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[general] Why are escape pod emergency releases not inside the pod itself? | So Im in my last year of engineering academy, and I finally get to do my first rotation on an actual starship.
During the Safety induction, they covered escape pod protocol, including launch failure. For some reason I can't fathom, the emergency release is inside the main ship, and the handbook states one person should stay behind and "heroically sacrifice themselves".
Why not put the mechanism inside the pod, so that everyone gets to escape? | 412 | Because the emergency release is a mechanical override for the systems on the ship that hold onto the escape pod.
The ship itself handles holding the pods, AND launching them out. Those systems simply don't exist on the pods side. | 295 |
ELI5: When a baby is in the mothers womb, and is developed enough,does it produce human waste from the nutrients the mother provides to it? If so, where does it go or how does the body adapt to that. | Edit: Thank you for all the info! Much appreciated.
Edit: I woke up this morning and was blown away by the amount of answers and popularity this got. Thanks all and Happy 4th! | 13,862 | Yes. Just a couple of months into their development, little humans begin peeing freely into the amniotic fluid that surrounds them in the womb. Then, foreshadowing all the gross stuff that babies do once they’re born, they’ll consume that urine as they swallow the amniotic fluid. Every last one of us has spent several months drinking our own pee.
In utero pooping is less common. Fetuses get their nutrients from food that their mothers’ digestive systems have broken down, and the waste from that food stays with mom and is taken care of on her end (Thanks, Mom!). Fetuses do ingest some stuff—mucus, bile, fine fetal hairs called lanugo, cells lining the inside of the womb—that needs to get disposed of, though. All this stuff gets broken down by the fetus’s digestive system and forms a viscous, sticky mass of feces called meconium.
Meconium is almost odorless and mostly sterile. It usually stays in fetuses’ bowels until they’re born, but some kids—around 13 percent—just can’t wait, and let it loose in the womb. This can be a problem, since feces is now floating in the amniotic fluid that the fetus swallows and takes into its lungs, and “meconium-stained amniotic fluid,” as the docs call it, can lead to serious respiratory distress. | 9,747 |
CMV: Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets are in aggregate better than Word, Powerpoint, and Excel | First of all, the automatic saving feature is great because I don't have to worry about saving all the time. Secondly, everything is always backed up on the cloud/drive so you don't have to worry about losing files on your computer. Third, it is FREE, as you can use all the google services at no cost to yourself. The sharing feature is very intuitive and you can collaborate with many people on your documents. Heck, all three google services are more intuitive and easier to use than the microsoft services which are cluttered with too many features and not well organized. Moreover, with google docs you can work easier with others too because google things are free so you can work with people that cannot afford the more expensive word, powerpoint, and excel. | 41 | " Third, it is FREE, as you can use all the google services at no cost to yourself. "
As long as you play nice with every Google product. But if you get banned from YouTube suddenly you've also lost all your documents and spreadsheets! That seems pretty disastrous compared to using Openoffice or Word! | 18 |
[Rick and Morty] Why isn't there more automation at the Citadel? | 36 | Because when you have someone doing the jobs, they have less time to think of how to get into your position. The jobs aren't even necessary at all, it's just to keep the people on the bottom at the bottom. | 43 |
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[Pokémon] what makes great balls so much better at catching Pokémon than pokeballs? | 37 | Speaking in broad terms, when you attempt to capture a Pokemon in a Pokeball, you convert it to energy and store that energy in the ball. However, during that process, a stronger Pokemon can fight to reverse it and break containment of its energy. Once it does so, it reverts to physical form.
Great balls/ultra balls/etc are simply built with higher-strength containment, making it more difficult for Pokemon to struggle free. In addition, you can tune balls to make their captures from a greater distance, thus making it difficult for Pokemon to physically knock away the balls. | 31 |
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[Dragon Ball Super] Why was King Vegeta so mad that Broly was in the elite nursery? | He calls him a “low ranking baby taken in off the street” but the Saiyan doctors said he was the son of Colonel Paragus. Is Colonel not a high/elite rank in the Saiyan army? | 28 | High rank, but still a filthy commoner.
Vegeta is an aristocrat, if you aren't born nobility you are trash. Sure Paragus proven himself to be a capable warrior, but he still wasn't nobility and his baby hasn't proven shit.
Assuming, of course, their colonel actually lines up to the English rank. Ranks tend to get confused when translated. | 53 |
In the attached gif was doesn't the bottom of the slinky begin falling as soon as the top is released? | http://i.imgur.com/aGQpFgV.gif | 15 | Let's forget about how the slinky contracts for now. Let's look at the center of mass - for the slinky, it's approximately midway between the two ends. Note how the center of mass, as expected, falls.
Now, think of a stationary, horizontal slinky with tension applied on both ends. As soon as you remove the force holding the two ends apart, the slinky will contract. Because the slinky is stationary, its center of mass never moves - the two ends simply approach the center.
Now combine these two things. When held at one end, the scenario is a stationary slinky with two forces applying tension - gravity pulling down, and your hand opposing gravity. As soon as you let go, the slinky begins to contract - but at the same time, the center of mass begins to fall down. As a result, the bottom of the slinky doesn't fall - because the downward motion of the center of mass is cancelled out by the contraction of the slinky. | 23 |
ELI5: How does self-disappearing ink work? | I got one of these pens for free with a calligraphy practice workbook. After about 5 minutes, the ink just vanishes as if nothing was written. I've tried it on multiple different papers and the same result occurs so it shouldn't have to do with a specific kind of paper. How does this happen? | 289 | Disappearing ink is usually reacting to carbon dioxide in the air around us, creating carbonic acid through an interaction with an agent in the ink, which causes it to "disappear" as sodium carbonate. Sometimes, the ink is photosensitive instead, which will cause it to disappear due to exposure to light. | 154 |
[DC] Could a devolution device (like the kind made by Gorilla Grodd in the Justice League cartoon) be used to weaken Doomsday? | 41 | This could possibly be a viable way to defeat doomsday. Considering how he was created, it could devolve him to one of his weaker forms, maybe even his original form depending on how much power the devolution device has. | 31 |
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How can same volume engines have different HP/torque/etc.? | 156 | The displacement of an engine is not the only factor contributing to work done by the engine. The compression ratio for one will change the power output (the more you squeeze the air and fuel the more power you get out). Intake and exhaust manifolds will affect how effectively air can enter and exit the combustion chamber (less pressure loss on the intake will help get more air into the engine, less back pressure on the exhaust will help clear the chamber to allow cleaner air in). How well the engine is tuned as well will play into the performance of the engine (igniting the air/fuel at the right time to make sure the mixture ignites when it is compressed the most). There is much that plays into HP/torque than just volume | 70 |
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I am a firefighter with a fluid dynamics question. When splitting a single 4" diameter supply line to two separate supply lines, why would I get more water from splitting to one section of 4" and one section of 3", as opposed to two sections of 4"? | So were were practicing filling tankers (trucks that carry 3,000 gallons of water each), and noticed something interesting. I will explain our setup. So we had a 10' length of 4" supply line coming off of a hydrant w/ ~60 psi of pressure. There was a manifold on the end of that section of 4" that splits it into two supply lines. Our initial setup was to run 50' of 4" off of one side and 50' of 3" off of the other. When filling two tankers simultaneously we noticed that both tankers were filling rather predictably. The one with the 4" was filling faster and the one with the 3" was filling at about half that rate.
When we had the materials necessary, I "upgraded" the 50' of 3" to another 50' section of 4". Now we have two 50' sections of 4" coming off of the manifold. This is where the confusing bit happened. When I would hook up and fill two tankers simultaneously, one of the tankers would get almost all of the water, and the other would get nearly nothing, until the first line was shut down. No one has been able to explain this to me. There are two essentially identical supply lines coming off of the manifold, why would one be favored so heavily. And why would the 3" line allow more water flow when partnered with the 4"?
[Sketch of setup](https://i.imgur.com/c9BCvUs.png) | 39 | I design multiple path processes every day. We've got a rule of thumb that anything less than five psi of pressure drop in the entire system can only be single path because below that point minor differences can cause massive maldistribution of the flow to the point that one of the passes can run dry... Sounds to me like this is happening in your system. You've reduced the total system pressure drop to the point that the water just flows easily down a single path without enough back pressure to force it down the other path that's available. Flow control valves on each pass solve the problem as do individual pass booster pumps if they're adjustable so you can balance them out... But basically you've just reached the practical maximum flow for your hoses without additional equipment. | 37 |
CMV: Increasing penalties for crimes does not appreciable dissuade people from committing crimes | Often I see writings that talk about the harsh penalties of the past and in other cultures, like taking off someone's hand or being given the death penalty for theft. Simply, if harsh penalties for minor crimes were effective against the human need to commit crimes, these things would never need to occur.
Politicians who claim to be "tough on crime" while increasing the penalties are just playing against peoples' anger and desire for revenge without much consideration of making society safer or solving the problems that led to the crimes in the first place.
Here is my reason for offering this CMV: It's coming up to election time (US and Canada). Politicians will be ramping these statements up at the exact same time that private prisons and policing are very much in the public eye. I want to make informed opinions.
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It may or may not work as a deterrent, but that's nit why the law is there. The penalties get worse to make the prison sentences longer, in order to protect the public from the habitual re offender. | 22 |
Is the way of making philosophy based on "first principles" dead? | I read somewhere that Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" invalidated the pursuit of "first principles" from which truth could be determined and a system of philosophy could be constructed from. It is true? Are there philosophers still working in this way? | 22 | Systematic philosophy is alive and well, though it certainly is not as popular as in the early modern period. Just for a few names, in the analytic tradition there is Mario Bunge, and in the continental tradition you have Alain Badiou. Overall the continental traditions nowadays is much more amenable to systematic philosophy, in part because of authors like Quine and Russell in the analytic tradition arguing very forcefully against systematic philosophy. In some of the early sorts of battlecries for the analytic tradition you see their response to systematic philosophy, for instance Russell addresses it in the last chapter of *A History of Western Philosophy*. He describes a new vision for philosophy where we deal with individual problems instead of trying to solve everything all in one go. | 13 |
ELI5: Why do people use 0-60 mph to benchmark the acceleration of cars? | Why not use 0-50 and what is significant about going to 60 mph? | 40 | Because the actual benchmark is 0-100 km/h, which get's rounded down to 60 mph. 0-100 is a nice round number, and since everyone except the US uses the metric system that's the standard. So the significance is that 60 miles is about 100 km. | 79 |
ELI5: If I died on an alien planet that was possibly habitable but was void of life, would my corpse spark life? | Would the introduction of organic material kick start life on that planet? I imagine bacteria in our guts or something could make it. | 41 | You'll get better answers over in /r/asksciencediscussion.
The answer is it depends a bit on the planet. Most planets other than Earth are simply not very good places for life; bacteria would freeze, burn, or be irradiated.
However, if this planet is even relatively friendly to life but currently life-free then your microbes could probably colonize the shit out of that. The anaerobic methanogens will turn H2 and CO2 into CH4 and produce energy for themselves in the process. The sulfur reducers that make the hydrogen sulfide that makes your farts smell are also good candidates for being able to find food in a lifeless world. Really, come to think of it your large intestine has a lot in common with early Earth.
If you are very lucky you will have a few cells of airborne cyanobacteria on your skin or stuck in your hair. These little buggers can photosynthesize, and if they get into a sterile alien ocean then they'll start making oxygen and very gradually poison most of the methanogens and sulfur-reducers from your colon (they hate oxygen).
That wasn't really ELI5, but yes you have strong independent bacteria that don't need no human. You are merely a convenient source of raw chemicals.
| 22 |
CMV: The international community should cut all ties with China until they stop the mass genocide of Uighur Muslims | It’s inexcusable that the vast majority of the world still maintains ties with China as they do the worst mass genocide since the Holocaust, and the only mass genocide that can compare to it. China needs to be held accountable and we need to send the message that this isn’t ok. The best way to do so is to cut all ties, including trade and diplomatic relations, until China halts this mass genocide. Women are being raped to death. Men and children are being worked to death. People are being sterilized. You can’t sit by and allow this to happen.
The negative consequences that I can see happening is we lose (in a short period of time) a lot of exports, but I’m sure we can all agree that we can wait a year for a new iphone if it leads to the end of a mass genocide. We can trade in other places. We should do anything we can to stop this human rights violation, and it starts with cutting ties to China.
Change my view
Edit: The IPhone thing was an oversimplification of what would happen to the economy. My point was most of our imports from China are leisure items, thus it won’t be as bad on the people if they go away for a small period of time as other countries step up to fill the gap
Edit 2: for all of you saying that this doesn’t exist, why is it whenever someone brings up mistreatment of the Uighur Muslims China throws a temper tantrum (literally).
Edit 3: start going after me personally and not my argument and your getting insta reported and blocked
Edit 4: I wake up and I’m on the front page and there’s awards and my phone has 400 notifications from Reddit. Thank you all so much for making this issue visible to more people and thank you especially to all of those who have been respectful in the comments. You have really advanced and changed in spots my view on this topic. Thank you | 17,837 | Unfortunately, not all countries have problem with genocide - there are so many countries that don't mind killing minor tribes in their own land. In reality, only portion of countries would mind such noble concept.
For other countries, the attempt would be seen as another power seize. To make matter worse, quite the number of countries which will advocate this method have past with imperialism - meaning the motive could be seen as more sinister. This make even countries oppose genocide mildly would oppose such drastic method since they would fear the next target being themselves.
Edit : Some people said this isn't an excuse for why countries shouldn't cut tie with China. However, from the view of theirs, making precedent that world can shut one country down is considered as more dangerous than allowing one country to commit a genocide. Sure, there was and will be sanctions, but the proposal here will be whole different level since it assumes the whole world(not just the west) will unite against one. | 949 |
ELI5: US Presidential election 2016 megathread | Most of the common questions have already been asked multiple times, and searching the archive is recommended.
Other wise, this post will serve as a location to repost past questions, and any new ones. | 84 | Why is the Electoral College still a thing? Has there been any effort to move away from it?
Seems odd to have a system that allows a President to win while losing the popular vote. Why not award proportional amounts of votes from each state to their results? Has there been an effort to move away from the system?
| 50 |
[Fairy Tales] What was Rumplestiltskin going to do once he got the baby? Also what is he and how did he get his powers? | 44 | It's implied that he's a fairy/Fair Folk. They're often known for kidnapping children and sometimes even adults. What they do with the kids isn't really known. Some stories claim that they eat the children. Other stories like Thomas the Rhymer say that they just hang out with their captives, not really doing anything horrible and then bring them back to our world with special powers only for the captives to learn that they were gone for years despite not aging at all. Others still like the ballad of Tam Lim claim that the Fair Folk owe a tithe to hell which they pay with the humans as offerings. | 44 |
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ELI5 - when people cut people open in surgey, why dont they bleed everywhere? | i mean i know there's some blood loss involved in surgery but when people get cut at home etc theres usually blood every where. [this is the sort of stuff im talking about] probably NSFW (gore) (http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/v2kz5/underneath_the_skin/)
is it a drug thing or just techniques? | 599 | Seeing as the highest rating comment is removed, let me restate what it said in a way I'd tell a five year old.
Sometimes doctors need to open people up to fix them, and to do that, they have to cut them. There are tiny tubes that carry blood throughout your body. Blood carries air, and if you lose too much, you die, so your doctor has to make sure you don't bleed. Your doctor knows where these tubes are, and does all that's possible so that they don't cut them when they cut into your body. But when you have to cut the tubes, they use clamps that stop the blood from leaving, like if you squeezed a lawn hose, or they 'cauterize' it (think of it like caught-'er-eyes'), meaning they burn the little tubes closed. But even through this, blood will still be lost. So they suck out the blood that's in the way of the surgery, and they replace what is lost with blood that people donate. When you get big and strong, you can donate blood and save peoples lives, and they even give you a cookie afterwards! | 621 |
ELI5: Synthetic meat | Does anyone know what has happened to the synthetic meat we were all promised many years ago that would be just as good as the real thing (One step closer to Blade Runner ). It's now 2018 I haven't seen one synthetic burger.
and is it really that good for you... or not ? | 736 | No one has figured out how to make it cheap enough yet. Consider the price of ground beef, if you have a multimillion dollar lab making lab-grown beef then you're going to need to make millions of pounds to have it pay for itself.
There are a bunch of companies work on it, but none of their products are commercially viable yet. | 404 |
ELI5: if black friday is all positive revenue why don't they do deals and stuff more often than once a year? | If 'being in the black' is profit for companies, why do they limit their deals to one day of the year? | 24 | Deals and discounts are usually done for two reasons.
1. To get rid of any long standing inventory to free-up room for new orders
2. In anticipation of high volumes of demand (surge in amount of customers)
When demand is expected to be extremely high, companies can afford to mark down items and offer sales, the minimal loss in revenue from marking down products is in theory supposed to be easily made up by the added amount of revenue the company will receive from the increase in demand.
Companies aren't usually only striving for one of the above reasons, Black Friday is inherently a combination of both. Stores experience large surges in the amount of shoppers, so they start off by marking down the prices on inventory which they are trying to get rid of first. Usually the items marked down in price the most are items which have been on the shelves for quite sometimes, or are items which are being replaced by newer models (or seasonal).
Deals similar to Black Friday aren't done other times during the year, due to the cyclical nature of retail shopping. It is much more difficult to sell products like televisions or other electronics during the year as compared with the holiday season. Some companies in fact lose a good amount of money maintaining their inventory during the year, only to regain all the lost revenue during the holiday season due to the increase in consumer demand.
TL:DR
Giving discounts is not cost effective unless there is an increase in overall consumer demand for the products you are selling during that time period. | 18 |
What physically happens to SSD drives that make the memory blocks wear with each write operation? | It's common knowledge that SSD drives have a limited number of writes and it must minimize the amount of times each memory block is rewrited, to make it last more, bla bla bla.
But, why does it happen? I mean what is the physical reason behind this? What is happening inside the drive that make the memory blocks wear with each use? | 17 | Flash uses a floating gate transistor that permanently stores a charge in a totally electrically insulated floating gate that isn't connected to anything. Hot carrier injection or tunneling is used to force electrons though the insulator and into the floating gate at very high voltages where they are essentially trapped forever (until reprogrammed again) and electrostatically cause the non floating gate to be on or off depending on the content of the charge trapped in the floating gate. Thus representing one or zero.
The high voltage and tunneling of electrons through the insulator breaks down the dielectric insulator with each erase/program cycle as electrons tunnel through the material and change the molecular state and electron composition. Basically the high voltage tunneling poisons the insulator with free electrons (?) until the dielectric starts becoming a conductor and progressively leaking so much that the floating gate can no longer hold a isolated charge. It just conducts and drains instantly through the insulator when you try to fill it and can't ever be a "1" again. | 47 |
[Harry Potter / General science fiction and fantasy] How does the Avada Kedavera work? Does it work on types of inorganic life? | Does it stop the heart? Cease brain functionality? Flip all of the target's cellular "alive/dead" switches at once? Perverse quantum immortality into a sort of quantum suicide? Depending on how it happens effects the second question: who can it kill?
Could you stop the Terminator with it? (It's a universal kill switch)
What about an AI like Deep Think (Hitchhiker's Guide)? (I causes brain death)
How about an AI that has a noted "heart/soul" like Optimus Prime? (It stops the hear or rips out the soul)
Could a person with a pacemaker live through the curse? (It ceases a specific function, which can be overcome by modern technology)
Are cyborgs like Darth Vader or General Grievous organic enough to be effected? (It ceases a specific function, which can be overcome by future technology)
Are hiveminds like the Borg or the Geth immune? (Brain death situation)
How about golems? (Magic based inorganic life)
Trolls with silicon brains? (Magic based semi-organic life)
Thomas the Tank Engine? (Faith based inorganic life)
| 24 | When Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort duelled in the Ministry of Magic, Dumbledore animated the centaur in the Fountain of Magical Brethren to use as a shield, which exploded when struck by a Killing Curse. That said, a decent *reducto* would have had a similar effect, it's possible that the statue broke because it was physically ripped apart instead.
Additionally, the effectiveness of all magic spells is based on a question of mass and to a lesser extent distance. For the same reason you can't *accio* the moon and kill us all, an average lone wizard would not necessarily kill something big like a dragon, mountain troll or giant with a killing curse. This, coupled with their relative intelligence, is why giants make for effective troops in wizarding wars. | 17 |
If you mix oil and water in a bowl and wait for a while, you will see gravity seperate them and put all of the oil on top. How is this consistant with the law of increasing entropy? | 22 | I probably won't explain this fully or with the highest degree of articulation, but here we go...
It minimizes the surface area where water and oil interact, which frees up the the largest amount of molecules from restrictive interactions, thus giving maximum entropy.
If you imagine a single oil droplet in water, a large hydration shell of water molecules. Those molecules are basically stuck in that configuration, giving them high entropy (but minimizing enthalpy).
If the oil were to suddenly dissappear, then those 'trapped' water molecules could then more freely move about and incorporate back into the bulk solution, forming and breaking countless hydrogen bonds as they move around and mix. Allowing for that movement within the bulk solution gives the greatest entropy.
Now, you can imagine many many oil droplets. Each would have their own hydration shell of water, reducing entropy. As the oil droplets come together, their volume would increase disproportionatly with their surface area. This results in the same amount of oil with less surface area, and thus a smaller group of 'trapped' water molecules.
A similar phenomonon is one of the main drivers for protein folding (burial of hydrophobic regions in the solvent-inaccessible interior, while hydrophillic regions are on the outside). | 22 |
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ELI5:How did the ancient Polynesians find places like Tahiti, the Cook Islands and Hawaii | I visited Hawaii for the first time this year and I am fascinated with Polynesian culture. How did they look out at the ocean and know how to sail to such small remote islands? Obviously, their astral navigation was extremely sophisticated but how did they know something was...out there... | 44 | There are whole books on the subject.
Basically, if you live on the sea and can read the signs, you can tell that an island is near even though you are hundreds of miles away. It has to do with the cloud patterns, the birds, the wave patterns and the wind.
For example, if waves are passing an island, they will be distorted around the island. This distortion persists for many miles.
Also...luck. If you are able to be at sea for a couple of months, you can explore a lot and still return home if you find nothing. | 31 |
ELI5: If the USA is now the worlds biggest crude oil producer, why are gas/petrol prices still so high? | Info taken from [this article](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-04/u-s-seen-as-biggest-oil-producer-after-overtaking-saudi.html) posted several days ago. | 57 | Oil is traded on the world market. Oil produced in the US is sold to the highest bidder. The only thing domestic production does is shave off a few cents in shipping costs. Oil companies have no allegiance, they just want to make as much money as possible.
China and India are growing at *insane* speeds & they have a rapidly expanding middle class that insists on having cars. When 2/3 of the world's population suddenly starts buying gas for their cars, the law of supply and demand says that the cost is going to go up. | 51 |
[Avatar: TLA] Do you think the Avatars influence will dwindle over time? | If we take from real world examples, the growth of technology and the human population itself could start to overshadow the Avatar. Would they even need the avatar then? How would the avatar handle a world where nuclear weapons exist? | 47 | A world where nuclear weapons exist will either use them, and end, or not, and not. They're a null factor when it comes to the Avatar, and the main effect they'd *have* on the Avatar is giving them something else to worry about.
The thing with the Avatar is, as long as people respect and believe in them, there is no reason *any* amount of technological advancement could ever outpace them. Because their power to bend all four elements is just... a neat bonus, on top of the *true* strength of the Avatar.
Their spirit.
Not Rava, though that helps, but each Avatar themselves has, by definition, the soul of a hero. Each one will do their best for the world. And as long as people are willing to stand behind that, technology may change the *scope* of the world, but never the Avatar's influence on it.
Add to that the literal magic that technology will never be able to meaningfully replicate, and you've got a being that will not dwindle as humanity grows, but grow right alongside it. | 61 |
Since most devices nowadays operate on low voltage, would it be more energy efficient to have a separate low voltage DC circuit per house? | Apart from appliances in the kitchen and some other household appliances, I don't think there are many devices left that operate directly with 230V (or 110V) AC.
Even modern TVs, while not necessarily being low power, seem to at least be fairly low voltage for me.
Yet, each household only has a (comparably) high voltage AC circuit whose power has to be transformed into low voltage DC for every device separately.
I imagine that you could solve a lot of energy loss by getting rid of all the little internal or external power transformators, couldn't you? Or is it impractical to distribute low voltage DC over a whole house? What about for each apartment?
| 38 | Because the voltages are lower, the currents are higher and the resistive losses will be higher. This leads to several problems, the wires get hotter which can become a fire risk and the voltage at the other end of a wire is much less than was put into it (so where you put in 5 volts you only get say 4.5 volts out). When you plug something else into the DC source it will increase the current and will change the voltage drop (and similarly when you unplug something) – so you will need some form of regulation on the output socket which will re-introduce the inefficiencies you were trying to remove – you may also want thicker cables to reduce the resistance and that will be expensive.
Changing AC voltages to a different AC voltage can be done efficiently with a transformer, the regulation of the output voltage is where most of the waste energy goes and it is unlikely you can remove that element.
Another issues is not all devices will operate on the same voltages (some, like PCs, require multiple voltages), so either there will multiple DC voltages outlets or you have a single voltage (probably around 20V) there will be a need to step the voltage down in each device.
Then you get to the practicality, you'd need two sets of wiring and plugs around the house with a guaranteed way that they could not be mixed up (mains down the DC would upset a lot of things), and you'd need companies to start making things that can be plugged in – until there is a market they won't and until there is a ready supply of goods that can use it, builders won't put it in house as extra expense.
| 14 |
ELI5: Why is the recent drop in gas prices a bad indicator for the overall economy? | I tried to read several news articles about this, but none of them actually explain it.
**Edit:** To clarify, I have a pretty good understanding of *why* the price is going down. Supply/demand, speculation, liberal conspiracy theories and all that jazz. My question is how does this impact the economy negatively, as so many news articles seem to indicate? In other words, what are the consequences of all this? | 2,509 | It's because oil prices are a fairly good indicator for how well people think the economy is doing.
The central idea is that everyone, and every business uses some form oil to conduct operations. As such, higher oil prices tend to reflect an increase in business activity and lower prices reflect a slow down. (if 1 million people lose their jobs, commutes are reduced, production is reduced, demand for oil falls and then prices fall.)
Now the tricky part is that the oil price you see on TV is actually the price a few months down the road. The oil price displayed on the news is what's know as an oil future, basically someone is buying a contract to receive oil a few months from now at whatever the price is expected/predicted to be. This allows for a magnified effect on oil prices due to the effect of speculated trades.
These trades are purely based on what an investor think the price of oil will be. They reach this conclusion by looking at data from various economic sources in order to gauge the economy and then buy/sell oil based on what they think will happen next. These trades then have a huge effect as the increase/decrease in price will only encourage more speculative trade that will further fuel the price increase/decrease.
**TL;DR: Overall gas prices themselves don't necessarily have a large impact on the economy, but the economy has a large impact on gas prices, that's why so many people look to it in order to gauge economic performance.**
**Oil is a good indicator for how well the global economy is doing, but the "indicator" can be affected due to speculative trading.** | 2,530 |
[Spider-Man: Homecoming] What powers Spidey's suit? | Minor spoilers:
What is the power source for Spider-Man's Stark-provided suit? There's enough juice to run a JARVIS-level AI, a holographic HUD, various enhanced sensors (like thermal and x-ray vision), cameras that record everything the mask sees, a spy drone ...
It's Stark-tech, so my first guess would be an arc reactor, but we've never seen one smaller than a hockey puck, and there's a distinct lack of big-glowing-disk anywhere on Spider-Man's suit. | 135 | A mixture of dynamos and the ultra-efficient batteries that Stark uses to power most of his silly gadgets like the glovewatch and his glasses.
Peter has Super-Strength. Tony designed the suit to resist Peter's movements to a degree, both as a way to charge the suit's batteries through kinetic force and to restrict his combat ability. This is why he's less graceful than he might otherwise be in the redblue, and why some suggest his Spider-Sense isn't very present while wearing it. It is - the suit's just fighting him without him realizing.
This kinetic resistance is the reason Peter messes up a few times - most notably during Civil War he mentions the suit messing up his landing, while in Homecoming he misses that one support structure.
Both of those can be attributed to the dynamos charging the suit. The batteries themselves are embedded in the same layer as the chip he pulls out. This kind of stuff shouldn't matter for what Stark wants him to do (neighborhood shit) but is irritating otherwise, and likely can be toggled off for important fights as needed.
Probably the biggest change in Iron Spider (the suit at the end) is transferring to a distributed Arc power system, allowing both more advanced weapons/tech to be implemented and less resistance in the same overall package. | 106 |
ELI5: Why is increased sucidal thoughts or actions always a side effect in antidepressants ? | Seems counterproductive | 84 | To start, it's not a common side effect.
The first theory is that since antidepressants tend to resolve the physical symptoms of depression before emotional or cognitive symptoms, people suddenly have the energy to act on thoughts of suicide.
The second is that it is simply a paradoxical reaction. For example, there is a small group of people who feel wired when they take medications that normally make people feel drowsy. No one is really sure why it happens. Brains are complicated, man.
The third is that people already have thoughts of suicide and misattribute those thoughts to the medication rather than the reason they are taking antidepressants.
The fourth is that people feel optimism that they are starting treating and become more depressed when treatment doesn't work as well or as quickly as they expected. The problem with antidepressants is that they take weeks to really start working and they are not a cure-all. If some sort of external problem is impacting your mental health, medications can't make those problems go away. The efficacy rate of major antidepressants is in the 50 - 60% range. Some people find the right drug on the first try, but many other people need several trials to find a medication that works for them.
Bottom line: if you start to have thoughts of suicide after starting an antidepressant, talk to your doctor right away. | 54 |
[Terminator] What would be the most rational, effective way to IRL survive a Terminator being sent after you? | T-800, doesn't look like Arnold but looks and acts equally unnatural. | 37 | The Terminator only knows your name and can only look you up in the phone book. Change your name and get an unlisted number, and tell your friends and family to say "never heard of them" if a large, heavily armed man stops by asking about you. | 29 |
In the 'Light Echo' images of the V838 Monocerotis star why are the leading edges blue? | In [this image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/V838_Monocerotis_expansion.jpg), the light pulse seems to have blue light reach the outer extremities first, and the red light seems to trail behind. What causes this? | 26 | The spectrum and intensity of the pulse could very well have large variations in time; but most importantly be very, very aware that the RGB channels you see in these images don't map to literally red, green and blue. They could even be shuffled. Only with the info about the meaning of the colour channels we could start making hypotheses. It could be that once you account for this, this question disappears. | 11 |
[King of the Hill] Did Cotton genuinely believe that Hank worked as a pump jockey, or was he just trying to tick Hank off by saying that? | Given that Buck claimed that he "used to knock skirts with" Cotton, I'm leaning towards the latter.
Edit, one month later: Changed placement of quotation mark. | 36 | Someone on here a while ago suggested that Cotton continues to rag on Hank because he never lives up to his full potential. We see Hank display an impressive array of skills throughout the series, even being able to run heavy equipment, yet he works for a scumbag who doesn't respect him and often puts his own company at risk. Hank should be running a business, not working for Buck. | 53 |
ELI5 if standing up straight is supposed to be proper, why does slouching seem so natural? | I try and stand/sit up all the time but it always feels forced while slouching just feels right and comfortable. How is that? | 36 | Proper posture is better for your body in the long run. Slouching feels easier because you're using less muscle to stay upright. But decades down the road, slouching may be your only option if you don't avoid it now. | 25 |
ELI5: Why does it cost money to do a reverse lookup on a phone number, or a person, when a lot of information is readily available for free? | 28 | It's because
A. The company collects all this info in one place to save you the time. That's what you're paying for, not the number owner's details.
B. It's a service that people are willing to pay for, so there will be people willing to provide it. | 15 |
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Does HFCS really "turn off the body's ability to know when it is full" by shutting off the body's ability to recognize leptin? | People keep claiming this but I can't find any science or research.
Some links:
http://foxfitness.com/the-truth-about-high-fructose-corn-syrup-and-why-i%E2%80%99m-outraged-its-being-renamed/
http://www.yelp.com/topic/los-angeles-should-there-be-a-ban-on-corn-syrup-and-high-fructose-corn-syrup-would-you-support-a-boycott-of-products-containing-hfcs
http://stewardshipofhealth.com/Documents/The%20Sweet%20Obsession.pdf | 90 | Sucrose and HFCS are chemically very similar. From a dietary perspective, both are pretty bad for you in large amounts. Especially in the amounts that many of our processed foods contain. It's awful, really.
The reason HFCS gets such a bad rap is because of its economics.
People like sugar, therefore (so the thinking seems to go) if you add sugar to a product, people will buy it because it tastes good.
Adding sucrose is kind of expensive. It only grows in certain regions, and it's hard to deal with in a manufacturing environment because it's a solid.
HFCS on the other hand, is comparatively cheap. It comes from corn, and is therefore, because of corn subsidies, cheap. It's also much easier to move around because it's a liquid.
As a result, manufacturers load their product up with HFCS because people love their sugar.
Products would be just as unhealthy if they contained equal amounts of sucrose. They would likely not contain equal amounts of sucrose, however, because it's economically unfavorable to do so. | 58 |
What happens when a government goes bankrupt? | In the talks about the bailouts for Greece the goal seems to be to prevent the Greek Government from going bankrupt. But what happens if they would? I posted some numbered questions to better display my confusion.
1: Do the countries assets get seized by the creditors?
2: Does the country descent to anargy?
3: Do they get kicked out of the EU?
4: What would the implications be for the stability of the Euro?
Thanks in advance folks! | 30 | 1. Government debt isn't backed by any asset, it's not like a mortgage backed with a house. Even if it were you'd need an army (most likely) to go get it.
For the rest of the questions countries can't go into bankruptcy like an individual, Governments default on their loans, not declare bankruptcy. What the bailouts are trying to do is to prevent a Greek default, by giving the Greeks enough money to run a government and make payments on their government debt.
If the Government fails to payout on a loan this devalues all the greek loans and any new issue of debt will have to offer a high interest rate. This high interest rate is problematic because then the government budget is consumed by something that doesn't benefit the economy and then this would lower GDP.
Because they are part of the Eurozone they can't just print more money and risk hyperinflation.
2: Note the Greece has already had a technical default on one of their loans and they haven't had complete anarchy.
3: The president of the Euro central bank stated that he will do everything to keep Greece in the euro zone.
4: If there were larger scale defaults by Greece, the Euro plunges and is more unstable. If Greece is removed from the euro zone the euro rises.
Hope that helps.
| 18 |
If there are, as most philosophers believe, objective and real moral facts, and if it is true that experts in ethics know what those facts are, then why do we still make decisions about society democratically rather than through philosophers and other experts? | For instance, if there is a consensus in academic ethics that eating meat, especially from factory farms, is objectively, factually, morally wrong, then what possible reason could we have to still allow people to choose to eat meat? Why do we allow people the freedom to be ignorant, immoral, and wrong when the experts know better? More importantly, why do we put matters of *objective fact* to a popular vote by the masses?
If you are an expert in academic ethics, do you feel that Western society doesn't grant enough influence to philosophers of ethics? | 21 | If there are, as most scientists believe, objective and real facts about global warming, and if it is true that experts in science know what those facts are, then why do we still make decisions about global warming policy democratically rather than through scientists and other experts?
The answer is that politics is not some sort of hyper-logical process that is run by Vulcans or whatever. It's run by human beings who often have priorities other than "listen to people who know what they are talking about." | 33 |
[DC] I'm a normal citizen of Gotham and I want to thank Batman for all his work. What's the best way I can do that ? | So he would notice it. | 417 | Write to the justice league, and send your thanks that way.
Otherwise, you could also thank the Batman for his work by making his job easier, and help improve Gotham even more, so he has less work to do, or it's less difficult for him to do it. | 346 |
ELI5: Why are there so many different bolt and screw designs (Hex wrenches, flathead, etc.) ? Wouldn't it be easier to have one universal tool? | 218 | No, All have different uses, and in turn are optimum for different types of jobs. Moreover cost can also be a driving factor for what to use. And lastly whether your screw driver, impact driver, hammer drive, etc... will slip should also be considered.
For instance Lag Bolts (Giant screws with hexagonal 'nut' ends) are great for anchoring 2x4 shelfs that will support ALOT of weight. Since they can be 3", 4" or 6" and beyond - you need to use a socket set with an impact driver to really make sure that bolt will not slip.
Alternatively, if you were framing a deck, and needed 2.5" screws Philips will work just fine - but green deck screws should be considered (costly) and the t-25 bit "star shapped" will not strip easy (and again will cost more).
Right tool for the right job, bro. | 80 |
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[SCP] If SCP-682 adapts to anything, what happens if you take its blood and put it into a human being? Would it kill them, turn into human blood, or do some weird third option? | 87 | This guy thinks like a scientist. Theres no data on this currently and any data that might exist would no doubt be protected by mimetic kill agents.
​
This SCP exist solely to destroy. If its blood was injected into someone the chances are that someone would die in the most painful way possible. Im not talking death by poison either. Pretty sure it would do everything from mutate your arm into a giant spike that penetrated the rest of your body to turning your stomach acid up a notch and burning you from the inside out. It would not be pretty.
​ | 73 |
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[Despicable Me] Are Gru's minions paid? Does he give them free housing and food? How does Gru get the money for this? | 62 | >Are Gru's Minions paid?
As far as we can tell, no. But, according to the Minions movie, the Minions don't want to be paid. They're biologically wired to serve the biggest and meanest person they can find to the best of their ability. It's actually shown that Minions that don't serve a villain wind up with severe depression and restlessness. Gru is basically Supervillain Numero Uno when he recruits them, so they serve him without question.
>Does he give them free housing and food?
Based on the context, yes. They still need food and water to survive, and, since they don't really have any other job besides "Gru's Minions," the costs incurred fall on Gru's shoulders. And, since Gru seems to hold some kind of affection for them, he's probably more than happy to keep them around while Gru's genuine love and willingness to care for them has established an ironclad loyalty within the Minions that keeps them from switching sides to another villain.
>How does Gru get the money for this?
The same way all Mad Scientist Supervillains do: develop high-tech weaponry to sell, steal and fence precious items, hold the world (or sometimes the moon) for ransom, etc. Worst comes to worst, he can always get a quick loan from the Bank of Evil to cover any unexpected bills. | 65 |
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If my salt intake is too high, can I just drink a lot of water to cancel it out? | 604 | Salt (Sodium) makes you retain water.
Adding water to a high salt diet means you'll be retaining lots of water.
This makes you hypertensive.
Hypertension (high blood pressure) is bad for pretty much everything.
Sorry, this turned out more ELI5 than science. | 383 |
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ELI5:When does light stop? | Today i was walking along a lake on a beautiful sunny day. I noticed the reflection of the mountains off the lake. I realized that what i am seeing are photons bounced off the lake, but then i realized they were 1st bounced off the mountain, and they came from the sun.
When does the photon stop? | 62 | Whenever light hits something, some of it is absorbed and gets converted into another form of energy (heat), while some of it is reflected. When you the light hits your eyes, it is absorbed by your retina. | 34 |
[FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF/GROUNDHOG DAY] If caught in a Groundhog Day style timeloop, would Edward Rooney finally be able to catch Ferris (and would that break the loop)? | 104 | so you're asking, if Rooney had literally infinite chances to catch Ferris (who would never adapt or change his plans) would he catch him?
Yes, absolutely. Bill Murray managed to rob a bank. Catching a child is significantly easier.
However that wouldn't break him out of the loop. Bill Murray broke his loop when he grew to be a better person. In the same way, Rooney would have to learn not to be so petty and vindictive. Once he learned that, and still caught Ferris (because that's his job) then the loop would break. | 91 |
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[Vampires] In general fiction, what would happen if a vampire was forced into a house ? | There's the lore saying a vampire cannot enter a house uninvited.
But, what would happen if he was forced into a house ? Maybe while he was sleeping or something ?
Also, what would happen if a house was built around a vampire ? | 99 | The vampire would not have "entered" the house, it would have been "placed" there.
Besides, if the human dwelling in the house placed him there that would count as an invitation.
Nothing would happen if a house was built around a vampire as a vampire is only forbidden from "entering" a house he has not been invited into. | 154 |
Why do mammals such as canines and felines tend to give birth to a large litter of 3-5. When mammals such as humans, primates, and even cows only have one baby at once? | 17 | From an evolutionary standpoint:
In the wild, the main goal of animals is thought to be "survivorship", or passing down their DNA to future generations. With this goal in mind, there are two main strategies.
1) Give birth to a small number of offspring, and care for them for a long time before allowing them to be independent. This way, when they are the most vulnerable at a young age, they have your protection and are unlikely to die. You are sacrificing number of offspring for the benefit of being able to care for the small number.
2) Give birth to a larger number of offspring, so that at least one of them is likely to survive, purely based on chance. You sacrifice caring for the offspring for the benefit of having a high number of offspring.
I believe this is called the r/K selection theory. More evolved and complex animals tend to have fewer offspring, but spend more time with them.
From a physiological standpoint:
With mammals, the reason why some species like dogs and cats are physically able to have multiple offspring is due to the fact that they release multiple eggs during ovulation. Humans, on the other hand, only release one egg each month, and therefore can only have one child (generally speaking). | 10 |
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ELI5: How can ministers affect public opinion as alluded to multiple times in The Wire? | Hey all! Stupid question, possibly, but I just finished S4 of The Wire and a common issue for the mayor is how a given policy is going to play out with the ministers of Baltimore, reflecting on their ability to sway public opinion.
I was under the impression, however, that political proselytizing, as it were, was verboten in churches. Did I misunderstand something or is there a more subtle sway of public opinion that they just don't touch on in the show? | 25 | In the US, a church cannot openly endorse or campaign for a specific political *candidate* without putting their non-profit status in jeopardy.
But churches absolutely can and do actively support or oppose issues, and that's not illegal. In fact, many of the great movements of social change were driven by churches. | 10 |
[CMV] I believe that prejudice can sometimes be justified. | I know what it means to be prejudiced. More importantly, I know what racism is. I know that in almost every situation, they are ignorant and unjustifiable. But I've been pondering something for a while now that I frankly don't see as all that unreasonable.
I like bowling. I go bowling non competitively a lot. There are a lot of times when I go to the bowling alley and there will be a group of Indians bowling near me. I've always noticed that they, more than any other people I'm bowling around, will have more balls than anyone else. A majority of them are never used. To put this in to perspective, a group of three will have seven or eight balls, most of them put under the rack where balls aren't being used. This can get frustrating when I can't find a ball with the right weight and hole size that I need and I see that they have one but aren't using it. Yes, I understand that I can't just blame them for being the only ones who do this, I know that there are a lot of people who get way too many balls. Just the coincidence in my experience that nearly every group of Indians does this is curious. The Indian-to-non-Indian-rude-bowler-ratio is when I can't help but notice this.
The other thing I noticed is that they don't seem to have regard for the proper etiquette of waiting until the player next to you is done bowling before you bowl. It can be really difficult to have a good game when you get distracted by someone else running up next to you. Again, I know there are a lot of people guilty of this, but the coincidence is just too weird.
I've just noticed that I automatically jump to the conclusion that the Indian people playing around me will do those things. 9/10 they do. In any other setting, I have absolutely no prejudice with Indians. Every time I'm bowling with Indian people around, should I have an unbiased outlook? Should The Dude simply abide? Or does my involuntary rough use of the scientific method help justify where I'm coming from?
I would like to point out that I am referring to the people of India, not Native Americans.
Edit: Turns out that I'm not prejudiced! I just have negative connotations with people who appear to be from India in the bowling alley setting. My view has been changed! | 21 | Prejudice is forming opinions without evidence, and then (often as not) ignoring evidence when it conflicts with your prejudice.
You have some evidence: inconsiderate bowlers who appear to be from India. Here's what you can say without prejudice: people at your bowling alley who appear to you to be of Indian descent tend to seem inconsiderate to you. You're on safe ground (from the POV of logic), so long as you recognize this for what it is, a hypothesis built on anecdotal evidence that could be contradicted at any time. If you present a hypothesis as proven and "true" about an entire class of people when you have no evidence for that, then you are being prejudiced (and probably rude).
Here's what your evidence does not prove. A) You can't say that all Indian people are rude bowlers. Maybe it's just the ones who live and bowl in your neighborhood, maybe these people are all friends with the owners of the bowling alley, maybe you're just unlucky. There are 1.6 billion Indian people in the world, and you've only observed maybe a hundred of them bowling. You can't even begin to draw conclusions about the entire culture, much less the ethnicity.
B) Are you even sure they're Indian? Some might be Pakistani, Afghan, Bangladeshi or other SE Asian/Subcontinent emigres. Maybe they're all Bhutanese, and the truth is that Bhutanese are rude bowlers. Maybe they're all from one province of India, and that one province is notorious for a rude, aggressive style of tenpins.
C) They might not intend to be rude at all. Bowling etiquette is different for different people, and if these people are all recent immigrants, it may well be that nobody has filled them in. Your conclusion that they are intentionally ill-mannered may be wrong for that reason, and they would (mostly) be horrified if they knew the anglo bowlers around them were quietly, passive-aggressively fuming over their breach of decorum. | 28 |
ELI5: Why is the apology of the US Sailor seen as a negative thing? | If our boat drifted into Iranian waters then shouldn't we apologize? Seems like it would be the diplomatic thing to do. I don't even understand why somebody higher up hasn't apologized. It wouldn't have to be elaborate or anything maybe just issue a statement that amounts to: "Hey. Sorry 'bout that. Thanks for not being dicks about it." | 30 | > It wouldn't have to be elaborate or anything maybe just issue a statement that amounts to: "Hey. Sorry 'bout that. Thanks for not being dicks about it."
If after examining the testimony, and boats themselves that was what happened, yes Iran should be thanked for coming to the aid of our Sailors.
But it should not happen while they are still detained by Iran, and the Geneva Convention includes protections against using Prisoners or other Detained persons for propaganda, or to specifically seek to humiliate them.
The crux is that this was done and shown off before the Sailors were released, and was done on the individuals own authority not from any higher command with official backing. | 27 |
[Witcher] What qualifies as a surprise in the law of surprise? | You could have many things qualify as having something you don't know you have at the time of the offer of the surprise. Your wife could be pregnant and also have obtained a valuable while you are away, plus you probably obtained some things with little value.
How do you determine which of these items to surrender under the law of surprise? Is it which item was acquired first? Is it the most valuable item obtained while away and if so, how are the values appraised? | 40 | It's what is genuinely a surprise to you. If you knew your wife was pregnant when you made the pact then it's not a surprise. If she has twins and you thought it was one child then it's a surprise. If your pregnant wife gives you a gift from her late cousin that's a valuable trinket then it's a surprise to you. Trying to choose the lesser value surprise to weasel out of the pact is frowned upon but not exactly forbidden. It's just Fate has a funny way of punishing those who don't honor their deals. You could even give up a surprisingly good harvest in lieu of a child or monetary gift and as long as the debtor accepts it you're fine. Children of surprise are rare but more famous than farmer Ted's bumper crop or fishmonger Carla's anniversary gift. | 53 |
CMV: Where possible, picking up items with your feet is superior to picking up items with your hands. | There are a bunch of benefits to picking up items with your feet:
* Can be a lot more convenient when since your grabbing appendage has to travel less distance
* Your hands can be used for a lot more than grabbing things that are below your waistline
* Great for when your hands are full
* Is a lot more fun as you can pop objects up in the air and catch them with your hands (this is a lot more boring to do with hands)
* Improves body spatial awareness (I don't know this for certain, but it seems obvious)
* You get more efficient the more often you do it as you can multitask
* You can do cool tricks like flicking a sock or piece of clothing over your head and catching it
* Its just more fun than using hands
I know this is a bit of a light CMV, but I'm curious to hear what people think.
Happy CMVing! | 46 | While maintaining balance ability in one's old age is critically important, picking up items with one feet in old age may cause unnecessary risk of falling or twisting a joint poorly. At least for the elderly picking things up with hands or with the aid of a grabber is considerably safer. | 15 |
[General Zombie Media] What are some legit tactics that Marines and soldiers can utilize against zombies? | (For reference, we’ll do both slow, walking Walking Dead-type zombies as well as the freakishly and inhumanly fast zombies from Train to Busan/Peninsula/Kingdom. Also, we’re not going to use the zombies from the World War Z novel. As much as I love that book (definitely check it out if you haven’t already. Absolutely recommend it), the zombies there were imo written so that they’d be immune to our military and break all of our laws of physics, biology, etc. so for that reason, we won’t use them).
Assuming that no other powerful military hardware like our artillery pieces, armored vehicles/MBTs, aircraft, missiles, etc. were utilized (because otherwise this would be WAAAAAY too easy for the military since Zeke can’t bite you if it turned into pink mist) were used and only guys (and girls) armed with either traditional M16A4s or M4A1s were what was given to you, how would you develop a doctrine to combat the undead?
Personally for me, I think that making suppressors standard-issue would be a no brainer. I’d also make everyone be as fast as possible so probably no or only a little body armor and we’d go back to LBEs/Load Bearing Equipment. Marines and soldiers would be utilized like modern dragoons where they dismount from a vehicle, pick a couple zombies off or harass the herd, then after a designated amount of time (say, 10 minutes), everyone hauls ass out of there and head off to the next spot. ACOGs would also be issued out as the standard optics for their rifles and everyone will also have both an OKC-3S bayonet as well as an E-Tool for melee combat. | 23 | I mean realistically what we do now works fine. Modern soldiers are very precise and shouldn't have any issues with head shots especially if the zombies are slow.
Assuming it even reaches that point. Zombies have no air defense, don't know how to scatter when artillery is inbound, and frankly have zero countermeasures against literally just being run over by tanks. Or even just some guy driving his car. Zombies are terribly combat ineffective against everything unless they outnumber the enemy hundreds to one. They also don't have the intelligence to make group movements in search of prey, instead preferring to aimlessly wander in the same general place. This results in swarms that can be engaged and disengaged whenever the military wants.
Additionally Zombies are awful at multiplying. Their only method of reproduction requires they face off against their biggest predator - us. How many zombies can a squad of soldiers kill? How about a few police? That neighbor with a shotgun? What about you just driving a car? Anything more dangerous than a child holding a rake should be able to manage a positive kill to death ratio and that's before we start looking at the ridiculous number of bodies an Abrams tank should be able to wipe away.
Zombie media loves to show the aftermath but never really likes to show the early days. The rare times the military is shown they are facing thousand to one odds surrounded on all sides but the reality is even if some areas were overrun they would be quarantined and dealt with quickly. In the real world Zombies would get decimated by modern military forces so hard that we'd actually feel bad for them. | 36 |
ELI5: Why do humans forget important things, but maintain embarrassing things like when we called our teacher mom? | 28 | Negativity bias. For whatever reason, the brain seems to put more emphasis on negative things than positive things, even when both things are equally intense. For example, losing $20 will seem more significant than gaining $20.
Because negative things seem more significant, they are more easily remembered and weigh more on your mental state.
Side note, that's why bad news seems to happen more often than good news. People respond more to bad news, so it gets spread more. | 13 |
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How does space have a temperature if it's just vacuum? | 16 | Remember that "temperature" is a pretty handwavey concept. We can't measure temperature directly. We can measure *changes* in temperature, by seeing how something metallic expands or contracts over time for example. Or we can measure the radiation coming off an object and make a guess as to its temperature based on how well or poorly that object approximates a perfect heat emitter. And so on.
But to say that something *has a temperature* is always going to be slightly squidgy.
In the case of outer space, when we say that it has a temperature and that its temperature is about three degrees absolute, what we mean is that a perfect black body in that environment will settle down to thermal equilibrium at that temperature. That temperature corresponds to the point where the object is emitting the same amount of thermal energy via radiation that it absorbs from its environment. | 14 |
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CMV:"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult Needs More Cowbell | August 1976: Sunshine Records' Blue Oyster Cult, an American Rock Band, were on the verge of laying a new track down, called "(Don't Feat) The Reaper".
Music Producer Bruce Dickinson (yes, THE Bruce Dickinson baby, cock of the walk) has clearly stated that the song has the potential to be a dynamite track. Dickinson is obviously an important figure in the music industry with valid opinions. Although he puts his pants on just like the rest of the band - one leg at a time - once his pants are on, he makes gold records. With Dickinson's's guidance, Blue Oyster Cult may have the potential to become certified gold, or even platinum.
During the track's recording, Dickinson became disappointed with the lack of cowbell. Gene Frenkle, a professional cowbell instrumentalist for Blue Oyster Cult, has also professed that he'd "be doing a disservice for [himself] and every member of the band if he didn't play the HELL out of [the cowbell]", despite band members Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma's complaints that the cowbell was "too distracting" and "pretty rough".
Without more cowbell in the track, Frenkle may blow it for the entire band. Because if Bruce Dickinson wants more cowbell, they should probably give him more cowbell in order to succeed, even when Blue Oyster Cult didn't have a whole lot of songs that feature the cowbell.
Dickinson had also expressed vocal concerns over his health regarding this issue. If Dickinson (and we NEVER question Bruce Dickinson) has a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell, the only solution should be more cowbell.
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> *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!* | 19 | "The Reaper" is known to this day for one sole reason. It needs more cowbell. Had it been recorded w/ the appropriate level of cowbell, it may have broke Billboard's top 10. Maybe even hit #1. But it would likely have been forgotten in the 90s. Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night" (which was #1 when "The Reaper" peaked at #12 on 11/13/76) certainly was.
No one can argue against Dickinson. More cowbell would make the song perfect, but art should imitate life and life is imperfect. A thing is beautiful because of it's flaws not in spite of them. This is what's known in Japanese aesthetics as wabi-sabi. | 14 |
ELI5:What is the difference between an atom bomb, a hydrogen bomb, and a thermo nuclear bomb? | 53 | * An atom bomb derives its energy from enriched uranium or plutonium undergoing nuclear fission.
* A hydrogen bomb uses an atom bomb to initiate nuclear fusion in lithium deuteride or other fusionable substance. Obviously the atom bomb contributes some of the energy.
* "thermonuclear bomb" is roughly a synonym for hydrogen bomb.
* There is also something called a "boosted fission bomb". This is basically an atom bomb, but adds a small amount of tritium/deuterium which undergoes fusion. This contributes a small amount of energy by itself, but causes much more fission to take place, increasing yield. | 31 |
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CMV: Game developers can do whatever they want in their games and making marketable content regardless of it it's objectifying is totally their right. | I would like to start by saying I am left-leaning, but this is one thing that always bothers me.
My opinion is that it doesn't matter what game and entertainment companies do. If people have an issue with it, just don't play that game. There are way more games out there that aren't like that, allow customization, and the like. Companies should be allowed to make whatever they want in games, whether it's morbidly-obese, wine-barrel-throwing warriors or pencil-thin, scantily-clad women. They should be allowed to make whatever makes them money and targets the audience that they want to target without being attacked for it.
Why should the entertainment industry be obligated to make content that won't be as profitable as other content. I understand that this could end up making it so some people don't enjoy most mainstream content, but that just means that they need to find other content. I wouldn't consider shows like *The L Word* mainstream, but they are popular in their own right. People shouldn't tell TV shows to cater to different groups because they feel left out.
Change My View!
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> *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!* | 22 | SO what exactly is the problem here?
Game companies are allowed to do this.
And people are allowed to complain about it.
The company is absolutely 100% free to act on those complaints or not as they wish.
Decisions by corporations are financial decisions. They choose to listen to complaints because it will make them more money (not lose them money) than not listening to the complaints.
| 16 |
What exactly happened with the Federal Reserve and the 7 millisecond thing? | I think I understand, but I'm not quite sure. | 60 | The decisions that the Federal Reserve makes have very large effects on the stock market. If you know what the decision they are going to make is ahead of time then you can make a lot of money. Because of this, they are very careful to not release the information early. They decided that they were going to release the information at *exactly* 2:00 pm. Under normal circumstances this information takes a little bit of time to travel to Chicago, via wires--about 7 milliseconds. However, at 2:00 + 2 or 3 ms someone in Chicago placed a *huge* volume of trades taking advantage of the news, before anyone else could react to it. Thus, the question is how did they do it?
The simplest answer is that they knew the news ahead of time and this is just insider trading (maybe... it's a fuzzy area). They could have traded before 2:00 but didn't want to because that would expose them as clearly breaking regulations. An alternative is that they took a loose interpretation of insider trading laws and decided that at 2:00 the information is public so a trade at 2:00 + 2 or 3 ms is not insider trading--it uses information that is publicly available. Such a move would have to be settled in court.
The other possibility that is fun to think about but probably not what actually happened is that they have some way to send the information faster than the wires. For example, a radio signal would travel at the speed of light--literally the fastest possible speed for information to travel. Estimates for the time that would take are at about 3.2 ms, but that *could* be within the error of the Chicago or D.C. clocks (shouldn't be, though--there are systems in place to get those clocks synced just about as perfectly as is physically meaningful).
There was no theft of milliseconds, contrary to the titles of many news articles covering the story, and nothing was stolen from the Federal Reserve. It was just a weird case of insider trading with knowledge that was public-ish. | 55 |
CMV: Inconsistent treatment of TV personalities who make rasist remarks, actually makes racism worse. | CMV: I started thinking about this topic this morning when I read that the future of Megyn Kelly's show is in doubt following her ill advised blackface comments. This reaction is in direct opposition to the result of Don Lemon and other panelists referring (multiple times) to Kanye West as a" N\*gro several weeks ago. We also saw Papa John's founder lose everything when he used the N word in a staff meeting while expressing words that he didn't want his staff using. This is countered by the illustration of Ice T slamming Bill Maher's use of the N word in a comedy routine and expressing that black people can use the word because of their skin color. Ice T has not only perpetuated the common use of the word in entertainment, but also profited by using it abundantly in his music.
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[Megyn Kelly Story](https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/24/media/megyn-kelly-blackface-al-roker/index.html)
[Kanye West Story](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6267343/CNN-host-Don-Lemon-blasts-Kanye-West-Trumps-Oval-Office-meeting-minstrel-show.html)
[Papa John's Story](https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2018/07/11/forbes-report-papa-johns-founder-schnatter-used-n-word/774752002/)
[Ice T Story](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/06/10/thats-our-word-and-you-cant-have-it-back-ice-cube-confronts-bill-maher-for-using-the-n-word/?utm_term=.acb79dfc6dc7)
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I see a double standard specifically between white/black racial issues. The missteps of white celebrities are met with swift, often life-changing punishments. On the other hand, the use of racial slurs and terms by black celebrities, are not only allowed, they are considered part of the cultural heritage. I believe that if use of a word is offensive to a specific race, that word should not be used by ANYONE. It is equally rasist to chose who can or cannot use a word based on their skin color.
Now, I do understand that the N word is more offensive to certain people based on their skin color. However if that word is offensive to the point where you can lose a job, it makes logical sense that it should be taboo for everyone. The more we categorize parts of language based on skin color, the more we perpetuate racial division.
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This is my first post on this page, so I'm still learning the rules! I am willing to have my view changed. Let me hear your thoughts!
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EDIT: Ok reading a few comments, I now see that I need to make my premise clearer. My premise is that if something is a slur at all, why not just eliminate that word's usage entirely? I think by allowing only SOME people access to words and phrases, this continues racial divisions along the same historic lines. | 77 | >I believe that if use of a word is offensive to a specific race, that word should not be used by ANYONE.
It isn't the use of the word that is offensive, though.
It's the context the word is used in.
This is demonstrable in your own stating of the facts- black people (in general) are not offended by the word when, in context, it is being used by the people it was originally targeted against.
This is a normal consequence of a group taking a pejorative 'back' from their oppressors.
A recent example of this is the word 'queer' - which was a pejorative against homosexuals until they started using the word themselves.
Now the word 'queer' has no power as a pejorative.
But that doesn't happen all at once.
With the n-word, we are in a middle phase - black people have changed its use enough that they feel comfortable using it amongst themselves, but it hasn't changed enough that it doesn't still have its pejorative context when used by white people.
Your suggestion, that no one be allowed to say it, is actually a step backwards, because giving that word a taboo quality *increases* it's use as a pejorative, automatically intensifying its meaning since it is breaking the taboo.
| 43 |
My web app works on my localhost... now what? | 29 | Next, you want to make it face the internet at large. That means either hosting it on a server in your house, and port forwarding and putting up with awful data rates and such, or renting some cloud hosting space. Then, if someone knows the IP address of the server, they can visit your site. Then you'll want to get a domain, so and point it at that ip address, so that it looks like a website. | 21 |
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What would the results be if the United States eliminated all agriculture subsidies? | Not just limited to some farmers going out of business but wider effects in the United States and worldwide. | 89 | New Zealand did this in 1984. It resulted in significant changes to raising meat more efficiently. A quick Google can provide details.
Today, New Zealand products enjoy a price premium in China due to their reputation for producing quality food products. In other words, they're competing on quality instead of price. | 33 |
How Is adderall related to meth? | I saw that the adderall has amphetamine salts but I’ve never taken a chemistry course so I’m wondering what exactly does that mean to it’s relation with meth.
How are they the same? Are they different? | 20 | Chemical structure is highly similar but that ultimately means very little because changing even one part makes for a drastically different substance.
It’s kinda like how humans share a ton of genes with bananas but we are nothing like bananas because the differences we have in our genes (I believe we are 41% similar to bananas if I’m remembering right) amount to a whole LOT of differences in the practical world. | 13 |
ELI5: After world war 1 Germany was dirt poor but how did they manage to get such huge army and inflict huge damage in world war 2 ? | 74 | Massive deficit spending and outright not even paying for anything.
The German economy under Hitler was a house of cards. It's not the economic miracle people pretend it was.
Hitler cooked the books. Borrowing money was hidden. Deferred payments were written to German industry which were then deferred over and over and over and over again.
The 1938 and 1939 invasions of Czechoslovakia and the 1939 invasion of Poland were timed for when the German economy was about to collapse under the weight of how much it owed.
Germany launched invasions to plunder everything they could get their hands on to keep the German economy going for just a little bit longer.
However, they never had a chance of winning because they always needed more enemies to plunder to keep the economy going and that was unsustainable. | 172 |
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ELI5: Does anything actually stop a foreign army from invading a 'Neutral' country? | I'm not sure if ELI5 is the correct subreddit for this, but I figured I'd give it a shot.
I don't even really know how to ask this without answering my own question. What actually stops a foreign country from invading and taking over a Neutral country? I've been doing a little research on what makes a country, such as Sweden, neutral during a conflict and came across this:
> As long as the country is officially recognized as neutral, no country can legally form plans to invade it or use it as a base of operations.
Here's what I would be thinking if I was the General of whatever army and wanted to go in and take the Swedes' stuff: Who cares? "Legally" we can't invade, but what's going to happen? The U.N. is going to sanction me?
For example, in WWII Germany invaded Denmark and Norway (both Neutral), so the Allies decided to invade and occupy Iceland (also Neutral) to better defend the Atlantic against the Nazis. From what I've come across, there were no repercussions for either side. The Allies did pay for anything they "broke" in Iceland, but that's far from any real consequence. If Germany had been successful on the Eastern Front and beaten Russia and Finland, they likely would have gone after Sweden (another Neutral country). Switzerland most likely only avoided invasion by the Nazis in WWII because the Swiss bankers would willingly help Nazi officers hide and store money in their country.
Hopefully someone can enlighten me because I don't see any real reason to leave a Neutral country alone during the next world war. | 43 | The same reason you already said: money.
If any developed country gets invaded, other countries have everything to lose. Also, politics don't work that way in developed countries. Allies, treaties, UN. The UN might not do much, but the countries in the UN will have something to say about it.
So, you can invade, but when you try and get carpet bombed repeatedly, over and over by every other country, your country will be in a lot worse position than originally. Not quite worth it. | 15 |
What are the oldest species that we could (in theory) bring back from extinction, given the half-life of DNA? | 1,089 | I do not believe that we are capable of truly bringing any species back. With out a parental cell then even if a " " was cloned, by using using an egg from a common ancestor, it would be a hybrid and not a pure " ". DNA is not the blueprint of a creature, it is more like the library of information, of which a cell can draw from. DNA only makes the creature when released into the context of a the maternal cell. This is rooted in cytoplasmic inheritance, and addresses the misconception of DNA being the blueprint. This line of thought is rooted in a prior believe of a linear relationship from DNA to protein and to gene expression.
Also as a side not a species is not an individual but a functioning population. Genetic information can survive but memes can not. They don't exist as a tangible substance.
I hear a lot about bringing species back, and not enough about not causing extinctions to begin with.
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[star wars] What was the public reaction to Alderaan's destruction? | How did the public react to the utter annihilation of a peaceful planet by a weapon of incomprehensible devastation controlled by power hungry psychopaths? | 82 | The Destruction of Alderaan was the largest and costliest mistake in Galactic History. To fully understand why we have to fully understand just what Alderaan represented to the Galaxy as a whole.
Alderaan was, above all else, a peaceful world. It was a beacon of pacifism, hope, political discourse, and strength through the various storms that tore through the Galactic Republic over it's ~25,000 year history. The planet weathered Sith occupation, stood above the corruption that plagued the Republic in its final years, and was generally one of the most well-known planets in the Galaxy.
For instance, did you eat a Nerf steak last night? Or have you ever called a scoundrel you know a 'Scruffy-looking Nerfherder'? Those are just two examples of how deeply ingrained Alderaan was in the Galactic culture. It was as well-known of a planet as could possibly be.
And the Empire destroyed it. They blew it up in the name of the Tarkin Doctrine: an essay written by Wilhuff Tarkin to Emperor Palpatine concerning security threats in the Outer Rim Territories.
>"Rule through the fear of force rather than through force itself. If we use our strength wisely, we shall cow thousands of worlds with the example of a select few. These examples would need to be highly visible worlds..."
Tarkin was a fool.
The Destruction of Alderaan had the exact opposite effect on the Galaxy. While intended to induce submission, the instantaneous slaughter of two billion innocent lives did the exact opposite. Instead of inspiring fear this event inspired rage. Angered citizens rose up against Imperial occupation, igniting battlegrounds across the stars. The Empire tipped its hand by destroying Alderaan as well: faced with the knowledge of how far the Empire was willing to go, freedom fighters began taking equally-drastic measures in their resistance. Imperial Officers defected in droves. And, most importantly, due to military victories in the Battle of Yavin, the Rebel Alliance firmly declared itself as a viable opposition to the Empire.
**TL;DR:** The Destruction of Alderaan was really important.
| 117 |
ELI5 Why does the body, as a self defensive response to some sicknesses, swell the nose so you can't breathe? | 69 | Swelling is part of the body’s response to fight viruses and other bad guys that try to make us ill. The swelling (inflammation) increases blood flow which brings tons of good bad-guy-fighting material (like white blood cells). It also increases heat to the area which helps speed up chemical reactions.
Once the bad guys are caught, torn apart or moved, the next step is to get them expelled from the body (such as via pus, mucus or snot).
Our nose swelling comes from irritation (eg blowing it a lot) but it doesn’t swell to stop us breathing. Our nose gets blocked because there’s some bad-guy-filled snot that needs gone. When there’s a lot of it it can cause some difficulty breathing. | 47 |
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[MCU] Is the eternal flame more powerful than an infinity stone? | In Thor Ragnarok Hela walks by the tesseract and goes "that's not bad" but she says that the eternal flame is an example of real power. | 38 | The ability to resurrect the deceased and also retain all of their memories and combat skills is an example of real power. Without the Power Stone or an innate ability of real power, the Space Stone is a glorified car. | 57 |
CMV: Men having children after the age of 50 is unfair to the child | The average life expectancy for a male in the U.S. is what, 75 years old? That means if a man has children at age 55 he'll potentially have 20 years with them - assuming he's in good health. He might be able to squeeze out an additional 10 - 15 years old life which means that he'll be leaving his kids behind when they're in they're 30's which is still far too young.
Men having children beyond the age of 50 limits the length of their interaction with their kids. It is also a burden for the children because having an elderly parent means that they likely lack the energy to do fun, engaging activities.
If a man has a child at age 30 then there is no guarantee that he will live long enough to see his kids reach their 40's. However, he is definitely more likely to see that than a 50 year old man is.
I understand that it's "not about how much time you spend with your kids here on Earth, but how much love you show them while you're here" but I think it's unfair to put them in a predicament in which they more than likely have a limited amount of time with you. | 27 | Life expectancy is an average. The main reasons male life expectancy is lower than females is because of reckless activities, work place deaths, and suicide. Men are roughly twice as likey to die in an auto accident, five times more likely to die on the job, and 50% more likely to commit suicide. Most of these deaths are happening before 50. So, while a 1 day old male is expected to live to 71, once he reaches 50, his life expectancy becomes 84. | 84 |
Why do mitochondria have their own separate 'mitochondrial DNA'? | Do other cells or organelles have their own separate DNA? Is it some relic of the very distant past? | 20 | It is in fact a relic of the past. Early in the history of life, we believe the eukaryotic ancestor enveloped an aerobic bacterium, but rather than digesting it, it lived within the cell. Eventually, the eukaryote and the bacterium would exchange genetic material, and the two would become interdependent on one another. This is what we call endosymbiotic theory. And there is predicted to be 2 primary events (mitochondria from aerobic bacteria, and chloroplasts from cyanobacteria), and 3 secondary events (green algae and their chloroplasts being taken up by other eukaryotes).
You can recognize these events through a few characteristics: extranuclear, circular genomes, independent reproductive cycles, and multiple membranes. | 46 |
[Star Wars] My world just joined the CIS, what now? | We felt that the Republic was corrupt as balls and kept giving us the shaft, so Parliament voted to join the CIS. What's life gonna be like for us now? | 53 | You dun goofed up, guys. The Republic are almost garanteed to show up and "liberate you from Your Confederate opressors."
Not sure how your millitary is, but if it is sizable, prepare to go all in with the CIS millitarily. if not, just bend over and hope the Republic is gentle when they "retake" the planet...
And that the CIS are gentle when they counterattack.
And that the Republic is gentle when they counterattack.
You could have cruised moothly as a neutral planet, but that is too late now. You have fucked up. | 54 |
ELI5 how does the same hormone exert different effects in different target cells? | Sorry if this is a repost. I couldn't any similar questions. | 122 | Think of a hormone as a key that turns that flips switches and turns on chemical pathways of cells. The switches they turn on are called cell receptors. Think of them as on and off switches that are turned on by the turning of the hormone key. Hormone (keys) flip very specific switches. Some cells have switches that can be turned on by the hormone key, others do not. Some cells have many switches and when they are all flipped on, they have bigger or different effects. If a cell has that specific hormone receptor (switch), then it will be activated by the hormone. | 11 |
Does anyone know why the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't report wages over $100/hour? | It just has a # symbol in the downloadable data or a footnote on the occupation's page on the website indicating that the wage is over $100/hour or the annual salary is over $208k/year. | 20 | For publicly available datasets, the answer will almost always be that there are few enough people in the category to make them individually identifiable from the data that is publicly available. E.g. if you combined that wage data with other data available from BLS you would have a high probability of being able to figure out exactly who was surveyed. | 18 |
eli5: Waves come in at New York, and waves come in at Europe. What happens in the middle? | 7,741 | Waves are not current. Waves are really just pulses of energy and can pass through each other. They are mostly generated by wind. They can reflect and refract like light.
In the middle of the ocean, most of the waves travel in the direction of the wind. When the wind changes direction, the already generated waves will keep traveling in the same direction (and will eventually dissipate) and it will start generating waves in a different direction. As a result, the open ocean has sets of waves traveling in several directions. Form the perspective of a small boat, there will be a main swell and then "under" it, you can usually notice secondary swells traveling in different directions.
Waves go slower in shallower water. Like light entering a lens, this causes the waves to turn towards shore. As a result, any waves traveling at an angle towards the beach will get steered straight towards it. | 4,600 |
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[DC/LoTR] Could Dr. Manhattan, at the height of his aloofness, resist The Ring? | The Doc's own powers don't give The Ring much bargaining leverage, and his disillusion with humanity makes it seem like he couldn't be appealed to with delusions of grandeur. | 34 | He returned from Mars because he cared. Adrian pointed out that Jon had regained interest in human affairs, and he didn't disagree.
Tolkien was exactly on point when he said Frodo was the best possible candidate for resisting the ring. Assuming Sauron's magic is strong enough to affect him, Jon would be straight up spellbound. | 23 |
[Superheroes] So, I'm a giant destructive monster. What now? | Good news! I won the genetic lottery and I just developed superpowers!
Bad News! I'm 50 ft tall, covered in missile-proof chitin and have a mass of biological armaments, and everyone is running away screaming for superheroes. I'm trying not to hurt anyone, but I'm 50ft tall and I'm pretty sure super strong, so if things continue I'm absolutely going to hurt lots of people. Don't think I can turn back.
Help? How do i get people to see that me, the monster wrecking the city, is in fact a peaceful soul trapped in the body of a monster wrecking the city? Can I get a message across to the superheroes that I'm not here to wreck things? Is there a place I can go where I won't accidentally murder entire towns through clumsiness?
What do I do, guys? This is realyl becoming a problem. | 20 | There was a science fiction story about a human who crash landed onto an alien world and was thrown from his space craft. His injuries 99% paralyzed him from the neck down, and was going to die.
Then he heard a voice. It spoke to him, and eventually he realized he was speaking telepathically with a tiny creature near him the size of one of his eyelashes.
He was just a space man, a pilot. Not a scientist, so he only knew so much and could only instruct the little creatures so much. They brought him food and water, and did everything they could to keep him alive.
He even lived for a few decades after that, and he taught them what he could, elevating them from stone age to bronze and beyond. Their lives were much shorter than a human's, and it was generations after generations of these little eyelash creatures that cared for him before he died.
He made sure they knew he wasn't a god, just a different form of life, with just a much longer life span than theirs.
His last thought was of a tombstone for his grave, and despite it being an incredibly expensive thing, the eyelash creatures made him one after he passed.
You're like that human, and now humans are like those little eyelash creatures, to you.
You can't be killed. Your very movements could kill.
So: take a walk to an un-populated area, brush a flat area clean, write your name in the ground, and lie down next to it.
Humans are clever. They'll find a way to communicate. | 27 |
Is it possible that all elements are radioactive at some point -- even if it took the age of the universe for just one atom to decay? | How do we know that all elements aren't radioactive? It seems rather arbitrary that some elements are radioactive while others are not. Wouldn't proton decay be a form of radioactivity? What makes one element radioactive while another element or different isotope is not? | 15 | The possibility of proton decay is one of the biggest questions in science. They have been able to put lower limits of 10^34 years as the half life of the proton. Is the proton stable or does it have a really long half life? We don't know yet. Of course that also makes us wonder if the proton in other elements will decay after a ridiculously long time, making them radioactive as well.
Just for comparison, the longest measured half life is for Tellurium-128 which has a half life of 7.7 x 10^24 years, and the age of the universe is 13.8 x 10^9 years.
As for why are certain isotopes radioactive while others are stable? Are the sum of the decay products less massive than the original nucleus? If yes, then it will decay. You can think of putting balls (nuclei) around a hilly area. If they are at a high potential (top of the hill) they will decay (roll down) to a more stable position at lower potential energy (the valley).
| 20 |
How did older spacecraft take and develop photographs and then beam them back to Earth? | For example, how did Voyager 1 take such awesome pictures of Saturn? I'm assuming the photographs were taken on film. Are there photochemicals onboard the spacecraft to develop AND a scanner to turn them into digital info for transmission?
Were the cameras actually just really early digital models? | 19 | Early spy satellites would take shots on film and then send the film back to earth in a pod and it would then be developed.
The cameras on the Voyager craft were similar to TV cameras of the day and were in a way between modern digital cameras and film based cameras. The data they recorded was sent in a digital 8bit format but the way the cameras operated was analogue. | 10 |
Is it possible to synthesize an atom above atomic number 118, where the current periodic table "ends"? | This would require another orbital, correct?
Also, should element 118 be considered a Noble gas? | 17 | Yes- possible, but very difficult. Right now we don't have the techniques to make them. We would expect no. 118 to behave as a noble gas, since it would have analogous electronic structure to the other noble gases (full valence).
As a side note, physicists have theorized that there is an "Island of stability", or group of elements with much higher atomic numbers that have longer half lives than the largest atoms we have currently synthesized. These elements would have particular numbers of protons and neutrons that provide special energetic stability.
Great question! | 10 |
CMV: I'm not convinced non-binary is a real thing | The title speaks for itself. I'm interested in hearing from people who think it is and can give me reasonable definitions for what they think it means or is and why they think it's real.
So far I've heard nothing to make me conclude it's anything other than a label that refers to nothing. Taking it literally it's a nonsense word. If there exist two possible states of being, you're supposedly a third? There's no third option in binary. It's like the joke in the movie Airplane where the menu serves either fish or steak and the character says he picked lasagna. It doesn't add up.
What makes a person believe they're non-binary? What makes someone come to that conclusion?
I am prepared to be wrong, but I'll need to hear some good arguments and, if possible, evidence.
Insulting or rude comments will be ignored because I have no time for that. I'm only here for honest debate. | 30 | >There's no third option in binary.
You're absolutely right. The concept of nonbinary rejects the idea that gender is intrinsically a binary. Nonbinary people (and others!) may support a vision of gender as a spectrum or may reject it as a useful concept altogether.
Socially, gender has been constructed as a binary: you are either a man or a woman. But this construction is not reflective of everyone's relationship to gender. Just because a person doesn't identify with being a man, doesn't mean they identify with being a woman. Some people may, at times, see themselves as men and other times as women; or they may recognize that there are things about this social category of "man" that are useful to them, and things about the social category of "women" that are useful to them, and draw from both; or they may not relate to either category at all. | 23 |
Why is your mouth much more sensitive to cold water after brushing your teeth or chewing mint gum? | 8,693 | the culprit is a protein called "TRPM8". It's ion channel is the main molecular transducer of cold sensations in your mouth. It can however also be activated by the presence of menthol which is found in mints and tooth paste for that "cool & fresh" feeling. So if you drink cold water after chewing mint gum you'll get the double sensation as the protein is activated by temperature and the menthol molecules. | 5,274 |
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[Star Trek] Why don't ships from Star Trek use fighters in they're space/fleet battles? | 16 | You've hit upon the legendary "fighters vs missiles" debate in science fiction.
The short version is that fighters often don't make practical sense in most science fiction settings. If you want a small craft loaded with weapons, you don't want to put all the equipment necessary to keep a human alive on it, you just want weapons, targeting computers, and engines. Beyond that, a human doesnt really add anything to the fighter craft, since the computers are going to be making all of the decisions anyways. As a result, in any situation where the Federation might launch a fighter craft, they just fire a photon torpedo instead.
That said, the federation *does* have smaller vessels with life support and weapons, but they're for transportation (shuttles) or longer term missions (the Defiant). | 49 |
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ELI5: Why did Wall Street crash in 1929 and why did it affect the whole world? | 60 | To give insight on how "buying on margin" worked:
Let's say you wanted to buy $10,000 worth of stock. In the 1920s you could do this with a $1,000 down payment and signing a note for the remaining $9,000 with your brokerage or a bank.
The 1920s were an exceptional boom time in the US. Electricity was going in everywhere, lavish excess, home building, agricultural innovations, cars, new technology everywhere. In fact not until the 1990s did America see that kind of economic growth again.
Anyway the markets are going up so now your $10,000 investment is at $12,000. A 20% gain is not unheard of, but buying on margin (remember only $1,000 of your money is in the game) makes this a 200% gain. You pay back your note and get $3,000 back on your $1,000 investment. 200%+ returns means EVERYONE is getting in the game, because why the hell not!?
This is all fine and dandy but what goes up must come down and when it did all that fake money in the markets imploded. | 27 |
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Is it far that my PI expects the some students to work over the weekend/holidays when the some students basically get the same days off? | About half of the research group are composed of religious shabbat-observing Jews. PI pesters the non-religious students and the foreign students to work over the weekends and is also somehow ok with the religious students to remain quiet over the same time period.
Is this acceptable behavior? | 18 | Stop worrying about other people. Really no one should be forced to work over the weekends, but he certainly can't force observant religious students to work on Shabbat. No one should have to violate their religious beliefs in order to do their PhD. | 46 |
[Batman] Why doesn't Alfred wear mask when he's out to save batman or others | 98 | Even if he gets seen, he's just a dude in plainclothes helping a masked vigilante into his car. Maybe they know each other, and maybe the guy saw an injured stranger and decided to help. Alfred wearing a mask would confirm that Batman has accomplices.
Given Alfred's theatrical background, it's also likely that he uses more subtle methods of disguise. Makeup, nose inserts, cheeks full of cotton... | 82 |
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[Fallout] Where are the cats? | Fallout is famous for its post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland, however one of my favorite species is just gone, poof. | 25 | You know how cats will sometimes sprint madly into another room, stop and stare at a blank spot in space?
The FEV finally accelerated their latent psychic talents to the point where they could predict the wormholes with enough lead time that they all caught their rides off world. Every last feline has left the planet. | 57 |
ELI5:What exactly is shadow banking? | 46 | Shadow banking is the collective term for organizations that offer bank like services, but aren't regulated as banks.
Because banks take deposits from the public, they allow multiple people to have a claim on the same money. This is a very important role banks play in the modern economy, and because of this role, the government has a huge number of regulations that are special for banks. However, complying with these regulations is expensive. Traditionally, the margin that deposits provided meant that banks had a pricing advantage against other competitors (these advantages became the source of the term banker's hours).
However, as the costs of compliance rose and liquidity in a few markets improved, the cost advantage of accepting deposits stopped being large enough to keep all competitors out.
Eventually, non-bank firms began to offer bank like products (not deposits which would entail taking on regulation costs) but loans and guarantees. These firms are not regulated by banks but can offer loans as though they were banks.
An example of a shadow bank that anyone can participate in are lendingclub and prosper, which have grown dramatically during the bank crisis when credit became hard to get for many.
Most shadow banks are firms like insurance companies or hedge funds that thanks to credit default swaps (a way to trade just the credit risk of a loan without the rest of the loan) and futures and swaps (ways to trade the interest rate risk of a loan) to become very important providers of credit to the economy (either through banks or by themselves).
TL;DR. Non-bank firms that provide loans (or products that allow others to provide cheap loans). Because they aren't banks, they have much less regulation than a bank would. | 18 |
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[Castlevania Netflix] How many people did Dracula kill with his genocide? | Is there ever a specific number or estimate mentioned? What percentage of Wallachia is likely to have survived? | 23 | A specific number was never given, but likely it wasn't a lot.
Dracula's genocide didn't really last that long, many places were still untouched and it sounded like few even took it seriously.
Likely it was a couple of towns and cities. | 29 |
If microprocessor manufactures are able to get more transistors on a processor why do they make them smaller? | I understand that power and efficiency are factors they have to consider but if you're looking for all out performance why not make the processor bigger so that you can fit more transistors/cores/memory etc on it to make it faster? | 16 | three things: propagation time, power consumption and (to some extent) price.
The first is that the electrical signal only goes so fast, slightly less than that of the speed of light. This seems fast until you realize that in one clock cycle at 3GHz light only travels 10 centimeters. Chips are usually less than this but once they get larger it can be a significant problem.
Secondly, the capacitance and hence power consumption of a transistor gate decreases with size. lower power consumption is a bonus by itself but it also directly relates to speed because it means you can run it faster before it starts dissipating too much heat for you to remove practically.
Also, although the smaller sizes are expensive to develop, ultimately you can produce more chips on one wafer than you could before, bringing down the price in the long run (this is more relevant on less extreme cases, such as embedded microprocessors)
Also, just adding more cores/transistors/memory doesn't immediatly make the computer faster for most workloads, especially games, since the software cannot effectively make use of increased parallism. Most of the increased transistor count on modern chips goes towards better branch prediction, more instructions, and better caching instead of increasing clock speed, for which you in fact want *less* transistors. | 20 |
[WH40K] One day, without warning, all humanity vanishes from the galaxy along with Chaos. What happens next? | 19 | Orks start dying from boredom. Tau can expand, but will eventually get crunched by all the major powers. The Eldar keep going about their business. Ultimately, the galaxy becomes the stage for the epic Tyranid-Necron war. | 24 |
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Is the microbiome of one ear significantly different from the other? | Sometimes I'm guilty of using q-tips. Is there every a chance of cross contamination between ears? | 27 | Medical literature cites a case of a person who only got repeated ear infections in one ear. The infections stopped after the patient took ear wax from their other ear and put it in the ear prone to infection.
There is also such thing as ear wax transplants for people who are prone to ear infections. They take wax from healthy people and transplant it into ears of people prone to infection.
However all these cases seem to indicate that cross contamination of ear biome can be beneficial not harmful. Of course these are all cases of taking "good" earwax and placing it in a biome that is causing problems.
So the question is: do either of your ears have problems? Make sure to always use the cue tip in your good ear first? :) | 14 |
[Starcraft] In the Brood Wars intro, does the UED drop a detachment of marines just to watch them get eaten by zerglings? | Were they UED soldiers?
Was there mission just so that the officers could be like "wow damn they're getting brutally killed down there, time to leave"? | 21 | It was a Dominion colony and therefore Dominion soldiers. As Gerard explains they were there to so Stukov could see how the Zerg operate in action so that he would have real, first-hand experience with the Zerg since they were planning on using them as a weapon against the rogue human colonies. | 20 |
[X-Men] Can Magneto bend adamantium? | In the first X-Men movie, when Wolverine finds Rogue on the train after she runs away, Magneto comes along to capture her. Magneto uses his powers to restrain Woverine, and appears to actually bend his claws somewhat. Is Magneto powerful enough to actually bend adamantium? | 21 | In the comics, he once removed the adamantium from Wolverine's bones, causing his powers to go into hyper mode and thus transforming him into a beast-like creature for a while.
In the second movie, he says: "Stryker is the only other person besides me who can manipulate adamatium." | 38 |
How does one distance themself from others’ worldviews and create their own? | I am a young (20) man, still in the process of developing my fundamental views on basically everything. I cant escape the feeling that things I believe in are not really my ideas, but copies of things I’ve read and heard throughout my life. In the spirit of Emerson, I try to analyse and question things I believe and take for granted, but am I not being impressioned by Emerson in that process? When I read works by great minds I cant help but feel their authority and therefore believe them more than doubt them. For example: I read Fromm at the age of 16 and until this day I feel his views on Love become my own, even though Ive found out many other perspectives since then, maybe even more sensible, but its expinentially harder to make soemthing out of them since Fromm is so engraved in me.
I recently picked up Becker’s „Denial of Death” and I am trying hard to distance myself from those worldviews. Its all just theories in the end, what if I am not lead by fear of death but I will start to believe it because of Becker? I think my final question is: how do I read something neutrally, process it objectively, without it influencing me too much? Is it even possible? | 27 | >I am a young (20) man
There's your problem right there. Just read more and grow older, independence doesn't come from avoiding writings for fear of falling under an author's spell, but from reading widely and deeply enough so that the relative pull of one author on you won't be too large. Besides, there's nothing wrong with becoming a disciple for a while. | 67 |
What happens to the global economy if i burn 1 billion $? | Serious question.
I study chemistry and I am also decent at physics. So there is this universal low, principle of conservation of energy where if for example i burn something, the energy is released but never lost.
About my question now, if I burn that billion, that means I never actually got to spend it, so it didn't «transform» into ten houses or something. So is there a gap in global economy? | 96 | Current m0 (physical money) dollar supply is 6328 billion, which means you're removing 0.0158% of physical money denominated in dollars. Would argue that this would do nothing because most money isn't cash and its such a small amount. Furthermore a larger amount of dollars get made every year. Now lets just say you remove a significant amount of dollars. Then what would happen? Well you would lose that money. The reserve bank would see that there is a lack of liquidity and do the proper monetary policy to fill the liquidity gap. | 141 |
ELI5: Why are there so many talented musicians on YouTube who can sing amazing acoustic song covers that never get picked up? | While there are some artists like Selena Gomez are horrible live which shows their lack of singing talent yet they can make it so big? | 23 | The music industry has little to do with music and everything to do with industry. It's not about selling an artists talent - it's about selling the artists.
That's not to say all famous singers are talentless hacks - Just that it's not that important. | 46 |
[Troll Hunter] How are trolls able to smell the blood of Christians? | Or perhaps the question should be, what makes a Christian's blood have a unique smell that is difficult to mask with troll stench?
It appears that people who are not Christian are generally safer around trolls than those who are. Everyone else in the documentary, the atheists and the Muslim girl, seemed to escape any preferential treatment by the trolls. It seems that there is something about Christians specifically. | 23 | I dunno. Magic, probably. But there's a rational explanation for the sunlight thing so maybe it has something to do with brain chemistry and hormones. Would be nice if we could pay some scientists to figure it out, right?
Could be an evolved trait in response to troll-slaying knights from centuries ago. Or, much scarier, they tell each other stories about it. Perhaps they remember the scent, and are still angry about all the men in bright armor with sharp swords. That would mean that if a troll hunter kills one and lets his friends get away, they might share the tale and figure out how to recognize that same scent of loneliness and depression that comes from an underpaid, overworked civil servant. What if a couple hundred years from now they'd be able to smell the blood of postmen? | 12 |
ELI5: Why does a battery's storage capacity decline over time? | 26 | Over charge cycles and due to external factors like temperature, the batteries begin to have wear and tear.
Every time that you charge the cell, an electrical current pushes lithium ions from the battery’s cathode (made of lithium cobalt oxide) to a graphite anode. When you turn on your device, the lithium ions flow in the opposite direction. With each charge/recharge cycle, the cathode material ‘degrades’ slightly, meaning its internal crystalline structure is altered so that some of the lithium ions refuse to make the trip to the anode. As more lithium ions get tied down, the battery loses capacity. High temperatures also speed up a chemical reaction that degrades the graphite anode. As a precaution, try not to use or store your device in temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius.
Specifics from howitworks.com | 13 |
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