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ELI5: Why do most goods have relatively stable prices, while gasoline fluctuates on a daily basis?
| 48 |
Mostly because gasstations decided it's worth the effort to inform people of daily price changes.
Fuel supply and demand change a lot, so with a constant price it would have to be pretty high to prevent the risk of selling at a loss for gasstations.
With other goods supply and demand are very stable, and the effort to inform people about the daily price outweights the gains for the seller. (Imagine a grocery store would keep up some digital board with all the current daily vegetable rates instead of printing a pricetag)
| 35 |
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[Marvel/DC] A simple swap: The Stark Family and Wayne Family grow up instead in each other's reality. Assuming a similar chain of events leading to the creation of Batman and Iron Man respectively, how do events play out differently in each universe?
| 18 |
i doubt tony ( who is now bruce ) would have the motivation and commitment to do what the original bruce did , he would probably become a rowdy teenager partying every night
bruce ( now tony ) would probably become a successful businessman
| 14 |
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[Harry Potter] What was Dumbledore using the Deluminator for before he bequeathed it to Ron?
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The Deluminator does two things: captures and stores all the the sources of lights around it, and acts as a homing device allowing you to zero in on and listen to them even through protection spells.
One of those things seems way way more useful to a man like Dumbledore. What'd he make it for that he needed that combination of magic abilities.
| 19 |
Nothing at all says that the Deluminator functioned as a... whatever it did for Ron all the time.
We only ever see Dumbledore use the Deluminator to turn off lights, so it's quite possible that he changed the Deluminator before he gave it on.
As for what he used it for... Turning out light when he didn't want to be seen.
| 25 |
[Batman] What college degrees does Bruce Wayne have?
|
Me personally, I'd like to think that he has a Bachelors of Science degree dual majoring in Forensic Science and Chemistry, with a minor in Genetics or something like Mechanical Engineering. Maybe an MBA thrown in there as well.
| 16 |
I don’t think he has ANY. It was canon for a while that he went to many of the finest colleges in the world to learn what he wanted to, and ONLY what he wanted to, and then he’d leave. Never got a degree at all.
| 29 |
[Star Wars] What if Windu killed Palpatine then Anakin killed him?
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So lets say Anakin didnt make it time and Windu killed Palpatine then Anakin kills Windu for taking away what he believed could save his wife. What happens next?
| 41 |
The biggest, most immediate impact of this would be that Order 66 would not have been executed. With Palpatine dead and Anakin unaware of the plan, the Jedi Order would be safe from the biggest immediate threat. With Dooku, Grievous, and Palpatine taken out, the war would wrap up quickly in any case.
As for Anakin, killing Windu is a big, fat step towards darkness. And one that it might not be possible to come back from. But without Palpatine promising to save his wife to tether him to the Dark Side, his resolve might not last. And without the power of the Republic's army and Senate behind him, Anakin wouldn't be able to lead a new Empire as Palpatine planned to do, especially with the Jedi Order still alive and ready to stand against him if he tried.
Best guess? Anakin would flee, maybe to plot against the Jedi, maybe just to stew in his darkness. Obi-Wan would be sent to find him and might succeed. But in any case, it seems likely that Padme would give birth without Anakin by her side. And that might be something he could sense.
And if she survived (which she might do without Anakin choking her or any of the Sidious lifestealing conspiracy theories taking place), the knowledge that his visions hadn't come true, that his wife and children had all survived, might be enough to bring him back. He would turn himself in to the judgement of the Council.
| 58 |
ELI5: Why does water stop evaporating when it reaches cloud-level, instead of floating into space?
|
Actual question from my actually 5 year old son, which I tried to research but couldn't understand the answer myself. Hoping someone can explain to both of us.
| 24 |
Cloud level itself is dependent on things like the temperature and moisture content of the air mass, and it varies widely.
Moist air rises until it reaches its dew point, the temperature where that moisture condenses out as visible water vapor that we know as clouds. Whatever altitude that occurs at (based on the atmospheric conditions) is "cloud level". There can be many such layers of clouds at any given time.
Vertical development, where the clouds are lofted much higher than they would otherwise be, is seen in atmospheric disturbances like thunderstorms that pump warm, humid air up into the atmosphere.
| 20 |
CMV: Describing lone wolf attacks, like the recent shooting in Las Vegas, as “evil” minimizes the social and personal responsibilities, deepening the problem and increasing the likelihood of future attacks.
|
[Vice President Pence](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/07/556396555/) and countless others in the media and in my own casual conversations have labeled the shooting and those like it as evil. This places blame on ethereal supernatural concepts and not the people and the societal issues at the heart of the tragedy.
The killer was compelled to carry out the act based on his own decisions and will. He surely had psychological issues, but these are not inherently evil. People struggle to have empathy for mass murderers so I see how it might be easier and more comforting to assign blame to generic evil forces. This causes long term damage as people fail to assume the collective societal responsibility. We as a country encourage the behavior through permissive gun laws, limited acknowledgement and treatment of psychological issues, and a score card approach where we rate shooters against each other for kill counts and style points.
A sober view of these tragedies would paint a picture of a country with problems we need to come together to solve, not a supernatural cause that can’t be brought to justice or practically addressed.
| 68 |
I think you're misunderstanding what people mean when they say these attacks are evil. That is a damning personal criticism of the shooter and his moral character; it strips him of no agency, holds him completely responsible, denies him all empathy and overwhelmingly denies any excuse anyone might conjure.
Think of evil as intelligence consciously pursuing entropy - that's precisely what this was.
| 14 |
Why doesnt the fed give money straight to the people instead of adjusting interest rates to keep inflation in check?
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Instead of lowering interest rates, the federal reserve could send money to people directly to set inflation targets and skip the middle man altogether (banks and federal government).
| 104 |
If the fed made direct payments to public, it would be creating liabilities (new base money) without increasing its assets. This is bad because if inflation were to rise, the central bank may not have sufficient amount of assets to sell (sales destroy base money) to control inflation. So “helicopter money” (what some economists call direct payments by the fed to the public) may lead to an inability to control inflation. The fed also provides the role of a “lender of last resort” meaning it lends to banks that are insolvent (don’t have enough reserves to meet depositors demands for withdrawal). If it gave up that role, banks would have a higher probability of failing.
| 94 |
ELI5: Why do throwing knives have a handle if you hold the blade while throwing?
| 53 |
As someone who has thrown knives for around 15 years allow me to clarify some things. First and foremost, you do not always throw a knife by the blade. The position of your grip on the blade is dependent on your size, the size of your knife, and the distance to the target. As you move closer to the target your grip should move closer to the balance point on the knife until you reach the center. At this point, you would generally flip the knife around to the other side and begin that same process again. Some throwing knives are designed with a point on both sides, but these are less common and even more uncommon among experienced hobbyists / professionals. The reason for this is IMO twofold. It makes the chances of sticking the target much easier which is seen as cheap and a cop out. And it is generally less safe in the event of a bounce back.(twice the chance of getting stabbed too)
| 33 |
|
What is the origin of spin, from the perspective of quantum field theory?
| 56 |
Spin arises directly from considering quantum mechanics with rotational symmetry, even without introducing field theory. In any quantum theory with a symmetry, you can arrange all states in irreducible projective unitary* representations of the mathematical group describing that symmetry. For rotations, these representations correspond to states which carry spin. Adding special relativity enlarges the symmetry group, introducing chirality and the fact that states carry a mass (and zero-mass particles have helicity instead of spin). These representations are naturally associated with/defined to be "particles."
Nothing says that you *have* to have particles with a given spin. But our own universe does take advantage of the ability to have particles with nonzero spin.
Relativistic quantum mechanics does end up leading you to introduce quantum fields and quantum field theory - you make all of the operators in your theory into operator-fields which transform in some (not necessarily unitary) representation of the Lorentz group. One usually matches fields with a certain representation with the particles which they create when acting on a state. But these are tools you use to describe spinfull particles, they're not really the "origin" of spin.
\* Or anti-unitary, which usually concerns time-reversal symmetry.
| 18 |
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ELI5: Why are certain items (like cars and mattresses) sold with such flexible pricing but other items are not?
|
I just bought a mattress and was able to negotiate and bring down the price on every element of the deal. But, why are certain items sold this way while other things have much more rigid pricing?
Are there specific market factors? Historical reasoning? Or is it just an anomaly?
And, would it benefit or hurt consumers if more or less items were sold this way?
| 41 |
Some would argue that all items have negotiable prices. As an example, you can totally negotiate with Walmart and end up paying a lower price.
The difference is that a car or mattress is a large dollar value purchase that is not made very often. So you (the consumer) has fairly large power because once you've bought you are unlikely to buy another for a long time. If you are just buying bread, well you buy bread all the time as does virtually everyone on the planet. So your power as a consumer is virtually zero.
| 16 |
ELI5: During an adrenaline rush, where was that adrenaline STORED before release? Did your body just make it on the fly? If it was already in your system, why didn't it affect you before the "rush?"
| 124 |
Your adrenal gland produces adrenaline in response to ~~hormonal~~ nerve triggers(1) when your fight or flight response is activated.
In short, adrenaline is ~~produced~~ released(2) when you need it. If it was just floating around inside of ~~you~~ your bloodstream then you would constantly be in a state of fight or flight. Being in that state all the time would be highly taxing on the body.
Edit : Corrected based below comments.
(1) See u/ahmadove
(2) See u/rested_green
Edit 2 : Spelling
| 61 |
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How do we recognize what language we hear is even if we don't know it?
| 194 |
All languages have characteristic sounds and sound patterns. This is called phonology. Languages also have characteristics beyond just sounds such as stress pattern, length of each sound, and pattern of intonation.
If you've heard the language before and had it identified to you, you probably picked up on some of the characteristics and can recognize them again.
| 45 |
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[Fallout] Would the Enclave consider the Sole Survivor pure enough for recruitment?
|
For the sake of the question this is the male SS and he has been in the wasteland for 1 month now give or take. feel free to imagine why or how the Enclave end up in the commonwealth.
My question is, if meeting, would the Enclave be more like "A pre war survivor? That has spent 200 years in a vault safe from radiation? And is an army veteran so he already fought for the USA?! GIVE THIS MAN A HELLFIRE POWER ARMOR"
Or more like "well yeah that's cool but you've been living in the wasteland for a while so you are now irradiated, kill him"
| 47 |
It may depend on which version of the Enclave the Sole Survivor encounters.
The "OG" Enclave, the ones hiding on the Oil Rig, do not consider anyone outside the Enclave to be worth recruiting. Even individuals who had been born in a Vault would not be eligible.
The Enclave based in Raven Rock, on the other hand, are a bit more welcoming. They contacted the Overseer of Vault 101 to ask if the Vault would be interested in cooperating with them, and it appears that the Enclave is receptive to recruiting wastelanders; for example, Project Purity scientist Anna Holt was able to join the Enclave at Raven Rock. This branch of the Enclave were led by Colonel Autumn, and Autumn's philosophies were much less focused on genetic purity than President John Henry Eden's, so that might explain why the Raven Rock Enclave were a bit more receptive towards wastelanders.
Therefore, if the Sole Survivor somehow made it onto the Oil Rig off the coast of California, the Enclave members there would consider him an outsider and would react with hostility. If the Sole Survivor met members of the Raven Rock detachment, though, and submitted to genetic testing, then there's a good chance the Enclave members there would be quite happy to recruit him.
| 44 |
ELI5: How do you not suffocate on an airplane during a long flight?
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I know that an aircraft cabin is pressurized while at low elevation, but how is there enough air for a really long flight? Ex. Dubai to San Francisco on an A380 with over 500 passengers.
| 26 |
It isn't sealed air tight, far from it.
Air is constantly pumped into the cabin through the climate control system. The jet engines take some of the air that passes through their compressors (bleed air) and sent it to the plane's HVAC system for the passengers.
| 55 |
[Matrix] If the agents can fuse body parts together (Mr. Anderson's lips.) Why can't they fuse his heart valves together when it matters?
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Was this an inconsistency or was it simply an illusion?
| 95 |
They can... until you take the red pill. While you are connected to the Matrix and have an intact carrier signal the machines can kill you at will. They probably wouldn't melt your anatomy together (that's the sort of thing that freaks out bystanders enough to reject the program) but they could give you a 'heart attack' or convert you into an Agent.
Once Neo takes that pill he's largely disconnected from their controls and they have to resort to more overt methods like gunfire, which usually tricks people's brains into thinking they've died when they're 'shot'. Of course Neo eventually transcends that too, realizing that there are no bullets, just as there is no spoon.
| 122 |
ELI5: why can't a power plant "dump" extra unused electricity?
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Some countries produce too much electricity at a certain period of the year, and have to pay another country to get rid of their extra own unconsumed electricity. Why can't a power plant produce more electricity than consumed, what's the physical obstacle to do so?
Also, what will the receiving country do if this surplus of electricity is again not consumed entirely?
| 57 |
The energy has to go somewhere. Power grids can deal with small mismatches in supply and load by allowing the frequency to deviate. A drop in frequency has the effect of reducing the load due to non-ELI5 effects like inductive reactance.
For large mismatches in supply and demand, simply pushing more energy into the grid will increase frequencies until the grid becomes unstable. The only way to “dump” the energy is to attach more load to dump it into. This could be in the form of batteries, pumped storage, hydrogen generators or anything else. The limiting factor is often the cost of installing new transmission lines. The cost of transmission is often much higher than the cost of generation for renewables.
Some thermal power plants are able to dump the excess energy into their cooling system without it ever being turned into electrical power but really it’s best to switch off or throttle down in most cases as it’s just a huge waste of resources unless there is some kind of combined heat and power system.
| 75 |
Am I Mentally Prepared for Grad School?
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Heyo, I work as a lab/field tech for a couple ecologists at a University and they’d like to make me one of their masters students. I am interested in a graduate degree and I do love ecology. However, I am concerned that I cannot handle the workload and the stress.
I have a pretty severe issue with depression (daily suicidal thoughts and the usual perpetual feeling of despair garbage). Fortunately, this has been improving for the first time in my life and I do not want to loose all the progress I’ve made.
I work with a handful of grad students and I hear a ton of complaints about how stressful the journey is and the occasional story of mental breakdowns.
My bosses are basically dropping this opportunity in my lap and I feel like it would be insane to pass it up. I don’t want to give this a try, fuck up, and loose this solid job and/or harm my relationships with my employers.
I am not concerned about the financial aspect too much. I have money saved that could cover fees and as an employee of the university, my tuition would only be $25 a class.
The project itself is something I am interested in and the people I work with are pretty great.
Hope this comes thru clear, typed this on a phone while anxiously sitting on the toilet.
Tldr: Im a depressed guy with an opportunity to get a masters thru my employer. Am worried my mental health could get worse if I pursue this and a failure could cost me my job.
| 59 |
If we all tell you don't do it, will you still want to do it? Do you have good coping skills and access to mental health resources? Will the people around you support you when you fail? Things to consider.
| 52 |
[Marvel] Scarlet Witch, Legion, and Franklin Richards find themselves alone in a room together. What's the best possible outcome of this scenario? What's the worst? And what possible reason would anyone have to make a meeting like this happen?
| 15 |
Whatever anyone does, it’ll only happen if Franklin is ok with it. His full scope of powers vastly exceeds their own.
Legion probably has Legion sort of mental issues; Wanda isn’t a walking insane breakdown of reality. She’s been to hell and back and had a couple of psychotic breaks but if no one is committing genocide on her family and people or literally murdering her family and children, she’s fine day to day. Think more hanging out and cooking paprikas and less “no more mutants.”
Plus her and Franklin would have absolutely known each other a few years.
Even if the worst case happens with Legion and Wanda, Franklin can deal with it. Or undo it.
| 34 |
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[LIMITLESS] What can the Limitless drug really do?
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[Here](http://limitlesscbs.wikia.com/wiki/NZT-48) is the wikia page. [Here](http://limitlesscbs.wikia.com/wiki/Brian_Finch) is a page for the user. Are these correct or have they been inflated? Thank you.
| 22 |
It might be *slightly* overstated, but NZT is indeed a miracle drug, giving one considerable mentat abilities. It however must be noted that taking NZT doesn't mean that you'll get these abilities by default and all at once. And to have access to advanced abilities you already must possess a keen mind.
It's sort of Super-Soldier serum for your brain. Makes average good and makes good great. Having perfect recollection seems to be a default effect of the drug, as well as heigtened cognition. It doesn't allow "omnilonguistics" as it stated in the wiki, since it took Brian a considerable amount of series to learn difficult foreign language - even under NZT.
Similarly it lists "hyperagility", probably referring to Edward Morra dodging a sniper bullet, but it has more to do with high mental processing speed, allowing him to consider circumstances and react accordingly.
| 23 |
[Marvel/DC] Who was the first super hero to come back to life?
| 21 |
I think it is Jean Grey, who died as Marvel Girl, saving her fellow X-men by piloting a wrecked shuttle back to Earth, exposing herself to deadly radiation along the way. She was reborn as the Phoenix, the radiation and event propelling her abilities to a much more powerful level. Her new name "Phoenix" references this rebirth.
Superman died a little more than a decade later, defending the world from Doomsday. The mantle of Superman was then fought over by several would be Men of Steel: The Last Son of Krypton, John Henry Irons, Superboy, and Cyborg-Superman. The real Man of Steel eventually came back to life, after his apparent death he had been put in a stasis chamber to power the Last Son of Krypton, who was actually an ancient Kryptonian weapon known as the Eradicator.
Not sure if these were the first but they were certainly two of the most prominent.
| 21 |
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CMV: You should not lose your driver's license over nonpayment of a fee
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There are several fees that if you are delinquent on, you can have your driver's license revoked. Examples are child support in some states such as [Texas](https://www.dps.texas.gov/DriverLicense/DelinquentChildSupportRevocation.htm) and [California](http://www.childsup.ca.gov/home/childsupportawarenessmonth2012/driverlicensereleaseopportunity.aspx) (and presumably most-all others that I haven't researched on), nonpayment of a fine for a municipal violation ([John Oliver did a story of it here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto) i.e. traffic court fines). There may be other fees I don't know of.
Revoking someone's driver's license should only be done when they drive recklessly or irresponsibly. Revoking a driver's license solely for insolvency, even if it is voluntary nonpayment, is a terrible idea. It does not help anyone. Most Americans drive to work and many rely on a driver's license for their jobs. When you do this, you are severely hindering their capacity to work and pay the fine. It helps no one for your capability to earn money and comply with the law to be impeded.
You need these fees paid, but by suspending their DL you have jeopardized their means to reliably pay them. This is especially problematic when it comes to child support because it ends up hurting the child.
Change my view that revoking driver's licenses solely over insolvency is a horrible idea. Driver's license revocation should only be for wrongs that relate to driving, or perhaps being exposed as obtaining a license illegally (i.e. with a fake ID). It should not be over things completely unrelated to driving like nonpayment of a fine.
EDIT: some grammar
_____
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| 167 |
Revocation is a form of punishment by fear. While it's true that it may end up punishing the child, there are very few punishments that the government as an incentive.
It's really hard to get someone unwilling to pay fees to actually pay. Typically you have to threaten something they care about. For some people, they don't care if they lose their credit score or if they rack up more interest. They'll just owe more and more and more.
So now we have several methods of forcing people to pay:
- Taking away houses or property
- Revoking driver's licenses
- Taking out money from a person's bank account
- Jail time
In all four of these situations, the offender is less capable of actually providing payments to a child. No house means homelessness means possibly no job. No license means no driving to the job. Taking out money literally takes out the amount they're capable of paying. And finally jail time means no job or income.
But there's not much else that you can do to really threaten someone. You can't threaten to take away their small possessions (like phone or gaming consoles or TV) because they can move it whenever they want, very easily. You can't threaten to break their legs because it's illegal. You can't threaten to prevent them from shopping because they'll just use cash. You can't lock them in their house because again, no job.
In the end, revoking a license is the most cost-effective and least impacting way of forcing people to pay. It sucks and can take a turn for the worse, but there aren't many other options here.
| 24 |
ELI5: What are the major arguments against capitalism and what are the main proposed alternatives?
| 32 |
Capitalism in this context is interpreted to mean a free, unregulated monetary market. If you want alternatives to a monetary system completely, I'd recommend specifying so.
-
Proponents of a complete free-market monetary system will point out that it gives individual freedom, and allows those who 'know how to play' the money system, who are allegedly knowledgeable, resourceful and benevolent, to gain the power (in form of large amounts of money) with which to incur their positive benefits to society.
They'll also point out anyone who's poor in this system must not be valuable enough to society to want to feed, and that society taking care of them for them motivates them to put even less effort into society, thus terms along the lines of "socialist cesspool", which is a society which loses all progress from trying to idealistically take care of everyone, taking away motivation from everyone to contribute.
These are positions for an unregulated free market, and the reasonings for all Western societies having adopted variations of this model. As such, it's not an unsuccessful system, more of a the-best-we-can-do system granted humans won't be motivated to contribute to society unless it's necessary for their own survival.
As such, reasonings against capitalism aren't primarily useful for replacing capitalism with a different system, but more to improve the current capitalistic system, to make it more fair and useful.
-
Dangers of capitalistic systems include monopoly, where for instance a company may sell something basic like water, and if no one else is there to sell water, then you can charge anything you want for it, and customers have no choice but to buy it, because you need water to survive. A company can tell you you have to pay $100 for a bottle of water if they want, even if they could sell it for $1 and make money, nothing tells them to sell it for cheap. Thus companies can make large amounts of money for no real reason.
Corruption is one of the biggest dangers of capitalistic systems. This means a person with economic power pays money to easily-manipulated government officials to circumvent rules and regulations, thus gaining imbalanced economic advantages. Say for instance a large company pays the government to turn down other companies wanting to compete with your company, then you can get a monopoly advantage in a market which in turn allows you to get a large amount of money which allows you to continue paying the government to turn other companies down.
Even if you're not strictly going against rules, you can still gain unfair advantages by exploiting flaws in the currently existing rules. For instance in presidential elections, you can invest money into a candidate to have them gain a much bigger chance at winning than the other party through expensive campaigning, and there's nothing in the rules saying you can't do it. The person you then paid to put into office can then perfectly legally alter the rules to remove even more regulations against paying into election campaigns, then you can pay even more money into a candidate the next election. Thus companies can essentially pay indefinitely to have elections go their way, without ever technically breaking a rule. This is a major controversy of how democratic democratic systems are.
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In general, what you expect to happen with free market capitalism is for ingenious and hard-working people to move upward in society, and for stupid and lazy people to move downward in society. In reality, this doesn't always, or even most of the time, happen in true free-market societies. This because the above things happen all the time, companies do their best to influence laws and regulations to make the playing field stacked in their favor. It's a lot easier to pay money to be able to stay rich and making money, than to actually work hard and stay the best alternative on the market. This leads to bad-product companies staying rich because they're already rich, and good-product companies staying poor because they're already poor, thus going directly against the purpose behind free-market capitalism.
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If you ask a left-wing person, then the left wing party tries to achieve this balance, whilst right wing parties are essentially paid for by large corporations and only represent them, and are thus the downfall of capitalism. If you ask a right wing person, then the right wing party tries to achieve this balance, whilst left wing parties just want to give everyone things for free and be the downfall of capitalism. So whether there exists a 'true' proposed alternative to unregulated free-market capitalism, is up to your perception.
| 32 |
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[star wars] what happened to the droid army after the war?
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We know the leaders were wiped out by anikin but are the droids themselves just sitting around gathering dust now or were they dismantled? Would someone be able to reactive them somehow?
| 23 |
We don't know exactly.
Most were probably scraped, however we do see some repurposed B1s being used as either personal security droids or bounty hunters.
Also a large section of the droid army **didn't** receive the deactivation code and are still out there waiting for orders on some very remote separatist outposts.
| 27 |
ELI5: Why are my muscles so weak when just coming awake?
|
So I have always noticed that upon first waking I have very little strength in my hands and other muscles. My grip is weak and only after waking up a couple of minutes do I get more strength. Is this due to a lack of blood flow, oxygen levels, nerves waking up? Why does this happen?
| 110 |
your brain paralyzes you while you are asleep. these paralysis hormones take some time to get reabsorbed. they release and absorb in cycles called REM and Non REM sleep cycles.
This is also why you will feel more groggy and heavy when waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle "deep sleep" instead of at the high point of the cycle (when you would typically naturally wake up without an alarm clock). you have more of the chemicals in your system.
| 85 |
ELI5: What is Homeopathy and does it really work?
| 24 |
Homeopathy is:
> the treatment of disease by minute doses of natural substances that in a healthy person would produce symptoms of disease.
Basically, they take something that might cause you problems, and then dillute it an extreme amount, to the point where mathematically there is not a single atom left of the original stuff.
So a drop of arsenic in a gallong of water, shake it, empty it all but a drop, fill it, repeat 100 times. Then take a drop of that water, and that's your treatment.
There is no evidence that homeopathy is an effective medical treatment.
| 33 |
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ELI5: How can the gravity from the sun keep the planets locked in orbit, but we are weightless in space.
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So basically if the gravity from the sun is strong enough to keep the planets orbiting it, why don’t we feel that gravity in space? How is it strong enough to pull on the earth but not on a person?
| 22 |
We are weightless in space because we are in freefall. Imagine being trapped in a falling elevator. You and the elevator would fall at the same rate, so you'd 'float' inside it.
If you're in orbit, you experience the same thing - the ISS, for example, is falling around the planet constantly (that's what an orbit is). If you were travelling to, say, Mars, you would essentially be falling towards Mars.
| 31 |
ELI5: why can doctors restart a transplanted heart with presumably high success rates, while a flat-lined heart is usually fatal?
|
For the sake of my question, let’s assume that cardiac arrest was due to factors that were then corrected (such as massive blood loss).
Why is not having a shockable rhythm in cardiac arrest different than having a heart that was taken out of the donor’s body and at that point doesn’t have any rhythm at all?
I understand that during a transplant doctors are literally inside someone’s chest and shocking the donor heart to restart it that way. But why do those shocks have a different effect than the shocks from a defibrillator, and wouldn’t doctors be able to save someone in cardiac arrest if they took them to the OR and cracked their chest open and shocked their heart in the same manner transplant surgeons do?
| 33 |
A heart transplant surgery takes 4-10 hours.
The only reason the recipient doesn’t die is because they have a bypass machine pumping their blood for them, and a ventilator breathing for them. That keeps their brain function going.
If a person has a 4 hour long severe cardiac event that requires correction, the odds are that they’ve endured brain damage if not brain death. If there’s no brain to power the nervous system, there’s nothing to make the heart beat.
So a transplant heart can be “jump started” and then the brain takes over, whereas a brain dead patient may or may not be able to sustain a heartbeat depending on the type/severity of the damage.
It all depends on the brain.
| 37 |
[The Elder Scrolls] Why is every world-saving hero predisposed to prison?
|
The Eternal Champion - Former prisoner
The Agent - Former prisoner turned imperial agent
The Nerevarine - Exhiled to morrowind
The Hero of Kvatch - Former prisoner
The Last Dragonborn - To be executed
Seriously, why is incarceration such a common thing for world-saving heroes?
| 65 |
You’ve got it backwards, world-saving heroes aren’t predisposed to prison, the Prisoners are predisposed to world-saving. Well, not entirely. The act of freeing the unknown prisoner gives them a blank slate, and frees them from the bounds of fate more or less. That makes it easier for them to slip into certain roles or mantles, some of which happen to be world-saving ones.
| 83 |
ELI5: If me and another person are looking in a mirror and I make eye contact with his reflection, is he making eye contact with my reflection also or looking at something else?
| 94 |
The angle of reflection is equal for you both. So you're both looking at each other. With a little thought this will be obvious.
You'll notice that movies will sometimes cheat at this. A girl will be admiring herself in the mirror but in actuality she's looking at the camera.
| 63 |
|
CMV: Most of the current rioting/looting is thrill seeking behavior, not 'political' in the traditional sense
|
While I consider essentially all actions to have a political aspect to them, I think the reasons behind the current rioting/looting falls outside the context of what most people consider to be political behavior and is simply thrill seeking behavior.
Obviously, being OK with collateral damage to small and large businesses in order to satisfy an urge for an adrenaline rush says something about your lack of enthusiasm for our current political/economic system. However, my view is that most people engaging in this behavior are not attempting to make an overt political point about that system.
My view could be changed by pointing me to interviews with actual rioters/looters where they express an overt political reason for their actions, or evidence that they are simply looking to obtain material goods they otherwise would have trouble affording. That said, those most willing to talk to media outlets will also be the most political and not necessarily representative of the whole. If there is any academic research into past mass looting events, I would be very interested in those findings.
I do believe that some of the people involved are provocateurs; however, I find it very unlikely that they consist of more than a small percentage (although with possible outsize influence on how events unfold on any given night).
| 68 |
Riots often occur in ***reaction to a grievance or out of dissent***. Historically, riots have occurred due to poverty, unemployment, poor living conditions, governmental oppression, taxation or conscription, conflicts between ethnic groups (race riot) or religions (sectarian violence, pogrom), the outcome of a sporting event (sports riot, football hooliganism) or frustration with legal channels through which to air grievances.
Nothing about it is related to thrill seeking behavior.
Can you define `thrill seeking behavior` and provide examples?
| 10 |
ELI5: How exactly does my brain know to wake me up at exactly the same time every day, with or without an alarm?
|
On days I want to sleep in, my brain wakes me up anyway. Help
| 215 |
Biorhythms and habits. The explanation is a bit long, but there's a tl;dr at the end.
In a nutshell, the largest culprit are biorhythms. Living things do have internal clocks, it's not just a figure of speech. You have a lot of chemicals, mostly hormones, that go up and down regularly, in relation to what happens around and in you. These are all clocks that regulate when things must happen in your body.
The ones you may know best from school are those that regulate the female period. The hormones change during the month and define when the period should start.
You have biological clocks (or biorhythms or circadian rhythms) for other things too, such as eating, and also sleeping.
So now the new questions is "what does regulate the hormones?"
As for sleeping, scientists know sunlight has a big role, by stimulating the production of melatonin (which is the sleep hormone and requires sunlight). Stress, eating habits, exercise, etc also regulate the hormones connected to the sleep cycle.
But this just defines a rough, good sleep pattern (so that you are sleepy at night and wake up somewhere during the morning).
It's the habits that pinpoint the exact moment.
Your body and your brain are wired to create habits. It helps doing things right and not always worry about the details: imagine having to put all your attention to opening a door every single time you do it. Not efficient.
The brain works so that repeated behaviors change your connections brain connections. These connections are easily built if the behavior has a positive result. These new connections make it easier for the behavior to be repeated, even unconsciously. That's how you learn.
With all this stuff in mind, here's the tl;dr
When you go to sleep and wake up at the same time you tune the sleep hormones cycle so that it matches the same time frame every day. With time, this becomes an habit as the brain changes and learns to do that more often. It becomes easier to do that and all your biological mechanisms work fine, in tune and are happy that nothing is disrupting the equilibrium.
On a side note, this last part is also why having an healthy sleep pattern does wonders for health and mood.
| 64 |
CMV: Cities should outsource all investigation/prosecution of police misconduct to private investigators and law firms
|
I have no idea whether Darren Wilson was acting in reasonable self-defence or not, but I think we can all agree that the prosecutor was shit. If the PROSECUTION is bringing up crap like how Mike Brown might have been made violent by "super powerful weed" then he either is a moron or not actually trying to secure a conviction. Since the dude graduated from law school, I can only assume the latter.
Problem is, this kind of shit happens all the time, and not even just when the victim is black. Police and DAs are very tight knit, and don't want to cross one another, leading to an inevitable conflict of interest. We can see this play out in the incredibly light non-punishments officers get, even in cases way more clear cut than Ferguson. Our current system of holding police accountable to the public clearly isn't working.
Now, obviously creating an entirely new police department and prosecutors just to handle police matters is impractical, but contracting out these functions to the private sector is not. One could even stipulate that such contracts can only go to lawyers/PIs who have never served as police officers and have no police in their immediate family. This would eliminate the conflict of interest and lead to fair and honest investigations and prosecutions.
_____
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| 30 |
Having a private investigator is problematic because private investigators don't have the power to do things police do such as make arrests, execute warrants, etc.
What would make more sense would be to have a dedicated investigation unit within a different department with coextensive jurisdiction such as state police and the state attorney general's office investigating allegations within a local PD.
| 15 |
[Star Wars] If Darth Vader was to use Force Lightning, would it come from his arm stub or his artificial fingertips?
|
Palpatine's and Dooku's Lightning comes from their extremities, and since Vader's extremities are his stubs, it would make sense that the lightning would come from there.
| 28 |
It'll come from Vader's hands as well. The Force doesn't so much care whether your hand is biological or not as it does whether or not you consider your hand a part of yourself.
Given that Vader uses hand gestures as part of how he uses his other Force powers, they're likely to be involved in Lightning.
| 42 |
ELI5: Why does less sleep sometimes make you feel more rested
| 2,504 |
Sleep happens in cycles. Basically, you have a long period of NREM sleep (Non-Rapid-Eye-Movement) with several stages followed by a shorter period of REM sleep. How rested you feel has less to do with how long you sleep and more to do with at which part of your sleep cycle you wake up. If you wake up at the end of a cycle, you’ll feel way more rested than if you wake up in the middle.
| 1,611 |
|
[Fantastic 4] How thin can Mr. Fantastic become?
|
Also, secondary question, how far can he stretch/how much space can he take up?
| 48 |
He can stretch to about 1,500 feet before it becomes painful for him, flatten himself to the thickness of a sheet of paper, or make himself thin enough to pass through the eye of a needle.
I couldn't say how voluminous he can make himself.
| 28 |
I believe attempted murder and murder should be treated as the same crime. CMV
|
hypthetical: Someone makes me mad. I bring a gun to their house, and attempt to shoot them. This creates two scenarios: one where I shoot them in the head, killing them, and serve twenty years in jail. In the second I narrowly miss them, they call the cops, I'm arrested, and serve five. If the intent is the same, why should failed murder attempts be treated lesser than successful ones?
| 22 |
Having a lesser punishment for attempted murder incentivizes would-be murderers in the middle of carrying out their plans from following through because they know the punishment will be greatly reduced if they restrain themselves in the very end and don't actually kill someone.
Also attempted murder is a much harder crime to prove definitively than actual murder because it is difficult to definitively tell if someone was trying to kill a person or simply harm them. Both are bad but a less severe crime should have a less severe punishment and since it is less clear with attempted murder that the person wanted someone dead the punishment is less severe.
| 32 |
How close could a machine get to the Sun?
|
I was reading about the Parker probe and it's amazing just how close that thing is going to get to the sun; but it of course made me wonder how much closer we could get. The Parker probe basically uses a big oriented shield to protect itself, and behind the shield it's more a normal spacecraft.
Is it conceivable that anything could be constructed that could survive passing through the corona? It seems stuff must be whipping around like crazy in there, plus the insane temperatures. To my knowledge the highest known melting points are in the thousands of degrees, but I figure there is also some kind of blast force or something going on there.
*Edit* and if the corona is so easy, can you conceive of a spacecraft passing through the *photosphere* and surviving?
Not that it is possible with any known technology, but is it even physically conceivable that something could survive a close approach towards the surface of the sun? What would be necessary (special materials? some kind of super-magnet?)?
*edit 2*
Thanks all for the entertaining and informative comments! I will let you all know when my machine is completed and ready for launch.
| 3,527 |
If you have a good heat shield and heat transported to the back of your spacecraft, you can essentially get to the point where friction is a problem. Typically these spacecrafts are in a very elliptic orbit so they are are only very close for hours at a time. Tungsten alloys or some high melting point ceramics will do.
| 1,645 |
[Man Of Steel] Why Even Terraform Earth?
|
Overall I generally do enjoy a Man of Steel Flaws and All.
But one thing a lot of people tend to criticize is Zod behavior in the movie. They said his plan to terraform with his kind of stupid because, if the kryptonians are already Gods on Earth with the yellow sun and Rich atmosphere giving them the ability to fly and shoot lasers. Why even bother terraforming Earth? Keeping Earth the way it is, would mean the future generation of kryptonians would have powers. Then having powers would make them taking over the planet and creating the next generation of genetically engineered kryptonians much easier.
If you wondering why I'm asking this [this video kind of really upset me and made me question a lot of what I liked about the movie to begin with.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pKK_u6-zraM)
| 64 |
Kryptonian society was built upon everyone being genetically crafted to fit their role given at birth. This meant Zod was designed to be the 'perfect' general and defender of Krypton, for better or worse. This is also what lead to their demise, as it was a flawed system, especially given each individual's inability to adapt beyond a very specialized area, beholden to these overwhelming needs they were created with, urges they couldn't ignore. Note that Kal-El was different, born naturally, free of these urges. He could be anything he wanted to be.
This was most apparent when their leadership could not look beyond the immediate need for energy: they were warned that they were about to destroy their own planet and should have been looking elsewhere for energy, but they wouldn't entertain the idea. They likely had an overwhelming need to stay on Krypton (no deep space travel anymore), in addition to the need to provide for their people (avoiding an energy crisis), which overcame common sense (don't destroy Krypton).
So here we have poor General Zod. Krypton was gone. His purpose was gone. Except, it wasn't. Here he had a World Engine, and within reach was the Codex. He could rebuild Krypton, and bring his people back. Nothing else mattered.
Sure, if he didn't terraform Earth, they'd be much stronger. But then it wouldn't be Krypton. He NEEDED Krypton to come back, no matter the cost. So what if that meant wiping out all life on Earth? He was designed not to care. All that mattered was to fulfill his purpose: Protect Krypton.
| 103 |
Can we cut wasteful spending by giving government agencies incentives for having a budget surplus?
|
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this, if it isn't, I'll take it down. Bare in mind I'm not an economist, it's just a random thought. So here goes:
I've worked for a private company that is a supplier to different agencies of my local government. It's no surprise that prices of the products are way higher than the market since government contracts are essentially money printers for private companies.
Besides that, an agency/ministry will deliberately blow through their budget at the end of the year. The reason for doing so is avoid budget cuts for the next year.
The way funding is allocated to these government agencies incentives over spending and would increase government debt.
My idea for this goes someting like this:
At the end of the year, budget surplus will be tallied and the agency with the highest surplus will receive priority funding for the next year as well as a budget increase. Those that don't have a surplus will undergo an audit for overspending.
Half the surplus funds will be collected to put back into the treasury and will be given back on the next budget allocation.
Will someting like this work?
| 71 |
Public choice theory is the study of incentives by government agencies, politicians and bureaucrats. The general idea is that the incentives of those in positions of government don’t align directly with the hypothetical benevolent dictator, and choices are guided by self enrichment or other objectives.
In one model by Niskanden, government agencies seek to maximize budgets, not the social welfare of those affected. It sounds like you are implicitly taking this incentive on through a budget surplus incentive.
Sounds like the obvious perversion of incentives here are to maximize surplus by reducing expenditures as much as possible without the agency being penalized for that. So what is to stop a department like housing or education from cutting as much discretionary funding as possible in order to maximize next year’s budget? In general, if an agency had the ability to cut services in such a way that was socially desirable, why would we then want to increase those budgets in subsequent years?
At the same time, why not audit all agencies? Oh, yeah because those auditors are also rational actors in the game. So we then need to audit the auditors. But who audits them? It’s auditors all the way down. Until we reach the turtle shell.
| 53 |
[Physics] What exactly determines how a radioactive isotope will decay?
|
Physics graduate here, I've got a decent understanding of nuclear physics but I've never seen an explanation of what exactly determines if a radioactive isotope will decay by alpha, beta, gamma or a mixture of the three.
| 26 |
That's sort of a backwards way of thinking about it. A nucleus is unstable if there is a more energetically favorable configuration which can be reached without violating any relevant conservation law.
So an unstable nucleus is unstable *because* it can decay by one or more of the typical nuclear decay paths.
For every given nucleus, there exists another nucleus which can be reached by each of the various ground state decay paths (alpha, beta^(+), beta^(-), nucleon emission, spontaneous fission, etc.). If the daughter nucleus which is reached by a given decay path is more energetically favorable than the parent, then that decay will occur (assuming no selection rule prevents it).
The sum of the decay constants for each possible decay path determines the total decay constant, and thus the "total instability" of the parent nucleus.
| 11 |
How they go about laying the foundation for an oil rig?
| 42 |
Oil rigs aren't on a 'foundation'. They are an actual metal rig that sits on the existing ground. They will drill out a hole and cap it off with cement for later use after they have reached their desired depth. Think space shittle tracks. The big tracks they use to move around the large space equipment. Things are different on the water. The rig floats over the hole they are digging with anchors laid out for support.
Source: Move those things from time to time.
| 10 |
|
[fullmetal alchemist brotherhood] what was truth trying to say to father before dragging him back inside the gate of knowledge?
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Never understood truth whole monologue to father, I know father gate is completely blank implying that he didn’t learn anything but is that all truth was trying to communicate?
| 16 |
The truth was essentially telling Father that he was wrong, that he wasn't, and never was better than humans. That stealing power from others did not make him strong, and that he was every bit as conceited as the humans he derided earlier when he said Truth existed to punish boastful humans. He was telling him that for all the power he had amassed, he still understood nothing, and that for that he deserved to be, and would be punished.
Juxtaposed with this is his talk to Edward in his final transmutation, where he calls Ed's choice to give up alchemy the right answer. Ed states he doesn't need, alchemy, as long as he has the connections to the people he has come to rely on. The Truth's point, as can be seen across these two interactions, is that what is valuable, what makes someone strong and worthwhile, is not the power they amass for themselves, but rather the connections and relationships they build with others, that trusting and relying on each other is what really matters.
And so, Truth punishes the one who didn't learn to be bound forever, while giving the one who did grow and learn exactly what he wanted for so long.
| 31 |
[Indiana Jones] Is every world religion "true" in the Indiana Jones Universe (including books if anyone's read them)?
| 255 |
No, it is not that every religion is "true" but rather there is some underlying truth upon which some religions have been extrapolated from.
So there is an Ark of the Covenant, a Holy Grail, and weird glowy potato rocks; and Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism have incorporated the existence of these things into their own beliefs. That no more makes those religions "true" than "Hot Shots! Part Deux" is "true" for referencing real-life individual Saddam Hussein.
| 268 |
|
Am I being fleeced?
|
Morning all, non-developer here with a quick question. I am having an app built and have just been quoted 16 hours for a button on a webpage that will launch the app (Android or IOS). I have (very) basic knowledge of HTML and do web design myself and 16 hours seems like a lot. However, I am also aware that people often grossly underestimate the work that goes into things outside their own realm of expertise, so am a bit unsure of what to think. Thoughts?
| 21 |
"The Button" doesn't exist on its own.
One might need to adjust multiple things on that page to make it fit it. You might also want to pass some data from that page into the app, and that's additional complexity (and thus, work).
Add things like tests for that data transfer - and it can easily become 16+ hour job.
| 31 |
ELI5: How does the ocean stay salty?
|
With rain and all the freshwater rivers flowing into the ocean, how does it maintain a similar level of saltiness? Should't it be getting less salty over time?
| 23 |
Rivers pick up small amounts of salt on their way to the ocean, but mostly it's a matter of the water cycle. The amount of fresh water flowing in to the oceans and diluting them is balanced by the amount of water evaporating from the ocean (salt doesn't evaporate, so this concentrates salt in the oceans).
Over time the two forces balance each other pretty well.
| 13 |
[Star Wars] When Obi Wan saw his master die, was it anger that drove him to defeat Darth Maul?
| 120 |
Obi-Wan's victory over Darth Maul was his true Jedi trial, and what made him ready to be a Knight. This is underdeveloped in the film, but Obi-Wan's arc is learning to step out of Qui-Gon's shadow and become a Jedi in his own right. This is established in their first conversation, when Qui-Gon says that Obi will take the Trial when returning to Coruscant.
His reliance on Qui-Gon was Obi-Wan's greatest weakness, but his ability to come to terms with his Master's death and, at the last second, let go of his anger is what drove him to victory. This of course sets up Obi-Wan's downfall as well - he never truly feels like Anakin's Master, or that he can ultimately control him.
| 112 |
|
ELI5: The difference between the different degrees of murder and manslaughter
|
Just curious as to how one would get charged with each of these offences. Thanks in advance!
| 54 |
Murder requires:
* intent to kill, or
* knowledge that death is a foreseeable outcome of your actions
First degree murder is premeditated...you thought about it beforehand and still decided you wanted to kill someone.
Second degree murder is a spur of the moment reaction...you get mad or scared, you try to kill someone.
Manslaughter is when someone dies accidentally but your criminal actions contributed to it. Voluntary manslaughter is acting directly against someone, involuntary is general negligence leading to a death.
Also, different jurisdictions use different names.
| 43 |
ELI5: What is happening when I try to hit 'back' on a webpage a thousand times, but it just keeps reloading the page and won't go back?
| 56 |
some web site builders are jerks.
For some pages, they have 2 pages (or more) instead of one. The first page is just a redirect to the second. You don't notice this when you go to the page, but when you use the back button, you just go back to the first page which redirects you back to the second page so you can't easily go back.
| 45 |
|
[Assassin's Creed] (Original Game) How did Al Mualim take away Altair's abilities?
|
In the beginning of the game, Altair has all his equipment and abilities until he breaks the creed and is punished with loss of rank. It's easy to take rank and equipment, but how did Al Mualim manage to confiscate, for example, Altair's ability to Dodge?
Did the potion that made him experience death also wipe his memory? If so, how is Al Mualim able to 'give back' that ability at will? Or did Altair still have those abilities but was forbidden from using them?
| 54 |
Animus magic. One of two things was happening:
- The real Altair didnt use those abilities while he was being punished, so Desmond couldn't either.
- For skill-based abilities like dodge, Desmond is not fully synched yet, and is having difficulty using Altair's body to it's full potential.
| 39 |
ELI5: How does Twilight Sleep (anesthesia that keeps you awake but you forget the procedure) work?
|
If I'm freaking out about the procedure, will I be freaking out during it but not remember?
| 109 |
Am an anesthetist (or anesthesiologist in American)
Procedural sedation can use different drugs, but two hypnotics in particular stop your brain forming new memories. Propofol is short acting and wears off very quickly, and associated with feelings of calm and euphoria. Midazolam is the other drug, and can stop you forming memories even 24 hours later.
There is no guarantee that you'll forget everything. Only proper general anaesthesia can do that, but the job of the staff looking after you is to help keep you calm and relaxed.
| 60 |
ELI5 How do people “steer” hot air balloons?
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Since hot air balloons don’t have a propellor sails I’m just confused on how they navigate and not just float away endlessly or crash into stuff until they come down
| 51 |
You have two controls on a balloon, you can rise and you can fall. That’s it. A skilled balloonist might be able to take advantage of that to change lateral speed based on winds, but the major part of ‘steering’ a balloon is by launching and recovering from known positions and having a clear grasp of the prevailing winds.
| 101 |
ELI5 why it can be too cold to start a fire
|
I was scrolling through youtube shorts and stumbled across [this scishow short](https://youtube.com/shorts/fCv6a5jYWa8?feature=share) from Hank explaining how it can literally be too cold to start a fire.
I did not know this possible and his explanation did not make sense to me. Can someone either break down what he said into something more manageable, or explain it in a different way? Thanks!
also PLEASE don't eat me alive if I flaired this wrong. I failed chem. I never took physics. I have received five different answers on whether or not this is a "physics", "chemistry", or "other" flair.
| 21 |
Fire needs three things: heat, fuel, and air/oxygen. That’s because the chemical reaction for combustion needs three things: energy, a “reducer” and an oxidizer. If the fuel/oxygen mixture isn’t hot enough, it won’t ignite; think about gasoline vapors when you fill up a car. The fuel (gasoline vapor) and oxygen (air) are mixed, but it’s not hot enough to ignite.
Usually an open flame (a lit wick or match) or a spark are hot enough to ignite the fuel. However, if the air is extremely cold, it’s possible that the air pulls away heat faster than the reaction can generate it. Therefore, the fire will go out; think about blowing out a match. You’re putting **more** oxygen into the fire; that’ll just make it worse! Except you’re taking away heat at the same time; if you take away heat faster than the additional oxygen can burn with the fuel, the fire will go out.
| 62 |
I have a philosophy/religion question..If "God" is Omnipotent and Omniscient, why did he create the universe? Was he bored or something?
| 21 |
I think the leading modern protestant Christian philosophical view on this question is best framed by Alvin Plantinga.
Plantinga is perhaps best known for his "free will defense", a response to the classic problem of evil. The problem of evil asks a somewhat related question -- why would an omnipotent / omniscient / benevolent God create or allow evil. Plantinga's response (see his book God, Freedom, and Evil (1974)) is that "the price for creating a world in which (persons) produce moral good is creating one in which they also produce moral evil."
Perhaps more clearly stated in an earlier version of his argument in 1965, "it is possible that God, even being omnibenevolent, would desire to create a world which contains evil if moral goodness requires free moral creatures."
Now look at the logic of this argument at a more basic level, ignoring the existence of evil. Plantinga is arguing that the good moral acts of created persons have positive moral value, and that God's omnibenevolence involves something approximating the maximization of universal moral good. This implies that the reason for God creating ANYTHING is because God could forsee that doing so was the best possible action he could take to maximize universal moral good.
Now this runs into evidencial troubles when you consider "natural evil", like famines that cause children to starve, among other potential difficulties with the argument. But of course it should be unsurprising that arguments on the border between theology and philosophy are controversial to say the least, and Plantinga is unusually well regarded for a modern religious philosopher, so I'll take his view as a pretty good example.
| 14 |
|
[40k] Abaddon and a small company of his chosen get lost in a warp storm and end up on present-day Earth. What happens next?
|
Obviously he can't rage at the Emperor and the Imperium cause they aren't a thing yet. Well the Emps is here but no one knows where. What does Abaddon do?
| 23 |
The Emperor most definitely exists as a person at that point, he's just either working behind the scenes or he is living as a 'normal' human would live, with a family, job, etc and occasionally faking his death.
I would bet he would sense something about Abaddon, a familiarity but also his corruption. Even before he was Emperor, the man who would become Emperor was a force of immense proportions. His psychic powers and physical abilities were immense but purposefully shielded from the humans of Earth who were not ready to realize him in his glory.
Abaddon has two options, he can either make a big show of himself and attempt to draw out the Emperor, such as attacking cities or killing innocents or he could attempt to find the Emperor through subterfuge. Either way the Emperor probably wouldn't like being called out/searched for. Either way Abaddon would be picking a losing fight.
| 32 |
[edge of tomorrow] how does Rita know...
|
How does Rita know she lost her power?
| 30 |
she did say ( or cage did) that after using the reset powers, both could feel the power inside, like a sixth sense kinda feeling. Rita could probably feel the lack of power when she woke up after the blood transfusion.
| 31 |
[Naruto] how do you practice any technique that will kill you if you use it?
|
Naruto has several jutsu (usually forbidden jutsu) that will straight up kill the user the first time you do it. How could Guy or Dai know what their 8th gate technique can do if after you use it you die. Night Guy and Sekizo don’t seem much like his other moves. Plus he wasn’t surprised at all when his Night Guy technique took the form of a giant dragon like he knew exactly what was going to happen. He had a near perfect control of it despite it being the first time he ever used those taijutsu techniques
| 20 |
The eight gates unlock greater power, but the thing that causes injury is actually *using* that power. It's similar to how in the real world an adrenaline rush can give you the strength to lift a car at the cost of injuring yourself, but you only actually injure yourself when you lift the car. Just getting an adrenaline rush won't hurt you unless you have an underlying heart problem or something.
I imagine Guy and Dai practice opening their chakras during meditation, and perhaps actively train by just opening the first gate and sparring. They talk about how serious using the technique in the real world is because their comrades need to know what to expect after its complete.
| 34 |
[Big] Josh Baskin is 43. How has his second adulthood gone compared to his first go as a grown up?
| 293 |
Broken and disillusioned.
He thought finding love and a dream job was as easy as showing up in the city for a couple of days. That's how it worked the first time. He's been chasing that high ever since.
Now his third marriage is winding down, he's crushed by child support and alimony working in a menial dead-end position, and his only refuge is the bottle.
Somewhere that Zoltar machine is laughing.
| 252 |
|
CMV: 'Private military contractors' should be addressed as what they are: mercenaries
|
Imagine being so money-oriented that you agree to potentially injure/kill someone you've never met, just because of money. Imagine taking part in a war you have no right to be in, for money. Imagine being security for some scumbag, be it government, company or entity that hired you, ensuring their places, where heinous things occur, are safe from people who rightfully want to liberate that place and bring the place staff to justice.
Imagine literally risking your life for money, simply. That is the life of a mercenary, or, as they have begun to call themselves because the word that symbolizes what they are isn't too Public Relations friendly, "private military contractors". Governments and shady organizations are hiring them more and more because if they die, they die. They agreed to it.
We as society should repel the normalization of this concept. I do not see anything positive in "private military contractors", and that is where I want you to change my view on.
| 179 |
> I do not see anything positive in “private military contractors”,
Suppose you are a small, new government just having won your freedom from an oppressor. You need to start a government which includes a military but you lack knowledgeable personnel to train your forces. This is a service that private military contractors can provide. In fact during this period of training you will likely need security services from your military that they are ill-equipped to provide themselves, so this private military contractor could also supplement your forces as they get on their feet.
What is immoral about this? The government is going to pay its own soldiers to do that same job, why not pay a private company to do the same thing? They are in essence fulfilling the same role as a staffing company just for military services.
Now imagine an established government with a competent, capable military. Instead of their main concern being able to provide security, they now mostly worry about reducing costs. Personnel costs are a huge part of that and their demands vary over time. One year they may want 50,000 soldiers and the next they want 53,0000, but it will be back to 50,000 the following year.
Training 3,000 soldiers takes a long time and a lot of money so they would spend a year or more getting them up to speed just to use them a year and then do what, let them go? Inevitably this is going to lead to a lot of waste, training new soldiers who won't see much use and/or paying a bunch of soldiers to just sit around when not needed.
Instead why not cover a lot of this variable demand with a private military contractor? Just hire them for the time you need, you don't have to train them from scratch or keep them on for a whole tour of duty. The country saves a ton of money and you achieve the goal that was already reasonable and ethical to perform.
As for the actual contractors consider their motivations. They almost always started out in the military and after completing their contract are out looking for a job. They already have a military skill set and private military contracting pays better than reenlisting. If they are still up for doing military stuff then why not?
| 59 |
Is it true every atom in our bodies came from a star that exploded?
| 93 |
Except some hydrogen, helium *and lithium* atoms , whom have existed since the Big Bang, all elements comes from dead stars, since it's the only place, where it is hot and dense enough, for larger atoms to form.
Edit: Thanks **LoyalToTheGroupOf17** and **demostravius** for letting me know about the lithium.
| 87 |
|
[Myths, Creepypasta and Urban Legends] If the protagonist died, where did the story come from?
|
Bloody Mary kills whoever summons her, the Red Room Curse kills you once it finishes the sentence "Do you like the Red Room Curse?" and many more examples exist. If you are always killed by these phenomena pretty much insantly, where did the stories originate from?
| 179 |
More importantly who would spread that information around? This information was leaked for a purpose and it's not an innocent one. All beings need to eat and one of the easiest ways to find food is to have food bring itself to you. Every trap needs bait and what better than a ridiculous story that children will tell each other late at night and egg each other on with dares and ridicule.
| 115 |
ELI5: Why do things like hand sanitizer only kill 99% of bacteria? How does that other 1% survive?
| 22 |
It's more of a liability protection than an actual scientific statement of fact. If you get sick from a virus or bacteria after using their product, and you try to sue them, the company can always defend themselves by saying "We didn't say it's perfect. It's only 99% effective."
| 47 |
|
[Star Wars] Aside from the Jedi and Sith, what other factions of force users are there?
|
I know there's force users that belong to neither, but have any of them formed factions that follow neither Jedi nor Sith teachings (exclusively at least)?
(both for Legends and Disney canon)
| 200 |
**The Aing-Tii Monks** that lived near the Kathol Rift saw the force as a spectrum of color, not simple light and dark. Among other "tricks," they could teleport things, up to and including their fleets, and had a burning hatred of slavers.
**The Witches of Dathomir** were force users from the planet of the same name. There were a number of different tribes/sects, including the dark side Nightsisters, who struck a bargain with Darth Sidious at some point before the Clone Wars.
| 211 |
Why is it that when a person gets kidney stones, he/she has a risk of getting stones again?
|
From what I understand, those who got kidney stones have a high chance of getting it again. Is there a difference in the risk of getting stones before that person got the stone?
| 902 |
One interesting reason is that the crystalline formations of minerals can be "contagious" - i.e, as a crystal starts forming, more and more oxylate gets "locked" into position and forms a bigger stone. When it finally breaks off, some might be left behind, serving as the "seed" for the next stone.
Since the conditions that gave rise to the first stone probably haven't changed, the second one is an inevitability.
Drink more water! That means more dilute urine and less free-floating calcium oxylate.
| 653 |
[Destiny] I am a Guardian, one of the last protectors of Humanity. Recently, I was charged by the Queen of the Reef to kill her old enemies, except.. I could've sworn I've killed them before....
|
In fact, I keep being sent on missions to kill the same creatures over and over again, or destroying the same Devil Walkers and Shrines, invading the same Black Garden over and over again... am I going crazy? What's going on here?
| 15 |
What's a virtual life worth? Nothing.
You bub are living in a simulation. Nothing but numbers being crunched in hopes we'll find a solution to this forever war.
We don't even have a holo hooked up to your sim. You kill by the thousands and die the same and no one cares unless you happen to produce some statistical anomalies in the data.
Otherwise like you said, you're being sent on the same mission over and over.
How it is you have memory of past resets is the real question here. Bug in the system? Enemy A.I. infiltration? Are you the one?
Maybe. But we aren't going to find out today. Anomalies in the system only bring debugging and lot of paperwork. Let's reset and throw something harder are you.
| 24 |
Why do phone screens/tvs/monitors always look awful and pixelated when recorded from a phone?
| 16 |
It is due to the Moire effect. The rows and columns of pixels in the camera's sensor and the monitor alternately coincide and mis-align. Ironically, if you defocus the camera slightly, the effect can be reduced or eliminated. You can see the same problem with halftone printing and scanners. Two window screens overlaid also demonstrate it.
| 14 |
|
ELI5: Why do some fridge magnets fall off after a certain time? Do magnets lose magnetic properties?
| 26 |
Magnets do lose strength over time. Basically, the magnet is made up of a bunch of microscopic magnets. The magnet is at it's strongest when all the microscopic magnets are pointing in the same direction. Heat causes some of the microscopic magnets to flip in a random direction, which, on average, reduces the strength of the magnet. A lot of heat can cause the magnet to stop being magnetic rapidly, a small amount of heat (like room temperature) means the magnet loses strength more slowly. Your fridge magnets that fall off are either old or just made with bad magnets.
| 22 |
|
[SCP] How does the foundation stay secret if there’s so many people working for it ?
| 140 |
Cover granted by the various world governments and a lot of less than friendly incidents. One nation may have the foundation disguised as a hazardous waste clean up team and another as a part of the military. Enough cover to keep the average citizen from looking too closely. And those that see too much or get too close to the truth are either recruited into the foundation or given a choice. Forget everything you've seen and take some pills to help you forget. Or the foundation can make it look like a suicide when you die or make it look like you died in an embarrassing way to discredit you.
| 115 |
|
ELI5: Why do some languages have masculine and feminine nouns?
|
I'd like to understand both from a historical perspective, and also how it is decided for new words?
Being English I've found this the most difficult aspect of learning a new language such as Spanish.
| 153 |
It's important here to distinguish between grammatical gender and biological gender. Grammatical gender describes what rules a specific word follows in the grammar of that language. Biological gender describes living things that reproduce sexually by splitting in two separate genders. Despite the name the two aren't strictly related.
Grammatical genders are more akin to word classes: words in the same class will behave in similar ways, such as declining and conjugating after similar rules, using similar adjectives when described in a sentence (i.e all blue masculine words in Icelandic are "blár", all blue feminine objects are "blá", all neuter blue things "blátt"), or take a specific determinate forms (i.e la vs le in french).
So grammatical genders are a description of how a word behaves, not the other way around.
> Historical perspective
We frankly don't know for sure. Some theories suggest that genders initially started as classes to separate inanimate and animate objects, Later feminine and masculine split due signify a group of things, and words that didn't properly fit with the other two classes.
There are some evidence that genders slightly increase comprehension and comprehension speed of a sentence, as well as slightly reducing ambiguity, but research seems to be situational.
> How is it decided for new words.
By observing how people use the word. Remember: Gender isn't imposed from on high by an absolute authority. it's a handy box that we use to group similar words together. If the new words is displaying characteristics of either gender we put it in that gender. People will morph new words so that they fit in with the grammar and don't sound stiff and unnatural, and during this morphing process people decide if the new word sounds better as masculine, feminine, or neuter (or other genders some languages might have).
| 98 |
CMV: The same arguments that are made in opposition to minors voting can be made in opposition to old people voting
|
Most of the arguments that I have heard as to why minors are not eligible to vote fall into the category that minors are not mature enough to vote; that they do not really understand the issues or the ramifications of the election.
This argument can easily be applied to old people. In the same way the minors tend to be less mature than the average citizen, older people tend to be more senile than the average citizen. This means that, like minors, they are less able to understand the issues, and therefore, like minors, they should not be allowed to vote.
Edit: I am making this comparison as an argument for lowering / eliminating the voting age restriction.
| 198 |
Every five year old is too immature to vote.
Only some 95-year-olds are too senescent to vote.
All minors have guardians to look after (and vote in) their interests.
Not all old people have guardians to look after their interests.
What are you arguing for?
Barring all people over a certain age, or allowing everyone to vote regardless of age?
| 85 |
DRACO (a potential cure for most viruses) will it really work?
|
Do yo guys have any interesting thoughts? I did my research and even read the AMA that was done 8 months ago. I understand that funding is the biggest problem but why wouldn't any multi-millionaire or billionaire try to fund him? not even one?!?
| 44 |
Funding is straightforward. This requires lots of funding. It's novel research, unproven, it may not generate any clinically useful medicines. Success in the lab and in a mouse model far from guarantees clinical success. Also it looks to me like Rider wants to retain control over his work and attract funding. And lastly, as you would have seen in his AMA, there are many practical hurdles yet to be overcome.
| 14 |
ELI5: If rebooting is turning a system off and then back on again automatically, how does the system turn itself on while being off?
| 70 |
Whether or not your computer is "on" ( power states of the computer) are controlled by something called the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface). When you tell your computer to "shut down", the operating system tells the ACPI to stop all processes. However, your computer does not actually completely power down, it has some stored juice with which it can restart itself when asked. This is called a standby power supply. The power button these days does not actually physically stop electricity to flow into the computer, it just tells a subroutine to go into a standby and wait for a new input to restart itself. At the end of a shutdown process, your computer tells the ACPI that the computer should reboot. When this happens, the components are reset with commands stored in them by the bootstrapping process (booting, as it were). So in other words, as long as the power is connected these days, the computer never actually turns off, it only resets various components and then behaves as if it was turned off.
| 65 |
|
CMV: No matter how good the intentions are behind it, no restriction of free speech is a good idea.
|
Now, I should note that this primarily focuses on hate speech laws, but anything really in this sense can apply. Let's get started.
CLARIFICATION: I'm primarily speaking about laws preventing the expression of beliefs, primarily politically.
ANOTHER CLARIFICATION: I'm speaking about laws akin to hate speech laws, not like, the promotion of crime, etc.
Context:
Recently I've been in an on-and-off argument with a close friend over hate speech laws. Her argument is that hate speech laws do more good than harm as they protect targeted minorities, and prevent the spread of racist and/or otherwise opinions. Part of her argument is also that if I support hate speech, why do I believe it should be legal?
I should make it brutally clear, I'm not a minority in any senses other than that I'm transgender and lesbian. However, I wouldn't make my opinion a double standard even if it was attacking me.
My belief:
The right to free speech should in no way be impeded or changed. Now, I believe this for a couple of key reasons:
- More pro-free-speech oriented
- Giving away any right to the government, for any reason, cannot be taken back. Imagine if we handed away the fourth amendment. The cops could barge in any old time without reason.
- Giving the right to silence permanently opens the door to government-sponsored censorship.
- As such, by giving the power to do so to the government, you inherently put it into the hands of "the wrong person" (Someone with the intent to silence other opinions, regardless of theirs).
- A society without truly free expression will be like a twenty-five year old kept in a sterile room their entire life -- The common cold will leave them deathly ill. What I'm trying to say is, if society is never exposed to differing arguments, said differing arguments will spread like the plague.
- People who are silenced always speak louder than their silencer, meaning that ideas will spread quicker, and likely "underground". Limiting free speech will inherently bring a new free thought renaissance.
- More specific arguments against hate speech laws
- I've seen absolutely no evidence in any arguments supporting these that they curb the tide of hate speech. Hell, even in Europe where hate speech laws are rampant, identitarian movements and other hate-based beliefs are growing exponentially.
- What is determined as profane and offensive is extremely situational, and as such, there's no proper way to parameterize it. What I'm trying to say here is that a specific ruling will either bring in a lot of false-positives, or will create a lot of false-negatives. Too restricted speech will silence the incorrect people, too lax will let hate speech run free.
- A recent example of a false-positive would be Count Dankula, the dude who taught his dog to perform the Nazi salute. This sounds bad, but in reality, he was performing a baseline juxtaposition for the sake of comedy. It's extremely unlikely he actually believes in Nazism.
- You cannot get rid of hate speech laws once you have them. _After all, wouldn't removing them be siding with hate speech?_
- Again, if the wrong people get this power, there is strong potential the table will be flipped, and say, your very own views will get silenced.
- Hate speech laws based off offense will bring in more false positives than anything. Anyone can get offended at anything rather easily. It'll be the witch hunts all over again.
- More specific arguments against her argument
- The ability for hateful opinions to be expressed is a small price to pay to ensure I will forever be allowed to express mine.
- My support of the legality of an activity does not inherently mean I support the practice myself.
Now, I don't personally agree with or support hate speech. But, I don't care how vile and insensitive your opinion may be. I might not support it or agree with it, but by god, I'll defend your right to say it until the end of days, as I expect the same courtesy.
_____
> *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!*
| 1,504 |
Are you familiar with the paradox of tolerance?
Basically what it states is that a society that is 100% tolerant of all opinions will eventually be taken over by a belief system that is inherently intolerant (by sheer mathematical probability) thus turning a previously tolerant society into an intolerant one.
According to the guy that first formulated this idea (Karl Popper) the only way for a tolerant society to remain tolerant is to be intolerant towards intolerance, which is paradoxical and therefore makes little sense intuitively (to me anyway) but it does logically.
| 306 |
[Marvel] If Green Goblin resurrected Gwen Stacy, captured Mary Jane and Spider-Man and forced Parker to choose which one he would kill, who would Peter choose?
|
If he doesn’t choose one, both will die horribly. Escape and rescue is not an option at the moment.
| 30 |
I believe that Peter once stated that he loved (loves?) Gwen Stacy but he loves Mary Jane even more. If he had no way of saving both or sacrificing himself instead, he'd most likely pick Mary Jane still. However such an event where he caused the death of Gwen again, he'd probably wind up killing/seriously injuring the Green Goblin and be shaken for some time (more than usual).
| 40 |
Would I have to retake classes I’ve already taken in my MS for my PhD?
|
Suppose I take several graduate classes in a subject for a MS and after getting the degree, I jump into industry for several years (say ~5 yrs). If I decide to pursue a PhD in a closely related or the same subject and some of requirements for this PhD have already been met from my MS degree, would they still be eligible for consideration despite having been taken years ago? As such, do credits expire? Do you typically have to give a test proving you are knowledgeable of those classes or do you have to repeat them?
I know this would vary a lot from college to college but I just wanna get a general idea since its too far in advance for me to even have an idea as to what graduate school I would go to for a PhD.
P.s. The subject in question is mathematical finance.
| 31 |
Credits can expire. The rule is set by the university, so you’d have to contact them specifically to ask. They also may not accept your specific courses because they don’t think they match their courses closely enough, and if they’re mostly 500-level they may not count them toward the Ph.D at all.
| 24 |
What happens in the body to create the "loss of appetite" sensation after experiencing something unpleasant?
| 50 |
Activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the neuroendocrine stress response. This puts the body in what is termed "fight or flight" mode by diverting blood flow away from the internal organs and more towards the skeletal muscles, and by causing pupillary and bronchial dilatation as well as other effects.
| 32 |
|
[The Elder Scrolls] If someone reads an Elder Scroll to an audience out loud, will the audience become deaf?
| 19 |
No.
First off, you don't "read" an Elder Scroll. The Scroll grants a vision to whoever looks at it, but you need training to interpret it.
Secondly, in Dawnguard, a Moth Priest relates the vision granted to him by a Scroll, and nobody listening suffers any ill effects.
| 54 |
|
ELI5: How did ancient peoples make it to Hawaii and other geographically disparate islands centuries before reasonably modernized shipbuilding?
|
I'm not talking about riding a ship over a few dozen miles. I'm asking how people navigated thousands of miles of treacherous open ocean before sails were even commonly implemented. Ships in the 1400's and 1500's were still dodgy risks.
| 134 |
On a boat.
The Polynesian people lived on strings of islands for thousands of years, some islands that were close together and some that were further away past the horizon. They were experts at seafaring, had excellent boats, excellent navigation, and understood the cyclical way the ocean current and winds changed over the year to let them go far out and then circle back. They knew what supplies to bring, how to get fish and fresh water on long trips. They could spend weeks at sea.
| 101 |
[BSG] What is the nature of the calculations required to make an FTL jump?
|
What exactly are they calculating? Why are the calculations so difficult? For routine jumps, does this process still have to take place, or can pre-calculated data be punched in in order to make the jumps almost immediately once the decision to jump has been made?
| 37 |
One thing to remember is that their computers are intentionally kept below a certain threshold of capability.
Since this is a space folding type drive, the calculations that need doing mostly involve the specific parameters of local spacetime both at the origin and the destination. Gravitational gradients, vacuum density, and a few more exotic parameters as well.
Those parameters are constantly changing, so it is not possible to pre-calculate jumps by great spans of time.
| 27 |
ELI5:Do other species commit suicide? why or why not?
| 189 |
Yes, there are other species that do commit 'suicide', or rather engage in behavior that will likely result in its demise. Rarely its at their own hands, rather an act that gets them killed by something else.
For example, there are spider species that, during the mating process, the male will impale himself on the female's fang. By sacrificing himself, the female is more likely to allow the copulation to finish, thus ensuring that his genes pass on to the next generation.
| 101 |
|
[Star Trek] What's the purpose of Locutus's laser?
| 57 |
As spokesperson and defacto leader of the Borg in the Alpha quadrant a large part of Locutus' job involves giving PowerPoint presentations. The laser pointer is an essential tool of middle management.
| 63 |
|
Is there such thing as a cytotoxic memory T cell and if so what is it’s role?
|
I haven’t been able to find a definitive answer from google but I was just wondering is it a thing? I was under the (very possibly wrong) impression that there are only cytotoxic T cells and memory T cells.
| 767 |
Cytotoxic T cells are defined by their expression of CD8 in contrast to the CD4 ecpressed by the helper T-cells. After developing a functional T-cell receptor and undergoing selection, cytotoxic T-cells are in a naiive state and have to come into contact with an corresponding antigen. When they do, they differentiate into one of several different activation states including the cytotoxic effector and cytotoxic memory T-cells. The effector T cells have the highest cytolytic function but are short lived, while the cytotoxic memory T-cells are there to perserve the "memory" of the antigen. They are longer lasting and are able to rapidly proliferate and differantiate into the effector cells upon renewed contact with the antigen.
| 233 |
CMV: There are way too many Americans and Canadians that drive big SUV's and pickup trucks
|
Let's be real, I doubt people who are daily driving F-150's are going to be doing stuff on a regular basis that requires the grunt of a vehicle that big. Usually, they might be doing stuff that a decent sized sedan, wagon or hatchback can do just fine. When you aren't fully utilizing a big vehicle, they get worse gas mileage and thus pollute more, parking in tight spots can be a pain and bigger isn't always better when it comes to car wrecks. I get that some people do really need big vehicles (large families, construction workers, etc) but just because you tow an RV once a year doesn't mean you should drive a Super Duty to work every day. They also aren't as responsive as smaller vehicles, don't brake as quickly and can wear out roads more quickly because of their weight.
| 85 |
Your arguments can largely be made about any vehicles outside of motorcycles and smart cars.
You never know when you’re going to need a truck, so it’s best to have one when you need it. Similar to insurance.
In fact, there’s probably a better argument for everyone’s first vehicle being a truck.
| 13 |
[Transformers] Why Deceptikons and Autobots waste time to verbalise sentences and orders when they could do it almost instantly through WiFi?
|
Example is battle scene on Cybetron in Bumblebee movie
| 20 |
Wireless handshake protocols and the like are *incredibly* intimate. If you could pass information quickly and efficiently by putting your tongue into someone's mouth, how often would you do that with your coworkers?
| 34 |
ELI5: How do helicopter blades actually lift a 20,000 pound helicopter?
| 16 |
To generate lift we use wings, which we move fast through the air. We can do this by making the vehicle go fast (planes) or by rotating the wings fast around a midpoint (helicopters).
Wings moving at an angle through the air will push that air down. As a result, the wing is pushed up. A helicopter moves a *lot* of air down (which is one of the reasons it's so noisy), so it can lift quite some weight up.
| 22 |
|
[Star Wars]Why does Finn refer to Han Solo as a war hero even though he was raised by the First Order?
| 315 |
"There are heroes on both sides"
It's possible that the word 'hero' is used slightly differently in the SW galaxy, meaning someone who commits acts of bravery for a cause but lacking the moral approval that is commonly implied in Earth usage.
Or, it could just be that Finn has realigned his moral perspective on history since breaking his indoctrination and recognizes that figures the First Order portrayed as villainous were probably actually valorous.
| 313 |
|
CMV:There is no valid reason other than defending Trump for the current Republican attack on the FBI.
|
There are a number of attacks on the credibility of the FBI from Republican politicians. These attacks have come in a number of forms, the most recent being the Nunes memo which apparently alleges that there was misconduct in the FBI relating to how FISA warrants were obtained, and allegations of a "secret society" within the FBI that has been conspiring against Trump.
These attacks dangerously undermine the credibility of the FBI, and do a disservice to it's officers. Additionally, *even if true* the manner of the attacks through innuendo and allegations rather than through hard data is irresponsible. Also, *even if true*, there is no reason to believe that Mueller investigation would be able to falsify evidence. At worst the investigation would dig into areas that are not directly related to the Russian interference like money laundering.
The only valid reason for the attacks is a preemptive defense if charges are levied against Trump or his senior staff. To be convinced otherwise I would need to be convinced there is a good reason undermine the authority of the FBI with rumor and innuendo, or that the investigation can be conclusively determined to be so corrupt that it needs to be ended before it has completed.
_____
| 136 |
NOT a Trumpette but
The FBI has a long history as political hacks,though mostly in support of GOP hate of minorities,gays etc [ie the "other"]. While it would be out of character to bite the hands that fed them it is not out of character for them to stick their fingers into politics.
I think it would be more accurate to say that attacks on the FBI's credibility are coming from the Tea Party wing of the GOP [and/or those fearful of a Tea Party challenger in their district]. This is a direct challenge to the never-Trumps and progressives and yes,is likely a form of preemptive defense.
| 31 |
ELI5: Why does my dog shake his leg like he's "scratching the air" everytime I scratch his belly?
| 135 |
Sometimes something will go in your nose and it will bother you and make you sneeze. Or if something comes fast towards your face your eyes will close to protect them.
The doggie sctaches the air for the same reason. Part of the doggie's brain thinks that your fingers are something it needs to protect it from - a bug or something else that it wants to itch away. So it makes the doggie's leg start moving. But the doggie isn't really bothered, because your fingers are also scratching the itch (if the doggie really didn't like it, he could still move away or growl or try to bite you).
| 42 |
|
what are the benefits of having a stock market? how does a stock market benefit society?
| 248 |
The primary purpose of the stock market is to provide a means for companies to get funding. By selling ownership in the company, companies are able to raise large sums of money without taking on debt. This money is then used to grow the business and everyone gets to make money.
| 175 |
|
[Dragon Ball Z] Why does the Frieza Force even bother with weaker soldiers (such as Raditz or the soldiers that Gohan and Krillin/the Namekians killed on Namek) that could easily be replaced by Saibamen?
| 15 |
Saibamen seem to have low intelligence/will, and probably only accept simple direct orders. Raditz and the fruit aliens can follow directions and manage logistics on their own.
Also Saibamen probably dry up in the sun if you forget to water them or something.
| 26 |
|
Eli5 Why are we so terrible at comprehending large numbers?
|
When somebody says there are 100,000, people there your thinking “wow that’s a lot of people” but if somebody tells you there are 10 million people there your reaction is still the same.
| 31 |
Your brain needs some physical comparison, not just abstraction.
100,000 people is like two packed stadiums, or one enormous stadium. You’ve experienced something like that.
2000 miles is the drive from Chicago to the tip of Florida. You know about how long that takes.
But how far is 700 million miles? How big is a crowd of 2.7 billion people? There’s no reference, it’s off the scale.
| 53 |
ELI5: How do allergies develop in kids?
| 42 |
Basically, the body encounters something it hasn't encountered before. It usually is a foreign protein. The body encounters it and thinks that it is something bad that is trying to harm the person. The body then creates an immune response to protect the body. The next time the body encounters this allergen it reacts as if it is trying to harm the body, leading to an allergic response. This often means massive release of histamine which can cause swelling of the lips, tongue, throat, and gut in the case of a serious anaphylactic reaction.
​
Source: Am doctor.
| 24 |
|
ELI5 the differences between the major Christian religions (e.g. Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Protestant, Pentecostal, etc.)
|
Include any other major ones I didn't list.
| 3,148 |
Agree: Jesus Christ is our lord and savior
Disagree: God is divisible, ex. Trinity, saints, communion, role of pope, women ministers, can ministers marry, everything else besides the first statement.
| 2,196 |
ELI5: Whats the difference between f.lux and dimming my computer's screen?
|
[f.lux's website](https://justgetflux.com/) if you've never heard of it.
| 20 |
The higher frequencies (blue, violet) are responsible for suppressing melatonin production. In the case of a computer monitor, only blue. F-lux allows you to maintain an overall higher brightness by setting color temperature rather than uniform luminance, leaving green and red less affected than blue.
Color constancy allows the eye to adapt to the new temperature without greatly sacrificing visibility as a brightness toggle that attempts to achieve the same blue level would. In fact if you have a long transition period (~ 1 hour) you might not even notice.
| 19 |
[Marvel&DC] I'm magically thrown into either of this of these universes, what would be the fastest to get superpowers or a way to not be defenseless?
| 67 |
* Volunteer as a herald for a cosmic being
* Expose yourself to exotic radiation
* Successfully lift Mjolnir
* Learn magic
* Get a job in a laboratory and hope for a freak accident
* Your natural physical peak is now higher. Train in the martial arts or something.
* Hang out with superheroes and hope something rubs off
* Invent something really clever that gives you superpowers or the functional equivalent
| 71 |
|
[Star Trek TNG] What is meant of "full stop" on the Enterprise?
|
The Enterprise is in space and velocity, by definition, must be in reference to something. On Earth, the reference point is typically the ground. What is the reference point the Enterprise uses? "Full stop" can't simply mean acceleration=0, there are several incidents in the series where they are "stopped" in front of an object.
| 19 |
It means stopped relative to the local spatial context. Absent all reference points, it just means engines to zero. In the case that there are local references to be used, it means stopped relative to them.
| 30 |
[Warhammer 40K] Is there a "best" shade of green for Orks? If there is one, what is it?
| 17 |
More green is better, doesn't matter what shade. Orks only care who is the biggest. Incidentally they are always correct about that, because of their psychic gestalt the most energy goes to the best fighter and he becomes the biggest.
| 21 |
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ELI5: why did cars used to have their engines in the back, then with more modern cars the engine was moved to the front, then with some sports cars the engine is in the back again?
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ELI5: why did cars used to have their engines in the back, then with more modern cars the engine was moved to the front, then with some sports cars the engine is in the back again?
| 24 |
Most of the high end sports cars put the engine behind the driver, but ahead of the rear axle for better weight distribution. These are considered mid-engined cars. A car with 50/50 weight distribution front to back will be more stable, easier to control and faster through curves.
| 11 |
How real was the risk with turning on of the higgs collider?
| 84 |
You are talking about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The kind of reactions that scientist create in the LHC occur daily in our atmosphere when cosmic rays strike earth. If there was any truth to any of the doomsday scenarios associated with turning on the LHC, then these scenarios would have already be triggered by cosmic rays. The fact that the earth is still here is very strong experimental evidence that this doomsday predictions are wrong.
There was zero risk.
| 78 |
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ExistentialComics's representation of Rorty
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[The latest Existential Comic](http://existentialcomics.com/comic/218) features Richard Rorty, but he sounds like Jordan Peterson. He says, "Postmodernism is really just when too many women are in movies, and stuff like that."
This surprised me because it does not sound like the Rorty I know from *Contingency, Irony, Solidarity*. The explanatory text says nothing about Rorty specifically, but talks about "far right pundits." Am I remembering him wrongly, did he change his views later on, or is this just a joke? I mean, I know it's a joke, but is the joke that Rorty's own views are laughably incorrect, or that Rorty's actual views do not correspond to those stated in the comic?
| 21 |
> is the joke that Rorty's own views are laughably incorrect, or that Rorty's actual views do not correspond to those stated in the comic?
The second of these. The comic humorously swaps the "common conception" with the "accurate" one.
This "accurate" conception is then abused further by pointing the "modern" teen reader toward Marx - a philosopher who thought that theory needed to be put to work to make the world better.
(That is, contemporary so-called "SJW" work is rooted in Modern thinking, not Post-Modern thinking.)
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