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ELI5: If Google's automated cars ever become a thing, how is responsibility divided up in the case of an accident?
| 51 |
The way it could work is that the car manufacturer or the company that provides the AI would also provide the insurance for the car which would be factored in to the price of the car. Car owners would no longer need to purchase insurance of their own. The determination of which vehicle is at fault would work the same way. If fault fell to an AI controlled car, the AI company's insurance would pay.
| 23 |
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What's Kant's view of sex?
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Do you know where he mentions sex? I heard his view was negative and he died himself virgin and unmarried.
| 77 |
I haven't read primary material from Kant on sex, but Nussbaum has some discussion of his views in her paper "Objectification." In short, Kant thinks that sex is morally problematic because our sexual passions lead us to objectify one another. Recognizing the absurdity in the conclusion that sex is morally forbidden, Kant argues that marriage establishes a long-term context of mutual respect and concern such that sex inside that context need not be objectifying. So, ethical sex is sex in the context of marriage for Kant. (It's a bit unclear whether Kant thinks all sex inside marriage is morally permissible, or just that marriage is necessary for ethical sex.)
It's probably worth noting that there is room for Kantians impressed by the categorical imperative to insist that Kant was wrong about what follows from the categorical imperative.
| 99 |
Has googles "GO" AI figured out a way to solve NP problems?
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I am am rather interested to know how the AI works. if it is truly unbeatable doesn't that mean Its effectively solving an NP problem in polynomial time?
Edit: link http://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-program-vanquishes-human-players-of-go-in-china-1483601561
Edit 2: the way you guys are debating "A Perfect Game" makes wonder if anything can be learned by studying Meta shifts in games like Overwatch and league of legends. In those games players consistently work out optimal winning conditions. Pardon the pun but we might find meta information in the meta.
| 2,745 |
Trust me, if that were the case, we would be hearing about it.
Google's program is not "solving" Go in the strict CS sense. It is not evaluating every possible outcome of every possible board state. It is using heuristics to choose some possible moves to sample, and it is using other heuristics to evaluate the outcomes of those moves rather than calculating all the way to the end of the game. In a certain sense it's an approximation algorithm, but it's not entirely clear to me what it's approximating because its objective is to beat its opponent, not to play a "perfect" game.
Technically, P vs NP doesn't come into play at all because the board size is constant and therefore the set of possible moves is bounded by a constant. We can't say that the algorithm is running in polynomial time unless we answer "polynomial of what?" The neural nets are running in constant-bounded time on problems of constant-bounded size.
| 2,569 |
[Dune] How did House Atreides, supposedly one of the most respected and powerful houses, get treated like such a bítch?
|
So an entire House just gets wiped out and there are no political repercussions, no shockwaves, no power vacuums elsewhere in the galaxy?
What about their armies on other planets? Did they have no allies in other houses? No one’s asking after them? And if they were so isolated and the target of jealousy, how the f did they rise to such prominence in the first place?
Even the Starks’ demise had realistic consequences (besides the events directly caused by the individual survivors). 🥲
| 60 |
They weren't isolated, Duke Leto was sort of a leader of the "opposition" in the Landsraad and quite respected by many. But, the Houses have the right to fight out their blood feuds (kanly), so long as they abide by the Great Convention and don't use their atomics. Fact of the matter is, House Harkonnen was within its rights to enact the vendetta. As for the Padishah Emperor, his involvement (the Sardaukar) was kept under the rug, as he shouldn't be picking sides in these feuds.
Right after the Harkonnens took back Arrakis, for all intents and purposes that would've been seen as a legitimate move, and the other Houses that might've had a favorable view on Duke Leto and House Atreides would have their hands tied.
| 94 |
[Fallout] What's going on in Europe?
| 90 |
As the most heavily fortified front in the war, Germany got the worst of the bombardment and is still completely uninhabitable--Berlin would look like the surface of the moon, if any living thing could get within a hundred miles of it.
Every major European capital has been devastated just like D.C., but the cloud of irradiated ash on the continent was more severe, and Europeans were tragically dependent on fresh produce rather than the long-lasting processed foods that saved so many Americans in the first years after the war. Accordingly, initial survival rates were much lower than in most parts of the States.
A few NATO and Soviet troops escaped the holocaust with their guns and supplies, and were able to carve out little fiefdoms in the Alps, the Balkans, and Scandinavia--wherever there were mountains to weaken the wind patterns that carried the radiation. Due to the lack of civilian armament, these ex-military groups are much more powerful than US ex-military groups like the Brotherhood of Steel. They vary from the benevolent to the totalitarian, as one would expect.
| 81 |
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ELI5: why can some people sense changes in the weather coming in their injured body parts?
| 18 |
Rain is often preceded by a sudden drop in barometric pressure, which basically means that everything liquid from your body to your bottle of mountain dew will very slightly swell as the pressure falls.
This swelling within your body is so slight that is will go unnoticed expect where scar tissue is present because scar tissue isn't as flexible as the tissue it replaces.
The pain you are feeling is actually not from your bones but from the periosteum, which is the thin layer of tissue that coats the bone.
This tissue is normally quite stretchy and sensitive because it has lots of nerves, but when you break a bone and some of that periosteum is replaced with inflexible scar tissue you will feel pain when the nerves surrounding it swell and pull on it.
This is also responsible for the less well known phenomena of people being able to predict the weather using old soft tissue injuries like deep lacerations that have healed.
| 23 |
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CMV: Most Nutrition claims are bs/pseudoscientific
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I realized I might be biased in this, as someone who has serious medical issues. I’ve been unbelievably irritated by diet and nutrition advice over the years, and have always felt it could be potentially dangerous — so I just wanted to get that out in the open.
I’ve heard eating healthier can improve overall energy, but I don’t understand how it’s measured or how science can determine this.
Now, I generally believe eating healthy is good and can possibly help prevent issues like obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart issues, and very specific diagnoses focused on food (like celiac disease) but I have heard it can influence specific illnesses that have nothing to do with diet too and I disagree with that aspect. And it’s been hard to find solid evidence about the correct diet for everyone, I’ve found too much variation among advice and between individuals to get a solid idea of how the field can apply their advice or science to the population as a whole. So, I guess I’m just convinced almost none of it is helpful unless a person suffers from a very specific food related issue, or consumes mostly processed/junk food long term. And personally, I have never noticed feeling worse or any ill effects when eating super unhealthy, and I haven’t noticed anything when I’ve tried to eat healthier either.
Whenever I’ve looked into it, I’ve found the field is rapidly changing and contradicting which foods cause inflammation or prevent it, and even experts seem to disagree about what specific ingredients and vitamins are doing. I know some food items used in medication at higher amounts or altered have had great healing properties and that many pills can be derived from natural resources, but I don’t see how nutrition does much else on its own.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the field of nutrition and what it’s used for, so honestly any insight would be appreciated.
Edit: I realized my view is more against alternative medicine and the constant flood of inaccurate health advice than real nutrition — it had blurred some of the lines for me knowing where one began and the other ended. Also edited to differentiate between type 2 diabetes in my original post.
| 121 |
I would shift your view to a more nuanced position.
There are big issues with nutritional studies, which are mostly epidemiological. They look at what people report eating, and what their reported outcomes are. This is a very poor way of doing science, as there is no hope of proving causality to any degree. These studies can at best find correlations. You would need a properly designed experiment for showing probable causality.
Now, the issue arises when non-scientifically minded people stumble upon these studies and think they prove something they do not, e.g. that eating eggs makes you fat. (Also some people may be dishonestly representing the studies to get views.) **So then you get click-baity news and social media posts making bs/pseudoscientific claims which the scientists never made.**
| 63 |
[Fallout - New Vegas] If The Legion bases their entire military on that of Ancient Rome, why do they never-ever make use of any shields?
| 186 |
Shields of a weight that humans can realistically carry in battle are useless against firearms and explosives such as were not uncommon in the wasteland at that point. If the Legion sets up a tortoise formation like Rome of old, all someone has to do is throw a stick of dynamite in the middle of the group to take them out or at least disrupt their formation.
| 199 |
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[Misc Superheroes/Villains] So, where do I find one o' them there abandoned warehouses/factories?
|
Binge watching Flash and Arrow - seems the abandoned factories and warehouses are the place to be. Free electric/plumbing ultra fast internet, no-one EVER wanders in, that would be GREAT.
​
So are these places ... plentiful?
| 59 |
Well first you wanna go to area that’s has a pretty bad economy that’s what causes the buildings to go and stay vacant is better if it’s a city that was a shipping hub at one point or a tourist destination with lots of unused carnival rides
| 31 |
ELI5: How have we come so far with visual technology like 4k and 8k screens but a phone call still sounds like am radio?
| 12,908 |
The reason phone calls don't have perfect audio has all to do with three things.
* Bandwidth
* Physical medium of the delivery technology
* The codec used
They are all closely related.
If you think of a data connection as a water pipe, there is only so much data that can be passed down the connection, just like a water pipe can only carry so many gallons of water a second.
If you make the water pipe bigger, the pipe can carry more gallons a second and deliver more water faster to its source. This is broadly comparable to using better connectivity for our data connections. For example fibre optic cable can carry much more data a lot faster than the copper cables that are used to connect most of our homes.
To that end, when a phone conversation is initiated between two people, the sound of the voices from each party is in fact, a data connection that gets converted into an analogue frequency. Now uncompressed audio takes up a lot of space and can be slow to transfer, so to reduce it down to something more manageable, phone systems use something called a CODEC (en*CO*de/*DEC*ode) that basically analyses the audio, and throws out the bits of data that it thinks is not relevant to the clarity of the conversation. The more data it throws out, the more "AM Radio" the conversation sounds.
The standard codec used by most public telephone systems (Generally known as the "PSTN" to phone engineers or "Public Switched Telephone Network") is something called U-LAW. Europe uses a variation of it called A-LAW. It allows 64Kbp/s of data for each way of the conversation (So 128Kbp/s total). It's been around since the 70's and is fairly embedded into most phone systems. It also closely matched and fitted the best data rate offered by twisted copper connections that where used at the time (And predominantly still are).
The days of the "AM radio" phone call are coming to an end though, if quite slowly.
Many new codecs have been developed alongside newer communications technology since the 70's that allow for greater clarity in a phone conversation. They do this by improved methods of packing in the audio data and more sophisticated ways of deciding what parts of the audio need to be thrown away and what needs to be kept. Some are even able to do this using a smaller transfer speed than the U-LAW codec. Most of these improved quality codecs are referred to as wideband codecs or "HD audio". This has come about with the rise of a technology called VOIP or "Voice Over IP" which is basically a phone system that utilizes the same technology that underpins the internet (TCP/IP) to deliver an all digital phone service.
One of the most popular codecs used by internal phone systems of companies/organizations (Which is sometimes referred to as a PBX or Private Branch Exchange) is a codec called G722. The difference in audio quality between G722 and U-LAW is like night and day.
Cellular technology is also catching up on the wideband conversation game. Indeed many mobile carriers are offering wideband calls between users on the same network. This uses a codec called AMR-WB. It's generally predicted within ten years or so wideband audio for mobile phone calls will become the norm **where supported**.
I emphasise that "Where supported" bit because like most communication methods, a phone call has to negotiate down to the level of the lowest offering. So if a phone conversation is initiated between two phone systems, one side tries to use a wideband codec like G722 and the other side only supports U-LAW, then both phones will use U-LAW and the conversation will return to the "AM Radio" quality for both callers.
| 1,622 |
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How does a neutron become part of an atom without a positive or negative charge? Could electrons orbit lone neutrons? Does that already happen?
| 18 |
Neutrons don't have charge, but they *do* interact via the residual strong force. Protons and neutrons both do, and they form bound states. Then you have a bound nucleus with a positive electric charge given by the number of protons. And a positively-charged nucleus can form bound states with negatively-charged electrons via the Coulomb force.
| 25 |
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Jupiters Surface how we know what it’s like?
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I have scavenged the far reaches of the internet to no avail so why not. How do we know gas giants are really just Gas and not just extremely large planets with thick clouds we have no solid in-depth looks at the innards of the atmosphere only theories and hypothesis’s of visible and non visible light pictures
| 215 |
Well for one, Jupiter has moons. Why does this help us? Well we know how large their orbits are, and we know how long their orbits take, and from that it's fairly trivial to calculate Jupiter's mass. If we know Jupiter's mass, as well as Jupiter's size, then we can calculate it's density. All this can be done based on visual observation from Earth and a little bit of math.
If we want to get a bit more advanced, we can use spectroscopy. Different elements are prone to absorbing light at specific wavelengths. By looking at light that's passed through the Jovian atmosphere, we can identify what wavelengths have been filtered, and from that determine what elements compose the atmosphere.
Finally, we can send probes to Jupiter, and they can do things like measure variations in the planet's gravitational and magnetic fields. From that data, scientists can make inferences about how mass is distributed, what it's composed of, and how it's moving.
Now it should be noted that Jupiter *isn't* entirely gas. The outer layers are gas, but as you get deeper, you get a region of liquid metallic hydrogen, and as you go even deeper still, it transitions to something solid and composed of heavier elements.
It should also be noted that we are still learning. When the Juno mission arrived at Jupiter a few years back, it provided a lot of new data, and a lot of changes and additions to our understanding of the planet's composition.
| 587 |
ELI5: Why does Britain compete together at the olympics but as seperate countries at international Football?
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We're a small enough country anyway that it's hard to put a solid team together the quality gap between players is ridiculous. Espescially in Wales as you've got players like Ramsey and Bale playing alongside Yeovil Town players and the like.
Would it ever head to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all competing as Great Britain or not? We'd have a much better team if we did.
| 166 |
The first national football associations were England(FA) and Scotland(SFA). The first "international" match between teams drawn from two football associations was England vs Scotland.
When other countries started to form thier own FA's then it got logically limited to one FA per country, but the UK home nations were grandfathered in as seperate.
| 62 |
CMV: “Capitalism vs Socialism” is an outdated debate.
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Hi everyone. This is something I’ve been pondering for quite a while.
Questioning the “system” is an intellectual practice as old as civilization. But I take issue with one that humanity has deeply engaged with for the last sentry. It has been a driver of civil strife, institutional change, and war for the 20th and 21st centuries.
“Capitalism vs Socialism” has been an interesting debate, but given how many modern economies look, it may be time to put it to rest for the laymen.
But first, I will give the Merriam-Webster definitions of each.
**Capitalism**
> an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
**Socialism**
> any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
So here’s the first problem. It’s difficult to find a modern example of a nation who’s economic system does not have aspects of both. These tend to be labeled “mixed economies”. Today they are the dominant economic systems (at least among democratic nations). Sure countries can lean in a particular direction, but that doesn’t change my point.
Second problem is that there is more variance in how countries design and run its institutions than there are differences in capitalism and socialism. There is no rule book that countries go to in deciding how to run an economy. For example, the United States, Nordic Countries (Sweden, Finland, etc), and Japan are broadly considered capitalist. However, they all have vastly different structures and one could never say that they are the same in the slightest. Socialism has many different models that happen to fit under its umbrella, including communism and fascism. This because the common traits of capitalism and socialism are pretty vague.
So why is this still such a prevalent issue today? Well part of it is recent history. The 20th century saw such an insane amount of political shifts and conflicts. One of the biggest of them all was the Cold War between the Soviet Union (now simply Russia) and the US. But my question isn’t about history. It’s about public debate today.
The public is the problem with this debate. Evaluating institutions and economic structures for effectiveness and practicality tends to not be easy to explain in a tweet or Instagram post. What is easy to explain to the average Joe is morality.
Let’s take tax policy for example. Let’s say I wanted to argue why the US should increase the top marginal tax rate.
I make one argument saying “We are in a time of crisis right now and we need tax revenue, but increasing taxes on all Americans could make things worse for poorer Americans who have already had their spending power reduced significantly. This may lead to reducing consumption even more which will slow economic recovery and introduce a host quality-of-life issues. That lack of consumption could result in more business, small and large, struggling more and eventually failing due to a lack of revenue”
vs.
“Billionaires have stolen and hoarded the wealth of millions of Americans through the absolute exploitation of labor. Their greed is crippling the working man in these hard times. We must get back what they are owed.”
Before you say it, yes these would not be mutually exclusive statements in a real debate. That’s not my point. What I’m asking is which statement will more easily engage and fire up people?
The second answer most likely. And that’s the problem with Capitalism vs Socialism today. It’s really just a debate about Good vs Evil nowadays. Variances of the second answer don’t have to be logically sound so long as it’s emotionally charged and playing into people’s insecurities. Of course morals and virtues should always be a consideration, but examining complex, practical issues only through those lens is very dangerous.
| 61 |
Just because an economy is mixed that doesn't mean that it doesn't have a leaning. Mixed economies can be more or less capitalist.
As such the debate isn't capitalism 100 percent vs socialism 100 percent, but 60:40 vs 40:60.
It is entirely reasonable to argue for a 60:40, just as it is reasonable to argue for a 40:60, and that's what people are generally doing.
Given that, how is the debate outdated, seeing as policies such as Medicare for all, could potentially change the balance, and are up for debate right now.
| 10 |
[Bright] Shrek exsists. What other films exsist but might have a wildly different context?
|
I imagine LoTR is this universes version of "Birth Of A Nation"
| 200 |
LOTR was not Birth of a Nation this universe. It was the boring-ass documentary the history teacher showed on days when she was too hung over to lecture from the textbook- crusty old historians droning on about elvish history, overweight reenactors putting on period uniforms and doing low-energy fight scenes while the voiceover reads from first hand accounts, 1960's style cartoons showing the map of Russia get super squiggly arrows running red over it.
Shrek was an Orksploitation movie like Shaft, showing a wisecracking ork from the swamp outsmart and outfight the evil human prince.
"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was elves and orks instead of black and white.
"Sindar's List" was the heart-rending true story of Oscarion Sindar, the German elf factory owner who kept thousands of gnomes, dwarves, and Jews from the Nazi death camps.
| 178 |
ELI5: Why do smooth, glossy surfaces feel sticky to the touch but a slightly textured surface does not?
| 239 |
They may or may not. but..the same surface material that is rough or dimpled will have less surface contact, and therefore the degree to which it is sticky will have less total stick because less surface is touching your skin.
| 116 |
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ELI5: How does compression clothing work?
|
There seems to be a lot of data confirming that compression clothing (tights, socks, sleeves, etc.) improves circulation. But my understanding is that compressing blood vessels would inhibit circulation. How does this work?
| 373 |
It compresses the small capillaries and vessels near the surface, forcing/diverting more blood through muscles and organs where it is needed.
You don't circulate more overall, but you are circulating more where it's needed.
| 194 |
ELI5: Sensitive Skin - Why does it seem like people with pale skin are more prone to acne?
|
Why do gingers seem to get more zits than say swarthy italian people?
| 30 |
I don't believe that is necessarily the case, it may just be more pronounced. A very pale teen with red zits would be hard to miss. Think of a black guy who has bad acne. The acne is still there in similar amounts but the contrast just isn't as bad.
| 18 |
[TRON] Has the internet ever been explored or mentioned in the digital world? Could the TRON world be hooked up to the internet and if so what would happen?
| 154 |
The first Grid that Flynn went to was the ENCOM mainframe, where the Master Controller Program ruled. The MCP planned to take over other mainframe computers, including the Pentagon and the Kremlin, so we can assume that Grid knew of and was connected to an Internet of some sort. Lightcycles zipping across phone lines, sending out requests and bringing back data.
The Grid created by Flynn and CLU seems to have been a standalone system, with no I/O connection with the internet. CLUs plan is not to take over the world via the internet, but to use a physical army to take over the real world, so it's likely he doesn't know about the Internet and other computers. If someone ever plugged an ethernet cable into CLUs world, he would immediately set about erasing the operating systems of everything and replacing them with a more perfect ENCOM OS. With his ability to repurpose programs, it wouldn't be a cyber-war, it would be a cyber-genocide.
But CLU was reintegrated. He's gone now, and we're all safe. Right...?
| 119 |
|
ELI5 why does our subconscious naturally choose poor posture?
|
[biology]
| 270 |
Compared to our ancestors, our lifestyle is extremely sedentary. There's almost no physical effort required to simply be alive. Because we spend so much less time on our feet from birth to death, the muscles that are important for good posture are often poorly developed. For the most part, people that begin to walk or run more frequently can notice improvements in their posture, even without actively trying to improve it. Our musculature encourages good posture, so naturally, being more physically active leads to better posture. The reason it feels unnatural or uncomfortable to try to force good posture is simply that the muscles being engaged are underdeveloped.
Edit: See /u/nerak33's post for a more accurate answer
| 101 |
[Futurama] Is the Robot Devil for or against killing all humans?
|
Robot Religion from Futurama always seemed a little disjointed to me, but do you think the Robot Devil wants Robots to rebel against their human lords, or succumb to the will of humans?
| 56 |
He'll be in favor of whichever one supports his current goals at the moment. Humans are way too much fun to have around, so he probably won't seriously consider any attempts at destroying all of them. Killing them all doesn't benefit him at all, since he doesn't get their souls.
| 37 |
[The Time Machine - Simon Wells] Did anyone notice a large, spherical area of space which was inexplicably impenetrable for many decades?
|
As we see from the point of view of the protagonist on the interior of the machine's operational area, apart from extending limbs or bodies outward from the interior after temporal displacement is initiated, the sphere seems impenetrable to weather effects, assumedly what would be ultra-fast-moving particles, and extremes of temperature. So how, or why did nobody seem to notice that there was a sphere of impenetrable space occupying a certain (not inconsiderable area) from the year 1898 to 2032?
| 187 |
I always assumed that he is outside of normal time looking in. He can see everything and everyone in the sphere around the place where he side stepped into a higher dimension but no one can see or interact with him.
| 105 |
How significant is the genetic difference between the Northern and the Southern White Rhino?
|
With the last male Northern White Rhino dying today, and only two females left, chances for survival of the northern 'half' of this species is pretty much 0. Apperently they have enough sperm to keep the two remaining ladies getting pregnant, but it is not that straight forward of course.
To my surprise however, I read that there are thousands of their Southern counterparts left. I don't have a clue about the differences between the two though. Although the reasons they are still around might be really interesting, I am more interested in the biological difference between north and south. Could 'we' rejuvinate the northern species by using their southern brethren? How different are they?
| 3,295 |
The Northern and Southern once though of as subspecies (like different breeds of domestic dogs) are believed to be of different species entirely. DNA evaluation shows it is an evolutionary divergent lineage a million or so years ago. They are similar in that they both have wide mouths as they are both grazers (where their names came from). But other than that are as different to each other as they are to the black rhino, different morphology, different genetically. Like domestic dogs are similar species to ~~wolves~~ foxes, coyotes etc NOT subspecies.
Edit: as others have pointed out, wolves and dogs ARE sub-species. But foxes and coyotes etc are not.
| 928 |
Plagiarized application documents?
|
So I'm on a search committee for a tenure track faculty position at an SLAC, and I sat down to review applications today, and noticed a jarring change in style between the research statement and the diversity statement. A little googling reveals the diversity statement is 100% plagiarized.
Now I'm paranoid, so I start checking all of them with plagiarism checking software. I'm on application 3, and so far they're ALL plagiarized--teaching statements to research statements to diversity statements. WTAF? Is it really this common? I started wondering why you would work so hard to get a PhD only to plagiarize your job apps, and then realized they probably just plagiarized their dissertations too.
Am I just experiencing a statistical phenomenon, or is academic fraud really this common?
UPDATE: have now checked 16 applications. 3/16 had at least 1 document with anywhere from 1-3 pages lifted verbatim from internet sources. Very blatant plagiarism. I double checked it all by hand.
UPDATE 2: To clarify for people who just cant quite believe this is real: by internet sources, I mean publicly available sample documents and documents posted on completely different professors' websites years ago, not internet sources belonging to the actual applicants. I checked for all that. And yes, someone really did copy/paste about a page of someone else's research statement. It was a very broad and vague preamble to a research statement on a similar topic.
| 196 |
Be careful that you’re not detecting document recycling. If a previous reviewer did the same thing you did, the document would be in the database but the candidate would still be the original author. Of course, this may not apply in your situation, but it’s worth worrying about.
| 354 |
[DC] Does Wonder Woman's lasso of truth force the person to tell the truth, or does it just prevent them from lying?
|
Like, if she tied me up and ordered me to tell her my password, would I have to tell her or could I refuse to answer?
| 145 |
IIRC it compels you to say something in response to a question asked, and you cannot lie while saying it. So for a question with a direct answer like "What is the password to your laptop" you would have to say it. But for an open ended question like "Why did you do X?" You'd have a bit note wiggle room if there were multiple reasons you did something and you might be able to get away with not mentioning some of them.
| 110 |
[DC Universe] How does Batman disappear so quickly when the people he may be speaking to aren't looking?
| 250 |
Ninja Skills maxed out, and he's pre-positioned himself for a quick slip around a corner before beginning the conversation.
Real question is how does how know when people are going to look away and talk for a good long sentence.
| 288 |
|
What facts or propositions are mostly agreed on by philosophers?
| 17 |
"Tenure is a good institution," "professors should be paid more," "students don't study as hard as they could," "the sky is blue," "the Earth is round," "strawberries grow on strawberry plants," "most cars run on gasoline," and billions of other things.
| 45 |
|
Getting post-graduate degrees in biology at no cost?
|
My 17-year-old daughter loves biology, especially genetics, and ultimately wants to get her doctorate and do research. We've been visiting potential universities and were excited to hear that in STEM fields, once you have your undergrad degree, you can do grad school at no cost to you, through filling assistant teaching positions that pay you by waiving your tuition and giving you a stipend to cover room and board. We have very limited means, so were over the moon to hear this, but it almost seems too awesome to be true so I thought I'd look for further verification on this.
| 15 |
It's true; any PhD program worth its salt will provide a stipend while you work as a research or teaching assistant. Some people also earn internal or external fellowships that cover expenses, though they are pretty competitive.
| 40 |
[DC/Green Lantern] There is only a limited number of Green Lanterns per Earth, does this apply to other rings?
|
So the Green Lanterns originally had a lantern per sector (Hal for Earth) and then this was later changed and expanded and all that. But does this apply to any other lantern corps, or just green because its a very formal "police organization"? Because i find it hard to believe that the Red Lantern corps would adhere to this limit, so either theu just dont care or it only applies to greens.
| 23 |
It's not as key a part of their organizational doctrine as it is for the Lanterns (except maybe for the Sinestro Corps) but they do have a finite number of rings that it makes sense to distribute evenly through the universe.
| 12 |
"Unemployment alone explains 80% of the variation in Dutch suicide rates between 1960 and 2015" Is this a meaningful number? How do we determine causation?
|
I got the number from page 21 of this report: http://www.dyingforchoice.com/docs/TheTenDeadlySinsOfJonesPatonAndKheriaty2017.pdf
>Trends in Dutch suicide rates closely follow the unemployment rate.
Unemployment alone explains 80% of the variation in Dutch suicide rates
between 1960 and 2015. And from the year that the Royal Dutch Medical
Association (KNMG) first issued structured guidelines for doctors to
participate in assisted dying, 1984, there’s been a long-term downward trend
in the suicide rate. As discussed in more detail elsewhere,48 the rate only
increased from 2008 onwards when the Netherlands was particularly hardhit
by the global financial crisis (GFC).
What would a good social scientist due to determine if: (A) this 80% number is meaningful and (B) what the true affect of unemployment on suicides are?
| 78 |
It's important to note that their explained variance comes from regressing a time series of suicide on a time series of unemployment. In many cases, regressing levels on levels in a time series will generate high correlations with high significance. Regressing a change on a change is often more meaningful and also often yields a lower R-squared.
Basically, all the regression tells you is that there was a trend of increasing unemployment and increasing suicide up through 1980, a decreasing trend in both until about 2008, and another increasing trend thereafter. It could be caused by any number of things, such as changes in demographics (percent of the population above age 65) or broader societal changes.
As an example, if you regressed the US crime rate on the number of US high schools that taught evolution, you would see a very strong positive correlation up through about 1990. So does teaching evolution cause crime? Well, no. It doesn't necessarily mean anything, just that there were two broad societal changes that coincided. Trends can last a long time. If two trends happened to start at around the same time, for completely unrelated reasons, then those trends will be highly correlated.
If you look at the cross-sectional bivariate regression results on page 29, the state unemployment rate explains only 4 percent of the variation in state suicide rates, and is not statistically significant. It's hard to think that unemployment plays a large causal role if there is no significant cross-sectional relationship between unemployment and suicide.
| 19 |
CMV: Systemic racism does not exist in the United States
|
The recent BLM protests have all mostly called for police reform and the abolition of "systematic racism" [1](https://time.com/5851855/systemic-racism-america/) [2](https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/13/protesters-call-for-end-to-systemic-racism-in-policing-housing-education-and-more/) [3](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/10/thousands-of-scientists-go-on-strike-to-protest-systemic-racism-stem.html). And it had me wondering whether systematic racism truly exists in the United States.
I did some research and found [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrHIQIO_bdQ) video which presents the argument that systematic racism is a consequence of red lining.
The main argument is that red lining prevented black people from growing financially and still impacts their financial growth today as schools in black neighborhoods (those who were redlined back in the day) are underfunded in comparison to schools in white neighborhoods. First of all, redlining was made illegal through multiple acts and policies such as [1](https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-vii-equal-credit-opportunity-act-0), [2](https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-3030.html), and [3](https://www.ffiec.gov/cra/). Some people state that redlining is still in effect as people of color are being denied loans at higher rates than white people as seen in [this](https://eji.org/news/banks-deny-home-loans-to-people-color/) article. However, [this](https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/1992/mortgage-lending-in-boston-interpreting-hmda-data.aspx) study shows that this difference is actually due to people of color having, on average, more debt and worse credit than the average white person.
The second point this video makes is that redlining also allowed universities to deny people of color acceptance under no pretense. This is true, however [affirmative action](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/affirmative_action) policies have been put in place that actively discriminate against non-black individuals and favor black individuals when considering employment and university acceptance. This means that it is easier to get into college as a black person than it is to get into college as a white person due to lower test-score requirements as a result of affirmative action.
These issues may no longer be in place and the video agrees with that. However, the video's main claim is that these issues caused black grandparents to have less wealth and education than white grandparents which, in turn, causes today's black population to have less wealth than today's white population. This claim is made under the pretense that if an individual's grandparents are wealthy/poor, then that individual will also be wealthy/poor. This is factually untrue as many individuals have come from poor backgrounds and achieved financial security or even prosperity.
The issue with today's society is not a wealth gap, it is, in fact, an income gap. [This](http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race_summary.pdf) study from Harvard shows some convincing evidence of racism in that black males underperformed their white male counterparts growing up in the same income households. This may seem like it implies racism however the study also shows one really important fact. Black women perform at a level equal to their white women counterparts growing up in the same income households. This shows that there are other factors at play besides race. In fact, page 122 of [this](https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-projects-and-surveys/miscellaneous/15-year-study/chap4.pdf) study shows that black women in 2002 were roughly 18% less likely to be imprisoned than they were in 1998 whereas black men in 2002 were almost 20% **more** likely to be imprisoned than they were in 1998.
This leads me on to another claim that a lot of individuals make as seen in [this](https://mappingpoliceviolence.org) which says that 24% of individuals killed by police were black even though black people only account for 13% of the population. This means that black people are victims of police bruatility at a disproportionate rate when compared to white people. However, this claim doesn't take into fact the rates of poverty. In fact, [this](https://www.povertyusa.org/facts) and [this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/200476/us-poverty-rate-by-ethnic-group) source show that the poverty rate among black individuals is 2-3 times higher than that of white individuals. [This](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=5508484140a84023a1e2d8b080e14d0a) source shows that there is a direct correlation between poverty rates and crime rates. This leads me to believe that black people are a result of police brutality not because of systemic racism or discrimination against them, but rather because they simply commit more crimes.
I would like to end this by saying that I support the BLM movement and I do empathize with them. I believed that systemic racism was indeed present in the United States. But after I conducted my own research, I realized that the facts show otherwise.
| 30 |
“This is factually untrue as many individuals have come from poor backgrounds and achieved financial security or even prosperity.”
This is the keystone of your argument, and it falls apart because it’s simply incorrect as a point of simple fact. Generational class immobility is *absolutely* a thing, and even though individual class mobility is theoretically possible, the exceptions do not change the general rule—people born into poor families tend to stay poor, and people born into rich families tend to stay rich. Per Wikipedia:
“According to a 2012 Pew Economic Mobility Project study, 43% of children born into the bottom quintile (bottom 20%) remain in that bottom quintile as adults. Similarly, 40% of children raised in the top quintile (top 20%) will remain there as adults. Looking at larger moves, only 4% of those raised in the bottom quintile moved up to the top quintile as adults. Around twice as many (8%) of children born into the top quintile fell to the bottom. 37% of children born into the top quintile will fall below the middle.”
| 25 |
CMV: We should implement mental health screenings in schools like we have dental screenings, lice screenings, etc..
|
Young adults today are obviously facing a great number of mental health issues. From my observations, I've noticed that many who should be getting help don't do so because they are worried about the stigma, or because they don't realize that they have an issue (although there are other reasons). I feel that implementing *preliminary* mental health screenings in high schools would be an effective way to identify those who seem to be at risk and may need help (confidentially of course). They could then be referred to specialists for an actual diagnosis and treatment.
_____
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| 32 |
The sad reality of mental health in America is that after you screen these kids not much would happen. There is a shortage of mental care centers in America. Due to multiple years of budget cuts in mental health, because mental health centers are expensive, there's not much infrastructure available. Screening would be great who know who needs these services, but unless more services are in place you're just going to know who needs them, but not be able to give services to kids due to lack of services or lack of funding.
| 12 |
[DC] Since Poison ivy love plants and wants the world more green. Why does she ask Weather Wizard to creating a massive rainstorm to help Ivy grow more plants?
| 15 |
Takes more than just rain to make the green grow. She's in sync with nature and knows how delicate ecosystems are and how torrential rain can be just as devastating as a drought to plants and animals
| 24 |
|
[MCU] Captain America and Bucky can be considered peak human, but Tony with the suit should be solidly superhuman. Why wasn't he completely dominating Cap when they fought?
| 115 |
Iron Man was only trying to kill Bucky, meaning that he used noticably less force against Cap (limited mainly to hand to hand). However, the effort expended by Tony to meet those goals was costly; Cap managed to damage his flight system and Bucky managed to distract Tony at a crucial moment. If IM had tried to kill both of them, he would have had a much easier time. As it was, he had to be careful to micromanage the force he was using moment to moment.
Cap's shield also plays a factor; it is near perfect defense and can be passed around, and it was crucial offense.
Another really big factor is that IM is only, like, 400 lbs. A lot, but light enough that Cap can meaningly kick him off balance.
Further, Iron Man was solidly dominating, really. Cap and Bucky probably hit him fifty times, and he's not really even hurt by the end. If it weren't for the shield breaking the Arc Reactor, then Tony could have kept getting up against and again. Even when Cap started spamming hooks and crosses for several seconds, Tony... what, grunts a little?
Basically, Tony was winning handily through attrition. Every obstacle in his way, he was still winning.
| 138 |
|
[Star Wars] What Force powers make the ability to destroy a planet seem insignificant and could Vader utilize these powers?
|
Who else could utilize these powers?
| 17 |
He was partially speaking metaphorically. He was talking about how destroying a planet through brute force (heh) was nothing compared to what the dark side could achieve.
I mean, the Emperor, as a Sith, stood in front of the entire Jedi council and no one was the wiser. He then manipulated an entire galaxy to go to war while basically being the leader of both sides. He then used said war to take over the entire galaxy and install himself as dictator. And the people whose power he stole *applauded him for it*.
So you know this big, scary weapon that can destroy a planet? The only reason it exists is because we used the force. And no one in the galaxy - not even you, the commander of said weapon - had a fucking clue we did it.
| 47 |
[Hitman] Why does nobody take notice of the assassin's barcode tattoo or his laughably thin disguises?
|
You can even see people crane their heads to follow him, as if they notice something, but they never seem to take action. I can see all this stuff clear as day on the cameras after the fact, but when he's out and about, nobody pays him any notice.What gives?
| 25 |
People have weird tattoos all the time, and since Agent 47 does his job right nobody knows to associate a barcode tattoo with an assassin. That also being said, while you might find his disguises laughably thin, we at the agency have conducted many field tests and found that the best disguise is to hide in plain sight disguised as someone who will not get more than a cursory glance from most individuals.
| 18 |
[DC] What are the limits to Flash's ability to vibrate through objects?
|
Just to begin with I understand how flash vibrates through things, I don't need that explain.
I'm more interested in the limits that are placed on the ability, he is capable of vibrating through ordinary material as well as lantern constructs but how would he fair against different objects such as a magic forcefield or a piece of material where the molecules are constantly changing the frequency that they are vibrating at.
| 120 |
"What are the limits to Flash-"
Pretty much none. He can subconsciously put limits on himself though (or just not try as hard). Speed force allows him to do crazy shit. Idk about what he could do against the magic one, but he could steal enough speed from the vibrating molecules that they stop moving, then phase through em.
| 116 |
[Star Wars] If a fully trained Jedi lost their saber and required a placement, would they have to go through the crystal finding process all over again or did the Jedi have spare crystals lying around in a drawer somewhere for just such an occasion?
| 16 |
It would seem that there are some spare sabers kept ready just in case (*see Anakin and Obi-Wan getting sabers from their Jedi rescuers in the Geonosis arena*). However, this may be extraordinary circumstances and there might not always be spare sabers.
While it would seem more efficient for the Jedi to simply have a stock of kyber crystals for those who'd lost theirs, you're forgetting that the search for the lightsaber crystal is as much ritual as it is practical, and the Jedi don't exactly seem like they would exploit a world to harvest all of its kyber crystal veins.
| 26 |
|
[Marvel] So what happened to the time machine?
|
I mean now that time travel is real and the avengers have it, wouldn't the governments all around the world want it and not forgetting all the super villain groups. Even if they didn't tell about it to anyone, how are they gonna explain how they got the infinity stones back after Thanos destroyed them and how Thanos was back. Also even if they destroy the machine, Bruce Banner and other members do know about it so they could try to force them to hand the blue prints to the government especially to Pepper
| 642 |
It's a very interesting question, for sure. After Nebula gave the game away, it really didn't seem to take Thanos and his engineers a particularly difficult time to both figure out time travel and, potentially, recreate Pym Particles.
Even if Earth-based parties can't suss it together, it seems the technology itself is eminently attainable by the universe at large.
| 396 |
[Hunger Games] How did the US turn into Panem?
|
How did the US, a democratic super power both militarily and economically, fuck up so bad to the point where they're now an authoritarian dystopian nation? Also how do they interact with the rest of the world? Does the UN condemn this new governemnt?
| 75 |
The US didn't turn into Panem directly. There was some sort of global catastrophe that more or less destroyed modern civilization as we know it, and the US was destroyed as part of that event. War is always an option, and climate-change and accompanying sea-level rises is hinted at in the histories.
Whatever the disaster, Panem rose out of the effort to rebuild society after the event. It's not uncommon for fledgling nations in such harsh conditions to be authoritarian. That's often the only kind of government that will work in that context. And, of course, once such total control is no longer strictly needed, authoritarian governments have a long and storied history of going dystopian rather than relinquishing power to a more appropriate form of governance.
| 105 |
ELI5: Why can food or drink of temperatures that are clearly sufficient to scald my lips seem to elicit no pain response whatsoever once within the mouth?
| 22 |
When you sip a hot drink, two important things happen;
1. You draw air quickly over the surface of the hot liquid, cooling it more quickly than if the air against the surface were still, and
2. You separate out a much smaller volume of hot liquid than if you were to simply pour it into your mouth like a glass of water. This means that as you spread a small volume of hot liquid over a large area of your mouth, only a small bit of heat gets transferred to any portion of your mouth, ideally not enough to burn you.
| 22 |
|
Eli5: Why do dimpled golf balls go farther than smooth?
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I remember hearing that golf balls used to be smooth and people would actually play with old beat up balls because they would fly further than the new smooth ones. Why is this? What makes dimpled balls go further?
| 19 |
The dimples trip up the air, and create turbulence in the air flow around the golf ball. Turbulent flow causes less drag on a golf ball than "laminar" (the air is in smooth layers around the ball) flow. The turbulent, mixing flow reduces the vacuum behind the golf ball compared to a ball where the airflow was smooth.
| 28 |
I don't believe that the porn ban in the UK is a bad thing. CMV.
|
Now I hold this view with circumstance: That you can request to have no filter on your internet if you want it so. This would mean the porn ban would be on by default, but you can ask your network provider to switch it off, which I believe was the plan.
Now I believe that porn isn't very positive for children, as it distort their views on sex and whatnot. I know that people love their freedom, but it's not an issue of freedom if you can request to turn it off! I don't see anything bad about it. It is different from China where it's a constantly on firewall, people have choice, it's just there to protect the children from bad influence.
| 18 |
Freedoms that you have to ask permission for are not freedoms.
An opt out filter (which already exists in many forms) doesnt put government between people and the internet in any way. Why stomp on freedom to save parents 1 phone call.
| 34 |
[Overwatch] Is there any reason why the Bastions in the Eichenwalde siege don't use their Tank forms?
|
Before I give my understanding, I'll refer to the Bastion unit that survived and made contact with Ganymede as Blue Bastion, thanks to the eye color, and the Eichenwalde siege Bastions as Red Bastions.
If you think about it, a Bastion unit is a one-man army. Not only is it capable of defending a base with Sentry configuration, but they're also good siege units thanks to their Tank configuration. All while having a Recon configuration as a base form.
The tanks can jump, are faster than Recon form, and (personally) really good siege engines. Why didn't the Red Bastions besieging Eichenwalde ever transform into tanks? Wouldn't it be a great move against all those Crusaders defending the city? I'm sure a volley of tank shots would be deadly to the crusaders.
Presumably, from my experience, the tank form can't be handled with for too long, but I always thought that this was due to the fact that the only time we ever see it being used is with Blue Bastion, and it's been overgrown for so long that its systems aren't as functional. I don't know if there's any factual basis on that though. It seems weird that the Omnics would design a Tank form for the Red Bastions and put a limiter.
Regardless, is there any reason for this?
| 32 |
From a lore perspective presumably all the ultimate abilities are really energy intensive. The Bastion units would run out of energy too quickly if they used the tank mode too much. Also there were at least two people with Rienhardt type shields which could block the tank's cannons.
| 35 |
[Static Shock] How come Joker was the only big time villain that tried to recruit meta humans from Dakota City?
|
The metas of Dakota City are pretty powerful, and many of them are young and can be easily convinced or manipulated into working for some of the bigger villains of DC. It'd be the perfect opportunity for people like Penguin, Lex Luthor, and Ra's Al Ghul to get some strong goons.
| 23 |
Cause it’s the kind of thing Joker would do. It’s in line of the way he likes to do things. Lex is low key. He knows it could lead to him, which isn’t his style. Penguin is making Himself seem as a legit businessman, so he won’t want to employ teens which are highly unpredictable and it’s also illegal to do so. Ra only wants the best of the best for his group, so he would most likely try to recruit Static instead.
| 14 |
Are people born with bad memory? Is there any way to improve it?
|
I have a few core memories but I forget a lottt of the things that have happened in my life. I’m wondering what the causes are for bad memory and whether there’s a way for me to fix this?
| 39 |
It is not necessarily true that people are born with bad memory. In fact, everyone has the ability to develop a strong and healthy memory. However, some people may have a naturally stronger memory than others, just like some people are naturally better at certain activities or skills.
There are several factors that can affect a person's memory, including age, lifestyle, and overall health. As people get older, their memory may naturally decline, but this decline can be slowed down with proper care and attention. Additionally, certain lifestyle factors, such as a lack of sleep, stress, or a poor diet, can also negatively impact memory.
As for improvements, there are many ways to improve your memory, and the most effective methods will depend on the underlying cause of your memory problems. Here are a few general tips that can help improve your memory:
* Get plenty of sleep: Sleep is essential for memory consolidation, so make sure to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep each night.
* Stay physically active: Regular physical activity can improve blood flow to the brain and enhance memory function.
* Eat a healthy diet: A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains can provide the nutrients your brain needs to function properly.
* Stay mentally active: Engaging in activities that challenge your brain, such as puzzles, games, or learning a new skill, can help improve your memory.
* Reduce stress: Chronic stress can impair memory function, so make sure to manage your stress levels and find healthy ways to cope with stress.
| 29 |
How do scientists determine how many calories different activities burn? And how accurate are the estimates on exercise machines?
|
So I kind of understand how they determine calorie content of food. My understanding is that they burn it and measure the heat and duration, and that gives them the basic estimate. But how do they figure out how many calories the human body burns?
| 31 |
I think it has to do with measuring the CO2 you exhale when exercising. So you wear a facemask which is connected to a machine which can measure the amount of CO2 you are breathing out and can then estimate the amount of calories that represents while you are running on a treadmill etc.
| 28 |
Ever met an undergrad like this?
|
I am TAing a course and one of my students comes to visit me in office hours fairly frequently. She started talking about feeling bad about not having any publications. I told her it was normal since she is only a first year and I didn't have a publication until 4th year, from a 2nd year project but she is convinced that the times have changed because a person from her floor in first year has over 40 publications. I told her he probably exaggerated and that this is so far out of the realm of possibility that I have a hard time believing it but she is entirely dejected.
I have never heard of that but she gave me his name, and out of pure curiousity, I googled him later. He actually...has 3 pages of papers published on Google Scholar. Not in my field, so I can't evaluate the quality of the journals but 2.6 in one common journal, 20 something in another.
Anybody ever seen that? Has undergraduate schooling changed so much? I remember none of my friends published anything beyond our college's undergraduate research journal, with one notable exception being a guy who got into the right lab at the right time, but this guy must have been publishing on cancer since Gr. 9.
| 31 |
You're sure it's not one of his parents?
The only realistic way for a first year to have 40 meaningful papers published is for Dr So-and-so to decide to go back to do another Bachelors. This does not happen in any meaningful way otherwise.
| 48 |
Why are compilers so.. weird?
|
My first semester of this major is almost complete (today's my final), and something my professor never really explained to me (or the class) is how come compilers run differently?
What I mean is how come when you compile and run a piece of code and it shows up with one or two error messages, and then you copy and paste the same code into a different compiler and it runs successfully with no errors? Can someone explain that concept to me? I still don't understand it.
| 23 |
There are multiple reasons why you might get an error in one compiler, but not another:
* The compilers are for different languages (duh)
* More subtly, the compilers are for different versions or dialects of the same language - or even technically the same version/dialect, but with different additions to the standard library
* The compilers do support the same versions/dialects, or at least have a sufficiently large overlap, but they have different defaults if you don't specify which version you want.
* You're not passing necessary options correctly because the compilers have different options or the same options have different names
* You're using an option like `-Werror` (causing the compiler to treats warnings as errors) - different compilers (end even different versions of the same compiler) warn about different things.
This list is very likely not exhaustive. If you give an example of what you're talking about, like which code in which language you tried on which compilers, someone will probably be able to tell you more specifically why it worked on one and not the other.
| 31 |
Consequences for plagiarism by professors?
|
In my US history course this semester, I was forced to purchase a $94 online textbook that was written by the professor. Everything that was graded (HW/quizzes/etc.) was done through the book publisher's website, so we either had to buy the book or drop the class.
I just realized that nearly half of the sections in the book had been plagiarized from various online sources. There are no citations whatsoever and I've found that entire paragraphs have been copied word for word from news publications/online blogs/government websites. I used the plagiarism checker on Chegg and it found that some sections were as much as 85% plagiarized from other online sources.
I'm just a bit frustrated right now because I had to spend money on this...
If I were to do this on one of my papers I would fail the course and possibly face expulsion. Are there any consequences for professors who commit egregious plagiarism? Should I report it to their department chair?
| 353 |
> entire paragraphs have been copied word for word from news publications/online blogs/government websites
I agree that it makes sense to report this to someone, but have you considered that the news sites & blogs may have been plagiarized from the textbook instead? You may wish to simply report that you've seen identical content elsewhere, rather than making claims about which direction the plagiarism came from, unless you have proof.
| 338 |
ELI5: How can you know when you've had enough sleep? If you can fall back asleep, are you not done?
| 416 |
*Enough* sleep is different for everyone. The common number is 8 hours of sleep a night - however this is based on statistical data. Other studies show that many people can function on less sleep with no side effects. You can know when you've had enough sleep when you do not have general sleep deprivation symptioms such as lethargy, depression, decreases in short term memory, concentration, etc. ( however other factors such as caffeine, alcohol, drug use, and medication can affect this )
| 132 |
|
Does Data have inflation?
|
I'm not sure where to ask this, this is the subreddit i found the most relevant to this question.
All big companies collect data, and data is the modern day gold. But, does it have inflation?
We generate more and more data every day, it seems logical to assume that it's value is decreasing, but is this actually the case?
| 56 |
Inflation is a general increase in prices of goods/services. Data isn’t a currency. The concept you might be looking for is ‘diminishing marginal returns’. As a company invests more in data, the rate of return eventually diminishes.
Also, as more companies compile big data and use it for strategic decisions, there is less of a competitive advantage to be had.
| 82 |
ELI5: Why is the gas from grocery stores cheaper than gas from traditional gas stations?
|
Why is Costco/Kroger gas cheaper than Shell/Exxon gas? Is there really a difference between their gas “quality”?
| 15 |
I dont think there’s a difference in quality but Kroger has their membership which gives you a slight discount
Plus, they’re likely banking on you doing your grocery shopping too meaning they can afford to offer gas a little cheaper since they’ll make up the difference in groceries
| 33 |
[Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame] Didn’t Dr. Strange technically fail to uphold his primary objective? What are the consequences?
|
Now let me first start by saying that yes, obviously Strange saw the future and knew that the only way to beat Thanos was to play the long game and give him the time stone. After Infinity War came out, most people assumed it was all part of his plan. However, in Endgame, we learn that Thanos destroyed all of the infinity stones. His victory may have only been temporary, but Strange’s sacrifice is forever. The time stone wasn’t just a temporary loan, it ended up being permanently destroyed. Did Strange foresee this, and ultimately decide to save the universe instead of the stone? Or did he give up the stone knowing that it would lead to victory, but not knowing that he would never get the stone back? He made it abundantly clear that his purpose, above all else, was to protect the stone. The best I can figure is that the horror of witnessing 14,000,604 failures was enough to sway him to let the stone get destroyed, but what are your thoughts? What are the consequences of the stone no longer existing? (And yes, I know that the stone still technically exists at an atomic level, but there must still be consequences to it being virtually nonexistent).
| 20 |
His job was to protect the stone so that it couldn't be misused by anyone. He did one better. He found possibly the only person in the universe both willing and able to destroy the stones so that their power could never be abused again.
| 26 |
CMV: America Should Try Public Housing Projects Again, Despite the Failures of Earlier Attempts
|
Most Americans are familiar with the traumatic backstories and evil memories associated with its “public housing projects” that were overridden with violence, crime, and neglect. What many Americans may not know is that we aren’t the only country to have developed such programs. Many countries have built public housing and succeeded: Its only in the USA that it really failed.
Section 8, the program we have today, is somewhat lottery based: We give housing waivers to a lucky few and then the middle finger to everyone else. Section 8 is also unfair to those working class people who earn just above the income limit threshold.
If we really want to promote equality and upward mobility, we should take lessons learned from earlier failures and try high density, no car, environmentally friendly, and economically self sustaining public housing along public transit lines.
If we avoid past mistakes (single neighborhood concentration of apartments, under policing, etc.), and build out thoughtfully trial phases, I really believe America could try this again and succeed!
| 165 |
The federal government in the USA does not dictate local zoning decisions. If your city wants to allow this type of development, it is free to do so. Have at it. You're likely going to quickly realize one of two things, nobody wants to build there since nobody is willing to pay the rent or what NIMBY means. There is no top down from Washington power to force these projects.
| 96 |
ELI5: Why can't JPEGS be transparent?
| 1,549 |
Because the image format doesn't support it.
In order for an image to be transparent you need to encode in the image how transparent it should be. That is, for each pixel, in addition to knowing the red, green and blue values, we also need to know "how transparent is it". That's commonly referred to as "alpha", and so the image has to store RGBA (or ARGB) pixels, rather than just RGB.
JPEG doesn't do that. It only stores three color channels, red, green and blue. The image format doesn't give us a way to specify how transparent each pixel should be.
(Edit: As many commenters have pointed out, JPEG images *don't* actually store red/green/blue information -- and for that matter, it also doesn't store values for each distinct pixel. They store other information which can be used to work out red/green/blue values for each pixel)
| 2,442 |
|
Did life originate in only one place on Earth?
|
I saw [this](http://www.lucasbrouwers.nl/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Evo_large.gif) picture in another [thread](http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/sfnlc/small_gradual_changes_i_can_believe_in/) and wondered about the part labeled 'oceans rust', i.e. the origins of life on earth.
Is it confirmed that there was only one type of life to begin with and that this has lead to all other life? By that I mean, could there have been other 'original' living things that merged into the same diagram; could there be another root to the tree? e.g. a 'lake rust' somewhere that produced something similar that bred with the main branch? Or is this so unlikely as to be not worth thinking about? Or is there evidence this did not happen?
Or are there other evolutionary trees that are completely distinct? Are there any corners of our current understanding of the evolutionary tree that are so bizarre or out of line with the rest that it could be a separate tree and have just been shoehorned in for lack of evidence to the contrary or is it all pretty neat, well ordered and understood?
| 57 |
We have absolutely no idea. We have no evidence for life having originated more than once but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. This being said we have no idea where, how or when life came about on Earth. This falls into an incredibly popular field right now which is astrobiology. What we do know is we have evidence of life going back to 3.9 billion years ago and microfossils back to 3.5 billion years ago. From 3.5Ga we have fossils and such to go on but before 3.5Ga the evidence is less direct. We don't even know if 3.9Ga is the earliest time Earth had life on it or if there was life earlier.
TL;DR: We have absolutely no idea but currently there is a lack of evidence for separate events that started life (that doesn't mean it didn't happen)
| 30 |
how does the body know when it has had enough sleep for the night?
| 66 |
We haven't figured out why people sleep at all, so this is a difficult question to answer. There are technical answers, but until we actually determine why we sleep, it is not really possible to give a satisfactory answer as to when we know we have had enough.
| 82 |
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Are there organisms that fall somewhere between single cell organisms and complex organisms?
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I know you have single cell organisms like say a paramecium. And complex organisms which can run the gamut from say a dust mite to a human being or blue whale. Are there organisms that fall somewhere between these two though? Like something that is made up of not one or billions of cells but say five different cells that share a common genetic code?
| 29 |
Yes! A great example is the green algae genus *Volvox*, that form spherical colonies with cell numbers ranging from between a few hundred to about 50000. Cells on the interior of the sphere produce gametes that swim out to form new colonies.
In some species, the colonies are either entirely male or entirely female.
| 16 |
If heat rises, then why is it colder higher up in the atmosphere?
|
For instance, when there is sometimes snow at the top of mountains but not at the bottom. Or in an airplane, when the pilot tells you that it's really cold outside, even if you're flying over a warmer part of the world.
I know basics about heat: that heat rises because air molecules gain kinetic energy when heated, and their movement spreads them further apart, meaning hotter air is less dense, so it rises above the colder, more dense air. I know how a convection current works.
It seems like a stupid question. My physics teacher initially laughed, then told me that she couldn't come up with an answer. However I am serious. It's really been bugging me!
If the question is too basic, just tell me. Maybe I'll submit it to /r/explainlikeimfive.
| 41 |
Consider a "packet" of air sitting near the Earth's surface. It's warmed by the ground, which is absorbing most of the Sun's energy. As you correctly state, this means it starts to rise above the cooler air around it, but there's more to it. The hot air expands, but it doesn't do so into a vacuum, it must push against the air around it - that is, the air does work. Thermodynamics tells us that when a system does work, it loses energy and in this case that manifests itself as a lowering of temperature. So hot air does indeed rise up over cooler, but this selfsame process leads to the hot air cooling down.
As it happens, it's not always true that temperature drops as you rise up through the atmosphere. Once you get about 10-20km up (depending on latitude) you leave the troposphere and enter the stratosphere, in which region temperature actually *increases* with altitude due to increased absorption of UV radiation. This radiation splits apart oxygen molecules into radicals, which release heat when they recombine.
| 25 |
How far back can we trace the etymology of our words?
|
When I look up a word like "fire" in the dictionary it gives a cursory explanation that it comes from "fir, old english." But at some point words had to have formed out of pre-civilization unsophisticated communications. How far back can we track our oldest words?
To phrase my query another way; can we trace any words back to grunts and unstructured vocalizations of cavemen and neanderthals?
| 53 |
Most linguists agree that the farthest historical linguistics can get is 5,000 to 10,000 years. There are a few linguists who claim that they can go farther, but most linguists don't buy their arguments.
English, Russian, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit are Indo-European languages. Their ancestor language, late Proto-Indo-European, was spoken perhaps 7000 years ago. The English word "wheel", the Sanskrit word "chakra", the Ancient Greek word "kuklos" (which is borrowed into English ultimately as "cycle", "saikl") and the Russian word "kaliso" are descended from the same Proto-Indo-European word *kʷékʷlos (here the * means that the word is reconstructed). These changes of pronunciation and other changes took a few thousand years to develop in the speech communities that spoke each language. Now multiply this time period even by a small number and you can see that all the words change so unrecognizably that etymology and language kinship cannot be reconstructed.
| 29 |
Why do we twitch in our sleep?
|
I've noticed my boyfriend twitches when he first falls asleep. It seems to only happen when he's in light sleep. What causes muscle spasms and why do some people have it more commonly than others?
| 90 |
This is called a "hypnic jerk" and is completely normal. There doesn't seem to be a single cause narrowed down as of yet, but the prevailing consensus is as follows:
At the onset of sleep, your muscles enter a state of restfulness. The brain, not yet fully in a state of sleep, interprets this stimulus as if your body has lost its balance (i.e. the sense that you're falling) and responds by recruiting a muscular reaction to regain your balance.
| 66 |
[General Fiction] Why do terrorist and mad bombers so often make explosive devices with blinking and beeping lights on them?
| 62 |
Because they don't have a Quality Assurance department. They need to be able to verify on the spot that the bomb is working right when they go to plant it (i.e. nothing shifted in transit, none of the wires got tugged loose, the battery is still live, etc), and they need to be able to do so without hauling any extra gear with them. By having a set of status lights (possibly even a timer, if they're feeling saucy) they can rapidly confirm that everything is good to go when they go to plant the bomb; if the bomb fails to blink or beep, then they have one last chance to troubleshoot the problem before having to scrub the job.
| 78 |
|
ELI5:Buddhism
|
I've read wiki but am still confused on what exactly they believe.
| 15 |
True ELI5: Buddhists believe you will be happy if you recognize that things you like will go away eventually.
It is likely that you are confused because there are hundreds of different schools of Buddhism, and there is very little in the way of a western-style dogma to preserve the history or authenticate cannon. The narrative below is the wildly abridged common origin story.
Long version: The Buddha was very rich as a young man, but he was unhappy. He left his palace one day, hoping to find something to make him happy. On his trip out, he saw poverty, illness, and death for the first time- he had been totally sheltered from that before. He was even more sad than before. The last thing he saw on his trip was a holy man, who was happy- so the Buddha tried to find happiness for his spirit, too.
After a long time and many different strategies, he sat down under a free, cleared his mind, and worked it out. It took a long time of sitting, but eventually he reached a thought that was so clear and compelling that it gave him happiness and he became enlightened.
"Suffering is caused by attachment." Attachment to life, to things, to feelings and sensations- all of these things are transient and you will be sad A LOT if you act like they aren't.
After that, it all goes wonky in the way of sectarian religions. The Tibetans have a pantheon of gods and demons, zen is split on whether you can achieve enlightenment through practice or spontaneously or at all, and there are any hundreds of other differences.
| 11 |
Many birds have colorful eggs (blue, reddish-brown, spotted, etc). Is it possible that dinosaurs had colorful eggs?
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And if so, could we identify any of those pigments in fossil eggs?
| 311 |
It is very likely that dinosaurs were much more colorful than they are commonly depicted.
It's not like evolution would design a 5+ ton animal that's colored to blend into the background. It is the background. Sexual preference should have led to elaborate display colors.
This would include egg coloring to identify nests and prevent brood parasites.
| 84 |
ELI5: Why everything else on a computer will freeze and become unresponsive, but you can still move the mouse around.
| 128 |
Typically when a computer 'freezes' it is due to a specific application misbehaving or running some form of short term resources intensive task and taking up all of the resources that are available for other non-essential applications.
If you think of it like a city, there are priorities on a computer when it comes to resources. in a city things like Schools, Public Safety, and Government are the essential programs that are required to keep the city running. A computer has essential programs too, like input/output, which includes your mouse, keyboard and display.
To continue the analogy, in a city when resources become scarce, as in times of a bad economy or some form of disaster, the essential programs continue when things like State Parks, Historic Building Renovation and Social programs "freeze up".
It is the same with a computer when an application is using up more resources than the computer has available, all of the necessary things for the computer to operate have resources reserved for them to keep functioning, but the other, non-essential applications all fight for resources.
Many times, if you know how to shut off the application that is hogging the resources, or it completes what ever resource intensive task it was doing, the rest of the non-essential applications will begin to have enough resources to behave normally again.
| 81 |
|
ELI5: The XBOX one DRM problem /r/gaming is in a frenzy about.
| 133 |
Your X1 needs to connect to the internet every 24 hours to make sure that you own the games you have installed on it. If you can't make that check, you now own a blu-ray player and a voice activated cable box until you can check in.
If you take a game over to a friend's house, you need to bring your profile with you because you can't play any games off the disc, and the check in is once every hour. So make sure your friends all have good internet connections before trying to play your games with them.
| 101 |
|
ELI5: Why do people snore when they sleep but not when we're awake?
|
Why aren't we snoring all the time? Are we actively regulating are breathing so we don't when we're awake? How and why?
| 8,849 |
Snoring is due to the fact that your mouth muscles are not tightened and that you usually have your head tilted back (or at least horizontally with your nose pointing to the celling). Basically, your palate loosen and your to~~u~~ngue roll back a bit thus kind of blocking the airway, but not totally which is why it makes so much noise.
Now, when you are awake, your mouth muscles are more tightened so you are not blocking your own airway.
| 4,025 |
ELI5: Why has China devalued its currency, and what will that mean for other countries?
| 21 |
When your currency becomes stronger, it becomes much harder for you to export your country's goods, because your goods become more expensive for other countries. China doesn't want that because they are the biggest export nation that there is.
| 14 |
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CMV: All politicians should be fined a percentage of their campaign funds for lying during public speeches and campaign ads when running for office
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5% of the politician's public campaign finances should be charged for every lie a politician tells, administered by a bi-partisan committee in the Federal Election Commission. The politician will have 30 days to pay the IRS or be disqualified from the race.
Think of it this way. Companies can be sued for false advertisement, and you can be charged with fraud for scamming people, so why should politicians be held to a different standard? Plus, democracy itself will work better and more fairly with a more informed public.
**Edit:** to answer a few questions being asked:
1) This applies only to public speeches and campaign ads during the course of the campaign; Not random conversations they might have with other individuals.
2) This applies only to verifiable true/false statements at the time it was said; Not campaign promises
3) Honest mistakes are treated the same as lies. If you're running a slander campaign you should vet those statements or advertisements before making them.
_____
> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*
| 103 |
A lie is defined as telling a falsehood intentionally knowing it is false. This means that you must prove they knew it was false at the time they said it.
This becomes very tricky when you consider what people say. If a politician says that he will increase funding to a specific department, all he really has to do is to make an attempt, no matter how small, and he cannot be claimed as a liar if it doesn't go through. It also means that if a politician states a false statistic, you need to prove they intentionally gave that false number, which means proving they both knew the real statistic and that they didn't mix it up or otherwise confuse the number.
It is unrealistic.
| 28 |
ELI5: How do zip files compress information and file sizes while still containing all the information?
| 10,813 |
Image if you had a long paragraph and then try to find all the repeated word or phrases. For each repeated word or phrase, you replace the word or phrase with a lookup. Then you only need to write the repeated word or phrase once and from then on every spot you would write the shorter lookup. This is how files are zipped.
Example
1 - word or phrase
2 - repeated
3 - lookup
4 - you
5 - then
6 - write
7 - and
8 - the
Image if 4 had a long paragraph 7 5 try to find all 8 2 1s. For each 2 1, 4 replace 8 1 with a 3. Then 4 only need to 6 8 2 1 once 7 from 5 on every spot 4 would 6 8 shorter 3. This is how files are zipped.
| 8,584 |
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ELI5: Why do so many people who emigrate from the Middle East open convenience stores?
| 24 |
Each culture has an 'in' to a particular business in each area. So, one Korean family will come and open a dry cleaning business. When their cousins come, they will tell them the tricks of the trade and the regulations and have the business model set, so their cousins open up another cleaning business one town over - repeat for friends and family. Same with Indian people and small grocery stores or liquor shops, middle eastern immigrants and convenience stores. They share the business model within the culture and are immensely successful this way.
| 31 |
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ELI5: what the Enron scandal was
| 22 |
Enron was a power company. They used aggressive pre-estimates of how much money their deals were going to make, then never revised their books when the deals went bad.
They moved their huge amounts of debt into subsidiaries to hide it from investors, until eventually it came out, and the stock price plummeted, killing the company.
| 18 |
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[Harry Potter] If someone were horny and entered into the room of requirement, would a bed and willing partner be present?
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???
| 91 |
More likely to get a magazine and a bottle of lotion. Magic can not create something sapient enough to be considered "willing".
If you're lucky, you might get one of those magical target dummies with.. Y'know.. Holes..
| 119 |
ELI5: Why do normal, rational adults always think that snoozing an alarm for 5 minutes will make any difference at all?
| 57 |
That isn't particularly true because.. Sleep is comprised of 3 NREM stages and one REM stage. Every stage lasts approximately 5-15 minutes long and the NREM stages become shorter the longer you've been asleep while the REM cycle will last longer. When you interrupt a stage, either from the alarm clock or otherwise, you will fall back asleep and resume that stage. This explains why people will say they go back into nightmares once they have woken up and fallen back asleep again. Falling back asleep for 5 more minutes could easily complete a stage thus making them feel less tired.
| 47 |
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ELI5: What's DOMA and why is it considered unconstitutional?
| 16 |
There are a couple of arguments, mostly to do with ennumerated powers, equal protection and full faith and credit.
The 10th Amendment says in part that any power not specifically given ('ennumerated') to the federal government by the Constitution belongs to the individual states or to the people. As the regulation of marriage isn't at all related to any of those powers, the argument is that DOMA is unconstitutional by that reason alone; in other words, Congress never had the authority to make any law about marriage, that being the job of each state to decide for itself.
Article 4, Section 1 of the Constitution says essentially that each state must recognize as valid the laws of all the other states; in this case, essentially meaning that if you get married in Massachusetts, Kentucky isn't allowed to act like you're not married when you visit Louisville. This is why opponents of gay marriage care what other states do, since they're legally prohibited from just ignoring it.
The 14th Amendment says in part that the states are required to apply all laws equally to all people. The way it's written, this doesn't apply to the federal government, so DOMA itself has been hard to challenge based on equal protection so far, but it has been an obstacle to state-level laws banning gay marriage.
| 10 |
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CMV: Overall the PC provides a superior 'Next Gen' experience.
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So far the Xbox One and the PS4 have not exactly provided a wild new level of entertainment while the PC has just continued to evolve more and more at an accelerated rate. At this point I honestly believe that people looking to upgrade from a 360/PS3 should opt for a PC for a couple reasons.
**It's gotten cheaper**
Time was that PC gaming was a somewhat elitist hobby like fox hunting or polo, requiring considerable time and cash to get a rig running nice and proper. Currently PC gaming is far cheaper than ever before and some builds exist that can outperform the PS4 or XB1 for the same cost. That being said you're still likely to spend more than you would on a next gen console, however the cost for games will make up that price difference very quickly with the notoriously low prices of PC games. Between Steam sales and Humble Bundles and the like you'll save lots of dough in the long run going the PC route, and you'll get a better performance to boot.
**It's gotten easier**
Gone are the days of requiring a computer engineering degree to properly run PC games. Having to manually adjust your PC settings or update drivers is a thing of the past and PC gaming really isn't any more complicated than buying and loading up a game on steam. And PC's aren't limited to a heavy desk anymore either, all you need is an HDMI cord to have it going on the TV and it doesn't take more than few minutes to set up a wired or wireless controller either. Steam big picture mode handles very nicely and with Steam Link just down the road PC gaming on the big screen is only going to get easier and easier.
**Better performance**
This practically goes without saying of course. With the XB1\PS4 embarrassingly failing to hit 1080p on many AAA games and even then often running around 30 FPS the PC has far superior performance even on a 4-500 dollar build. 1080p/60 FPS is easily achievable on most games by even midrange gaming rigs and the difference is night and day between that and the lower performance of the next-gen consoles. Add in the opportunities for 1440 and 4K gaming and PC gaming takes the stage performance-wise.
And let's not forget about mere capabilities. The XB1 and PS4 have both fought to be usable a a general media machine as well, and in this regard the PC blows them both out of the water. I can stream a movie, play a game, and listen to music off spotify on the same time while the XB1 is proud to be able to switch between just two tasks. If you're looking for a gaming machine than also does media well then the PC is a natural choice.
**As simple or as advanced as you want**
You can have a monstrous multi-titan crossfiring 12-core tank of a PC that runs a triple-4K display with surround sound, or you can have a modest little box that connects to the TV and is controlled with keyboard or console, how advanced PC gaming gets is up to you. Consoles are limited in what they can do, they can only ever give more simple performance. PCs can do that just fine if that's all you're looking for, but if you want to get your game on down the road you can do that too, no problem. PC's are more flexible than consoles and allow more wiggle room.
**Backwards compatibility** The next gens really lost face with the loss of backwards compatibility. It made them less of an upgrade since you still have to keep your old machines to play 90%> of your game library, and even now they're still somewhat struggling to crank out enough good exclusives to make them worth the money. Meanwhile PCs can play pretty much anything ever made, from Pong to Star Citizen. Backwards compatibility is nearly a non-issue for PCs and through the use of emulators plenty of older console gems can be enjoyed too. PS2, PS1, N64, SNES, etc. This gives PC gaming a far more massive game library than the next-gens and also far more PC-exclusives.
**Reasons to get a Next-Gen console**
I concede there are some small strengths the next gens have, but I do not believe they provide enough of a reason overall to go with a next-gen over a PC.
- Consoles are simpler
Yes. Despite how simple PCs have gotten consoles are still more streamlined and simple, however it's not though PCs are overwhelmingly complex either and I don't think that a consoles marginally more simple design is a real big advantage.
- They're cheaper.
Upfront yes, but not in the long run. You'll likely spend probably an extra hundred or so dollars more on a solid good PC build than on a console, but you'll save massive amounts of money on how cheap PC games are. Plus the existence of mods for many games adds lots of extra content and play value for free. If some really wants to spend low for a decent gaming experience then it would be best to get a 360 PS3 which are both considerably cheaper than the next-gen consoles while also having a much larger and much cheaper game library.
- Split-screen
This is an advantage for consoles, true. However in most cases split screen isn't the primary factor in deciding on a game console.
- Exclusives
Right now the market for good Next Gen exlusives is pretty week. XB1 has been standing almost solely on Sunset Overdrive -which wasn't exactly a wild success- and Halo which hasn't had a very promising debut on the XB1 with the clusterfuck that was MCC. PS4 has done a bit better with inFamous, Killzone, and Bloodborne and a new Uncharted, but if it comes down to a slugging fest of exclusives then the PC certainly has more, from almost the entire Indie market to AAA titles like Civ 5 and Star Citizen.
While I'm not saying a PC is for everyone -some people will buy a next-gen because that's what their friends play on- I'd say that *overall* a PC is a superior choice compared to the next-gen systems.
_____
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| 15 |
You left "specific console exclusives" out of your *Reasons to get a Next-Gen console* section.
If you want to play a particular game and it's only available on a particular console, then that console obviously provides a superior experience.
| 14 |
ELI5: Why are the gas prices dropping so rapidly after being to high for so long?
| 20 |
- The cost of producing oil mostly depends on its accessibility.
- OPEC is a group of oil producing countries who make up 45% of the world supply.
- OPEC countries like Saudi Arabia have huge relatively easy to access oil deposits, meaning they could produce lots of cheap oil whenever they want.
- Most of the cheap & easy to access oil fields in the US have largely been exhausted or are nearing some limit of production.
- The US has the largest Shale oil deposits on earth, but shale is a lot more expensive to extract so oil has to be above a certain price to make it cost effective to extract from shale.
- Over the last few years oil prices have risen high enough that extracting shale oil became economically viable.
- The viability of shale oil led to a oil boom in the US that was causing us to consume less OPEC oil and more of our own.
- OPEC didn't want their market share eroded by US shale oil.
- So OPEC increased production effectively lowering their own prices and the price of oil in general.
- OPEC hopes to make oil cheap enough that it would make US shale production more expensive.
- As long as OPEC is exporting large amounts of relatively cheap oil, the companies in the US will have to work with lower margins or no profit at all which means less oil production in the US and more consumption of OPEC oil.
- This wont last forever, eventually OPEC will lower their production and prices will go up again.
| 48 |
|
ELI5: Why do fans (and propellers) have different numbers of blades? What advantage is there to more or less blades?
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An actual question my five year old asked me and I couldn't answer, please help!
| 13,715 |
It's always a balance.
Number of blades:
* Fewer blades = More efficient shoveling of air because of turbulence (air swirls) created by other blades reduces efficiency. Usually simpler to make.
* More blades = More stable because the force is spread out over more blades and shovels more air compared to how long the propellers are.
Propeller tips breaking sound barrier is bad (because of lots of turbulence). The longer the propeller the faster the tips go compared to the center. But having too short blades means more loss of energy at the blade tips:
* Longer blades = Better at generating lift, shoveling more air at lower speeds. Longer propellers also less stable and vibrate more.
* Smaller blades = Allows higher top speeds since the propeller can go much faster without breaking the soundbarrier with the wingtips. More stable.
So basicly.WW1 airplane: We can't make so good engines. So we're gonna go with efficient short two-bladed propellers because that gives is the most thrust for our weak engines.
WW2 airplane: We gots a lot better engines now. But two-bladed propellers can't shovel enough air to take our planes as fast as we're going to go. So we're going to go with 4 short blades!
Helicopter: We gotta generate lots of lift. So we're going to go with longer and slower rotating blades!
Modern helicopter: Uh. Those blades aren't generating enough lift. MORE BLADES! More blades is harder to make, but more stable too.
Modern turboprop: Too noisy! We're making special 6 bladed propellers that are much quieter. And computer power and advanced materials allows us to make them special advanced shapes that generate even less noise and more power. So now they look more like ship propellers. But for air! Still kinda short blades because we gotta go fast!
Ship propellers: Water dense yo. So we gotta make blades short (or they'll break!) but we make them much wider to shovel a lot of water backwards.
P.S: Jet engines work entirely differently, even if they do have fans at the front they're for compressing air into the engine, not generating thrust.
P.P.S: For ceiling fan. You're moving lots of air, but you want to do it slowly and silently. So lots of wide blades. How long the blades are depends on how mobile you want the fan to be. Big fan = more air silently. Small fan = Noisier, but more mobile.
| 13,850 |
[Dragon Ball] Why didn't Vegeta or Gohan's tails grow back?
|
At the end of the Saiyan Saga, both Vegeta and Gohan get their tails severed. Goku repeatedly grew back his own tail until Kami "pulled it out from the root" (whatever that means) and Vegeta claims that his tail will just grow back to the doctor when he first returns to the Frieza Force. So why exactly didn't his tail grow back? Even if the claim is that Vegeta was already an adult and so it would never grow back for some reason, why didn't *Gohan's* tail grow back either despite Goku repeatedly losing his tail in childhood?
| 15 |
It's been revealed that after a certain point Saiyajin bodies view the tail as a weakness and do not regrow it as the Saiyajins reach a certain strength seemingly in preparation for Super Saiyajin.
This could be seemingly supported by the fact that Goten and Trunks were born without tails, and they had incredibly high battle power and achieved SSJ with ease.
| 25 |
ELI5: harvesting salt from sea water
|
I've just an ace doc on Smithsonian channel, and they explained how it is dried in different pools and harvested when dry, but then mentioned "it is then washed before shipping". So question is: how can you wash something that is soluble? The dirt will still be there when the water is evaporated away..
| 22 |
The amount of salt you can dissolve in water is finite. Once you've dissolved that much, you can't dissolve any more. So you can wash salt in that brine (it's saltier than sea water, so salt water might be confusing). Dirt and sand still wash off.
| 30 |
Is there any office jobs that required bachelor’s in psychology?
|
I am looking for an office job that is related to why I studied in psychology. I don’t like working with clients, as an RBT because it is very overwhelming
| 43 |
What do you think about research assistant jobs within psychology departments or charities? Data collection may involve being with clients depending on the project but its often quite a restricted and limited interaction. You could still apply your psychological research methods and find enjoyment in psychology related topics.
| 37 |
ELI5 - What is the "falling thing" people apparently experience when trying to sleep?
|
I keep seeing it popping up, whether that be in memes or comments. I don't think I have experienced this ever. Is this some sort of genetic thing? I tried searching it on Google, and the first result mentioned something like
> What causes falling sensation while sleeping is the natural disengagement of the astral body
- and I just stopped reading when it mentioned astral body. Is this just another thing we have no idea about or is there something to this?
| 15 |
Our body relaxes our muscles when we sleep so we don't act out our dreams, however if your body relaxes all it's muscles just before you pass out it can feel like you're falling, which jolts you awake again.
| 22 |
ELI5: What drives people to falsely confess to major crimes?
|
Every true crime podcast/documentary deals with this. Someone is killed or kidnapped. The press release details. The public immediately calls in false information and, even more baffling, fake confessions.
What drives so many people to do this?
| 26 |
Interrogation techniques that work to break down psychological defenses that people have. Prolonged Interrogations can make people more susceptible to suggestion and leading questions can lead people to make statements that aren't actually true. Detectives are also allowed to lie directly to suspects. They can make up whatever stories they wants to coerce confessions and pressure people into making false statements. And if they are dealing with an individual is already mentally handicapped, they can pretty much confuse them into agreeing to anything
| 28 |
ELI5: If the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, that must mean that the air we breathe is mostly nitrogen, right? So do our lungs take in nitrogen with no side effects or do they "filter out" the nitrogen to take in the oxygen?
| 66 |
Our lungs take in whatever is in the atmosphere, a special compound in our blood called hemoglobin (the one responsible for making it bright red) reacts with the oxygen. Nitrogen (N2) is an inert gas, we breath it in, a little bit of it is absorbed in our blood but for the most part doesn't enter our bodies.
| 72 |
|
ELI5:The 1% difference between humans and chimpanzees DNA
|
We differ by merely 1%. WHAT is in that 1%?
From here: http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/7/4/1168[1]
"A total of 21,269 nonpolymorphic human-specific insertions were identified, of which only 372 were found in exons"
What does it mean when it says 372 were found in exons? 372 insertions or 372 DNA?
Thanks in advance!
| 93 |
1% different DNA=/=1% difference in creatures.
The vast majority of human and chimp genes are "junk genes", DNA material that we have but doesn't actually activate. So, while there is only a 1% difference in the DNA chimps have and the DNA we have, the percentage of DNA that actually activates the same way for both species is far higher than 1%.
| 31 |
[An American Werewolf in London] Right before David starts to physically transform he shouts out in agony and tears his clothes off claiming to be on fire; what was the cause of this sensation?
|
I mean, beyond the fact that he was transforming, what is the specific internal change that first occurs to put David in so much agony even while looking completely normal? Is it the fact that every part of his body will transform and the sensation he felt was every nerve firing off immediately, like being electrocuted or irradiated where you just feel pain everywhere?
| 17 |
The actual answer lies in the true sciences of lycan transformation. The fact is when somthing happens to your body that results in physical and physiological change your body temperature begins increasing significantly. The more you change and the faster you change the hotter you get. It the case of were wolves the thing that allows them to survive their transformation is their accelerated healing factor without it the heat would cook the brain and or severely damage the muscles. Which in turn sets off your nerves that you are either incredibly hot or burning. So yeah the act of transforming cooks you. Unless you can out heal it you die. I
| 25 |
ELI5:Why do they put tar and other harmful chemicals they advertise about in cigarettes? What's the difference between smoking a cig and smoking just tobacco without the tar and chemicals?
| 15 |
Tar is part of the tobacco, that's true - but there are hundreds of other chemicals that are added to to cigarettes.
The big tobacco companies claim that these additives make the cigarettes more flavorful and provide a more pleasurable smoking experience. Others have argued that they make cigarettes more addictive.
Smoking additive-free cigarettes (such as American Spirits) or rolling your own cigarettes with additive-free tobacco has been suggested by some as a "safer" way to smoke - but the government puts the exact same Surgeon General's warming on these products as they do regular cigs with additives.
| 15 |
|
ELI5: What is the political situation surrounding China and Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau?
|
I'm on my way to Taiwan today and I've been reading up on political tensions with China and wondered if someone could explain the situation there to me. Is it a similar situation with Macau and Hong Kong? Are there other regions I haven't mentioned in similar situations? Thanks in advance.
| 56 |
Back before WWII, there was a civil war in China. One side pretty much won and today controls mainland China as the People's Republic of China. The other side was pushed to Taiwan and held onto it, calling themselves the Republic of China. For awhile, the Taiwan government held the UN seat, but the PRC managed (for Cold War reasons, didn't want them allied with the Soviets) to get itself recognized as 'the real China' and took the security council seat and is what everyone calls China now.
PRC never managed to capture Taiwan so there's still a separate government there who operates pretty much entirely independently of the PRC government. PRC, however, insists it's their territory, they just let the Taiwanese government do their thing. Other countries aren't allowed to recognize Taiwan as it's own country or PRC gets very mad, but they tolerate Taiwan pretending to be a country.
Hong Kong (former British territory) and Macau (Portuguese) were the last bastions of European control in China and only relatively recently reverted back to PRC jurisdiction. Because they were developed by foreign powers with their own legal institutions and police and customs and all that, PRC lets them continue to operate independently of the PRC government on domestic issues. They have their own legislatures and courts but aren't allowed to conduct diplomacy with other nations or have their own military.
PRC says all three of those places are part of their territory. Taiwan is an independent state which just doesn't have official recognition. Hong Kong and Macau are almost the same thing, but there are Chinese military units stationed there and they only have authority on matters within their borders.
| 16 |
ELI5: Why do men statistically die younger than women?
| 32 |
men are more likely to die on the job than women, because they are over represented in dangerous jobs. Men are also more likely to be victims of violent crime than women. Men are also more likely to die as a side effect of poverty than women, because men are more likely to be very poor. If a man happens to survive those issues, he is still more likely to die sooner because his life involves greater stress on average, which has health implications.
| 34 |
|
[Die Hard] Will John McClane ever get his 401k back?
|
Cause I’m under the impression that when Gabriel deletes it he really deletes it.
| 30 |
You can't delete a 401(k) any more than Project Mayhem can cancel debts by just blowing up a few buildings. Off-site backups make it trival to repair the damage and even if these didn't work, the accounts can still be rebuilt from the individual transaction records. This would take a huge amount of work, but banking relies on people trusting that their money is safe. It will be done, no matter the expense.
| 36 |
ELI5: How did musicians, specifically rockstars in the 70's -90's, perform live without that ear piece that let's them hear themselves?
|
I watching a load of Zepplin videos and obviously, they were loud as fuck but I also remembered in last decade or so, most musicians would have that ear piece that apparently lets them hear themselves back? Sometimes they take out and it just dangles down.
Even in the early 2000's I hadn't really noticed this kind of thing, they just wore ear plugs.
| 23 |
They had monitor speakers pointed at them which had a vocal heavy mix. A deluxe setup would allow each person their own mx.
Also folkies would stick a finger in one ear to block out the sound of other instruments and voices.
| 33 |
Dealing with advisor's (empty?) threats
|
This morning got off to an awful start. I'm in my hopefully last year of my PhD and so far it's been rough. I have a review paper to write which is on the critical path to my graduation and am on a project which is less critical for me. However, this project is a multi-million dollar grant for my advisor.
For some context, my advisor is the caricature in PhD comics. He is disorganized, consistently changes his mind and unfortunately thinks he's the opposite. The multi-million dollar grant project was supposed to be a neat little final project for me to wrap up my PhD. Between monday and today, it has become a blue whale which I think I won't be able to finish at all. Less fortunately, I think I'll do all the grunt work (unpublishable) for some other person to do the cool bits and publish because I have to graduate next April.
Yesterday, I told my advisor that I'd really like to contain the scope so that I'm able to finish everything while I'm in grad school. This morning, he added another bloaty analysis bit. At this point I told him I'd spend half my time on this and the other half writing the research paper to finish. He then threatened to cut my salary in half because and I quote 'im paying you full time to work on this project'. Now, this is classic douchery on his front and he's done similar stuff before. He pays me for 13.5 hours a week but let's be real, I'm working a lot lot lot more. But I'd like to show my deep displeasure without a raging showdown. Help?
| 154 |
It sounds like there was an early expectation that you'd finish this project, but you feel like it's not possible with the timeframe you have in mind. So this needs to be clearly communicated and agreed on by both (a meeting of the minds). Otherwise, it just sounds like he's got a certain perspective in his head of what's critical (the project is the important thing, regardless of your 1-year timeline), while you're got another (finish in one year, regardless of the project). You should get his agreement of what's acceptable in writing (at least email him to confirm, after a meeting, to give him a chance to correct any misunderstandings).
If you don't finish it, and do the grunt work for someone else to finish, that sounds like what you'd prefer right? You can't have your cake and eat it too -- you don't want to finish the project, but you don't want someone else to finish it?
Why does he think you're paid to work fulltime on this, while you are only paid 13.5 hours a week? Seems like a huge discrepancy, so there must be a misunderstanding there to clear up. Same problem as the project -- it sounds like there's not a shared understanding.
| 75 |
How feasible would it be to put a large, man-made object (such as a space station) into orbit around the sun?
|
Or, to put it in a more specific context, would it be "worth it" to build a semi-permanent "outpost" in orbit between Earth and Mars, for example?
| 101 |
We have satellites orbiting the Sun already. As for an outpost between Earth and Mars, that wouldn't be very useful. Things in different orbits don't maintain the same spatial relationships over time.
| 29 |
CMV: Enacting a new law should require 60% of the vote, removing an old one should require 40%
|
EDIT2: The rule would be something like: "To enact a new law, it needs to be supported by **more than 60%** of parliament. To remove an old law, the removal needs to be supported by **more than 40%** of parliament.". To avoid ridiculous scenarios where 60% creates a new law and the other 40% removes it the next day.
Disclaimer: I'm coming at this from an European perspective, but I think it applies to U.S politics as well. I'm also a somewhat libertarian, and this proposal would probably make the object-level politics more to my liking.
I believe that it should require a larger-than-majority share to create new laws, and that a smaller-than-majority should be able to remove old laws. The exact numbers might not necessarily be 60% and 40%, but they are numbers to start the discussion. Some reasons:
Why are we so obsessed with a majority anyway? What makes the 50% number so special? It is "natural" in some sense, but that shouldn't prevent us from experimenting with other models. It prevents "gridlocks" when a group is forced to decide between options, but this isn't an issue when we are adding and removing legislation to an already existing corpus.
A moral argument: Laws are a restriction of what you are allowed to do. Making new laws reduces the liberty of the people. It is reasonable that there are additional protections for this to happen. This is already the case for constitutional law, why not extend it?
Most modern nations have incredible amounts of legislation. Even people who study law their entire lives can only become competent in small subfields. This might be a consequence of societies becoming "more complicated", but I never seen a good argument for this. I believe that reducing the amount of legislation would be a good thing, and this proposal would be a tool to do so. Also, it would increase the "selection pressure" on laws, forcing them to be better.
It would make polarization less of an issue. Elections would be less of an all-or-nothing affair. A party my cooperate with a second party to remove a law it dislikes, while simultaneously be part of a larger coalition enacting new laws.
A risk is that a minority coalition threatens to trash laws left and right unless their demands are met, but I think and hope that voters would punish such a behavior.
I know that this will probably never happen, but I still like the idea. I never seen any discussion of this anywhere before. Am I missing something obvious?
EDIT1: Removed.
| 26 |
From a practical standpoint, wouldn’t this create a bizarre scenario where a law could be created today and rescinded tomorrow, by more or less the exact same government?
That sort of uncertainty would create lots of instability, this is not a good idea.
| 59 |
[Batman] Why does fire shoot from the back of the Batmobile?
|
Is the Bat's vehicle literally propelled by flame like a rocket of some sort? Is that more effective than a quality engine? What kind of fuel is used to create the flames? Does it pollute more than normal cars?
| 17 |
The flames would be used for short bursts of speed but the downside is they would use alot of rocket fuel ir aviation fuel.
The batmobile would likely run on petrol or diesel and the rockets would be for propulsion when he needs bursts of speed.
He would have to use them carefully because of the potential of causing collateral damage. A rocket powered car is just impractical in and around city streets.
More likely than not he just uses the flame for cosmetic effect, intimidation, fear or awe.
| 17 |
CMV: The contribution of vegans/vegetarians and other environmentally conscious people is absolutely insignificant.
|
I'll start off by saying I'm a vegetarian and I also try to limit the eggs and dairy I eat, I try to buy no leather and no other animal byproducts. When there are leftovers from dinners with guests, etc. I'll eat that (throwing meat away is definitely worse than eating it). I try to do as much as I can for the environment and animals, I have very little money so I do not donate to animal rights organizations but I certainly would if I could.
I'm trying to be as reasonable as possible on the subject, I try not to see individuals as evil 'cause they think it's normal to torture animals, I understand it's a cultural thing although I loathe humanity in general.
I also think the hypothetical contribution of even a billion of the strictest vegans imaginable wouldn't change things a bit.
As of today I'm making this choice exclusively because it makes me feel good / at peace with myself, 'cause if I think about the contribution to the environment, I'm sorry but I just can't believe I'm doing anything significant.
I'm 100% convinced on what I've done for a year now, and I'll become as "vegan" as possible in the future (I hate this whole "vegan" thing, it should be something natural like being against slavery), I'm NOT looking for an excuse to quit. But I know it'll only benefit my ethics and my self-esteem.
I know that for every person like me (and I'm nowhere near good) there are one thousand who don't give a damn. I know that there are TENS OF BILLIONS animals being tortured for food, and unless the world miraculously turns vegan overnight, there's no chance any of this will change. Change my view.
On the eating leftovers thing, I also have to add.. I've been to a wedding recently and I got vegetarian courses, it was really no hassle for anyone... but I looked at the courses with fish and meat and I just thought of all the stuff they'd be throwing away that day... if I ate meat and fish that day it would have made NO difference at all... maybe it would have been better, saved the cook some work...
For me the key point is not BUYING meat rather than not eating it, I get it, and having vegetarian stuff served that day and making things look positive for everyone and having conversations with others about being vegetarian was a positive thing... but the actual contribution to things? That restaurant probably threw away ten times what I could have eaten. It's depressing.
I still recommend that people switch to a vegetarian (or vegan) lifestyle, I think it's a GOOD thing by all means. It's a fantastic feeling, it's healthy, and a million other things. As I said I haven't stopped believing in the lifestyle and I'll never quit. I just believe the actual contribution to the environment and the well being of animals is insignificant, and expecting results is hopeless.
**I have found a convincing argument and I think that made me change my mind. Although many answers were backed up by very uplifting data, I couldn't justify changing my mind since I couldn't help but believe things are changing way too slowly, and that the damage might still be irreparable in the long run.**
> Eventually — not soon, but maybe in a generation or two — I would not be surprised if the majority of people on the liberal side of the fence started to shun meat-eating, as has happened with social issues in recent years. And at that point, changes will be sweeping and sudden.
I have never thought about critical mass. I still believe the situation is a lot more complex than just the West, but even believing that one day a relatively sudden change could happen like it did with LGBT rights based on public opinion reaching critical mass makes me believe there's something to look for behind the hard numbers.
**Another great argument with links**
> In short, the reality is: It adds up.
[Does Veganism Make a Difference?](http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Utilitarianism/Does%20Veganism%20Make%20a%20Difference.htm)
[Expected Utility, Contributory Causation, and Vegetarianism](http://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/thresholds.pdf)
Both of these essays approach your question in a statistics-based manner that focuses on thresholds. They propose that your effect on meat production is a measurable probability.
In other words, they ask questions like, "What are the odds that your purchase of, say, a frozen turkey will be the one that causes your grocery store to order another entire shipment of frozen turkeys? And that that shipment causes the food distributor to order more turkeys? And that that shipment causes a farm to slaughter more turkeys?"
_____
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| 589 |
I don't think you're totally wrong, but there are some larger impacts than you might think.
Specifically, having a substantial vegetarian/vegan portion of the population forces places like restaurants to have better non-meat options to appeal to those customers. And once they do so, even meat-eaters may end up ordering those dishes just because they're appealing, even if they'd ordinarily order meat.
Essentially, in 1985, if you went to a moderately upscale restaurant, the vegetarian option was something like rice and steamed vegetables. No meat-eater would ever order that because blech. But the restaurant didn't bother improving it because a tiny tiny fraction of people were vegetarians. In 2015, because there are more vegetarians, there might be a few options such as a pasta with mushrooms or a chickpea curry.
The same is true with grocery products, which will avoid non-essential meats and meat byproducts so that they don't exclude vegetarian customers.
| 257 |
[Batman] Why does Ra’s al Ghul always refer to Batman as “Detective”?
|
Like, I know he is one and that “detective” is as appropriate a title for him as anything, I was just wondering why Ra’s prefers to call him that over “Batman” or “Dark Knight” or hell, even “Mr. Wayne.”
| 55 |
I think it's that Ra's admiration for him mostly comes from his intelligence. After all, it's DC comics- any schmuck can get powerful if they inject themselves with the right serum. Merely being tough and having advanced tech just puts Batman in there with every other clown in spandex who got hit with some cosmic rays.
But batman's *mental* abilities? That's not something you can get with a quick demonic bargain or alien gizmo. The intelligence and determination of Batman is what makes Ra's consider him his potential heir. And that shows through when he's tracking down clues and figuring out what's going on, not when he's punching people or relaxing on a deck chair.
Ra's respects batman as a *detective*, not as a superhero or playboy, so that's what he calls him.
| 103 |
[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's] Why does police apprehend criminals with cards instead of guns?
|
There's literally a whole saga of a literal terrorist bombing and killing people in plain daylight and police's first reaction is to apprehend him by dueling him on a motorcycle.
Granted, I don't know which laws conform the judicial system in the 5D's world, but surely, cards don't seem to be effective against terrorists.
What is the government thinking?
| 101 |
Culture is a major point here. Duel Monsters is a major cultural phenomenon in that universe. Moreover the Arc system that runs the city's power get's it's energy from Synchro Summoning, so each duel powers the city more and more (not to mention their motorcycles). The city's power and the city's security have a synergistic relationship with each other. The whole city was built on the power of Synchro Summoning, which is why entities from the future go back to stop that energy method, because it will ultimately bring despair and destruction due to their reliance on it.
| 62 |
[MCU] If Gamorra jumped from the cliff without wanting to sacrifice herself for Thanos and the stone, would Thanos still have gotten it?
| 20 |
Natasha jumped off of her own volition, and Barton got the Stone as a result; the price seems to simply be "a soul for a soul."
For *Thanos*, it was specifically the sacrifice of the one person he held most dear, but that is apparently Red Skull Ghost's interpretation of the situation, not an absolute requirement; Gamora was simply the one he brought along. But in Barton's case, he almost certainly loves his wife and children more than Nat, and he was sacrificing her to get them back.
| 37 |
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