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71tp8e | Repost | Why does a familiar word sound unfamiliar after you overly repeat it? | I... Have some learning disability and this doesn't effect me. Can someone explain how this feels? I've seen this talked about a lot and I can repeat a word 100s of times and never get to this point. | 16 |
97966p | Other | Where does the term “red herring” come from? | Way back in the day, herring was smoked, and came out looking reddish, so a smoked herring was also called a red herring or a kipper. As a literary device, a red herring is a device to throw a follower off the trail, much the same way as dragging an enticing and easily smelled red herring across the trail to somewhere else could divert the hounds following a fleeing person. In spy versus spy terms a red herring is a promising avenue investigation that leads nowhere and leaves a false impression to the pursuer, wasting time and resources. | 2 |
8fqmb0 | Engineering | Why do bathroom stalls not extend all the way to the floor, leaving that creepy exposed area? | Installation Cost: save money by buying pre made walls instead of custom walls Smells: Airflow helps remove gases Cleaning: easier to clean floors Security: people less likely to do drugs, sex, etc. Speed: increased throughput by people seeing which stalls are empty instead of knocking | 4 |
6s2qzu | Repost | How did Salt and Pepper become the chosen ones of food spices? | Salt is special because the sodium and chlorine ions that we get from it are critical to our nervous system. If you don't eat enough chlorine and sodium you will eventually *die*; and since salt is the most plentiful (and edible) source of those elements on the planet our taste buds have evolved to crave it. Pepper appears to be popular for cultural reasons. My understanding is that it's a 'clean' spice which can add heat to foods without adding all sorts of other flavours. It does have bactericidal properties, but so do almost all other herbs and spices so I doubt that has much to do with it's prevalence. | 21 |
8o9x9w | Engineering | What is it about (steam or otherwise) turbines that makes them so ubiquitous for power generation? Do we really not have anything more efficient after more than a century? It's almost mind-blowing to think that large-scale electricity production is just a handful of different ways to spin a turbine (nuclear, wind, hydro, coal; all basically the same core principle). Is there really no better commercial technology available for generation? | Water is an amazing compound. By the way the actual power generation has nothing to do with temperature other than just keeping it steam throughout the process. The only reason it has to heat up so much is that you don’t want the steam condensing back to water on a turbine blade. Coal, natural gas, and nuclear, all do the same thing which is heat up water until it turns into steam. The steam passes from a higher pressure point to a lower pressure point and it’s path it through the turbine which in turn turns the turbine and creates power. Harnessing higher pressure that is going to lower pressure has been used for thousands of years (think of windmills or a water mill). | 16 |
f2xtx2 | Technology | They say my phone has more computing power than the computers that got Apollo 11 to the moon. Does that mean, theoretically, my iPhone could orchestrate a moon landing from take off to touchdown? | Even those electronic birthday cards that play a song when you open them have more processing power than the Apollo 11 ship... so yes | 20 |
mgzntk | Other | How do kids play the same or extremely similar children's rhyming games across wide regions? I don't remember adults teaching me those rhymes that me and my neighborhood playmates know and when i was older and meeting other teens i found out they also knew those rhymes, so is that simply by word of mouth? If it is i mean that's an efficient children's information network. | It's kind of by word of mouth yeah, but it's not an information network. It relies on the fact that children of different ages interact with each other, so you get some overlap between play groups - if you have a group of 9 year olds with one 7 year old who all play a particular rhyming game, and then that 7 year old also plays with a group of 5 year olds and teaches them the rhyming game, you now have an entire new playgroup with the same game, which may also have a 3 year old in it who teaches it to their 3 year old friends. Playgroup overlap isn't just age-based either, it's also geographical. Just taking myself for an example, I lived on a street as a kid, and I went to a school. The kids on that street went to a total of four different schools iirc, so if I had brought a game to them from my school, they could spread it to three more schools from the neutral ground of my street. If someone from one of those schools liked it and brought it back to their street that's on the opposite side of town to my street, they could pass it onto kids who go to schools even further away. This happens because school catchment zones tend to overlap slightly (or in some cases quite significantly), as if the entire country were a giant Venn diagram. Then you also get a little bit of kids moving around as their parents do to top it off and allow some extra mixing between not directly adjacent catchment zones. You also see mutations in the rhymes over great distances, when the carrier of a new rhyme misremembers it or changes it to be funnier, and there's an element of shared media consumption nowadays too. Tom Scott did a [survey]( URL_0 ) a while back about the rhyme involving noisy metal and malodorous crime fighters that indicates younger people today know the egg-laying versions better than older people as a result of the simpsons, which broadcast the almost ubiquitous American version. For this to work the rhyme needed to be known first, but television replaced the rhyme for a lot of children for a generation or so. | 1 |
7z8eka | Biology | In survival/apocalyptic movies, people can survive by just eating insects alone. Is this true in real life? | People eat insects, and they can provide some useful calories and protein. But no human society has survived using insects as a major source of its calories, and for a very good reason. The amount of calories you gain by eating an insect is very small in proportion to the effort it takes to capture or cultivate it. In many cases it will burn more calories to harvest and prepare an insect for food than it provides in calories. So if you are going to spend time gathering a food resource, it's a very poor choice. But if you are starving and see an insect as a target of opportunity, eat it. | 5 |
7ovmrz | Biology | How come during winter my feet are cold but sometimes sweat while I try to warm them up? | As someone else said, core body temperature. Actually your head temperature also has a major effect. Wool socks is the best solution. Actually had to explain this to a coworker today who was talking about how he had frozen sweat on his feet after a day of hunting in -20 weather. | 11 |
exeh0c | Physics | How do counterweights on construction cranes not tip the crane before loads are hoisted? I know that the tipping of cranes is caused when the torque generated by the load exceeds that of the counterweight. But if a crane were to have no load attached, i.e it is preparing to pick one up and the counterweight is attached, how does it not tip in the time before any weight is able to generate torque against the counter weight? | Some cranes have counterweights that can be shifted by the operator. Otherwise they generally have the counterweight set so that crane's balance is towards the rear of its limit, then when lifting the maximum weight it will be towards the forward limit. Calculation of counterweight and maximum weight limits are usually done when constructing the crane based on the requirements of the job, the height, distance it loads need to be moved. And will frequently be recalculated while working. | 1 |
kyetu1 | Technology | Why can't we recycle plastic in the same way we do for metal? Melt it and remold it? Little edit: The question was regarding the mechanical/chimical aspect, not economical. | Two large issues: * There is no such material as "plastic" - there are gazillion different types of plastic, just like how there are a lot of types of metal. So you have to work recycling out for every type individually. And not mix multiple types together. Just like with metals mixing random stuff together makes reusing it borderline impossible. * Plastics are FAR TOO CHEAP TO MAKE. They are made from ludicrusly cheap fossil fuel stuff. Due to this its simply not economical to recycle it - thats an unavoidable issue, even if you want to be enviromentally conscious with your company. As the company that uses non-recycled stuff can do its thing for cheaper, price better, and drive you into bankruptcy. & #x200B; Both issues can only (realistically) be solved by legistlation. & #x200B; On top of these, ther are technological hurdles. Stuff like plastics being made out of long chain like molecules, instead of "just atoms thrown in randomly". And with repeated reuse, molceular chains can break and thus shorten. Shorter molecular chain touches and connects to fewr other molecules, thus your material gets weaker. Ofc this issue can be circumvented by grading plastic - and designing the arts for appropriate strength. And when it becomes really useless you can still reprocess it chemically. Technological issues are - in some sense - easier to overcome than legistlative ones. As it can be done by a relatively small hard working group. With legistlative problems you have to fight against large mutlinatinals and various other interests groups pushing back with all their ~~bribing might~~ lobby power | 30 |
k4fb9y | Biology | Why do joints make a "Cracking" noise for certain activities such as walking up stairs, but have no actual pain associated with them? | There are two types of cracking or popping. The one we do with fingers backs etc that’s cavitation of solute gasses in the synovial fluid. The other one is tendons that have some sort of scaring on the sliding inside their fascia causing a snapping sound. Sorry eli5s Your fingers pop like by little bubbles of air bursting. Your knees crack because tendons and ligaments snap like guitar strings. | 8 |
6hj9l3 | Biology | why sneezes vary in speed, loudness, and quantity from person to person. What is it that determines these differences? I've known people who have machine gun sneezes that can come in bouts of 10-15 at a time. I, on the other hand, almost exclusively sneeze twice with a kind of heavy yell-scream, and rarely do I get to experience a third. Why is this? What factors determine how one sneezes and why are certain people prone to having such lengthy sessions of rapid-fire sneezing? | Genes could play a role. My grandfather, father, and I have the same frighteningly loud sneeze, while my cousin sneezes exactly like his mother and probably also Tinkerbell. | 2 |
74kvwg | Mathematics | Why do we need to use polygons in video games? What causes us to need flat polygons rather than simply having rounded shapes? | Graphics hardware can break the polygons into individual triangles which can be batched to as many shader cores as you have. You can't really do that with parametric models. | 12 |
6qxbdd | Biology | What is the science behind being able to take a punch? Are heads built that differently? | This guy is brilliant! URL_0 It’s hard not to be in awe of Tito Ortiz’s head. So imperious in its shape and proportions. So defiantly unbowed. So … well, frankly, so unbelievably mammoth. It was only after I had been admiring Tito’s head for some time that I learned that in addition to its obvious aesthetic qualities, his cranium’s superhuman proportions gave him near invincibility in the ring. Amazing! And it was only after I had been believing that for some time more that I went to medical school and realized it was absolute nonsense. If a strangely enlarged cranium doesn’t provide a fighter with infallible protection against knockouts, the so-called “iron chin,” what does? What allows one fighter to absorb a man-killing blow to the face and dooms another to crumple before it? The answer is straightforward and multi-syllabic: the sternocleidomastoid muscles. The sternocleidomastoids (SCM) -- one on each side of the neck -- are paired muscles, composed of the sternomastoid component that runs from the sternum to the mastoid process of the skull, immediately behind and below the ear, and the cleidomastoid muscle that runs from the clavicle to the mastoid. When flexed, the SCM rotates the head toward the opposing side. Flexing both SCMs in alternation shakes the head “no,” as one might if waving off an overly concerned ringside physician. Flexing them simultaneously flexes the neck forward and extends the head -- in the right circumstance resisting the force of a blow to the face. It’s why fighters often seem to be ducking into a punch. One can look in a mirror and flex his SCMs, looking a bit like Lou Ferrigno after someone has seriously pissed off Bruce Banner. The muscles are prominent. Unfortunately, they are also isolated; no other significant muscle supports them in resisting backward movement of the cranium. image: URL_1 Photo: U.S. Public Domain Moreover, arrayed against them are the muscles used in throwing a punch: calves, gluts, lats, pecs, triceps, etc. These are some of the most powerful muscles in the body. It is not surprising then that we rarely see the thrower of a well-placed punch to the head grasping his hand in pain and stumbling back in amazement as his opponent casually flexes his SCMs and smiles; the muscular arithmetic is firmly in the thrower’s favor. When a punch of sufficient force strikes the face, it accelerates the front of the cranium back into the frontal lobes of the brain. This is the irreducible sweet science of brain injury. A gentle blow to the frontal lobes causes various degrees of central nervous system sedation -- it stuns the brain -- and a blow of sufficient force simply shuts the brain off. Seizures are not uncommon. When a blow to the head comes from an angle, as opposed to straight on, only one of the SCMs can resist the force: The resulting acceleration of the cranium and damage to the brain are thus much greater. Worse still, when a fighter is struck on the chin, the mandible creates leverage that magnifies the force and damage. This is the phenomenon of a fighter being hit “on the button.” Incidentally, this is an argument why, all things being equal, fighters with large heads and Cro-Magnon-like chins are at a theoretical mechanical disadvantage in withstanding blows. Lastly, the anatomy of the brain makes blows to the back of the head particularly dangerous. The extensor muscles of the neck are far stronger than the SCMs, but the part of the brain under direct assault is more delicate. The frontal lobes injured in a frontal blow control speech, movement and thought -- all the neurologic skills we see depleted in old boxers. The back of the brain, the hindbrain or rhombencephalon, controls respiration, heart rate, swallowing, blood pressure. Fighters who sustain injuries there never grow to be old. | 6 |
awxdmx | Economics | Why do authors go through book publishers to sell their content? | Traditionally, it was very very difficult for an author to publish their book and get it sold in stores. The logistics involved in getting a printer, getting stores to buy that book, having that book shipped to stores, having the book advertised, were so complicated that it just made sense for authors to get through traditional book publishers. The benefits of having the business end of making a book handled by someone else mean that the author can focus on the creative end instead. Now, modern technology does make it easier for authors to self-publish their books, but for many, the benefits of going through a publisher and not having to do that extra work seems work it. | 1 |
80kg1c | Other | is there a reason for women tending to live longer than men? Is it biological, sociocultural? | Also, don' forget that there are not tons of females in dangerous jobs, Males tend to die on the job more often than females. males tend to be the biggest casualties in times of war. And males just tend to do more stupid things all around. | 3 |
kcv3qe | Economics | If lab created diamonds are becoming cheaper than real diamonds and are a lot more durable than glass, why aren't things like watch glass and phone screens made from diamonds? | While I don't know the prices, I'd assume the lab diamonds are still much more expensive than glass | 4 |
66xv50 | Biology | How do bionic hands work? | There are different ways to trigger them. They can use invasive or non invasive input systems. A simple setup might have an EKG type sensor taped to a muscle group on the arm allowing it to measure electrical activity. When you tense one muscle group, it sees this and triggers the hand to contract. When you tense another muscle group it triggers the hand to let go. Like imagine the muscles in the stump could flex to push a switch one way or the other, except instead of a switch, it's simply a sensor that sees which muscles are tensed. Another way is by measuring brain wave patterns. When you put your mind into a particular state, it sees the change and can activate the limb. This is less useful for people with the full use of their body other than the limb, and more useful for someone who for instance may be paralyzed. An invasive method has electrodes attached to nerve bundles inside of the limb or somewhere else on the body like the brain, and when those nerves are stimulated by the person, it reads the change and triggers the limb to move. | 1 |
6a9syp | Culture | Why are both main US political parties celebrating the firing of James Comey? How is this good and bad for each side respectively? | Comey has had a long career and so people have different opinions on him for many different reasons, but the two main parts of the narrative right now are: Many Democrats are angry with Comey because they believe that he mishandled the Hillary Clinton investigation during the lead up to the election, hurting her chances of winning. Some also believe he should have/should be doing more to investigate the administration, particularly its ties to Russia. Many Republicans are angry at Comey for not pursuing Clinton more aggressively, and for giving credence to some of the Russia claims made against the administration. Additionally, the president who removed him is a Republican, and so as Republicans they will likely support his decision. | 1 |
90z6qo | Physics | As we continue to lob probes, cars, and eventually bigger stuff into deep space; will this eventually erode the mass of the earth enough that its orbit might be affected? | The top layer of the Earth, known as the crust, is up to 30 miles deep in continential areas and 5 miles deep in ocean areas. If we manage to strip all of that out and throw it into space, the Earth loses less than 1% of its volume. Relative to that, a few cars or spaceships won't affect the overall mass of the Earth. | 3 |
5vdh7q | Repost | Why do people invest in US government bonds if they are in trillions of dollars of debt? | Imagine that you have founded a new Business trying to create a new Factory to produce Widgets. You don't have the cash on hand to build that Factory, and you don't have the Credit History to borrow it all from one place. You *could* issue Stock, but that would reduce your control over the business significantly. Instead, you decide that you will issue Bonds. Bonds are *promissory notes*, basically an IOU. A Bond is a promise that you will pay whoever legally owns it back what they bought it for, plus a certain amount of interest, on or after a certain date. Bonds are *much smaller* than Loans. The big benefit to Bonds over a Loan is that Creditors get to choose how much of a risk they're taking on you. Also, if you want, you can offer to buy back Bonds early for *less* than they're going to be worth if people hold onto them. Bonds don't work like Loans or like Credit, which are the two types of Debt that most Americans deal with every day. You know *exactly* what you're going to owe, and *exactly* when you're going to owe it. If someone forgets to redeem their bond, they **will not** continue to accumulate interest past the date it could be redeemed. Bonds "growing" past their Redemption Date is a Myth, and I blame Sitcoms for it. The present it as if it were compound interest, when it's really just the Bond's Terms allowing for its value at the date of redemption to be adjusted for Inflation. It should be noted that some Bonds *do* expire after a reasonable period of time, for the same reason that Gift Cards expire after a reasonable period of time. It's to keep the Accounting Ledgers from accumulating *countless* entries that will never be redeemed, because the Bond has been forgotten. Government Bonds *usually* don't include an expiration date, though. --- The United States Government *looks* like it has an unmanageable amount of Debt. Indeed, were it a Line of Credit (Credit Card) or a Loan with a reasonable interest rate... I'd doubt that we would ever be able to pay it off. Compound Interest would *murder us*. Fortunately, our government isn't **stupid** enough to go with Credit or Loans when it comes to the National Debt. We know when *every* Bond that has been issued will be due and how much they will be worth; and we have planned accordingly. The United States pays off *every* Bond that someone wants to Redeem. In its entire history, the United States Treasury has never failed to pay a Bond that it has issued. There aren't many Countries that can say that, and that's why US Treasury Bonds are seen as a safe investment. The Debt *will* be paid off as it comes due. It has *always* been paid of exactly when it comes due. The United States is nowhere near being in a position where we can't pay off our Debts as they come due. You'll know when we get near that position, because the Head of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Secretary will appear on all the News Channels talking about the situation. --- Interesting Side Notes: **We owe most of the Debt to ourselves.** ~$5.54 Trillion Dollars of our Debt is owed to Agencies within the United States Federal Government. I've checked, and there is no typo in the sentence that preceded this one. Almost *a third* of the Debt is owed to the US Federal Government. ~$2.463 Trillion Dollars of our Debt is owed to the United States Federal Reserve Bank. The Feds alone hold ~$8 Trillion Dollars of our National Debt, if you count the Reserve Bank (which we should, since Federal Appointees make up half of its Board). That's kinda interesting, considering how Foreign Governments only hold ~$6.281 Trillion Dollars. Yep, that's right. The US Federal Government owes more money *to itself* than it does to all Foreign Governments *combined*. You'll notice that there's a lot of debt missing there, though. That's what the Feds owe to *American Citizens*, and the lower levels of Government (State, County, and Municipal Governments). Most of it is held in Mutual Funds, Pension Funds, and so on. So... yeah. Considering how the Social Security Fund handles its Investment Mandate by buying Treasury Bonds, it's fair to assume that the Average American's Retirement Fund is mostly made out of US Federal Debt. **The Countries that own our Debt might surprise you.** There are certain segments of the Media that like to talk about China "coming over to collect." However, the biggest Foreign Holder of American Debt is not China, it's Japan... which doesn't have the capacity to launch an invasion across the Pacific (running a supply-line across an ocean isn't easy). The most current list of Debt Holders that I could find is the following: 1. Japan 2. China 3. The United Kingdom 4. *Ireland* 5. The Cayman Isles Japan and The United Kingdom are both major players in International Banking. China has the second-largest Exporting Economy in the world, behind the United States by a fairly large margin thanks to the Trade Sanctions other countries have leveled against them due to their labor practices. The holdings in Ireland and The Cayman Isles are probably Tax Shelters. Those countries get used for Tax Dodging *a lot*. Oh, yeah... didn't mention that, did I? The amount we owe to these "Foreign Nations" aren't just owed to their governments. We combine Debt held by their Governments with Debt held by their Citizens. As we've already established: US Treasury Bonds are a ludicrously safe investment, so they get *bought* and *resold* on the International Market. I could literally buy one from London, if I wanted to, and own it as an American Citizen. Most Debt owed to Japan and the UK is actually owed to Banks and Businesses there. The Debt owed to China is split between their Government and their Corporations... which is a blurry line due to their weird Capitalism-Communism Hybrid system. **Tl;Dr:** We aren't anywhere close to defaulting on our Debt, and most of it is owed to ourselves. **Edit**: Removing a few things that were vaguely political. Also, something that was factually inaccurate but irrelevant to the point. | 11 |
eokmbg | Technology | how does my car know to stop playing my music and switch to FM radio when traffic updates come on? Like I'm assuming theres some voodoo in the airwaves? | Radio checks your last tuned frequency for a special signal that you can't hear, like a very high beep noise, every second. If the radio "hears" it, it switches to the radio. | 3 |
68xrx5 | Biology | Chronic Pain vs Drug Dependencies and Vice Versa in the Medical Field? | I think your vocabulary might be off. But here's my thoughts. I'm assuming we can agree on what chronic pain is. It has many treatments but none are absolutely proven to work, and finding the right treatment (s) for each individual is not easy, and sometimes takes many tries. One of the more common treatments is narcotics. These are readily available,cheap, don't require much in the way of special medical supervision (as oposed to say injections of powerful drugs, deep into the spine), most patients are generally satisfied with them, and the vast majority of patients don't abuse them. But, with long term use, many patients do become physically dependant on them. At the same time, the meds become less and less effective, and the side effects get worse and worse. For long term use, narcotics aren't very good. Physical dependance is is not addiction, these people will get sick without the drug, but they I'll go through that rather than do things like Take more than prescribed, or as much as they can get their hands on Rob their grandma to get more Have emotional issues or shame about their medication use Lie about their using habits and needs Some Drs, just like some of the rest of Americans, think chronic pain is a weakness. Or that meds that mske you feel better are a weakness. Or that the current focus on narcotic abuse is synonymous with over treatment of pain, not over use of a relatively shitty drug that shouldn't be used for long term pain control. At the same time, laws and regs are encouraging Dr's to stop prescribing narcotics, but without giving them any incentives to transition their patients to better meds. | 2 |
b0rhae | Physics | Why does a cd/DVD reflect rainbow colours when it is placed under sunlight? | Because the way light bounces off of it (because of the foil the data pattern is engraved on stck to the clear plastic spine or whatever) the light is scattered revealing the various notes (colors, more or less) enclosed in white light | 1 |
eyda33 | Biology | Why can't a monkey impregnate a human (and vice versa)? | Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes and other great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes. That's enough to cause crossing to fail. In comparison, Horses and Donkeys are 64 and 62, and a hinny crossbreed has 63 causing it to be sterile. | 1 |
6bi21g | Biology | is your body reusing or concentrating the urine in the bladder in case of lack of water? Let's assume I drink until my bladder is full. Then I stop drinking for hours or days until my body gets real dehydrated. Is my body going to get the urine from my bladder to make it more concentrated and gain liquidity? Or is everything in the bladder lost forever, doomed to go out and never come back? | Once fluid is in the bladder it can't be reabsorbed again because the lining/wall of it (as well as the walls of the ureter and the renal sinus) are impermeable to water. The way it goes is that once you stop drinking the kidneys will excrete less and less water/create more and more concentrated urine to retain more water. The only way to gain water is through your intestines; everything excreted by the kidneys will leave the body. | 2 |
jofo9v | Biology | Does Homeopathy works? If not then why people use it ? | If a Master of science degree in chemistry cannot debunk homeopathy for him, I am afraid nothing ever will. | 6 |
nb5mw8 | Biology | Why our body rejects organ transplants from others but not blood (of the same type)? | Red blood cells have very few marker proteins on the outside (A, B, O are the classifications for these). Organs, however, are chock full of cells that have marker proteins all over them. So it's much more likely for the immune system to trigger on all of those (foreign) marker proteins compared to the few that are on the red blood cells. | 3 |
76ze3u | Other | What’s the difference between an embassy and a consulate? | I'm going to use my situation as an example here: Canada has their embassy in Washington DC, which handles all of the official gov't-to-gov't business. They also have a Visa Office that handles all of the minor citizen level stuff: Visas, Passports, etc. There are also Consulates in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, San Fransisco, and Seattle. All of which handle the same Visa office stuff, as well as more US company-to-Canadian Gov't business. They also get involved in Canadian Province Gov't-to-US State Gov't business. Mostly trade related stuff. The head honcho of a Consulate is called a Consul General, all of which answer to the Ambassador of Canada in Washington DC. There are also Ambassadors of Canada to the [OAS]( URL_1 ) and to the [UN]( URL_0 ) both of which are the head of the Permanent Mission of Canada to their respective organization. I mention the OAS and UN because they're both located in the USA. | 13 |
i1rnje | Physics | Why Water feels colder than air at the same temperature. | Water is more conductive than air, so it pulls heat from your body much faster. You feel this drop in heat as cold. Also evaporation can cool the water below air temp. | 3 |
ak996t | Other | why air looks rippled when there are high temperatures | Hot air has a different density than cooler air, so light passing through it bends differently. Different density = different path that light travels = “ripples” | 1 |
jdaglp | Biology | How do people with injuries feel/predict weather changes? | Barometric pressure is the reason for a good amount of that. Storms often are sightly preceded by low pressure systems. Joints in particular are sensitive to changes in pressure due to their anatomy. Joints have synovial fluid that keeps bones from grinding against each other. The fluid is contained in a membrane and is not rigid. When the pressure outside of that membrane (and your body) changes that membrane will expand and compress. This is often very minute expansion or compression, but enough for the person whose joint it is to be acutely aware of it. | 2 |
ipy24f | Other | Why isn’t the quality of life always improving? I don’t understand. I see issues and solutions, but it seems like everyone is “content” with where the world is. Like, world hunger is an issue to be solved, that can be solved. Why wouldn’t we solve it? | Quality of life is improving decade by decade. Most people now have things that we take for granted that Kings and Queens 200-300 years ago could only dream of. A screen with hundreds upon hundreds of options of entertainment to view in your home. A device in your pocket which you can open up and call all of your friends and family with no matter how many miles away they are. A card that you can swipe in any store and buy things. Transportation to anywhere in the country you would want to go. Clean water. Sewage disposal. All of that and many more are vast improvements from 200 years ago. All of that you take granted now, totally unavailable a short time ago. | 7 |
csbbvm | Chemistry | How does my clothes dryer’s lint catcher get so full, yet my clothes don’t fall apart? Where does all this lint come from? | As you wash items, they lose particles (lint) which is collected in your lint trap. If you weigh the lint you’ll see that it is a small percentage of the (dry) washed items. As an interesting aside - laundry and linen companies (e.g., Aramark) often have a weight cut off for when they inject new linen. For example, if Aramark provides uniforms and the dry uniform loses 25% of its weight or more, it is retired from circulation. Edit: Injection is a term used in laundry & linen to mean a new item is put in (“injected”) to circulation. When an item is retired - which can be due to weight, but could be caused by any other number of issues like rips, tares, stains - they are no longer in circulation, which means they won’t be cleaned and supplies back to the client. Syringes and other injection devices are not involved in laundry injection. | 7 |
j2kt3d | Technology | How do fitness trackers know that you actually sleeping but not just laying there resting, being awake ? Edit: Thanks for all the answers and the awards, I’m shook | I need background noise to sleep. My tracker decided that I was awake all night because the tv was on. I slept like a rock. Next night I turned the tv off, slept really badly and my tracker was like, that’s better! Uninstalled, lol. | 23 |
a0z72b | Physics | how come waterfalls like the Viagra Falls and Victoria falls don't collapse from erosion ? | I’m sorry what? Viagra falls? Sounds like a hard place to find. | 2 |
9wm2go | Other | As someone who's never lived in a city how do apartment buildings work? Could you explain the process of getting into your apartment starting from the street (do you have to buzz in? is there a key? is there a lobby?) | Honestly it depends on the apartment. Some have separate entrances for each unit, some have a main lobby with a key or a doorman, some have a common space that’s unlocked. | 4 |
7j1sb0 | Other | . How did climate change become a partisan issue? | It was never just about climate change. The Republican party has represented business interests for a very long time, and has a long history of opposing government intervention and regulation. A large number of environmental issues have typically been solved by telling big businesses they have to spend more money cleaning up, or limiting what they can sell. From DDT to acid rain to chlorofluorocarbons to nitrous oxide to carbon dioxide, environmentalists have been restricting the ability of businesses to dump whatever they like into the atmospere, and/or sell whatever they like to others. It's not so much that climate change gradually *became* a partisan issue: it was born into a partisan issue which was already ongoing. | 4 |
hm4lk9 | Technology | How is polyphonic music encoded and read in the grooves of a vinyl LP? I can roughly imagine how a single melody can be encoded and read from the grooves of a plate but I am completely at a loss how this works with more complex musical plays. | Polyphony as a concept doesn't exist in records, it only exists in sheet music or equivalent human-readable forms. The record doesn't know that there are multiple instruments playing, it just saves the resulting sound wave. When you listen to it, your brain decodes the sound wave into multiple melodies or instruments. | 3 |
hcx0sj | Biology | What really happens when someone has a seizure? | Brains - broadly, basically - have two kinds of signals that are either *excitatory* or *inhibitory*, and they do pretty much what you'd think based on the names. Excitatory signals make it more likely that synapses around them will fire; inhibitory make it less likely that they will. Inhibitory signals are very important. Signals and patterns go in loops through the brain. One synapse causes its neighbor to fire, which causes *its* neighbor to fire, and so on until that signal gets back to the first synapse that fired. That's normal and expected. But those loops need to happen in regular, controlled patterns. They need to be able to *stop*. Synapses need time between firing to "recharge" and clean up the chemicals signals that were released. People with epilepsy have something wrong in the chemistry or structure of their brains so that the inhibitory signals in certain parts of their brain (or all of their brain, sometimes) and/or clean-up chemicals don't act like they should, and they don't slow down or stop those loops when they should. Say a person with epilepsy looks at a flashing light. Every time the light comes on, signals are sent from their retinas to their brain. That signal causes a cascade of other signals to do things like figure out what you're looking at. If the light is flashing, the signal is pulsing. Each time it pulses, it causes another loop. If the light flashes too quickly, the pulses get too close together and there's not enough time for the inhibitory chemicals to stop them, so they loop around again and again and again, too fast for the brain to make sense of them. They're not coordinated anymore, there's no pattern there. It's just a storm of activity. Each pulse also activates other parts of the brain, like figuring out if what you're looking at is dangerous or if it's coming towards you or away from you, if you are about to run into it, if there are any memories associated with it, if there's any letters or words, what colors... The signals pulse through the rest of the brain activating different parts to put together a total world picture and decide what action to take. During a seizure, those out of control pulses are cascading through other parts of the brain, interrupting whatever normal, controlled pulses are supposed to be there. If it happens in the parts of the brain that control your muscles, the brain starts sending out of control signals to your muscles to contract so you lose control of them and your whole body locks up. It should be noted that *grand mal* aka tonic clonic seizures - the ones where a person falls over and their whole body is jerking and twitching - are rare. Most seizures just put the person into a kind of stupor or zone out. Some seizures are so mild that the person may not even know they had one, except that people around them *might* notice that they spaced out for a short moment. EDIT: The seizure stops when the neurons involved run out of the chemicals needed to fire at all so the pulse can't keep going, or enough clean-up or inhibitory signals build that can slow the pulse back down and control it. | 1 |
63ndmo | Culture | In the quote "The best thing since sliced bread" What was so great about sliced bread? | I think it referred to the fact that bread could now be mass produced and it was then found in every household instead of traditionally baking bread from scratch. The statement is there to invoke that something is a great enough idea that everyone should be a part of it or that it could affect everyone (much like sliced bread making its way to almost every home). So it is to comment on some idea's innovative qualities while also commenting on the fact that it could be huge should it find its way to the market. Nowadays I simply hear it sarcastically, but I figure that is some of the history behind someone saying that phrase. | 3 |
lhkpbk | Biology | How after 10000 years of humanity surviving off of bread do we have so many people within the last decade who are entirely allergic to gluten? | We don't. The overwhelming majority of people with "gluten allergies" are self-diagnosed and wrong. It's just the "cool thing" to claim. | 32 |
6q1r6u | Biology | Why do we feel stupid around people we like even if we're not acting or doing anything stupid? | Because when you out around a person you see as a suitable mate, your reactions are to impress them and mate with them due to chemicals in your brain. | 4 |
62wm5d | Culture | Why did cloaks go out of favor? | I can't under any circumstance understand why a cloak would be better than a jacket or any of the other upper body clothing options we have today. Can someone explain to me what's so superior about a cloak to a coat or jacket while riding a horse or walking around? It seems to me that cloaks were just easier to make and easier to be worn by people of different sizes, and the reason they aren't made anymore is because making jackets is not only incredibly easy but cheap now | 10 |
5lofv3 | Biology | What determines your blood type and what's the difference between positive and negative? In the womb, what determines blood type? I am AB positive, what's that mean and how does it compare to negative? | Blood type is determined by genetics, but is slightly different than dominant/recessive traits because it can be co-dominant (that's how you ended up AB). People that are A would have either AA or Ai (for some reason O is i in Punnett squares). People that are B are either BB or Bi, people that are AB are exactly that- AB, and people that are O are ii. Whatever blood type you are, is the kind of ANTIGEN you express on your red blood cells. You're AB so you express A and B antigens. You also have no antibodies in your plasma (in terms of blood antibodies, not bacteria/viruses). People with A blood type have B antibodies (so they would attack B type blood if they received a transfusion). People with B type blood have A antibodies. People with O blood have A and B antibodies (why O can only receive blood from other O's, and why AB can receive from anyone). As to positive or negative, that again comes down to genetics. It's called rh factor, and it's also an antigen that is expressed on the surface of red blood cells. Your parents are either both positive or one of each, but they absolutely are not both negative. This means your parents could be any multitude of combinations (AA+, AA-, Ai+, Ai-, BB+, BB-, Bi+, Bi- OR both AB+). Positive and negative doesn't really have any impact on you, AB+ is known as the universal receiver, literally anyone in the world can donate blood to you! | 2 |
dxm8ha | Physics | Why does 24fps look absolutely fine in movies, but terrible in games? | Movies are finished. One frame is guaranteed to follow the next. There's no choice or options. Everything can be set up to flow smoothly from one to the other. In a video game, the processor can't predict every single time you suddenly shift the view to the left, so everything has to render then and there. | 7 |
8j60hm | Biology | why does every person with Down syndrome’s face looks so similar, even if their DNA is different | Several of the symptoms of Down's syndrome affect the way the head and face are formed. It affects the shape of the eyes, the shape of the face, the shape of the neck, and the shape of the head. This is what causes many people with the condition to look "similar", as you said. | 1 |
mnm4rj | Physics | How does a fly/bug in your car stay in place when you accelerate and not go flying into the back window? | Because the fly/bug is accelerating with the car. More specifically, the air inside the car is accelerating with the car, and the bug is accelerating with the air. | 2 |
8cwl3a | Biology | Why does depression sometimes cause hypersomnia & difficulty waking? I have problems with needing *tons* of sleep (sometimes sleep for 15 hours at a time) and difficulty waking (as in sleeping through alarms, or being so groggy when my alarm goes that I snooze it and sleep through because I'm not quite conscious enough to understand that I need to get up). This is a pain in the arse because it massively disrupts my life. When I try to Google info on this, I mostly get info on *insomnia* rather than *hypersomnia*, but I know hypersomnia is a symptom of depression sometimes. So how does this work? What's happening inside of me? Has the depression made physical changes that cause me to sleep so heavily and so much? Or is it that at a deep psychological level I know I don't *want* to be awake so my brain is keeping me unconscious? | Patients with major depressive disorder have high activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) coupled with low activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex section of the brain. We don’t know exactly why, but we do know that this causes more frequent and faster REM sleep, and in depressed people the “stages” of sleep can be disrupted and come out of sequence. As a result, the rhythm of sleep is out of whack and they sleep longer and more often but may get less actual rest. I’d also reckon that the constant sadness, apathy, and frequent cortisol injections also wear out the body and mind. HOWEVER, don’t rely on the medical advice of random internet people. You need to get checked out by an actual doctor. For example, you might have a sleep apnea that is preventing you from getting real sleep. It’s not something that can be diagnosed without an examination and a sleep study. | 2 |
mfdt31 | Biology | How do farmers control whether a chicken lays an eating egg or a reproductive egg and how can they tell which kind is laid? | The eggs will only be fertilized if a rooster has done his job. You can eat eggs whether they’re fertilized or not. The embryo doesn’t develop unless the egg is incubated either by a hen or a machine. Eggs can be “candled” to see an embryo. | 24 |
a4n2tv | Biology | Why can't we breathe with one lung and exhale with the other to maximize effectivity? | 1. Both vent through the trachea. Inhaling exhaled gases wouldn't provide enough oxygenation over time. 2. The diaphragm spans the entire chest cavity and is incapable of contracting on only one side at a time. | 1 |
arfcn3 | Engineering | How do the hundreds of satellites in Earth’s orbit not crash into each other? | Space **very** *big*, satellites *very* **small**. Also, we put them where we don't think they will crash into each other. | 3 |
6g77ix | Physics | How do people on a swing set build momentum? Where does the energy come from? | Gravity and the motion of your body is where the energy is coming from. You're sitting at the base of a pendulum. Now, you shift your body so that your center mass is offset from the pendulum. Gravity pulls down on your center mass, causing the swing to deflect from the center. So now the swing is no longer pointing straight down. Now you restore your original position and gravity pulls swing back to pointing straight down. However, your inertia carries you beyond the center point and back in the other direction just like a pendulum. As long as you keep adding a bit of disturbance to reinforce the swing's angular deflection at one end of its journey, you'll be progressively making the swing go further and further. | 1 |
7hkd13 | Mathematics | Construction of numbers I understand that the natural numbers can be constructed using set theory and are defined by the Peano Axioms. How do we get negative numbers (and thus the integers) from the naturals? How do we get the rationals from the integers? How do we get the reals from the rationals? How do we get the complex numbers from the reals? | Assume we have just addition and positive integers at our disposal. How do we get subtraction and integers from here? One approach would be to start thinking of pair of numbers, (a, b). To add a pair like this, you add the first numbers together, and then second numbers together, forming new pair with just addition. So (1, 4) + (10, 2) = (11, 6), for example. To define integers, we just say that integers are all pairs like this, but so that we don't differentiate between two pairs if you can add same integer to first and second number of one pair and get the second pair. So for example, (5, 3) = (3, 1) because if we add 2 to both numbers in (3, 1), we get (5, 3) = (3 + 2, 1 + 2). Now we just can note that pair like (2,1) stands for natural number 1. | 2 |
7qkbz8 | Other | How are online credit card transactions considered safe when the merchants solicit information that they can use to make purchases elsewhere? | Honestly, if you directly provide this info to the website (which is typical), it's no safer than when you use your card in a store or restaurant. They *could* copy your info and use it. However, they risk getting caught, losing their credit card processing permission, and even going to prison. | 13 |
hh05ua | Technology | Why is the data TikTok collects an issue for its users? How is this different from other companies and why should I care? I get the whole “privacy” issue but then again, why should I care about privacy? What are the implications of this data being used against my best interests? | If you "get" the whole privacy issue but don't understand why you should care, then you don't don't "get" the privacy issue. Privacy is essential to autonomy and the protection of human dignity, serving as the foundation upon which many other human rights are built. Privacy enables us to create boundaries and protect ourselves from unwarranted interference in our lives, allowing us to negotiate who we are and how we want to interact with the world around us. Privacy protects us from arbitrary and unjustified use of power by states, companies and other actors. It lets us regulate what can be known about us and done to us, while protecting us from others who may wish to exert control. Many of the failings of modern civilization today was enabled by the complete lack of discretion of the masses, informing the enemies of the people the who, what, and how to manipulate public opinion, decide elections, protect the wealthy, and divide the populace. | 3 |
fngfw5 | Other | Why it is hard to think about death deeply? | Imagination doesn’t actually ever create truly new things. It takes bits and pieces of experiences that you’ve had and uses those to construct what you’re imagining. If you want to test this, try imagining a colour you’ve never seen. Thinking deeply about death falls into the realm of trying to imagine something you’ve never experienced. You’re alive and as far as your brain is concerned always have been. So to imagine death it has no construct to piece together what it is like. The brain can fritz out while attempting to do this as it’s searching hard through your memories for something related. This may cause the fear response you feel especially since we are told enough messages that death is something to fear. | 1 |
63nhpq | Technology | Why are Texas Instruments calculators the most widely used and recommended calculators in a school/University setting? | Because most people know how to use them. If every student has a different graphing calculator, the teacher and/or students have to figure out how to use each one. If the whole class has identical calculators, the teacher can instruct the whole class keystroke by keystroke. TI invested heavily in educational outreach, and the result is that the only graphic calculator most teachers know how to use is a TI. | 3 |
9qrapv | Culture | Why were ancient buildings not constantly renovated/maintained throughout a civilization’ s history? | The new ruler didn't like the old ruler. New ruler lets the old ruler's monuments and construction projects fade away while they build for their own glory on top of the ruins. Or, conquering army destroys culture to show dominance. | 4 |
kn1nhg | Physics | If heat from the sun is radiated onto Earth, doesn’t that mean multiple layers of air are being heated up? If so, why isn’t the top layer really hot and the lower ones cold? | Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the majority of the heat makes it to the surface of the earth rather than heating up the layers of air it passes through. Especially at higher altitudes, the density of the air is really low (hence why we can't breathe, airplanes can't fly etc) that there aren't many particles for the rays to hit and heat up. | 10 |
677t2g | Physics | What is torque? Can someone please explain it so that it is understandable? Thank you :D | Practical examples - when you twist a tap with your fingers to open/ close it or when you rotate a wrench to tighten/ loosen a bolt you are applying torque. It's a 'twisting force'. Compared to say a 'linear force' when you push or pull something. | 2 |
k6ebls | Other | Why was the vaping/smoking age raised to 21? | Why? Because there was public/political pressure behind it. Anything can get done in politics even if it’s the wrong thing, as long as people support it. For what the rationale is, well I’d argue that the real epidemic/issue that people wanted to stop was that vaping was becoming an epidemic in high schools and middle schools. Kids as young as 12-13 were really starting to use vapes as a common thing. Which is absolutely not a good thing. And the theory is is where are these high schoolers getting these capes (and then possibly reselling them to younger kids) well from their friends who are seniors and 18 and older enough to go buy them. You could just ask an older friend to go buy one for you. So the goal is to get rid of that older friend, a high schooler is way less likely to be friends with a 21 year old than an 18 year old, someone who is college aged vs someone in their own school. The hope/goal is to bottle neck that supply route, kids have fewer older friends to go buy stuff, then there’s less access to the thing they shouldn’t be accessing. Obviously this isn’t a perfect solution, nothing ever will be, but that’s the goal. This has been something people have been pushing for for years, and the acetate illness was just the straw that broke the camels back. | 4 |
m860in | Biology | If we're all made up of atoms that just banded together, how did we get life and consciousness? I was thinking of our DNA as maybe a starting point then gets executed over time like how automated computer logic works. Looking for a scientific answer. Thanks! | It is one of the dirty secrets of science that we don't really have a great idea of how life came about the first time. There have been theories about this for many decades, and they are along the lines of, "if you get the right chemicals together, maybe they'll just sort of start spontaneously acting like this." But we've never actually been able to make anything like that happen in a lab, and we're not really sure what those conditions are. There are hypotheses, but none of them are really firm. The best we can do is say, "well, maybe if you have the right proteins and some catalysts and maybe a spark of lightning you end up with something that sort of acts like a virus and from there it evolves into cells and the like." (Viruses are on the line between "life" and "non-life" and so a very interesting thing to consider in this context.) But that's very hand-wavy. This isn't a slander against science. It just means we don't really know, yet. It is murky enough that many scientists actually lean towards the idea that somehow life on Earth came from another planet (e.g., hitched a ride on a comet, or something), which is really about as close as you get to them just giving up on the problem. Maybe someday we'll know. Right now, we don't. (Scientists and science-enthusiasts like to hand-wave over this question because they are afraid that if they can't answer it, it'll make people more interested in alternatives to evolution. There really isn't any doubt that once life exists, natural evolution explains how it got to be in its present forms. But we don't actually have a great sense of how it came to exist on this planet in the first place. I have faith there is an entirely naturalistic answer to it. But I'm willing to acknowledge that this is a form of faith.) We don't really know what consciousness really "is" and so we don't know the answer to that one, either. None of the theories are very satisfying, though they can be very interesting. They range from "something quasi-mystical" (quantum theories, religious theories, whatever) to "consciousness isn't really a thing" (which goes against our individual experiences of it). The most compelling idea I've heard is that consciousness is what we call the sensation that the brain generates in order to make sense of a lot of different kinds of sense-data, and it evolved as a sort of "hub" for coordinating eyes, ears, mouths, limbs, etc. But that doesn't really explain what it "is" and so it is still pretty unsatisfying. So anyway. These are great questions. But the answers are currently mostly unknown to science. That doesn't mean that science won't someday know the answer to either of them, or perhaps both (there are some who are betting we will never wrap our heads around "consciousness" in a satisfying way, because maybe our brains are just not capable of understanding it). I suspect the answer to the first one will be figured out well before we answer the second one, if we ever answer the second one. | 4 |
bhdro4 | Biology | How are we able to "hallucinate" so vividly while reading? It's like half of your brain focuses on reading while the other half plays a movie and somehow it all works. | I actually get frustrated at my inability to visualise what's going on in most books. And I'd say I have a reasonably good imagination, but it just doesn't happen for me. About half way through a book I'll tend to start losing track of who's who, where they are etc. Perhaps it's because I tend to read more complex sci-fi when I actually do read. Some writers make it easier than others. I do see the value in books, but this is why I will always prefer a good movie or series. | 5 |
l9wgb6 | Technology | What is the technological singularity and superintelligence? | Imagine a "thing-inventor". This thing-inventor is able to invent things. One of these things is another thing-inventor, a little bit better than the original. It can also invent thing-inventors. As you go along this chain, you get an ever increasing level of complexity and power. This spirals out, until there is no improvements to be made. That's the technological singularity. | 2 |
miqwjk | Biology | why can't other species talk? | Well. They can! We just can't understand it without a lot of study. I want you to think on what the first words of humanity may have sounded like. With no language, no translation, and big brain. Our first words were probably just screaming and whimpering. A bunch of humans together and one noticed a LION! Scream and point! Do that enough times and you have the word for lion. Other intelligent animals already speak and communicate in there own way. Dolphins squeek at high frequency and it sounds like just noise, but they can coordinate well enough to literally Hurd fish into groups and create big enough waves to force them into shallow water with teamwork. Apes and monies don't need to be too vocal unless they are far away. So they will communicate by body language and other things. | 2 |
60vx82 | Culture | A law was passed a while back that grants corporations the rights of people In what ways would a corporation NEED to be treated as a person? The only articles I can find seem to be heavily polarized one way or the other. | The ultra-simple way to look at this is this: if individual people have basic rights (eg, speech, assembly, the right to petition the govt), why shouldn't groups of people? More specifically, groups of individual people organized as non-profit companies have long enjoyed exercising basic rights. Why should groups of people organized in a for-profit structure (or a union) be denied those same basic rights when the US Constitution clearly does not make a distinction regarding who gets to exercise basic rights? This was the basic gist of Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in Citizens United (from wikipedia): > The majority wrote, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech. Justice Kennedy's opinion also noted that because the First Amendment does not distinguish between media and other corporations, the BCRA restrictions improperly allowed Congress to suppress political speech in newspapers, books, television, and blogs. People look at Burwell v Hobby Lobby as an extension of this basic concept eg, if corporations have 1A rights, why stop there? Why not the full deck of rights? (But note that Burwell v Hobby Lobby only pertains to closely held private companies, not Coca Cola or ExxonMobile). Also from wikipedia on the Hobby Lobby case: > The court found that for-profit corporations could be considered persons under the RFRA. It noted that the HHS treats nonprofit corporations as persons within the meaning of RFRA. The court stated, "no conceivable definition of the term includes natural persons and nonprofit corporations, but not for-profit corporations." Responding to lower court judges' suggestion that the purpose of for-profit corporations "is simply to make money", the court said, "For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives." And before everybody starts listing off every reason CU v FEC & Burwell v HL is bad, please note that I am just explaining the SCOTUS decision, not passing moral judgement on it. | 6 |
j1a4rg | Biology | Why sex fells so realistic in your sleep but you cannot get that experience from thoughts? Sometimes in your sleep your experience is so realistic that you can't even imagine..why is that? How our brain simulate that experience for us? | It does not fell realistic it's a fake memory. The brain is not recreating what you think you felt just the thought | 2 |
5lquhx | Biology | How did Crocodiles survive the extinction of dinosaurs? | First off, let me clearly state that there is no "definitive answer", there are several theories out there but none has been proven so far. However [this website lists several theories]( URL_0 ) which are quite interesting. Among others it also lists the water claim but explains why crocodiles were less affected than aquatic dinosaurs. Simply put, crocodiles are amphibious creatures who live near land and in fresh water areas (swamps, rivers, lakes, etc.) but not in oceans/salt waters. The KT extinction event might have simply been more devastating to those biotopes than those of crocs. It's easy to imagine environmental factors to influence fish but not frogs, crocs, turtles, etc. The same distinction goes for mosasaurus and a crocodile. The one theory I find most interesting is that dinosaurs, even though they are reptilian in nature, were actually warm-blooded which would explain the devastating effect of climate change on them opposed to the cold-blooded crocodiles. Lastly, maybe crocodiles are not the only species to survive and some crustacean beasts roam the seas looking for about three-fiddy. | 3 |
izklpe | Economics | How do tax authorities find out if people reporting their business income less than the actually is? Let's assume I only accept cash for my business. I got net profit of $3000 this month but I'll just report as $1000. No bank statements mean that no official proof that they can have. I can still manipulate my accounting book to match the tax report. How do they know that if I'm reporting less income? | That is what the audit is for. The IRS has a good understanding of how the average business in any sector works, so they know what to look for to see if the numbers line up. If you under-declare your revenue by that much, they are going to look at your costs - supplies, wages, etc - and see if that matches. If you are paying people to do jobs that you don't have revenue for, or you used materials to make goods that you never sold and aren't in your warehouse then that is a major red flag. | 1 |
dtnjar | Chemistry | Why haven't all the gases on Jupiter mixed together over millions of years to produce one solid average color? | Jupiter isn't a closed system. For its entire life Jupiter has been absorbing energy from the sun fueling atmospheric activity. | 2 |
ltv6r2 | Biology | Why do our taste buds prefer unhealthy foods compared to healthy ones? | What everyone is saying about human history is true. From another angle your body/brain/microbiome can he habituated to prefer junk food if you eat it a lot. Likewise if you are used to eating healthy food and take a trip where you eat out a lot and ignore normal diet you will likely be craving the healthy food before long. Say your brain/body is used to eating potatoes chips to get magnesium then that is what it will crave when it need magnesium. But if your brain/body is used to getting magnesium from almonds then it will crave almonds instead. Obviously it might be difficult to determine what the desire for a chalupa is for and it isn't always for one thing, but you can change your desires and food cravings eventually if you start eating a different diet. | 7 |
66bruo | Biology | why do some people "black out" from drinking and others don't? I've read that it's pretty rare to completely black out from drinking, but I do about 50% of the time, even from one or two drinks. I know people who have never blacked out and some who occasionally black out but only from severely heavy drinking. What is happening in one's brain when one blacks out? Is there any definitive research into why some do and some don't? (I am not talking about "browning out" where details are lost and memories are fuzzy.) | I have a genetically lazy liver. My liver enzymes are perfectly stable (I have to get them tested regularly), but I just don't process toxins as fast as most people. Basically, I get fucked up faster and stay that way longer. Blacking-out was pretty common for me in my early twenties before I figured it out with my doc. | 6 |
9i3m2m | Biology | Why does marketing work even when we are actively aware of the marketingprocess? | The same reason why people with anxiety are anxious even though they know there is nothing to be anxious about. We're not always in control. | 1 |
k5yhhr | Technology | What causes somebody to require an inversion to the Y/X axis when playing a videogame? | Conkers Bad Furday: Live and Reloaded. But honestly think of it like it’s a stick in the back of your characters head, push the stick down guy looks up and vice versa. | 3 |
n164cp | Biology | when you buy bananas that are green and not ripe, how do they become ripe and yellow when they are not getting any nutrients from the tree but just sitting in your house | They don't need an influx of nutrients because they are just doing 'different stuff' with what they already have: converting starch into sugar, for example. | 5 |
mx9i3r | Physics | Could you catch a bullet in space after a gun has discharged? Do guns operate the same with little to no gravity? | No. It will rip through your hand just as easily as on Earth. The force from a gun comes from the explosion of gunpowder (and its modern counterparts) behind the bullet. This shoots the bullet out the barrel at high speeds. This will happen with or without gravity. Whether a gun will fire in a vacuum is a different thing, but after it gets fired, it's the same. Once you have a moving bullet, it will just stay moving until another force hits it, aka, your hand, which will react in exactly the same way as it would on the surface. | 2 |
o9r4yx | Physics | Why are there so many different units for measuring radiation? Is this just the result of different people in different places developing their own conventions? Are all the units used equal in principle and easily converted with conversion factors, or are there certain units to use in certain situations? | Common units are: - Becquerel: this is the unit of decays per second. - Rōntgen: the unit of ionizing events per second in air. - Sievert: The physiological dose acting on the human body. Different units are for different purposes. All count the rate of radioactive events, but are weighted differently with respect to type of radiation and energy. Becquerel is simply counting events (irrespective the energy). Roentgen is the unit of what the dosimeter will measure (as it measures ionization in air). Sievert will measure the effect on human physiology (different energies incur different amount of damages). | 2 |
gyz1uy | Other | what does 'ish' mean? | It’s appended to the end of words to imply vagueness if you don’t know the exact value/answer. That kid is five-ish. He may be 4 or 6, but he looks about 5. I’ll be at your house around two-ish. I might be there at 1:50 or 2:15. | 1 |
hxttgm | Other | Credit Cards (first-time user) | For one, raising your credit will happen as you use your credit card correctly. And to do that, you should use it moderately (when you get one, you’ll get a total allowance, you should shoot to use about 1/3rd of that) using 100% of the limit of it every month makes creditors think of you as a more risky spender. Then, make sure you pay the card off in full every month to prevent having to spend extra in paying off the interest | 2 |
fdod6r | Biology | Why does the 'vibe' change in a room when you turn the TV off? Okay, it's a hard feeling to explain in a title. And maybe it's just me. Sorry for either/or. Imagine you are sitting in your living room reading a book with your back to the TV. The TV is paused and you aren't paying attention. But if you turn off the TV suddenly the room feels...*smaller?* Is this an actual thing or is it just monkey brain? | I know exactly what you are talking about. Though I get the opposite, a room feels larger. My mother used to put it down to static electricity, though to be honest I think it's just the absence of the very subtle hum of electricity that is almost imperceivable. | 8 |
6ot8y4 | Repost | Why is there such a drastic mood change when the guy ejaculates? | Realease of prolactin and cortisol, mainly. Prolactin destroys testosterone and cortisol makes you feel irritable and hungry. And longing for a smoke too! All of this to prevent we fuck until our heart fails. | 4 |
a5wbdh | Other | Why does brown not appear in a rainbow (or on a color wheel)? | Every other color on the wheel either cannot be achieved by mixing (red, yellow, and blue) or they're made by mixing specific colors together. Orange is red and yellow, for example. Green is blue and yellow. The colors on the wheel are ordered according to how they're mixed--orange would be placed right between yellow and red. Brown, however, can be mixed in multiple ways. Green and red will give you brown. Orange and blue. Yellow and purple. There's nowhere to put brown on the wheel because there's no one way to mix it. | 12 |
d3m86s | Technology | Why there's no screen that uses both RGB and actual CMY pixels? | This question is more interesting that it at first seems. The usual "cmyk is a subtractive color model" seems a bit hasty response, when you realize that LCD screens start with white light and literally subtract unwanted wavelengths. I thought, there's no reason why we coudn't make CMY filters instead of RGB and install them in series, rather than parallel. However, the problem is controlling the filters dynamically. After a short google, it seems that electrically controllable color filters are technically possible, but not even close to the range of the entire visible spectrum. & #x200B; So in short, the technology doesn't exist. | 3 |
720rrs | Mathematics | Why must the Pythagorean Theorem contain squared values? Is there a relationship between sides prior to squaring them? In a way it is self-evident that the sides of a right triangle are proportional to one another; visual proofs illustrate this. However, I am at a loss for how to describe this relationship without squares, and cannot articulate why squares are used other than they make the math simpler. My intuition tells me that if a relationship exists after an operation it must exist before it. However, A²+B²=C² , but A+B≠C Is my intuition wrong? I suspect there is a lesson to be learned as to the nature of exponents and their relationship to their roots. It seems as though the sides simply exist as square roots a priori. As if the way they were generated - within the system - defines them as such. But I can’t describe this process, and I feel as though it would give me a greater intuition into the theory if I did. Visual proofs have thus far not help demonstrate whether a relationship exists before squaring only that squaring creates a relationship. Please note that I only have a basic math education. I have yet to take calculus. It may well be that the tools needed to articulate an answer require a more advanced math education. If so I apologize for being inarticulate. I’m doing my best with the concepts/tools I have available. EDIT: Just wanted to point out that there is a linear relationship (non-squared). Stack exchange user provided the example URL_0 | Your sense that if a relationship exists after an operation it must exist before it is not necessarily wrong, but it is misapplied. Think about how it can be that A²+B²=C², yet A+B≠C: it is because (A+B)²=A²+2AB+B²≠A²+B². Going from A, B, and C to A², B², and C² does not simply involve squaring both sides of the equation. The fact of the matter is that the "unsquared" side-lengths are not directly related (except by the the triangle inequality A+B≥C). The relationship *really does* derive from their squares. | 2 |
bbyly1 | Biology | When we’re scared of something, why does the brain make you think about it more rather than less? | Everyone here’s saying its because the brain perceives anything you fear as a threat. I wanna know why tf my brain thinks a cockroach is a threat even though *I* know it isnt. | 14 |
etps5c | Biology | how do we experience a headache if our brains dont have any pain receptors? | My understanding is that a lot of headaches come from the skin and muscles in the head and neck, but I know they can also be caused by increased pressure inside the skull so I'd love a more educated perspective on how that translates to pain. | 1 |
gvqrn2 | Other | How do we have such an in depth library of history, dating back to dinosaurs and beyond? I know that it obviously been passed down through history, but surely after a even 2000 years information starts to become skewed? | Yes it does become skewed. But we can piece together quite a bit. As far as human history, we have written records going back to around 4000 BCE. These can be historical records, works of fiction, graffiti, inventory lists, or anything else people bothered to write down and managed to survive. Beyond the written word, we have anthropological and archeological digs, digging up and discovering the remains of ancient civilization, working out how they lived their lives by the artifacts and remains they left behind. Beyond human history, we have geology, paleontology, and many other scientific disciplines which use techniques like radiometric dating, spectroscopy, crystal analysis, and many, many others to slowly piece together the history of the planet and the life forms that have inhabited it. | 2 |
cj8bqr | Biology | How do different animals age differently? What is the difference in their physiology that makes them age live longer/shorter lives than us? | Going for heart rate. For at least of 80% animals, there is some kind of agreement that after 1 or 2 billons of beats you will die. Its very rough number but it works generally. | 3 |
6zmqvn | Biology | Why is bird feces white but all other animals are brown? I know I could look it up but Google won't explain it like I'm 5 so | We mammals excrete nitrogenous body waste (somewhat toxic) in urine because we can store a lot of water fairly conveniently and this dilution makes the waste less internally harmful. Birds can't carry much water or they would be too heavy to fly, so their kidneys have adapted to produce more concentrated dry nitrogenous wastes requiring less water waste. Source: b.s. in biology | 8 |
9s1c0j | Biology | Why do human diets consist of mostly food we have to cook or run the risk of getting sick, while animals are completely fine eating food raw. | Breaking down complex molecules like proteins or fats is a difficult and fairly inefficient process, because it takes so much energy to do so. To help us get the most energy out of food, and put the least energy into digestion, we break down many of those molecules with heat. By effectively jump-starting the digestion process before taking the first bite, we can get more energy out of the same amount of food, because it is easier to digest. A few million years ago, this was useful, but after so long eating cooked food it has become necessary. We have evolved away the defenses against uncooked meat and the bacteria in it. | 23 |
8yostr | Chemistry | Why isn't bread soggy when frozen and then thawed out? | Ugh, I hate thawed bread! Somehow it's both stale and soggy at the same time to me. To answer the question, bread doesn't have a lot of moisture in it to begin with so when it's thawed, there's not much 'wet' left to make it soggy. | 3 |
7z8ijh | Technology | Why do pictures of a computer screen look much different than real life? | Cameras “detect” the refresh of the scree. That’s why you’ll generally see lines and/or pixelation occurring. Your vision doesn’t see these things b/c it’s not a snapshot of the screen like a photo is. | 17 |
jrgrz0 | Physics | What would happen if we concentrated sunlight through big, glass lenses onto solar panels like a magnifying glass on a leaf. Would it increase the energy input? | There is already something similar where they put up multiple big mirrors in the desert facing a tower to produce energy | 2 |
6punjq | Biology | Sharks, crocodiles etc. When they eat in the water their prey, where does all the water goes when they swallow? Do they somehow filter meat from water or do they just swallow it all? | It might help to think of your food sitting in a giant pool of air. How do you eat without consuming vast quantities of air? As you reduce the volume of your mouth by clenching your jaw, you hold the food with your teeth or tongue or even just gravity while your throat is closed. Your mouth stays open and the fluid (air for you and water for sharks etc) leaves via your mouth and then, once most of the fluid is out of your mouth, you open your throat and swallow. | 17 |
6bck3l | Other | Why is it okay for companies to fire employees on the spot but it is recommended/respected when employees give the company a 2 weeks notice? | I don't know how such things are managed in the land of peanut butter and jelly but in the civilised world you can't just fire an employee on the spot, except in cases of gross misconduct, criminal acts and so on. A contract of employment generally includes specified periods of notice for both the employer and the employee. | 25 |
cp7n2j | Biology | When one gets "food poisoning" and you start to vomit/diarrhea, is that your body stopping itself from getting sicker? Basically what I'm trying to ask is I ate at a Chicken Restaurant (Raising Cane's) and the past 2 times I have been violently ill. I know cross contamination could be the cause, or the sauce, or the drink (who knows), but say it was e coli, but I threw up/pooped before it progressed any further and I immediately felt better after throwing up and "pooping", if I didn't throw up/poop would it have progressed into a worse sickness? Or is that just how those types of bacteria work, and my body was rejecting it and made me throw up/poop to get rid of it asap so it doesn't get worse? Sorry if this doesn't make sense. | Vomiting is your brains way of saying, “there’s toxic stuff in the belly, get it out!!!” | 5 |
dwogyy | Economics | What is bankruptcy and what happens when you file for bankruptcy? | Bankruptcy comes in two shapes : Illiquidity : A debt or other commitment legally oblige you to pay 10000$ tomorrow and the lender doesn't want to push back the deadline. You don't have such money readily available, but you have an apartment. However you can't sell your apartment fast enough to meet the deadline tomorrow. You miss the deadline, you can't pay your debt in time, you're bankrupt. Insolvency : you are legally obliged to pay 10000$ at the end of the month, but the sum of everything you own, if you were to sell it in time, is worth 9000$ and no one wants to lend you 1000$ and you can't get another job or produce anything more that would earn you 1000$. You miss the deadline, you can't pay your debt in time, you're bankrupt. When a company is bankrupt, everything it owns (buildings, furniture, machines, inventory, etc...) is sold to try to pay back the lenders, and if there is still anything left, the shareholders. In order to prevent as much as possible the lenders to be any more screwed, such liquidation is handled by a third party specialized company and supervised by a court (court can also organize the purchase of some branch of the company by competitors and several other options to save jobs etc...). | 4 |
9unr2b | Other | Why do streaming services sometimes only have random select episodes of a tv show? | because the company that sells it don't want to, or can't, sell it for all the episodes (or have made it stupidly expensive). there's loads of complex business reasons to do with this but it usually boils down to they think they can make more money selling them elsewhere. Or they've sold them to someone else already. | 4 |