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h8loza | Biology | why do humans scream when in pain? Is it a learned behaviour? | I can't give you an ELI5 but as an emergency services worker and former childcare worker I can say that a rule of thumb is... if someone is injured and screaming it's generally not too bad but if they are really quiet or go from loud to quiet then it's a concern. | 10 |
ieqbt4 | Biology | Why do some drugs make us hallucinate perfect geometry? | I’ve seen so many shapes and colors on mushrooms and LSD that I have seen the same things while sober. I haven’t been able to pinpoint why exactly but it’s usually when I’m in a really, really happy and uplifting mood. | 11 |
fxud1a | Technology | Why do computers get slower? | Because over time more features are added to the operating system and apps as updates. This happens because there is always pressure to add more capabilities, to stay competitive. If you could take an older slow computer and reset its software to exactly the same as was when it was new, it would have the same speed as when it was new. | 5 |
9gdd9h | Biology | How are services like 23andme able to place an exact percentage on how much of a person's heritage comes from certain regions? | I don’t think they are as accurate as they claim. URL_0 (There is a similar paper published by MIT) | 3 |
b20eue | Chemistry | how bacteria don’t just fall off of things? (I.e, how something so small clings on to our skins and such and we can’t shake them off” | Some bacteria secrete biofilms that allow them to stick to the surface unless moved mechanically. That's why we have to brush back and forth on our teeth... to get the plaque off! | 3 |
6jnm0v | Culture | What is the difference between " & " and "and", and in what context to use one over the other? | In most cases there's no difference. A good rule of thumb is to always use "and" unless there is a specific design/stylistic reason to use the ampersand. There are industries and contexts where they can mean different things. For example, in screenwriting, "By John Doe & Jane Smith" means that the two people collaborated together on the script, while "By John Doe and Jane Smith" means that they worked on different drafts or versions of the script, and may have never even met each other. | 6 |
hubo4w | Biology | Why is there a limit to human intelligence? Why haven't we seen super intelligent humans who can solve complex theories and problems in like a week or month? | We have, Einstein solved the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and mass-energy equivalence - all in Annus Mirabilis (Miracle Year) papers of 1905. | 4 |
6rztum | Physics | If Jupiter is a gaseous planet, then is it possible to land a rocket there? | It would take on a semi-fluid consistency as you entered it. The deeper you went towards the core the denser it would get and the harder it would be to move forward. Eventually the force of buoyancy pushing against the ship would be equivalent to the force of gravitational attraction the ship felt, and it would come to a halt. I'm no sure if that really constitutes landing, but it's the closest you could get on Jupiter. | 1 |
f8l3of | Biology | ; When you close your eyes at night you see all these colours, and when you press your eyes they become more and more vilbrant the harder you push. What are those and where do they come from? | I get this thing called visual snow where there's a constant overlay of static like dots over your vision. I only really notice it when I think about it but it's much more distracting at night and when I close my eyes I never really see blackness. It's apparently possibly some sort of visual tinnitus. URL_0 | 10 |
d7ihjt | Biology | Why do our wisdom teeth come out so late? | The tooth pattern of the ancestors of humans is to have 3 molars in each quadrant of the mouth—12 total. Those species are primarily vegetative foods and used molars for grinding veggies up into smaller bits. Those species also used large canine teeth for defensive display and intimidation. As humans evolved from them, meat became more important in the diet and human ancestors started using fire to soften food and make it more easy to digest, and used tools to cut and grind food before eating. So teeth became less vital to eating (but still important). Teeth evolved to be smaller, and jaw muscles also shrank, being less important for chewing and defense. Thus jaws and teeth became smaller. But they did so at different rates and in different ways. One way was for the third molars—wisdom teeth—to come in later or to not come in at all. Sometimes there’s a mismatch—jaws become so much smaller that they can’t accommodate all the teeth. That’s why there’s often problems with wisdom teeth being impacted or twisted. | 2 |
9pr9o6 | Physics | Why do sticks break easier when snapped apart and not when pulled apart. It may be obvious to snap a stick then to pull it since it is harder to rip a stick in half when pulled, but why is this? It also doesn't have to be a stick, any cylindrical shaped structure also behaves like this (from experience). | When you bend a rod or beam, failure occurs due to tension in the opposite side. When you pull, the tension is distributed throughout the cross section | 3 |
b8a0dz | Other | Why India is the only place commonly called a subcontinent? You hear the term “the Indian Subcontinent” all the time. Why don’t you hear the phrase used to describe other similarly sized and geographically distinct places that one might consider a subcontinent such as Arabia, Alaska, Central America, Scandinavia/Karelia/Murmansk, Eastern Canada, the Horn of Africa, Eastern Siberia, etc. | India is its own small tectonic plate. The only other landmass in a similar situation is the Arabian Peninsula. The Indian Plate is also colliding with the Eurasian Plate at fairly high speed (in geological terms) and is actively creating the massive Himalayan mountain range that almost totally cuts the Indian Subcontinent off from the rest of Asia. The Arabian plate is generally being a lot more mellow, so the Arabian Peninsula isn't nearly as geographically separate from Asia and Africa. | 11 |
lip2gc | Biology | Why did a day feel forever at age 10, but now at 25 it feels like 2 hours? | I think there are two parts that definitely contribute to this: 1. When you're young, you've lived fewer days of your life than now. One day to a five year old is a greater chunk of that person's life than a fifty year old, who's lived several times as many days as the five year old. In addition, when you're young, you've seen less of what life and the world has to offer, so you're bound to learn new things more often. This leads to part two... 2. Finding new experiences can make you slow down and think about life sometimes, and with each day usually comes the same routines, habits, and expected things. This can feel even faster if you manage to have the same job at the same employer at the same location for most of your life. It's like how your nose gets used to the smell of your house and starts to ignore it. Eventually you might live your average day on autopilot. | 5 |
kttr1c | Biology | How *thick* does a knife have to be to cut you? | The edge of a sharp razor blade is a few hundreds of picometers. And it is able to cut things just fine. However if we go to smaller dimensions then a lot of our concepts such as cutting, width and touch starts to brake down. At these scales objects are not solid mechanical things but instead the world is governed by how the atoms and subatomic particles interact. So your question stops making any sense. | 3 |
6x4yi2 | Culture | What is the reasoning behind the weird names of groups of animals? For example, a bunch of crows is called a murder, and a bunch of owls is called a parliament. Where does this come from, and who decided what name belonged to which animal? | Oscar Wilde did a bunch of them, although several of the more common ones existed long before him. He thought it was funny. Best collective noun -- easily a crash of rhinoceroses. | 1 |
cldqi3 | Biology | Why is it that baby teeth almost always are grown out straight, but adult teeth usually end up crooked? | As you grow up, your jaw bone develops and grows. Sometimes environmental factors such as diet and hormonal changes caused by the environment can cause the jaw bone to not develop fully or fast enough for new teeth. The volume in under-developing jaw structures cause teeth to crowd and become crooked. Behavioral factors might play a smaller role, such as bruxism (teeth grinding) or maybe thumb or blanket sucking. | 16 |
6ot1rw | Biology | What does drowning feel like and how long does it take for the body to completely shut down to the point of no return? Edit: I'm not suicidal, please don't worry! Just genuinely curious. | The point of no return depends on a lot of circumstances. Most of the body can survive for quite some time and still recover. The limiting factor is the brain. Without oxygen the brain starts to get damaged. If the brain is too damaged then it does not help much that the body is fully working. This can take seconds to minutes or it can take hours. Kids can survive longer without brain damage, temperature is also a huge factor with cold water slowing down the process. So an elderly person who drowns in warm water might not make it even if rescued and given CPR within two minutes. However a young child who falls in an icy river and is found after three hours might make it given proper treatment. | 1 |
829jq6 | Chemistry | How do we get such beautiful patterns and colors in marble surfaces? Thanks! | Heat and pressure on limestone, that transforms it into marble with various impurities in the limestone which create colours. Those effects are then magnified by the polishing of the surface of the marble. | 1 |
d2zqn9 | Biology | How can URL_0 tell time of death on a dead body? Like how can someone examine a body and tell they died around 7-8pm etc. | Algor mortis is the change in body temp after death, liver mortis is the settling of blood, and rigor mortis is the stiffening of joints and muscles. All of these happen at different time intervals and all have different stages which are then used to determine time of death. Also stomach contents; depending of how closes someone ate before death. Those are just a few off the top of my head. | 2 |
6gi2h2 | Biology | When looking into other people's eyes, why do some people focus on one eye, and others flicker between the two? | Your eyes can only really focus their attention on one spot at a time, and if you are intently looking someone in the eyes, you generally will focus on the eye that is on your dominant side. There's a lot of factors that can feed into people switching eyes, like anxiety, or they could be copying you. | 1 |
dv9qjq | Economics | Considering everything is automated these days, why do federal holidays delay direct deposit and money transfers through banks? | It's because your banking system sucks. People are telling you stories that they may believe or not, but it's ultimately bullshit, at least as far as the justifications are concerned. The eurozone has SCT Inst, which many banks participate in (it's not mandatory yet, and it came way too late as well, it's not like banks are actually good at their business here, buy hey), which allows you to transfer up to 15000 EUR (100000 EUR from middle of next year) with a delay of at most 10 seconds between any accounts at participating banks in the Eurozone 24/7, every day of the year. | 22 |
c38yrv | Physics | why is rainbow curved? | Rainbows are actually circular, you just usually don't see the lower part of them because the ground is in the way. You know how a prism can split up light into a spectrum? The same thing can happen with a rain drop. If you have lots and lots of water drops in the air for some reason their combined effects is such that you get the optical illusion of a rainbow circle with its theoretical center being in the opposite direction of the sun from your head. | 1 |
7vybqw | Technology | How is an IP address 4 bytes? From my understanding, 8 bits=1 byte. 1 byte is equal to 1 character. How is an IP address equal to 4 bytes if there can be more than 4 characters of numbers? If an IP address is 20.30.1.4 wouldn't that be 6 bytes? Thank you in advance! | 1 byte = 8 bits = 256 possible values. None of those sequences of bits have any inherent meaning. If you want to make 8 bits a "character", you make a table of 256 possible characters and each number maps to one. With an IP address, we look at it as 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 - but it's really a single 32-bit number. | 3 |
7luceo | Repost | Can someone explain SpaceX contrail pattern to me? | Right, I'm an expert because I saw an image explaining it an hour ago and I've read some hard sci-fi. First, It was bright because it was high enough to catch sunlight after the sun had set on ground level. As it climbed it stayed thin, then it stopped. It stopped and started again because this is the first stage stopping and separating and the second stage starting. Then the plume started to expand. This happened for two reasons. First, at higher altitudes the air is thinner and the exhaust gas expands more than it does lower down. This is usually not observed because it would be difficult to see against a daylight backdrop. Secondly, the first stage, still traveling at high speed just behind the now separated and firing second stage, had turned around and fired its main engine to slow down. SpaceX has this nifty trick of bringing the first stage back and using it again. The exhaust from the first stage and second stage were blasting into each other like the wands of harry potter and ol' no-nose. They decided not to land this one to reuse, but wanted to pilot it to a safe place anyway. Good guy SpaceX. Lastly the fairings (thin aerodynamic covers) had poped off (intentionally) and were flipping over in the wake, creating some pulsing dots in the fat exhaust stream. I think I covered it all, make sense? | 1 |
k367dg | Physics | What causes the audible hum from some electronics and wires? How is the actual sound being generated? | The metal core of transformers shrink and expand slightly under magnetic fields and therefore generate sound like tiny, kinda crappy, speakers at the same frequency AC power is fed into them. Additionally magnetic fields leaking from the transformers also tugs on metal parts around it like the case and turns those into little speakers as well. For non switching power supplies this gets you the hum you hear from some household electronics and big power line transformers. Switching power supplies like the ones that run laptops use electronics to run the transformer at higher frequency, usually higher than the pitch you can hear, though sometimes (usually under low load with lesser quality power supplies) the switching frequency drops low enough that you hear it as a high pitched sound. | 4 |
6uhwwy | Physics | Deadweight vs. liveweight. Why does a 50lb bag of concrete feel heavier than my 50lb kid? | Weight distribution and the kid helping the positioning. If the kid was dead, dead weight would feel worse. | 17 |
99w0i2 | Biology | Is there perfect amount of mold on blue cheese, or any amount is fine? Is it possible for it to grow too much mold, to point where it is spoiled, or is drying too much only way for it to spoil? | Cheesemaking is a very controlled process. Clean, filtered milk from healthy animals is pasteurized (or sometimes not, for raw milk cheeses, but we'll come back to that), which kills off most bacteria and yeast. Then the milk is cultured, usually with a powdered culture, which introduces bacteria and molds that will then predominate (due to the pasteurization process, which killed off most everything else). The new bacteria essentially has free reign to colonize the milk. The rest of the process is where things can potentially go wrong. Tools used to stir the milk or cut the curd have to be sterilized or they can introduce undesirable bacteria. The molds used to shape the cheese also have to be sterilized. Blue cheese has an interesting process wherein the cheese is aged briefly, then the wheels of cheese are "needled," or punctured all over with a very thin, long metal tool which allows oxygen to penetrate to the interior of the cheese, which the blue mold (Penicillium roqueforti) needs to develop properly. In my experience (and, from talking with other cheesemakers I know this to be at least somewhat common), blue mold tends to contaminate other cheeses more than other molds tend to contaminate blue cheese. Where I worked, we had a "cave" that we aged all the cheeses in together, using a system of baffles, fans, and humidifiers to control the airflow and humidity to try to prevent cross-contamination, but it happens nonetheless. We had pretty good luck with our blue cheeses and rarely had cross-contamination issues (to be clear, any cheeses contaminated with blue mold would be safe to eat but not very palatable, and certainly not what we were going for; we did once have a few wheels of cloth-wrapped cheddar that were contaminated with blue mold, and they were absolutely delicious!). But I know cheesemakers who tried to make blue cheese once and could never quite get rid of the blue mold in their caves. It is certainly possible for blue cheese to go "bad," but usually not in an unsafe way, just from a palatability standpoint. Pasteurized milk cheeses are quite safe. Raw milk cheeses are allowed in the US, but they have to be aged for 6 months before they are sold. This aging time allows for any harmful bacteria that may have been introduced to show itself, and the cheese can be discarded. In some cases, unwanted yeasts can colonize the cheese, leading to a slimy, pinkish substance that tastes bitter. Again, not harmful but not desirable. In short, it is possible but fairly rare for other, undesirable molds to colonize blue cheese. The blue mold outcompetes most other molds, since it has a running start. I loved how with blue cheese you never quite knew what the cheese was going to look like until you cut into it. When you first cut into a wheel of blue cheese, the interior is yellowish, not blue. Once the oxygen hits the mold, though, it turns blue. Pretty cool stuff. And tasty too. Source: I was a cheesemaker's apprentice | 4 |
lle9x4 | Physics | In scuba, why does the diver's air get more compressed with depth? Does the tank not protect the air from outside forces? | The tanks do not get compressed when you dive If you look at [Diving\_cylinder]( URL_0 ) a bar approximately an atmosphere and the pressure increase by 1 bar per 10 meters of depth. So the low-pressure take will have higher pressure on the inside down to 1650meters depth. The tanks will not be compressed to any significant degree for the depth you dive at * low pressure (2400 to 2640 psi — 165 to 182 bar) * standard (3000 psi — 207 bar) * high pressure (3300 to 3500 psi — 227 to 241 bar). You breathe in the air at higher pressure at lower depth because you like to have the pressure in the lungs the same as the pressure of the water so there is not net compression on your lungs and ribcage. It would be had/impossible to breathe anything in if the pressure is a lot slower than the water pressure because you need to push against the water to expand the lungs and get air in. | 4 |
jhttw1 | Engineering | Video game engines | Like others already said, game engines are simply frameworks. To elaborate - a (modern day) game engine already has a system for memory management so you don't have to build one from scratch, already has a system for physics so you don't have to build one from scratch, already has a graphical rendering system, already has an animation system, already has a compartmentalization system for assigning certain scripts to certain entities, already has a game compilation system, already has a system for audio, a system for game controls, etc. In other words - you either use a pre-built game engine and build a game, or you build a game from scratch and spend a huge chunk of effort and time building a worse and less widely applicable game engine (all the systems which actually allow you to build the game) before being able to build the game. Either way, your game needs infrastructure. | 4 |
jd5pq2 | Physics | 0% matter and does it exist? Is there a volume of space that has 0% matter? and if so, what would that do in measuring temperature. If we could theoretically create that volume of 0% matter what would that do in terms of measuring temperature. would the temperature be absolute 0, undefined?. what would happen if i poked it with my finger? | In an absolute vacuum (which is a purely hypothetical thing for various reasons), particle/anti-particle pairs are spontaneously created and then annihilate one another due to complicated quantum voodoo. So even if a bit of space is completely empty, things keep appearing and disappearing in it. Regarding temperature, it wouldn't have one. Temperature is a measure of the average energy of the particles in a substance. If there are no particles, there can be no measurement of their energy. If you poked your finger in, it would not feel especially cold as there is nothing to conduct heat away, though the low (zero) pressure would force water to evaporate from your skin, creating a cooling effect. | 1 |
8s7i6p | Biology | Why during medical trials both control and subject group are told they are receiving experimental drug instead both being told they receive placebo? | Adding to the other comment, when it eventually goes public, the people will be told they are receiving the actual drug and not just a placebo. It helps both groups stay in the correct state of mind | 3 |
f7rqvl | Biology | Where do birthmarks come from? | The short answer is that there are many types of birthmarks with different causes. Some are related to unusual areas of skin pigment, some are due to unusual blood vessel structures, some are from differences in the layer of fat below the skin and many more. This site has a lot of information, but in pretty technical terms. URL_0 | 7 |
cfxxs3 | Chemistry | How is soap simultaneously made from fat and an effective remover of fat? | Soap sticks fat to water. That's how it works. It doesn't do anything to the fat, it just attaches it to the water so that when you rinse it off, it goes down the plughole rather than stays on your plate. It's a fat-and-water-glue, basically. By one end of the molecule being fat, it sticks to other fat. | 2 |
5u4ahy | Repost | Why isn't 17th-19th century style classical music not composed anymore? | Composers of 20th/21st century classical music are always pushing the genre forward and looking to do something new. If they wrote something which was too close to the music of centuries ago, it would be dismissed as a "pastiche" and not a new work of art. | 3 |
jy4xs1 | Physics | - If the big bang came from a release of energy, where did the energy come from | There are a couple theories suggesting what happened with the Big Bang and what came before it and relating it to our expanding universe. One such theory is that the Big Bang has happened before and is cyclic in nature. In the theory, the universe reaches mass expansion, then collapses on itself, back to the infinitely small point only to expand again. Thus creating another Big Bang. But like the other reply, we can’t see that far back so we have no idea. | 1 |
a3u8aj | Other | How do fighter jets with guns utilize them when some are capable of going faster than a bullet? | Imagine this: you are riding on a train going 100 mph. You go to the front of the train and throw a baseball at 50 mph. What happens? Well, for a bit, the ball moves forward at a speed of (100mph+50mph) 150mph over the ground. Until the air resistance slows it down, it gets a boost from the trains speed. A similar thing happens with guns on a plane. Bullets are made to pierce air though and dont slow down as much. So they're much more effective than the baseball would be. | 4 |
6why9u | Biology | Why can't humans stand perfectly still? Why is it worse with intoxicants? | Standing upright and still is not natural, it's something young children can't do at first, and it takes them time to learn how to do it. We're constantly detecting how balanced we are and making little corrections, as mentioned. Intoxicants slow or degrade our senses and reactions, meaning that those tiny corrections might come later or not at all. | 2 |
dap82f | Biology | Why does a person’s voice sound different after waking up from a coma? | Often they’ve been on a ventilator, which may irritate their vocal cords. Plus, they haven’t been speaking, so that affects their vocal cords, as well. | 1 |
66ensi | Culture | Every country seems to know how terrible Kim Jong Un is and how oppressed the people of N. Korea are. How come the worlds more powerful nations haven't "taken him out" by now, Either overtly or covertly? | First, most nations are in no position to help North Koreas people by attacking Kim. The vast majority of nations don't have the military ability to take him out or free the country from his regime. Even those that do, why would they? Governments never do things out of kindness. They sometimes do kind things, but not because they are kind, its because it benefits them in some way. Maybe resources, maybe perception, etc., but for a country to want to take out kim, they would have to directly benefit from it. Most countries don't. In fact, the only one's I can directly think of would be South Korea, the US, perhaps Japan. Some powerful countries would actually lose things if North Korea's regime was overthrown. China and Russia see NK as a buffer to US military power in the pacific. In fact, both these nations would prefer to have a kim ruled NK, but non nuclear, as that would lessen Chinese military control over the DPRK. In short, many countries can't do anything about it. The countries that can do anything about it need a reason to. And some powerful countries don't want to depose him. | 10 |
cwf1mb | Biology | When you donate blood, how is it that medication that you are on does not end up affecting the blood recipient? Is it filtered out somehow? | Generally speaking donated blood is separated into fractions and filtered accordingly, or it's kept whole if it's going to be used for a whole blood product like a transfusion. In the first case there are a lot of drugs that just don't matter, assuming you're not donating a large amount. If you're donating more than 50mL of something like platelets, then there is a formula that's used to determine the waiting period while being off some medications. There are also lists of classes of drugs that are disallowed, or controlled, or otherwise have restrictions placed on types and volumes of donations. Most drugs don't exist in plasma in concentrations that really matter when you're talking about a transfusion, but there are exceptions. Drugs that can cause mutations of cells in fetuses, drugs, that can cause platelets to aggregate (come together) and form clots are also restricted. For a lot more info: URL_0 | 2 |
7cobrx | Chemistry | Why does the Salt in McDonald's Salt Packets Taste Different from the Salt They're Prepared with? | It's all just salt. The difference is the size of the grains. The salt that is used when making french fries has super-fine crystals - it's almost a powder while the salt in the packets is more like a traditional table salt. The size of the salt crystals greatly influences how it impacts your taste buds. | 1 |
mtzm92 | Biology | Why scientists don't use gene editing technology to get rid of mosquitoes forever ? I remember watching a YouTube video where they said that we can make mosquitoes get extinct by using Gene editing techniques, and scientists know how they can do it. But for some reason, it didn't happen yet and probablywon'thappen. Why is that? | We've learnt our lesson about playing God with ecosystems plenty of times in the past. Mosquitoes make up substantial biomass. Not only are they a nutrition source for animals, but plants as well. They're also hugely widespread, meaning their removal would affect many different - and differently fragile - ecosystems. Read more here: URL_0 | 5 |
9yp6gi | Other | Why are RICO cases so much more "serious" than other ones? The rapper 6ix9ine just got arrested apparently on a RICO case. What makes this so much more serious than a normal arrest? He's set for like a minimum of 20 years at the minimum and apparently there's no "avoiding" it or whatever like what powerful people and celebrities can usually do. | RICO cases involve racketeering (shaking people down for money etc) and conspiracy. It’s not just that you screwed up. You knew it, and usually were the guy at the top of the organization, or with major control over what was happening. Think mafia/gang type stuff. (Although there’s probably more scenarios, but IANAL and I’m too lazy at the end of a 12-hour workday to go look it up) | 3 |
daw9qa | Other | Why do people have emotional shut downs as defense mechanisms? | That’s exactly what it is, a shut down. A sensory overload that results in defense mechanisms kicking in to protect themselves. Not everyone has the emotional tools to deal with even every day stressors. Some default to being hurt or feeling like a victim, some lash out in anger because they don’t know how to process the stages of other emotions so they go to default settings. People who have matured and have been taught how to appropriately work through the very scary minefield of emotions, either with the help of a therapist or through self exploration and life experience, are generally better equipped to not shut down. People who are not introspective or who come from family histories where emotional outbursts are common place generally exhibit those same behaviors. Dealing with emotional experiences is very much a learned skill and not a natural response. Fight or flight impulse and adrenaline is a hell of a drug. | 3 |
nk0291 | Other | How do you force a passenger plane down, they can't just shoot a civilian aircraft if the pilots refuse? | Specifically in this case, they called in a bomb threat. Which gives them justification to send up an "escort" fighter jet to ensure the "safety" of all the passengers on board and force the plane down. In other words, they lie in such a way that the airline can't afford to refuse. | 9 |
cumdm9 | Psychology | What is happening when you hear or see something for the first time and suddenly hear or see it everywhere? For instance; I heard the phrase "bad actors" on a podcast the other day and all of a sudden I'm hearing it on everything. The news, almost every other podcast I listen to, Reddit posts. Just. Everything. This has happened to me before with perogies. Is it just selective hearing or is the phrase just all over the place all of a sudden?? | It's referred to as a frequency illusion out the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Often it's all around you but you never thought about it and suddenly it comes to your attention | 1 |
5rd8i0 | Technology | How is YouTube a sustainable business model? If view count remains constant but video storage costs continue to increase, wouldn't this lead to a permanent loss? Let's assume that in 2020, YouTube maintains a daily view count of 500 million per day. However, they also keep old videos on the site that aren't generating views. Don't these "dead videos" eventually accumulate and overcome the profit margins with cost of storage? | Storage costs are going down exponentially. Every year the cost of storing 1 GB of data is half what it was the previous year. YouTube loses money every time someone uploads a long video that nobody watches, but it doesn't matter because they make insanely high profits off of the top 1% of the most popular videos. As long as YouTube is a good place for popular videos, the business model is sustainable. If it turned into an unpopular site where people just uploaded their personal videos but nothing popular or viral ever went there, it'd lose money. | 2 |
jxlyl6 | Other | Can a man sue the church if his house was destroyed by "an act of god"? As if his house was hit by lightning. He talks with the priest, asks him: does God exists? Yes. Are you his representative on earth? Yes. Is everything that happens according to his will? Yes. Then, can the church be sued to repair the damage? | An "act of God" is just a phrase meaning something out of anyone's jurisdiction. The legal term is "Force Majeure". But to answer your question, you could sue pretty much anyone for anything. So I guess you could, but you wouldn't win. | 4 |
ml5vs8 | Physics | Why does a tennis ball bounce very high when you put it on top of a basketball and drop the basketball on a hard surface like asphalt or cement I used to do this all the time as a kid | Momentum and elasticity. Both tennis balls abs basket balls are pretty damn good at storing energy form a fall and releasing it again as the bounce. Meaning they bounce pretty close to the Original height they fell from, most things done do this, they either don’t bounce at all or maybe bounce a couple inches. when you put a tennis ball on top of a basketball and drop them, the tennis ball gets launched, this is because it absorbs some of that energy from the basketball bouncing. When the basket ball hits the ground, it’s gets squished a little bit, if we paused time, the basketball is squished and ready to spring back to its original shape and bounce. The tennis ball, sitting on top of the basket ball, is also squished doing the same thing. But when the tennis ball starts to bounce. It isn’t only bouncing do to its own elasticity and unsquishing itself, the squished basketball beneath it is also propelling it up as the basket ball unsquishes. It is kind of like a double bounce on a trampoline, except instead of the trampoline it’s the “bounciness” of the balls. | 1 |
5wsofv | Culture | What's the benefit of providing education credits and free choice of education for underprivileged children? I have a hard time understanding how this helps those in need. | Let's assume that the issue of "underprivilege" you're addressing is that the public school the kid would normally go to is really crappy. The idea of these programs is to them afford the cost of sending their kids to a private school. They choose a private school that is not crappy, send there kids there instead of the crappy public school, and this helps the kid go to college/get a good job/stay out of trouble, etc. Of course, this relies on there *being* an available private school that is a better option. Not always the case. It also fails to address transportation and a variety of other factors that may prevent poor people from taking advantage of the better private schools. And it takes money that could be used to improve the crappy public school for everybody, and gives it to an outside institution that only benefits a few people. Now, it does burden the crappy public school with one less child to educate so it's not totally ruining the budget. But it can complicate or worsen money issues for public schools as well as make them a lower priority, because it is assumed there are alternatives people can simply use if the public schools are too bad... whether or not that's true. | 3 |
bsx30e | Culture | Why are wooden houses more common in the U.S when block/brick houses are more common in Europe? | Much more wood available and the vast amounts of space to have "plantations" of quick-growing pine trees. | 3 |
679to2 | Other | Why does Valve allow games to be in early access for years while the game uses that tag to bring in more people? | If the game has a small dev team, and wants funding/non-intentional testing they can release early access. Some early access games just get ignored by their devs after a while (which is sad), but the dev company has no obligation to release a finished product. And steam has no obligation to keep hosting games that dev companies don't finish. | 5 |
bfc0zm | Biology | What happens to sunscreen? Does my body absorb or metabolize it? Is it stored in some form? | Not only is it absorbed but research has found that certain chemicals in sunscreens like oxybenzone, octinoxate, octocrylene, homosalate, and avobenzone are not only absorbed into the blood but are even found in the blood of a fetus of a woman who used it while pregnant. The research has even shown links to these chemicals and hormonal imbalance. | 8 |
j2vx3a | Physics | why can't you walk on pool covers I have always been told that if you walk on a mesh pool cover and it collapses you die or something why couldn't you just get out of it? | You will be trapped in the mesh, severely prevented from moving your arms and legs, nothing to grasp on. As you sink you will be rolled up in the mesh to help you comfortably drown. | 2 |
l6i5b7 | Biology | why do eyelids randomly start twitching for a few seconds? | I've asked my parents about this before, pediatricians, and they said it is due to tiredness, lack of sleep, and long times of focus. I have also noticed (with myself at least) that it increases during exam periods, which would make sense here, with all the reading (focus) and lack of sleep. Your twitch my be different from mine, I may have misunderstood them, etc... so don't assume this comment is directly from a doctor. | 2 |
ehz38m | Biology | What causes the chemical imbalance that leads to mental health issues? As in depression and anxiety etc... | The chemical imbalance myth was created by pharmaceutical companies in the 90s to sell more pills. Its completely untrue and no one in neuroscience takes its seriously. URL_0 I just read this article on a mainstream news website recently. No new info to me, but maybe it can help you understand. | 9 |
7cg4h0 | Other | Why does FM stations starts at 86 to 110 rather than other numbers? (Atleast where im from, SEA) | Here is a cool map showing the uses of the frequencies and by whom URL_0 | 11 |
o21wrm | Technology | How do Bone Conduction Headphones work? Are they dangerous? | Head bone is connected to the ear bone. Have someone tap on your head with a spoon, then tap on their head. When they did it to you, it was loud, when you did it to them, it wasn't. You can also tap on your knees and compare the sound to someone else doing the same. The difference is bone conduction. You can experiment wearing ear plugs. Sound travels through a medium as a wave, just like ripples in water when you drop a pebble in it. Air is the most common medium, but it doesn't have to be. When you put a string between two cans, the string is the medium. In space, the medium is gone. A loud speaker a foot in in front of your would give you no sound. If you put your forehead on the speaker cabinet, your head becomes the medium, and you will hear it. Bone conduction. People who are around very loud things can only lower the sound so much by combining earplugs and earphones (about 40db max off the top of my head), because bone conduction will still make it loud. Covering the head with some types of helmets can further attenuate bone conduction (of which the skull is the primary contributor). Even then, you can only do so much. | 2 |
dhtwrd | Chemistry | What actually happens when soap meets bacteria? | Your skin has a layer of oil on the surface that bacteria sticks to. Soap sticks to the oil and pulls it away from the skin along with the bacteria. That's why so many soaps have moisturizers. | 7 |
kcjqzl | Other | What are the "Proud boys" moviment? | It started as an anti-feminist fan club of sorts that was started by social and political commentator Gavin McGuinness, that overtime became a right-wing white supremecist movement. | 1 |
6f25lz | Technology | how does a Chromecast work When I cast a show from Hulu or Netflix how does the Chromecast still play after on my TV while my phone is off the wifi network? | Your phone tells your Chromecast over WiFi what to play. It also tells your Chromecast what volume to play, to play/pause, and to skip if you request it to. Since it basically just tells your Chromecast what to play, if your phone goes off WiFi it won't stop playing since it's not streaming directly from your phone. I think. | 2 |
dsjncr | Technology | Why are we evolving technologies at such a fast pace now a days, when contrasted to the thousands and thousands of years it took humans to move on from stone tools? Is it just like a big domino effect? | Technology is exponential. The more new technologies that are invented, the more tools you have to create never ones. Everything we have now relies on several inventions, cultural changes and scientific discoveries, but you can't start at the wrong end. You have more avenues to explore, more options, more ideas that can be made reality when you have industrial society than when you had barely figured out metalworking. | 5 |
75bxk4 | Biology | Why is it that you never get an infection in your anus after wiping? | If you're wiping and coming up with blood, you should probably see a doctor and not ask ELI5 about this; that isn't normal and could indicate a host of things from a simple hemorrhoid to some forms of colon cancer (note: not a doctor). Unless you're posting this from the waiting room. In which case, carry on... | 3 |
fvdx85 | Other | Why do dogs have tick medication, but humans don't? Has nobody thought to make a lotion we apply once a month to make ticks not bite, or is it unsafe for humans? | Great question. I’ve also wondered if there is a light or spray that you can put on your body/your dogs/wherever that would illuminate the ticks. Like they’d glow in the dark or something. | 2 |
ncrhjt | Biology | where do the germs go when you put hand sanitizer on you hands since they’re not “washed away”? | A germs fatty layers are like it's protective skin. When the germ comes into contact with the hand sanitizer, the fatty layers break down. Basically it's skin melts, and it's insides fall out! Science! | 4 |
640q2p | Physics | How is it that water at the bottom of the oceans doesn't freeze, if it's colder at depth? Why is it that water freezes downwards in large bodies of water? | Probably incorrect but doesnt the salt content have something to do with it? | 16 |
aj8ah8 | Other | With modern technology, why do pharmacists still exist as a profession? | Why do video examples of things exist for games? Pharmacists exist because not everyone can easily understand the instructions, nor can they understand easily the interactions between drugs they’re already taking. A pharmacist is supposed to be the bridge between your doctor and your medication and you. You can ask your pharmacist if something is weird or different. They will be able to tell you if things interact strangely and that’s why you’re feeling weird. They can also tell you if over the counter medication is interfering. | 3 |
n5oy3x | Other | Why are monocultures bad on a farm? Why does it matter which plant consumes the soil? | A big part that no one mentions below is disease and pests. If a plant is vulnerable to a disease or a pest *the entire monocultural crop is vulnerable.* So, that's obviously bad by itself. But this also means that farmers need to douse their crops added pest- and herb-icides which are harmful to the natural balance of the field as well. | 6 |
8fm33g | Physics | Since there is a way to illustrate three dimensions on a two dimensional plane with shading and highlighting, can you illustrate (or simulate) a four dimensional object in a three dimensional space? If so, are there any videos on the internet explaining this or showing it being done? | You can, but it might be underwhelming. You're probably already familiar with it, in fact. First off, you need to wrap your mind around what it means to illustrate something in a lower dimension: it's a bit counterintuitive, but what you're really doing is understanding that the shapes you see represent something other than the shapes they are. Look at [this cube]( URL_0 ), for example. See it? Well, yeah... except you don't. You can't -- not really, anyway, because it's *not* a cube. It's some trapezoids and a square and two triangles. You just understand that the angle of those shapes is a funky representation of what is, if you built it in 3D, a perfect square. So now let's move up to the fourth dimension, and the tesseract: a four-dimensional cube. If a square is a shape where every angle has **two** lines coming off it at ninety degrees, and a cube is a shape where every angle has **three** lines coming off it at ninety degrees, then a tesseract is a shape where every angle has **four** lines coming off it at ninety degrees. We know what a tesseract *is*, then... but what would it look like? What would a shape that had those properties *be*? [Here]( URL_1 ) is a tesseract, represented in 2D. You could imagine building that in 3D as a wireframe, ball-and-stick model, right? That's your simulation -- but the weird part is, all of the 'gaps' between the wires (we call them 'cells') is distorted as a result of showing it in a lesser dimension. The six outer sides that look like truncated pyramids in your wireframe -- as well as the small inner cube and the big outer cube -- are actually all identically-sized perfect cubes in a real tesseract (in the same way the trapezoids in the cube drawing are actually identically-sized perfect squares). Additionally, all of the lines coming off each corner would be at right angles in a 'true' tesseract, and all of those lines would be the same length. Every single one of them, and all of the lines would be the same length. Every single one of them. It's trippy stuff, but mathematically it works out. | 11 |
fs9pcr | Biology | What did they do with babies allergic to milk before the invention of substitute baby milk? What did they feed them with and with what results? | Ooooh, I have first hand knowledge of this. I was born in the 70's. I was fed from the communal breast milk supply while I was in hospital (3 weeks, all the mothers expressed and babies were just fed from what was there). After leaving hospital my mother was unable to breast feed (hooray I almost died), I was unable to tolerate either of the milk substitutes. My mum had friends with babies and I was given "donated" milk when it was available. I went on to solids under the care of a pediatric nurse (at under 2 months) and occasionally got boobie milk from other sources. So my answer to" **What did they do with babies allergic to milk before the invention of substitute baby milk?** " - communal breast milk from other mothers. | 2 |
g6xzqw | Other | What is the process of finding glitches, many of which are insanely specific and complicated, in games that speedrunners use? | There's a bunch of different methods that are used. 1. Plain old accident: a bunch of people play a game a lot and somebody randomly sees a glitch happen and tells people about it. At that point it becomes a matter of whether the glitch is helpful and whether you can find a way to make the glitch happen on command. 2. Glitch hunting based on experience: a lot of runners and glitch hunters have a basic idea of what kinds of player actions can cause glitches and how games are built. For example, if there's a wall in a 3D game, there's a chance you can clip through it, so you try things that have worked in other games. Games running in the Source engine are a great example, as a number of them have similar setups for wall clips. 3. Peeking under the hood: you can use either an emulator or build software that hooks into the memory while playing a game to learn about what's going on inside of it. This gives you the ability to figure out how you can change that stuff in unexpected ways. This works even better if you have clues as to how stuff breaks. | 1 |
o0qy6p | Technology | What is anti-aliasing? What does it do and how does it work? | anti-aliasing is basically blending out pixels that make a line, to make the line they're part of appear smoother from further away. here's a good pic of what it looks like both from far away and zoomed in: URL_0 | 3 |
j8kxve | Chemistry | how does a PCR test work? | You start with a forward and reverse primer that match up with the two sides of the section of DNA that you are interested in. You mix that with some other chemicals and the DNA. That mixture is put on a thermal cycler; an instrument that raises and lowers the temperature of your reaction. At a high temperature, the DNA splits from double stranded to single stranded. As the reaction cools, the primers attach and start making a complimentary strand of DNA with the nucleotides (building blocks of DNA) that are part of the reaction mix to form a new double stranded section out of each single strand. You have now doubled the amount of the section if DNA that you are interested in. This cycle repeats (usually 35-40 times). Every cycle you are doubling the amount of double stranded DNA that you had from the previous cycle. You end up turning one DNA strand into millions of DNA strands. There is a lot more complexity, but that is the basic idea. | 1 |
6y3i14 | Biology | How do humans retain the skill of riding a bicycle even with long periods of unuse? | I went over ten years without riding a bike. I had nearly lost the skill altogether. When I finally climbed back on a bike, I was quite wobbly and had poor control. It only took me a few minutes to get my confidence back, but it took about an hour for the skill to come back fully. Within that hour, I went ripping along a mountain trail, lost control around a corner, and tumbled down the mountainside tangled in the bike. After that I took it easy and the skill eventually caught up to my confidence. | 2 |
jhg9ay | Chemistry | How does simply stirring milk (e.g. whipped cream, churned butter) change it into “different” food? I can understand that it would might add air to milk but whipped cream and butter are thicker and heavier than milk so the “air” theory doesn’t work in my mind. | When you make butter or whipped cream, you start with heavy cream which is a lot thicker and has more milk solids and fat in it than whole milk. When you beat heavy cream, the air makes it lighter and fluffier. When you make butter, you churn it so that the milk solids and fat coagulate, and you’re left with buttermilk that separates out of it. | 4 |
dyjuov | Biology | if you have louses, why cant you just dive under water and wait for them to run out of air? | It take lice hours to die from suffocation & also even if you kill the living lice it won't kill the eggs they laid in your hair so they will just hatch & you back to square 1 | 2 |
8cr0f8 | Other | Why is it such a big deal that Sean Hannity was revealed as one of Michael Cohen’s clients? | It's a huge violation of journalistic ethics for him to have been commenting on the raid of Cohen's office without disclosing to his viewers that he has a personal stake in the matter, being a client of Cohen. It's also interesting since Hannity's need for Cohen's services is unknown at this point, but the fact that Cohen's other two clients employed him to cover up extramarital affairs with porn stars certainly doesn't bode well for Sean. | 2 |
62l7c2 | Other | Why does the American government "hide" evidence (pictures, videos, and documents) and not release it for years (like JFK and 9/11 information) | This question revolves around what the intelligence world terms "sources" and "methods". Let's say you have a girlfriend, Alice, and a friend of hers, Betsy, informs you that Alice is cheating on you. Let's also say that you might be interested in dating some of Betsy's friends, after this all dies down. If you act immediately on the information, it would tell Alice that Betsy told you, and result in relationships between all three of you being damaged. You can forget dating Betsy's other friends. On the other hand, if you wait a bit, and fabricate another plausible way for you to have learned about Alice's cheating, you preserve your relationship with Betsy. In this case, Betsy is a "source", and how you handle information from her affects whether she can or will give you more information, or whether she will become an enemy, of sorts. You can still act on that information, and use it to your advantage, without shouting it out in the middle of a large party. "Methods" are similar, but less personal. In this case, let's say that Charles, one of Alice's gossipy friends, posted something on his unsecured Facebook profile that you've been watching, because gossip. If you act on that information, it could result in Alice confronting Charles about that, and Charles securing his Facebook profile. You lose the gossip. The last case to consider is old or irrelevant information. Let's say you've broken up with Alice, and are interested in Danielle; but you learn that Danielle has cheated on two past boyfriends, one of which is your friend Evan, who has since broken up with Danielle. If you tell Evan, even if you can protect the sources or methods, what good is reopening old wounds or causing new ones if it won't likely improve Evan's or your situation. You already likely wouldn't date Danielle. This is a similar situation to rumored information on the JFK assassin. As a hypothetical: what would it benefit anyone to learn that there was a second shooter, and he was a Cuban intelligence officer? It would cause unneeded increased animosity between the US and Cuba shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis. You use that information to better secure your nation, and move on. | 17 |
7uyqeo | Repost | Why do people take the time to make computer viruses? It seems like a lot of work just to be a jerk, do they make money? How? | Some people create viruses for shits and giggles. They’ll spend five minutes coding something that will turn your computer off or something when you open it, and that’s all (Source: I have friends who do this all the time) Others just want to watch the world burn On a serious note, however, viruses that make money usually steal your information (ex: credit card, name and birthday, address) and sell it to marketers. Others encrypt all your files and demand a ransom for them. | 8 |
7rps77 | Other | Why do Third World Countries have problems with possessing water, when the earth is 79% of it and we have the technology to purify water? | It's not purification, it's desalination (taking the salt out of the water). And it's a very expensive process which requires a lot of energy. And even after you do that, you still need to deliver this water somehow - most places that suffer from a lack of water simply don't have the proper water delivery infrastructure. | 4 |
lfqmxo | Biology | If Homo sapiens and Neanderthals are different species, how did they interbreed and produce the fertile offspring needed for modern humans to have some Neanderthal DNA? I was told that two seperate species couldn’t interbreed and produce fertile offspring, so I don’t understand how we ended up with some Neanderthal DNA. | Two different separate species cannot. But similar animals can. For example, you can mate some wild felines with domestic felines. So the theory is that the early proto humans were close enough in DNA that they could mate. Its very possible that mating wasn't successful all the time, but enough of the time for the genes to mix. And as they mixed, it would make sense that more and more compatibility would develop. Would be more like breeding different dog breeds than completely separate species. | 3 |
k5f0dy | Chemistry | How are some colored linens bleach safe? Some of my bath linens are colors other than white, yet they can safely be washed with bleach, without risk of discoloration. What makes these dyes bleach resistant, and why aren’t they used in clothing? | Bleach is basically an oxidizing agent. If the dye molecule can't be oxidized to a different colour compound it will have no effect. Being unaffected by bleach is only one factor that may affect the choice of which due to use in a particular application. Light-fastness, good adhesion to a different type of fibre, etc. | 1 |
70hbjd | Physics | At a subatomic level, and from a physics point of view, what is charge? What is the difference between positive and negative charge? In most explanations of charge, a positive charge or a negative charge is just the state of positive or negative particles outnumbering their counterparts. But in regards to the positive or negative particles that determine charge, what determines *their* charge? | Right now, the best explanation for any fundamental property of particles is unknown; particles simply possess certain characteristics. However, string theory takes our current knowledge a step forward by proposing that particles are actually very small "strings," and the way that each string vibrates, much like a vibrating guitar string and its associated note, determines the properties of the particle/string. String vibration, and hence properties, can be influenced by their passage through very small curled up extra-dimensions. String theory is very difficult to prove, and without being technical, is too broad and the math too difficult to solve at the moment, but appears to do a good job of describing physics at a fundamental level. Here's a link to some light reading from Brian Greene, a well-known authority on the subject: URL_0 | 3 |
82k3es | Other | How exactly did people kill soldiers wearing heavy armour(the type from and medieval movies among others) with only swords and arrows throughout history? Plus, how did the people wearing these armours have the stamina to fight in battles? Wouldn't they be exhausted after fighting only one person who also happened to be wearing similar armour? Assuming all these movies accurately represent how battles and wars were. Example of the armour I'm talking about: URL_0 As well as other types. | such armor would be ridiculously uncommon, as it would cost a fortune. Royalty and elite might own such armor, but would likely wear it from a safe position away from fighting. Even mail armor was far too fancy for common fighters to have. most would be lucky to have leather, if anything at all. Weapons would be spears and clubs. killing a person in full plate armor might be difficult, but due to their limited mobility, likely not all that difficult. Just push them over and they are pretty much done for. | 8 |
j9389a | Technology | Why do we not have central locking for our homes like we do for our cars? I'm forever fumbling with bags trying find keys. | This exists, but it isn't secure. Convenience is nice, but some things should be "dumb". Anything wireless or connected to the internet can be hacked. Other stuff that should not be able to be controlled remotely: your car, your oven, and anything that can be dangerous or that has to be kept completely secure. | 4 |
iywev4 | Engineering | Why aren’t OBD sensors a standard part of you cars electronics offerings | I think because it’s not as simple as that. How can a car’s computer tell the difference between a bad O2 sensor and a break in the wiring? The codes are meant for the diagnostician to use, not the driver. | 18 |
ftbn8n | Biology | Why is H1N1 ( Swine Flu) that appeared in 2009 still spreading abundantly 11 years later ? | Diseases normally don't away. They change and adapt, but they don't disappear. The Black Plague that wiped out half of Europe several centuries ago? Still around to this day. It seems to be both less deadly and less contagious as it has adapted since. | 2 |
f3i4ml | Technology | - how does a coffee maker turn room temperature water into scalding hot liquid so quickly | It doesn't work like a kettle, trying to warm a big tank of water up at once, it draws water up through a tube, and heats the water in that tube only. The result is hot water rapidly, but it's not being delivered at a very high volume. That's how it does it. A lot of water at once hot takes time. A small amount at a time hot, can be done very quickly when you're running off wall power. | 2 |
b8052m | Biology | What is the goal of bacteria when they infect human? I mean they release toxin, causes damage to the surrounding area but what is that they are trying to achieve? Is it just to get more nutrients out of the infected organism? | Bacteria have the same goal as all organisms. To survive and reproduce. There are some bacteria that have a positive effect on the human body and some that have a disruptive effect. But either way the individual bacteria has the focus of survival and reproduction of its species. | 6 |
5tmh19 | Repost | Why do we not remember the last moments before we fall asleep? | One aspect is that the information isn't that important and you're not receiving much information into the brain, so what is there to remember? It's also important to realise that 'sleep' and 'wakefulness' are really just two points on an entire spectrum of consciousness. It isn't like you instantly go from being awake to being asleep; your brain slowly begins to inhibit lots of different parts of itself and the body. Your muscles become more paralysed, incoming information is filtered out, and eventually many of your brain processes (including memory) are inhibited. | 1 |
5xjdgy | Repost | How did the configuration of the computer keyboard come to be? | The QWERTY layout was designed with typewriters in mind to keep commonly used clumps of letters separated, preventing jamming of the hammers while typing. | 1 |
9s48yr | Chemistry | Who comes up with names for prescription meds, and why do they all sound similar? | They're designed by marketing to sound Latin-ish Greek-ish (sometimes based on the actual chemical name, sometimes not), because science/medicine terms sound like that, which makes the drug look more legit. The names also need to be unique and trademarkable, because scientific names can't be trademarked (anyone can sell acetaminophen, but only Johnson & Johnson can sell Tylenol). | 5 |
crkica | Physics | how did the substance came into existence that led to the big bang | > But I cannot grasp my mind on the fact that “something” “exploded” No. Nothing exploded. The term "Big Bang" is a bit of a misnomer for that reason. Do you know the visualisation that the expansion of the universe is a bit like the expansion of a balloon's surface? Then imagine that the balloon starts out infinitely small, as a single point. The moment that the balloon first expands is the moment that it start's having a surface. As the surface corresponds to the universe in this visualisation, that moment would be the Big Bang. As you can see, there's no explosion there. Instead the Big Bang describes the moment of our universe coming into existance. | 4 |
7adiqe | Other | Is it "couldn't care less..." or "could care less..." Why? | "I couldn't care less". "I could not care less". means that you are at the bare minimum of caring. saying "I could care less" implies that you care at least a small amount, as it would be possible for you to care less. Both are accepted colloquially, but "couldn't" is correct. | 1 |
778h8v | Economics | What is a lien on a property? | There are two different kinds of rights you can have: personal rights, and property rights. The vast, vast, vast, majority of rights we have are personal. "I owe YOU $2.00", or "YOU owe THE BANK $30,000.00". However one of the interesting characters of law that developed hundreds, and hundreds, of years ago, is that some rights are not just personal, they are attached to property. For example, if I have a mortgage on your house, it doesn't matter whether you go bankrupt, whether you die, whether you get divorced, whether you kill someone and go to jail. I still get paid my mortgage (subject to the hundred and one exceptions that exist to any six word legal summary). On the other hand, if the value of the house goes down, and suddenly it is only worth 100K, but I have a 200K mortgage... well I might be in trouble there. Now, today, most property rights also have a personal right component. In Canada if the house goes down to 100K, and I'm owed 200K, I sell the house, and then sue you for the unpaid balance. A lien is the property component of one of these dual rights. Yes if you pay a guy to pave your driveway "YOU owe HIM the contract amount." But at the same time if you don't pay he can generally get a lien on the property and then if it is going to be sold, or mortgaged, the buyer or lender will require the lien be paid out. *BTW OP, talk to a lawyer asap, you should know your rights and obligations from someone who can give you the details in your jurisdiction. Liens can expire for example. | 1 |
m33mp8 | Biology | Why can’t we just surgically remove/lipo all the unwanted or excess fat at once? I’m just curious. I’m sure if it was possible, it would be the most popular cosmetic surgery in the world. No more “my 600 pound life” shows, just go in and come out at your goal weight. | Fat is filled with blood vessels. Blood vessels are filled with blood. Sucking out fat can pop blood vessels. Blood vessels can fill the empty space where fat used to be. Skin can stretch and hold a lot more blood than there was fat. Blood outside of blood vessels is not going back to your heart. Blood not going back to your heart is not going to organs that need blood. Blood outside of blood vessels also starts clotting. Clotted blood makes unclotted blood start to clot too. Clotted blood can leak back into blood vessels. Blood clots can break off and block organs from receiving blood. Organs start dying without blood. Organs that get enough damage can't be repaired. Humans that have enough damaged organs can't live. | 7 |
9rd6lv | Other | Why do some states require you to reveal your identity when you win the lottery? | It's to prove that it wasn't a scam. The lottery is generally regulated by the government to some capacity and so they want to ensure that it's transparent. If you didn't require to reveal the identity of the winner it would be very easy to see a situation where the governor's siblings all just happen to be the winners each time and no one would be able to find out. This was the case for McDonald's Monopoly game for many years when it first came out. | 8 |
9gexy6 | Physics | Why is the UV index so much lower when the sun is closer to the horizon in the morning as opposed to later in the day? | When the sun’s light hits us at mid-day, it’s pretty close to a 90 degree angle (for most of us), which is essentially straight down through our atmosphere. The closer the sun is to the horizon, the less steep of an angle the light is taking through the atmosphere. Our atmosphere filters out a lot of harmful light for us, like UV. When the light follows a shallow angle, it travels a longer path through our atmosphere, which = more filtering. Thus there is less UV in the evening. | 2 |
7kom4u | Physics | Why does twisting a damp sponge get more water out than just squeezing it, without having to apply anywhere near as much force? | It has to do with the area where the force is applied. Squeezing (or compression) will be applied in the area immediately in contact with your hand. Twisting (or torsion) will carry the tension as angular moment throughout the whole surface of the sponge. | 1 |
icmnie | Other | Why does air fryer are not widely use in food industry or restaurant chains eventhough it is healthier compared to oil frying? | air friers are far more expensive than oil, especially if used at a commercial level. think about how many (or how large of) air fryers you would need to match the productivity of oil fryers. almost everything in the food industry comes down to the cost-benefit ratio | 4 |