears the sounds just fine, but its a bit slower to find the meaning so it just interprets it as meaningless sound at first.
| 48 |
|
Why does egg turn white when you cook it?
| 104 |
Proteins are shaped with hydrophobic parts of the molecule on the inside and hydrophilic parts on the outside, allowing them to be water soluble. When the egg white is clear, you're seeing a solution with dissolved proteins in it.
Proteins are very large molecules that are typically designed to function in a certain range (of temperature, pH, ...). For most proteins, that range does not include typical cooking temperatures. On a molecular level, the heat imparted by cooking is enough to undo some of the bonds that give protein its structure.
Then the protein loses its shape, so it is no longer water soluble. Then the proteins come out of solution as a solid. This solid happens to have a white color.
| 68 |
|
I believe that grade inflation is slowly ruining society. CMV.
|
Grade inflation seems to be a growing issue in the U.S (maybe in other countries as well). I believe that many teachers/professors are more worried about how they are perceived relative to the average grade they give out to students rather than how much the students actually learn.
For example, I graduated college in 2011 and a lot of my friends went directly to graduate school. I constantly see posts on social media sites of their grade reports and most of them have straight A's every single semester! I'm not saying that these people aren't intelligent, but I find it hard to believe that they all earned perfect scores.
I am involved in the recruiting process where I work and you wouldn't believe how many applicants we get that have GPA's higher than 3.5 but completely bomb the interview process because they can't explain what they learned in certain classes. You would think an honors student would be able to clearly explain some details related to their coursework.
[Here is a semi-relevant source] (http://www.gradeinflation.com/).
Change my view!
| 59 |
Grade inflation isn't ruining anything. Grade inflation is a symptom not a cause. It's a symptom of the corporatization/consumerization of the university. Faculty promotion and advancement is now tied, in part, to end of term student evaluations, despite the fact that they are 1) notoriously unreliable, 2) very dependent on perceived grade, and 3) based on the opinion of dubiously qualified evaluators.
Students and legislators believe that the money they/their parents/the government pay(s) to universities entitles them to success as opposed to the opportunity to earn a credential according to national/regional educational standards. This is a primary cause of the downfall of the university (and maybe also society). When it's institutionalized into student evaluations that impact faculty retention, promotion, and pay, it can't help but effect (at least subconscious) grade inflation.
| 23 |
ELI5: Why are steroids such a big problem in the MLB but not in every other professional sports league?
| 20 |
The major reason is that in no other major sport does brute strength play such a significant role. In most other sports strength has to be balanced by other factors such as speed, agility, and endurance- all of which can be negatively affected by putting on excessive muscle mass. However in baseball, for half of the game you have one task and one task only- hit the ball as far as you can.
The other factor is baseball's consistently spotty enforcement of steroid rules. This requires a bit of a history lesson.
Baseball went through a mini-crisis after the '94-'95 strike- baseball had long been declining in popularity, and add on the public outrage of millionaires squabbling with billionaires over money, and interest in baseball was at a nadir. However, baseball went through a mini-revival in 1998 when two power hitters, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa, went neck-and-neck through the entire the season to not only break the long-standing single-season home run record, but to beat their rival and set the new record. Just a few years later, Barry Bonds beat them both and set a new record that still stands today. Exciting stuff right? Except now it's become abundantly clear that all three players were using steroids to achieve their records, and that most officials and sportswriters at the time were aware or at least highly suspicious, but didn't care. As you can see, baseball has a perverse incentive- home runs are exciting, viewers tune in to watch them, but enforcement of the steroid bans would have kicked out the players most people were excited to watch. Thus it wasn't until the late 2000s and really recently that baseball got it's act together about drug testing, but for a long time they basically closed their eyes to much of the steroid use.
| 15 |
|
Eli5: why overwatering plants can cause roots to rot, but growing plants in just water dont?
| 18 |
So not all plants can grow in with their roots submerged in water. Many will just die.
That being said, for those plants that CAN grow in water or soil, care needs to be taken. Although roots look the same to our eyes, roots that are grown in water and grown in soil are different, and if you take a plant that was grown in water and put it into soil it very well can kill the plant. You need to transition the plant properly from one to the other.
Second, you might think that something like hydroponics just means growing food in water, but it is actually a little more complicated than that. Typically hydroponic and aquaponic systems have water levels that cycle up and down. So a plants roots will be submerged for awhile, then the water will drain and the roots will be in air (or the media), and then they will get submerged again.
| 16 |
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CMV: There is a shortage of workers because the pandemic has taught us that the economy doesnt need us; and over the last year & a half we have individually found ways to minimize or even eliminate our dependence on abusive employers.
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I am a professional chef and the pandemic and lockdown hit the food scene like the fist of an angry god. Many restaurants immediately shut down to wait it out. Many restaurants shut down and went out of business. Some restaurants were able to stay in business by effectively converting to a dine-out-only model. Overall, the ability to secure employment as a chef or cook was essentially impossible. The restaurants that stayed open & serviced the delivery scene pared their staff down to minimal, absolutely essential, most senior staff. There were unemployed cooks everywhere. Now that we're back to 100% seating capacity and guests can even fill the bar, there are no cooks to be found. This is just one example, but the media is saturated with news of labor shortages. There is a reason and it's not that everyone who was unemployed during lockdown instantly became successful software developers.
| 954 |
It’s not necessarily that the economy taught us something new, it’s just part of the business cycle. Because overnight, people started going out to buy stuff/participate in the economy instead of staying locked inside, demand for labor increased rapidly since more people were out shopping. But the supply of labor has not increased nearly as fast. As a result, since demand for labor far exceeds the supply, people are quitting their jobs that don’t pay as much for better pay/hours/benefits. This is just the natural cycle of supply and demand. So it’s not that we have collectively taken actions to minimize our dependence. The market has just changed in such a way that you don’t have to put up with your employer’s shit. You can just find a better job since there is such an abundance
| 122 |
[Superman] Could Krypton have been saved?
|
I've seen a few threads that deal with the possibility of Krypton being saved, either by a Green Lantern or a time traveler or some other method. But... Even if it were possible for someone with extreme superpowers to get to Krypton in time, what could they have done?
I can see a mass evacuation being somewhat successful, but the planet itself is boned, right? Most likely with extreme loss of life?
And even if you did evacuate, Yellow Suns seem to be more common than Red ones, so have you just filled the universe with a bunch of Supermen, many of whom may not have the morals that Kal-El did?
Please advise.
| 30 |
A popular way for heroes to 'save' Krypton is to hammer lead rods into the core, rather like a nuclear reactor. Kal-El did this once with a Green Lantern ring in one Elseworld, and Tomar-Re planned on doing it before he got blinded by a supernova and recovered in time to see the planet explode.
| 18 |
[Star Wars] Why was Anakin so mad that he didn't get promoted to Master when he knew he wasn't selected?
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I find it strange how Anakin told Palpatine that him being placed on the Jedi Council wouldn't work because they elected their own members and that the chancellor doesn't have authority on the Council.
But he then gets mad and complains to Obi-Wan about how it's not fair that he would stay as a Jedi Knight when they decided to accept him. Like doesn't Anakin realize that even though he got accepted he was never really chosen to be on the Council?
| 38 |
His entire time at the Jedi order they basically didn't trust him while calling him the chosen one and while he did their dirty work by going on countless missions and fighting in the Clone Wars. Aside from a few jedi like Yoda, Windu, and Obi Wan, he was one of the most skilled jedi in the entire order. After years of being faithful to them he felt like he deserved to be promoted to Master but instead they asked him to spy on his friend/father figure Chancellor Palpatine and continue doing more dirty work for them while they refuse to aknowledge his skills.
| 53 |
[Super heroes] Do lesser known C-list super heroes have fans in their own universe ?
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Is there a Question fan club somewhere in the DC universe?
Or people who rather get autographs from Booster Gold than Green Lantern?
| 16 |
There are certain people who are just fans of heroes in general, and they chase after the biggest names.
But a lot of people become fans because of a personal interaction they've had. Mitch Anderson didn't think much of Superman until Big Blue saved him.
So a lesser superhero who still saves people on a regular basis will have a somewhat significant fan base, even if it doesn't rival those of the "blue chip" heroes in the world.
| 22 |
Is "footnote-mining" okay?
|
History grad student here. I have been wondering for a while what people make of ["footnote mining."](https://onelastsketch.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/footnote-mining-and-interdisciplinary-research/)
By that I mean: When I do my reading of the secondary literature before starting to write an article/book chapter, I often try to look up and locate the sources in the footnotes/endnotes. This often is a good way to find relevant secondary literature and primary sources. Now, when I later end up citing secondary literature and (more importantly) primary sources first found in another historian's work, it is my understanding that I do not have to acknowledge where I found the source, but can simply cite the original source (for example the primary source that I first learned about in another historian's work but then located myself) and do not have to add something like "also see/also cited in....".
Am I correct that this is generally seen as acceptable? A quick search on google seems to suggest so:
[https://onelastsketch.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/footnote-mining-and-interdisciplinary-research/](https://onelastsketch.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/footnote-mining-and-interdisciplinary-research/)
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/\~myl/languagelog/archives/004608.html](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004608.html)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/dz4cnx/do\_i\_need\_to\_acknowledge\_it\_if\_a\_primary\_source\_i/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/dz4cnx/do_i_need_to_acknowledge_it_if_a_primary_source_i/)
&#x200B;
However, I am wondering where one would draw the line? Using a few primary sources that another historian working on a similar topic has used as well is surely fine and probably unavoidable. But what if it is more than that?
&#x200B;
Thanks!
| 113 |
Like the others said: yes, "footnote mining" as a way to find references is fine.
I might be stating the obvious here, but what is NOT fine, however, is to just add such references to your paper. You should only cite references that you yourself have read, i.e., don't believe other people's claims about a reference, check them by yourself. Otherwise you need to attribute the claims to the publication where you found the footnote. In other words, there IS a difference between "As discussed by Biden et al., Trump et al. make a number of claims about the voting system of the US" and "Trump et al. make a number of claims about the US voting system." , and you can use sentences like the 2nd one only if you've read (and understood...) the Trump et al. paper.
| 182 |
[WH40k]How to get the most Dakka?
|
Attach Gatling Guns to the barrels of a larger Gatling Gun? Or maybe put even more Gatling Guns onto those Gatling Guns?
Then paint it red to make it shoot faster?
| 50 |
TVTropes had a prolonged discussion on the subject of "enuff dakka". I'll save you from the rabbit hole by summarising:
You need to have a gun made out of all the matter in space and time, which fires all the matter in space and time as ammunition, at a target of all the matter in space and time. Repeatedly, with an infinite rate of fire.
And then you need to attach a loudener (like a silencer, but orkier), and maybe an underslung grenade launcher.
| 69 |
CMV: though people with gender dysphoria are perfectly sane people in the sense that they can and should be granted all the rights and freedoms other people have in every sense, that does not mean we should pretend that G.D. is not a mental disorder.
|
Thus, people should not be offended if we say, for example, that a biological male is fundamentally different than a trasgender one, that they're not the same thing.
It's an opinion I have, trying to put together the pieces I find reasonable in the two sides of the argument. It's a question of coherence more than one of consecuential value, meaning I'd like the idea could be refuted using just arguments about it's internal conherence and not by the mention of possible consecuences reaching it as conclusion may bring.
| 32 |
>that a biological male is fundamentally different than a trasgender one, that they're not the same thing.
I don't think that I've ever met a trans person who says they are the same thing.
The problem is when people think this "fundamental difference" means that there is no such thing as being a trans man, or that a trans man will "never be" a man, and arguments like that.
I mean, people often say lines like "they're not the same thing" or "these people are denying reality" but that isn't what trans people are doing. Trans people know the reality of their body. They know their chromosomes. They know they can't change how they were born. They know that being a trans man and a cis man are different. But that doesn't mean that they can't be trans.
| 30 |
[Avatar TLA & LoK] Is the sun like the real-life sun (i.e. a radioactive ball of plasma), or is it some kind of magical, nonradioactive ball of actual fire? In either case, would a firebender be able to "bend" the sun?
|
In a lot of fantasy universes, the sun is just a big ball of fire, not a radioactive ball of burning plasma like it is in real life. I can't recall any of the ATLA or LoK characters ever explaining if their solar system's sun is a magic fireball or a radioactive plasma ball.
Regardless of which type of sun the Avatar universe has, one thing is still known for sure: Firebenders draw power from the sun. It can also be safely assumed that fire is still a plasma in the Avatar universe, just like it is IRL.
All this leads me back to my original questions. Is the Avatar universe's sun magical or realistic? In either case, could a firebending astronaut fly close to the sun and bend solar energy/rays/essence/whatever the same way they can bend a conventional fire?
| 22 |
The sun is never confirmed either way.
We know the moon is a spirit though, and that is given as the reason why water benders are able to draw power from it. It would stand to reason that the sun is actually a spirit as well, and that is the reason why firebenders are able to draw power from it.
It may well be the case that astronauts flying to the sun will instead have a conversation with a lonely, probably grumpy spirit.
| 22 |
ELI5: When going over a hill in a car, what causes that fluttery feeling in your stomach?
|
My daughter asked me this question while we were driving earlier today and I was completely stumped.
| 36 |
That's your stomach jumping up in your abdomen. You might be (hopefully) strapped in with a seatbelt, but your organs as such aren't. They can move a little bit when you're in a car going over a hill, and that's all it is.
| 29 |
So I know that heat rises, but why is that so?
|
It's almost an adage at this point, however what is the reasoning between heat rising? Does it have to do with air pressure?
| 23 |
Hotter fluids like air and water generally have a lower density. This means that a given volume of the hotter fluid is lighter than the cooler fluid. The heavier fluid sinks forcing the warmer one to rise.
Heat doesn't rise. This is why you don't see heat "rising" in solids. This is also dependent on the differing weights, which is why you don't see heat rising in zero-g.
| 25 |
A few questions on Abortion (Thomson and Mary Anne Warren)
|
1. Does Thomson agree, for the sake of argument, that the foetus is a person that has a right to life?
2. Does Thomson’s view distinguish morally between cases of abortion depending upon the hardship to the mother required to bear the child?
3. Is Thomson’s Henry Fonda case supposed to illustrate that Fonda would infringe Thomson’s right to life if he does not save her?
4. Does Mary Anne Warren think that infants should be afforded moral protection solely on the basis of being sentient?
5. Does Mary Anne Warren maintain that relational properties are irrelevant to the ascription of rights?
| 28 |
In response to the questions about JJT:
1. Thomson wants to show that, even if the fetus is a person with the right to life, that doesn't entail the right to use the mother's organs.
2. If she's right, then even given the fetus's rights, the mom doesn't have to endure significant hardship to bring the fetus to term. Saving the violinist involves hardship. But the Henry Fonda cases don't. To save Judy (in the second version of the case, where he's on the East Coast rather than the West), he just has to walk over and wipe the sweat from her "fevered brow" (lol), but -- controversially -- Judy thinks he still isn't morally obligated to do it.
3. Judy thinks Fonda \*wouldn't\* infringe her rights by not saving her. Again, super controversial, but there are some views that kind of follow up. Taurek's "Should the Numbers Count?" and Anscombe's "Who is Wronged?" are both interesting examples.
Hope that's helpful!
| 20 |
ELI5 Saw a video of a squirrel getting rescued via CPR and it made me wonder... If CPR on humans has a specific "cadence" to it that is said to be best, would CPR be more efficient on an animal if the cadence was much faster (to match their normally quicker heartrate)? Thanks!
| 35 |
Indeed it is. There have been some research into this on dogs and cats which are the animals most often receiving first aid. And they have found that the optimal cadence is much faster then on humans. In addition the heart is not in the exact same place and the ribs are different so you end up performing the CPR routine completely different on different animals. However doing anything is better then doing nothing so you should not be afraid of doing the CPR wrong. It is also worth noting that CPR does not cure someone from a stopped heart but instead keeps them alive until they can be healed. There are some cases where the body can heal a stopped heart on its own after a few seconds or even a minute or two but in general you should continue with the CPR until professionals tell you to stop.
| 14 |
|
Eli5: Why do we use clean, potable water in toilets?
| 230 |
A separate water supply system for toilets would cost too much to build and maintain in a city. The water in it can't so dirty to cause gunk to deposit in storage tanks, pipes and the toilet, or be toxic for plant life that it can't be used for watering a garden.
| 500 |
|
ELI5: Why does every car have a different type of battery when every car takes a 12-Volt battery?
| 28 |
different sizes.
the bigger the engine, the bigger the amperage is needed for the electric starter motor to turn the engine. the bigger the amp requirement, the bigger battery you need.
bigger batteries also happen to be more expensive and more heavy. so you use the size battery that most appropriately matches your engine starting needs.
| 21 |
|
is it possible to move an object in circular motion using magnets?
|
hello I'm trying to make a device which uses magnetism. my device is like a windmill but instead, I'm planning to use magnets to move the blades. I created a miniature using a pc fan and a dynamo generator. So far it doesn't work. Is it possible to move an object in circular motion with the use of two opposite magnetic poles?
| 1,070 |
Absolutely, this is how most electric motors work. They have a coil of wire around the magnet, and adding a current makes the magnet attract or repel other magnets on a part that spins freely. (unless i misunderstood your question!)
| 792 |
Are adult children morally obligated to care for ailing parents?
| 20 |
Do you have a general moral theory within which you want an answer to this question?
Part of this is the extent to which you think familial status can itself cause a moral obligation.
edit--just adding a little elaboration.
Myself, it seems very unlikely that we can actually argue the "parentage" can be the cause of the obligation to take care of one particular ailing person. There certainly seem to be lots of things involved in parenting that make potential reciprocity morally right; but only in virtue of the nature of the parenting.
For instance, its plausible that you owe something to a parent who ensured you had access to great education and thus professional success. it seems extremely plausible to me that the same obligation would not attach to a parent who abandoned you at age 2 and never spoke to you for twenty years.
By extension, you would have to be arguing that there is some moral obligation arising from the mere genetic similarity. This seems very strange.
| 11 |
|
ELI5: Why when we think about breathing we start breathing 'manually'?
|
And how do we forget about it suddenly 'automatic' breathing starts?
Thanks!.
| 30 |
Breathing is regulated by two different pathways, an automatic center that originates from your brainstem that controls your natural breathing when you are not actively thinking about breathing. There is also an area that comes from your cortex allows you to have active control of the muscles that are related to breathing (your diaphragm, your intercostals, your abs). When you actively try to take a deep breath/breath harder, you are overriding your autonomic breathing center, and actively using more of your secondary respiratory muscles.
| 23 |
[Harry Potter] Hogwarts students enter at 11 and stay up to 7 years. Even the most advanced students never learn very powerful magic like the kind dumbledore and Voldemort use. Are there universities for young students who want to further their education?
| 807 |
Its more an apprenticeship based civilization. A student might graduate Hogwarts and be interested in Wandlore, so they would go to Olivander's or some other such place and apply for an apprenticeship.
Either that or there are low level ministry style jobs where you get additional training.
| 569 |
|
ELI5:why are chickens more likely to be contaminated with salmonella and not other animals
| 53 |
Just like reptiles, chickens have Salmonella bacteria in their digestive tract. Adaptation in both the bacteria and animal has resulted in a situation where infection is often asymptomatic. Issues arise, however, when slaughtering and processing isn't done in a sanitary way.
Because the Salmonella lives in the chicken's digestive tract, it can also be found in droppings. What we find is that the primary cause of Salmonella infection in chicken meat is faecal matter coming in contact with the meat during the slaughtering process, or while it's being handled for shipping.
| 34 |
|
If the coronavirus keeps mutating to evade our vaccines, like the South African mutation, and we keep on updating vaccines to protect against the new variants, would the virus ever “run out” of new mutations to try?
|
Just thinking of the worst case scenario where every time we create a new vaccine the coronavirus mutates again to get around it. Is the number of possible mutations that could affect vaccine response limited in any way?
| 173 |
Influenza is effectively doing this. It's constantly mutating. Every year, vaccines are adapted in an attempt to catch the latest mutation. Problem is the latest mutation can be quicker than our efforts leading to larger outbreaks of influenza once every couple of years.
| 167 |
ELI5: If the Earth's crust is divided into tectonic plates, all bordering the adjacent plates, how is it that continents manage to move away/towards each other?
|
Are there gaps between the plates that allow this constant movement?
| 72 |
At the scales we're talking about - very long timeframes, very large forces - even rock is somewhat "squishy". The plates compress and stretch as the forces below them push them against one another or pull them apart, so the horizontal size of the plates does not have to remain exactly the same over time.
In some cases, the compression is enough to create tensions that overwhelm the mechanical strength of stone even in the short term, before the rock can "flow" under pressure (which it will, given enough time). In those cases, the stone cracks and moves in different directions on either side of the crack - a "fault". The largest faults are the divisons between the plates themselves (e.g. the famous San Andreas fault, which divides the Pacific plate from the North American plate), while smaller faults occur within plates all the way down to the scale of individual stones you could examine in your hand. These faults can force pieces of land upward, allowing a plate to shrink horizontally while rising vertically.
In other cases, one plate is heavier than another, and the heavier plate (typically an oceanic plate) sinks below the lighter one (typically a continental plate). The sinking plate sinks down into the mantle of the Earth and melts, which replenishes the mantle material that erupts through volcanoes at the surface.
In general, the idea of plates as rigid objects is a reasonable way to think for the purposes of everyday understanding, but plates are neither completely well-defined things nor completely rigid nor permanent over geological timescales. They have substructure (the major plates tend to contain smaller microplates, especially around their edges), they can warp (especially when compressed as in mountainbuilding), and they can be created or destroyed (e.g. when an existing plate splits or is pushed down into the mantle).
| 38 |
[Star Wars] Why was the death star built when you could just carpet bomb planets using giant space ships?
| 33 |
It's about fear.
A fleet of ships. That's an understandable thing. Something you can get your head around. A fleet comes to glass your planet, you think maybe you can fight. Maybe you can drive them off, or maybe there will be enough left after to rebuild.
A moon-sized space station that can reduce your whole planet to rubble in an instant? There's no reaction to that thing except fear and desperation. At least that was the idea.
There's other advantages too though. With a fleet, you have to trust your Admirals and Captains to operate loyally without you. Something like the Death Star, one strong leader can control that directly.
| 78 |
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How fast is the sun moving through space and how can we measure that?
| 27 |
Speed is relative. "Space" isn't some substance or terrain through which the sun is moving. Nothing moves relative to space. So you must choose another object to compare the sun's movement to. The sun moves in it's circular orbit around the galactic center at something like 800,000 km/hr. But you might also choose to compare it to other nearby stars, for example.
| 23 |
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[General] If a werewolf was stabbed with a silver-plated blade, would it be as effective as pure silver blade?
| 71 |
Yeah. Silver is silver. As long as the silver is on the outside, then it's going to do harm. The problem with using silver plated items is that the playing can wear away with repeated cleaning, which is going to happen a lot of you are a hunter, and may become ineffective.
| 76 |
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How did the functions of super computers change over the years? Is a super computer just a stack of the newest hardware?
|
This field is something that always interested me a lot and I do have many questions about it:
How did the functions of super computers change over the years? Is a super computer just a stack of the newest hardware? How long does it take to build one, did the time needed change?
Are super computers doing the same things they were doing 20 years ago, just more in depth and complex? And lastly: how does the future of super computing look like? Will it "just" be faster and much smaller in 20 years?
Thanks a lot, I always enjoy reading the answers in here.
| 22 |
I can speak (a little) for the climate/weather oceanography group.
A lot of the basic code (for large scale climate system) was written over the last 30 years, and we still use that same Fortran.
The advances are running on finer and finer grids, or running more simulations to get better "average" properties. So yes, pretty much "same thing but faster/smaller". Scientifically though that's a big thing, being able to do statistics over multiple runs of a model is very different than just having a single run of a model.
We're basically on the same newest hardware (or often one level down from the best) in terms of raw CPU or GPUs as what you buy for a single computer. But a lot of the advances (hardware and software) are in inter-CPU communication (bus speeds, network backbone, improved compilers, etc.)
| 16 |
ELI5: Why do we want to listen to a specific song multiple times and afterwards don't want to hear it for weeks?
|
Everyone has that, finding a song particularly mesmerizing that you listen to it on repeat for days. But then all of a sudden you get tired of it and can go without for months. Why is that?
| 27 |
People want a feigned sense of newness. People often don't like a song because they haven't heard it enough to become familiar. Then you listen to it a lot, because you know what to expect then it becomes the boring because you know it too well and there is no growth.
| 12 |
[Comics Marvel/DC] How do enhanced geniuses like MODOK, Leader, or Hector Hammond (DC) stand up to there "world smartest" baseline humans? People like Lex Luther, Reed Richards and Doom.
|
This was a question I had for a long time, and it was never really answered in a satisfying way, as far as I know. To me, it would only make sense that these enhanced minds are smarter than humanly capable, but comics don't really handle intellectuals too well.
| 46 |
Reed Richards is recognised as being the smartest character in the marvel universe and consistently outsmarts his opponents.
I'd say MODOK and such probably outthink any "normal" human, which means they can plan ahead incredibly well, develop crazy tools and weapons and be sneaky enough about it to do a lot of harm.
When they get caught by the likes of Richards, Ironman or even Spiderman, however, they're done.
| 33 |
ELI5: Why induce labor in pregnant women past their due date instead of just letting the baby come on its own?
| 35 |
1. When the baby gets too big, it can require surgery to get it out.
2. You can make less of what the baby needs.
3. What the baby is using to live (placenta) can begin to fail.
4. Insurance reasons: Since is is now standard practice to induce if you are a bit late, any complications arising when they deviate from that norm leave doctors a target for law suits.
5. Business reasons: The doctor only takes on so many pregnant women at a time, with the assumption that most will deliver by their due date. It messes with the practice's schedule to have a bunch of ladies going late. This is not going to a primary reason, but if keeping the woman on her schedule can be justified medically, it is certainly a business perk as well.
6. Pregnancy is hard on the mother's body, so if she is having any significant health effects (high blood pressure, sugar level problems, etc), it might be safer for her to deliver sooner.
I think it is important to mention that there are significant risks to inducing as well.
| 41 |
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[Beast Wars] How come neither the Autobots or Decpticons found any relics from the Beast Wars?
| 41 |
Both the Axalon and Darksyde were destroyed with the remnants either long buried or recovered and packed up when the Maximals left Earth.
Other things that may have being left behind, such as Tarantulas's lair, would have been near impossible to find if you didn't know to look for them; buried under the ground or at the bottom of the ocean for millions of years and even when operational had a fraction of the energy signature of Autobot/Decepticon technology.
They'd have had to have some clue that something was there and where to look to even have a chance at digging up anything left behind by the Predicons or Maximals.
| 24 |
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