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81glxg | Engineering | With B-52 bombers reaching 60+ years of service, would they still be effective against a technologically advanced opponent, like Russia or China? | They have been constantly updated since their birth. Military would mainly uses the B2 for open warfare due to its stealth abilities | 4 |
7icg0z | Other | Why is the 5-17 age group so valuable to advertisers versus other age groups? Just that. Definitely seems that way on youtube, advertisers love bidding on videos targeting them, which is why me too youtubers crowded that market and made tons of money off it. Also why Youtube actually seems to respond to threats to that market and not anything else. One assumes the same age group is valuable everywhere else too. But, oh marketing experts, why? | Because they are easier to manipulate and are really good a whining. Ask any parent about the horror of McDonald's offering some cheap plastic toy from the latest Disney movie. Kids don't care that it doesn't do anything, they just know they want it and won't shut up about it. | 3 |
mn5hnp | Biology | if the intestines are such a sensitive thing with all the specific bacteria and stuff, how does the body keep stomach acid from entering the intestines? | From my understanding stomach acid does get released into the intestine in the food/water mixture but the acid is neutralized by a base produced and secreted during digestion | 3 |
6esxzx | Chemistry | Why does everyone hate big crop seed/pesticide companies like Sygenta and Monsanto? | """Everyone""" = a small number of mentally ill conspiracy nuts who are disproportionately loud about the obvious lies that they believe. Anti-big ag is an offshoot of anti-GMO and anti-capitalism. It has the same level of respectability as the anti-vaccine movement, with much of the same faulty logic and the same reliance on fringe sources of misinformation. Unfortunately, it's very easy to get the impression that these people are numerous, especially in online spaces where mentally ill people are known to congregate. If you go to Facebook, for example, you can find many "flat earther" groups, filled with people who believe that the world is flat. This represents an even greater level of derangement than the irrational hatred of the companies that make farming efficient, but it's essentially the same idea. | 4 |
hfuqz7 | Technology | Why do digital movies not have chapters to skip to like a DVD would've had? | Because they remember where you were when you stopped watching - DVDs didnt do that back in the day. | 2 |
jyb8f9 | Economics | Why have housing costs rose so much in the past decades? | Supply and demand, people not living in extended families and marrying later in life mean that there has been a surge in demand for housing which hasn't been matched by an increase in the number of available properties. | 5 |
99xy4x | Biology | Why does it not hurt your eyes to use a phone in a lit room, but in a dark room it hurts? | Your eye has an aperture (opening) just like a camera. The iris can make a bigger or smaller circle (exposing more or less of the pupil). When it’s dark, it opens up to let in more light. When it’s bright, it closes more to let in less light. If you look at something bright when in a dark room, your eye is more open, but there’s a strong light, so it hurts. An analogy can be made with the volume on your phone or TV. If you’re listening to something or someone quiet, you turn up the volume to hear. If suddenly someone loud is talking or there’s a loud noise, because the volume was set so high, it can be frighteningly or even painfully loud. This is also why it’s hard to read your phone with the brightness down when you’re in the sun. | 1 |
ewmh3d | Culture | Why can the defending party in a presidential trial deny witnesses? Isn't a trial all about hearing the important witnesses? | The impeachment process is a political process. The US system is divided into three branches and is deliberately designed to be somewhat vague so that there will need to be a working compromise between the three branches - no one part is considered supreme on all areas all the time over all the other branches. In practice this means when one branch "unnaturally" tries to intervene in another - many issues are left to be determined on almost a case by case basis. Impeachment is one of these occasions. Here you have the legislative branch trying to remove the head of the (duly elected) executive branch in a trial that the head of the judicial branch is presiding. They don't use the rules of 'normal' trials carried out by the judicial branch because this is a legislative branch led process. Of course, the President will voice his own opinion of the "executive privilege" in order to counter this. None of this is written in stone nor detailed in any form. Hence the entirely political nature. Very early on (way before the House of Representatives passed the articles of impeachment) it was very clear that the chance of removing the President was very remote, given that the Senate's majority is the party of the President. Hence, this entire drama could be interpreted as a process to embarrass the President and the Senate. | 2 |
754ik5 | Other | Why do some animals "show off" their babies to humans? | Why do humans "show off" their babies to other humans? Animals, contrary to some belief, do possess a modicum of intelligence. If the animal believes humans aren't a threat and, especially with animals raised in captivity, a caregiver, they will want to show off their child to one seen as a 'friend'. It's easy to assume, then, that animals are legit going to humans they trust and going "HEY! LOOK AT MY BABY! ISN'T IT AMAZING?" | 2 |
jac0q1 | Physics | How do swings not violate the Law of the Conservation of Momentum or Newton's Thrid Law? | The important points that the others have missed so far is that you+the swing arent in a closed system. There are external forces acting on you, via the frame, which is anchored somewhere. Essentially, when you are starting to swing, you push against the ground via the frame. | 3 |
6kmrnu | Chemistry | how come alcohol is only consumed as a liquid? Let me clarify, we all obviously know there are alcoholic beverages, but I'm wondering why there are no alcoholic consumables. Yes, yes I know this sounds just a tad ridiculous but when I was stoned out of my mind last night this question entered my thoughts. I've seen alcoholic powder before, where you mix it into drinks, but I'm wondering why there aren't, for example, alcoholic pills. Thanks! Bonus question: I have the opposite question for drugs, do liquid drugs exist? (I literally sound like a five year old asking this) | Rum cake, jello shots. Alcohol is the chemical ethanol. Ethanol is a liquid at most temperatures we consume food at. That limits the choices. Frozen ethanol is cold enough to damage us. Vapor ethanol is a thing, but dangerous. | 5 |
6f5ku9 | Biology | Why does background noise seem to calm some people? For example keeping the tv on when not even watching it when trying to sleep. | If its quiet your mind races through random thoughts to occupy itself. If someone else is talking or something is going on your mind stops thinking and just records whatever is going on. This allows my brain to slow down and fall asleep. | 37 |
6d20ec | Other | Why do most of the ads on TV sound/look like they are made for really really stupid people? | They're for disabled people. Simple as that. Those products are for the denomination of human beings that absolutely need help with all the mundane things in their lives, and have no other choice but to spend their money on things like this because hey, what else are they gonna spend it on? They might as well throw their money at all the things on tv that would make opening jars easier. Are they a stupid thing to spend one's money on? Maybe. Do they sell? Obviously. | 14 |
ikq8gr | Technology | How do they extract iron and other ores from rock? | Usually metals are in an oxidized form in rock - e.g. not just iron, but iron oxide. Crush it into small pieces then burn with charcoal (or other carbon source), the heat unlocks/allows the oxygen to go where it "prefers", so the oxygen moves over to the carbon, to make carbon dioxide; leaving just iron; which melts and flows to the bottom. Aluminium is a bit special, because the oxygen much more "prefers" to stick to it rather than carbon (or only move a small percentage); but most common metals are all the same overall process - Adding heat frees the oxygen to move, then rip the oxygen off using carbon, turn it into metal, melt it. | 1 |
is9mf4 | Technology | Why do photographs from the early 2000s (MySpace era) have 'that look'? | Answer: it was the early ages of Digital camera's, Over the years camera technology have been refined a lot. Better sensors, better colour capture, better lenses. There where good Digital camera's back then, but they where very expensive. So it was common to have a camera with a very small sensor which had very basic features, poor quality lens that was 'always in focus' and nearly no enhancements. Plus a lot of people would use Webcams rather than a digital camera which will produce a much poorer picture. Edit_ Just to compare to today's prices, I bought a 256mb memory card for £85, you could fit around 2000 pictures on there (so small image size). These days you can get a 64GB card for around £20 Things where limited and seriously expensive compared to now. | 2 |
7v7uc7 | Engineering | How are signals transmitted into a rotating thing. Like helicopter or tire | [This might help.]( URL_0 ) I used to wonder the same thing, but in a simpler example: how do they make front brakes for BMX bikes that allow the handlebars to be spun around without tangling up the brake cable? Of course, that's not exactly how it works for electrical cables, but same principle: two rings allow cables to run along spinning things. | 6 |
hj2zv6 | Technology | Before atomic time, how did watchmakers know how long to make a second last for? | They basically knew that day to day sun is up at approximately same time (or stars appear on horizon at same time too every nighta). So for a classic 12 hour clock, they'd take a 12-to-1 gear to get to get hours, 60-to-1 gear to get minutes, and 60-to-1 gear for seconds. Then by trial and error tune the mechanism so that hourly gear would make two full turns sunrise to sunrize, or tune it to match a sundial. | 1 |
j501s7 | Biology | Why do opiates significantly reduce sex drive? | Slightly off topic but interesting and related: Many antidepressants can cause Anorgasmia. So, the Soldier can stand attention no problem, but just cant shoot his gun.... | 2 |
lgomsx | Biology | Why do your fingerprints not scar when cut / burned and always grow back into the same "print"? | Yea that’s a load of bullshit I cut about a third of the tip of my thumb off including part of the print and it’s gone it just shows up as a weird wrinkly patch in fingerprints | 1 |
9ycbss | Physics | Why do things behind a bright light appear dark? | Your eyes make adjustments based on the amount of light present. Have you ever noticed that when you first walk into a dark room you can't see anything, but after a little while you begin to see better? Your eyes were adjusted to a lot of light before walking into the room and then slowly adjusted to very little light. Your eyes can't adjust to both a lot of light and very little light at the same time, so it adjusts to the intense light. The objects that are dark will not be very visible, just like when you walk into a dark room. | 1 |
5orooc | Biology | Why are younger children so picky about the foods that they eat? | I read somewhere that there are 2 main conflicting concepts that are hard-wired into human brains: 1) eat food that is different, because what you've been eating might run out. 2) eat food that is the same, because other food might make you sick And until the children grow old enough to over-ride these instincts, they can be inherently picky/choosy/unpredictable in what they'll eat. | 5 |
ev99yv | Other | How is it possible that homework has no correlation with academic success, when repeated practice is important to so many other activities? | Teacher in my 7th year here! Lots of people hit the bigger points; you get the feedback too late. Kids also have a tendency to just toss out graded work once they glance at the grade. BUT, last year and this year, I've started something new, which is putting up the answer key and having my students grade themselves AND write a short paragraph on what they missed/how they can improve (I teach environmental science to juniors). The reflective piece is what gets graded; I don't care what you got wrong, I just care that you KNOW what you got wrong. It took a WHILE to convince my students this wasn't a trick, "I got everything wrong last night....is it a zero?" "No." ".....are you sure?" And had to elaborate over and over again that it is NOT in their best interest to just look at the answer key, since I pick difficult problems on purpose that even my high-fliers couldn't get full points on. However, once they trusted me, grades on assessments have SHOT up (and I use similar assessments year to year, so my tests aren't easier). Class discussions are stronger, tension and anxiety during tests has gone down, and overall they are growing more comfortable in just trying AND learning from their mistakes. Edit: WOW!! Thanks so much! To the teachers asking: You definitely need to explicitly teach this. I do this in class the first time, show a good and bad model, and leave really REALLY detailed feedback the first few times. Big time commitment at first. | 30 |
7ddlht | Culture | How does a show like Survivor / The Amazing Race capture so many angles in a scene, especially the critical ones in the plotline? In Survivor, if there was say a plot to overthrow some alliance, how do the cameramen capture it? It seems to me that if there is some silent discussion, at least 4 people will be there...the 2 castaways, the soundmen and the cameramen. In The Amazing Race, it seems that before a team gets eliminated especially in the later episodes, some big fight / quarrel / trouble happens. How do cameramen capture that moment with so much anguish? | In addition to having numerous cameras running at all times, the "storyline" doesn't come together until the editing room. In most every reality tv show, if the show isn't heavily scripted, there is NO story until the editor gets ahold of it. | 3 |
itytec | Biology | How do painkillers.. Actually work? | There are a few different types of painkillers, but one of the most common groups, which includes ibuprofen, is believed to work primarily by temporarily stopping the activity of a certain type of enzyme. This enzyme produces molecules that act as signals for inflammation. By stopping it, it halts or slows the inflammation process which can sometimes be an overreaction by the body that causes pain and swelling. | 2 |
74oizt | Repost | Why do stimulants calm ADHD/ADD people down when they have an opposite effect on everyone else? | Stimulants can help a person who has poor concentration (like a person with ADHD) to [focus]( URL_0 ). It's related to parts of the brain that make use of a chemical called dopamine which is responsible for the pleasure of anticipating a reward, but people with ADHD find it hard to get that kind of pleasure so they can be hyperactive to try to achieve that feeling. Stimulants make it easier for a person with ADHD to activate the reward anticipation parts of their brain, which suppresses their hyperactive behaviour. | 3 |
for94p | Other | Palliative care, what's it? | If a patient has a terminal medical condition (they are going to die), and there are no treatments that can be done to cure the problem/disease, then they are "made comfortable" with palliative care. Palliative care patients are either kept in the hospital or sent home (depending on the severity of their condition), and prescribed medication (including painkillers) so that they don't suffer during their last days. The medication can't cure (nothing can), so it's there just to reduce pain and suffering. Typically, if sent home, a nurse will come by to visit and check up (medically) on the patient, and possibly there's therapy also offered to the patient and the family to deal with the emotional side of the patient's eventual (sometimes soon) death. | 2 |
ielfkc | Engineering | What is the "TSSSS" sound a bus or a truck makes? | It’s the brakes. Cars like yours or mine use hydraulic braking fluid to compress the brakes. This isn’t loud enough to provide a distinctive sound (unless something is wrong with said brakes). Trucks and busses used compressed air. This air needs to be kept at the right pressure for the brakes to work properly, and the use of the brakes causes the pressure to increase, so a valve needs to release pressure to keep that in check. The hissing sound you hear is that mechanism at work, releasing the air. | 12 |
edxqey | Other | Why is Harvey Weinstein able to successfully sue his rape victims if they ever speak about it, considering freedom of speech? | Freedom of speech applies specifically to the government not taking action against you, if you speak badly of the government. Anyone can say bad things about the President, basically. Compare to China, or Korea, as an example of the opposite. Freedom of speech doesn't apply in non-government situations. Speak badly of your boss and you can be fired. Speak falsely of any person and you can be sued for slander. If you sign a contract or an NDA agreement, and then break it, the terms in the contract apply. An NDA is a legally-binding document. You have to do what you signed that you'd do. | 2 |
l6tgo2 | Technology | Why aren't more video games distributed on cartridges (SD Cards etc)? I recently bought a Micro SD card and it got me thinking, these things can hold a ton of data nowadays (even more than a Blu-ray!) so why is it only the Nintendo Switch uses carts (which I assume are some sort of SD card) when they can conceivably fit any AAA title on them now? | Because games are mostly distributed via the internet nowadays. For consoles you *could* make a case for using SD cards (and I think the Nintendo cartridges are indeed such but with a larger case so they fit the cover art and don't get lost easily), but the Xbox/Playstation has inertia behind using DVD/BluRay drives. Indeed, one of the Playstation's features is serving as a BluRay player to watch movies. Disks are also quite a bit cheaper since they contain no electronics while an SD card is actually a tiny computer that communicates with the reader over a serial port. | 2 |
7jbqkq | Other | The fundamental attribution error | People tend to attribute their own behavior (particularly bad or rude behavior) to external factors, but attribute *other* peoples' behavior as representing who they fundamentally are as a person. In short, people judge others for doing certain things while making excuses for themselves when they do the exact same thing. "*I* acted this way because I was having a bad day, I was in a hurry, it was an honest mistake, etc... *They* acted that way because they are a mean/bad/rude person." | 3 |
8x0qc4 | Biology | Does the DNA carried by a sperm cell have any effect on the sperm cell's own structure? If so, is it a reasonable hypothesis that a sperm's swimming proficiency is significantly correlated with carrying DNA with a high probability of creating a suitable individual? | The germ cells structures is given by the dna information of the somatic cells(the daddys) so every sperms ability to swim is NOT correllated to the information which it is transporting. (Med student) EDIT: check laderlappe02 pubmed link if you are really interested. even though the article says always that further investigations are needed, there seems to be correlation between transcription rate and fitness! | 7 |
6b2twc | Other | Why is it called the World Series when only US teams play? Shouldn't it be the US Series? | How can you say only U.S. teams play in the World Series when the Toronto Blue Jays are 2-time World Series Champions? | 39 |
iwtvun | Biology | Why does the brain create nightmares? It doesn’t make sense to me that it would induce a state of terror in our most vulnerable state. | Nightmares and dreams are the weirdest things in neurology. They happen because the brain is extremely active and so certain parts of it light up most which creates certain images. Or at least that's one theory. | 3 |
nu8ubh | Biology | Why do Tortoises live so long? That's it. The question. I have zero knowledge about it and would like to know the reason. | One of the theories, according to my biology of aging class I took many years ago, was the rate of metabolism. A tortoise's metabolism is so slow. The amount of free radicals that are created that build up in the body that potentially lead to death is also very slow. If an animal has a high/fast metabolism, they live a short life. However, there are exceptions to this rule, which is why it's still a theory, as far as I know. | 2 |
b3j8nn | Chemistry | what causes the reduce in potency of medicines like ibuprofen after they expire? | Many medicines are comprised of both active and inactive ingredients. The inactive ingredients serve as stabilizers, fillers, absorption enablers, etc. Over time, and with exposure to air and potentially other contaminants, there ingredients begin to break down, degrade, and otherwise change the way the body interacts with the active ingredient. In addition, various contaminants, oils, dirt, etc may be introduced into the container as the user invariably dumps out several and puts the remainder back. These too can potentially allow for bacterial grown and weakening/changing of potency. | 1 |
6x20qf | Culture | Why are young children so susceptible to crying over the littlest things? This may seem a little arrogant but I would legitimately would like to know. | Best way I've ever heard this phrased: For young children, every unfortunate thing that happens to them is literally one of the worst things that has ever happened to them in their entire lives. | 4 |
ivb48o | Biology | What exactly is autism? I spent quite some time trying to learn about autism and I still feel a bit lost. I understand that it’s a genetic learning disability and that it’s a spectrum. I still can’t put a finger on exactly what it is. To put it in one sentence I guess, if that’s possible. | It's not possible to put it in one sentence. Autism kind of isn't one thing, is the problem. It became classed as a spectrum somewhat recently, but I fully expect psychologists to split it into a few different, separate disorders in the future in terms of how they categorise it. The common theme in all the different disorders currently classified under "autism" is possessing some kind of disability in the social department (it's not usually a learning disorder btw - people with autism don't usually display reduced capacity for learning - rather, it's a disorder of social interaction and communication). Autism is easiest to describe as a number of different scales that all add up to make "autism". Imagine you're making a character in Skyrim, and each slider for like weight and skin colour and eye colour and so on is instead a slider for stuff like "ability to recognise emotions" and "ability to adapt rapidly to change". If 1 on those scales is "can do it perfectly well" and 100 is "can't do it at all", Autism is like adding up the results of each scale and saying "if the total is over 300, you're autistic" - which means that autism can manifest in lots of different ways depending on the exact way those sliders are set that adds up to 300. For example, 50/50/50/50/50/50 is autistic, but so is 100/100/100/1/1/1. The most common "sliders" are: - Ability to recognise emotions, sometimes called cognitive empathy: The ability to look at someone's face or listen to someone's voice and identify "this person is angry" for example. Also affects ability to recognise distinctions in emotions. Autistic people often group emotions into broader categories than non-autistic people, such as interpreting all pleasant emotions as "happy" and all negative ones as "sad". Kind of like how some people might categorise crimson as red, whereas other people would insist that crimson is a different colour to red. - Ability to recognise nuances in communication, such as body language and tone of voice. For example, it's quite common for autistic people to be bad at grasping sarcasm. - Ability to adapt to change in plans. A lot of autistic people don't cope well with things being changed last minute. - Ability to process sensory information. A lot of autistic people can be subject to something called sensory overload, where a bunch of incoming information all at once (loud noises and bright lights simultaneously for example) can feel painful and cause stuff like anxiety and panic attacks, as the brain fails to integrate the information properly. - Ability to regulate emotions and thought patterns. It's quite common for autistic people to rely on some kind of external stimulus such as repetitively tapping a pen, or fiddling with a blob of blu-tac, to help keep their brain from responding to distracting things and keep themselves focused. - Ability to do something called executive functioning, which is a broad name for various organisational skills like keeping track of a calendar or budgeting time during the day well. Autism also interacts with other mental conditions, particularly learning disabilities. Something called Low functioning autism happens when autism is combined with things like low IQ or another learning disability. Low functioning autistic people often display much more exaggerated symptoms due to lacking the capacity to compensate for them. The worst cases may never even learn how to speak. On the other end, you have something called high functioning autism, which happens when autism is combined with unusually high IQ. High functioning autistic people are kind of comparable to the idea of an idiot savant. Because autistic people see the world in a different way to non-autistic people, autistic people can have some very useful things to offer, provided they have high enough IQ to put that perspective to use. For example, many high-functioning autistic people have "special interests", which are like hobbies but *really* in-depth. A high-functioning autistic person with a special interest will most likely be the most knowledgeable person you can ever meet about their particular special interest, because it's so important to them that it consumes a possibly even unhealthy proportion of their time and attention. When this happens with a marketable skill, such as computer programming, you've got yourself a very valuable employee. It's also worth noting that most high-functioning autistic people are capable of compensating for their diminished social skills with techniques called "masking", and it's usually very difficult to identify high functioning autistic people, cos they're good at passing as neurotypical. It's also also worth noting that the terms "high functioning" and "low functioning" are considered problematic by certain portions of the autistic population, but I use them because no one can figure out more appropriate terms yet (because, as mentioned earlier, autism is a very poorly defined set of conditions to begin with). | 5 |
9jfqc6 | Chemistry | What's the difference between using (olive) oil or butter when baking (muffins or cookies)? Was baking muffins and the recipe said " add 175 ml olive oil", which made me think what difference does it make compared to using butter? Does it change texture or something else or can you use either? | Olive oil is an odd choice for baking, since it's not flavor neutral. I would substitute with another liquid oil before using butter. Otherwise, in muffins, butter is probably okay, but may not have the same mouthfeel or texture. | 2 |
5ukjrc | Physics | How do knife/tomahawk throwers know that the head of the axe/knife is going to hit their target? | Theres a technique to it. They adjust how fast they spin the blade for different distances. It takes a looot of practice. | 3 |
76okwv | Economics | How can sites like Green Man Gaming and Humble sell steam keys at significantly reduced prices than whats available on steam? | I can only speak confidently from my experience with Humble, so here we go: Every game you see on Humble is a deal between the publisher/developer and the site. Steam would typically take a cut of the sale price anyways, so that reduces the cost slightly. Charity gets a cut of those game sales, which incentivizes lower prices so more people can buy it, therefore more money for both the devs and charity Green Man Gaming does the same thing, but minus charity. You'll see more games there available more often since no cut goes to charity. Gray markets like G2A and Kinguin is like eBay. They have people who buy/receive keys from developers (sometimes in illegal means) and resell them independently. The majority of those games are not sold from developers and, worst case scenario, the developer got charged-back for the game, leaving that purchase of the game costing them money. Hope this helps! | 17 |
enuztz | Biology | Why is reading books viewed as such a good thing? I see new-resolutions all the time with books in mind. I would understand if it were books that were educational, however I often see fiction refered. What makes reading so good? | TLDR: your brain is a muscle that needs to be exercised. Reading, no matter if it’s for leisure or for education, is always good for you. Fiction books are no less important to read than non-fiction books. With fiction books you allow your brain to work other areas like your imagination and lets you expand your horizons. Also, just because it’s a fiction book does not mean that there is not factual information in them. Take a look at the author Michael Crichton, a lot of his novels are fiction but are packed with scientific and medical information and concepts that are being developed today. At the end of the day, whether it’s a text book, comic book, or any other kind of book, find what you enjoy and read. | 2 |
6f40be | Mathematics | Why does e (the number) come up in so many seemingly random applications? | It comes from a particular function : the exponential function. Ok, so the exponential function is pretty unique. It is the only function other than the "always-zero" function that is always equal to its own gradient. That means that a lot of random things follow its shape, things where the speed of the process depends on the size of the process (chemical reactions, atomic ones, bacteria populations who double every fixed amount of time, etc etc.) Basically, it's the function that fits phenomenon that have a feedback loop built into them : the bigger it is, the faster it goes, and the faster it goes, the bigger it becomes. Now, e, the number, is just the value of this exponential function for an entry value of 1. It pops up a *lot* because it makes writing the exponential function very, very easy : exponential of x (exp(x)) can be written e^x Plus, the "always equal to its gradient" bit means that the exponential function is the cornerstone of every technique we have to solve differential equations, so it pops up in a lot of abstract math too. And it can also simplify a lot of work on complex numbers, which are a powerful tool to work on a whole other class of problems | 5 |
fbc1pf | Biology | Why can't you drink alcohol when you're taking antibiotics? | "It’s difficult to work out exactly where the advice orginated, but Karl Kruszelnicki (Dr Karl) suggests it dates back as far back as the 1950s, when penicillin came into use as the first really effective treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as gonorrhoea and syphilis. Doctors were apparently worried that disinhibited acts under the influence of the demon drink could undo their expensive treatment with the new miracle drugs. So patients were advised to abstain (from alcohol) until things cleared up." | 3 |
6utr1b | Technology | How come 3D modeling software will take hours to render a single high quality image of a car, while a video game like Gran Turismo or Forza will display 30 images per second that look just as good? | they don't look just as good. they're way less detailed. but you don't notice because you're not scrutinizing the detail of how the detailed the ferrari badge looks when you're going around the road. | 3 |
5ztvvu | Culture | Before toilet paper was invented, what was the main source of cleaning oneself and how bad was hygiene? | Before toilet paper sponges were used, like the ones you find diving in Tarpon springs. Then were was a "moat" if you will or stream with running water nearby which you would wash your sponge after use. I suppose it is similar to reusable diapers and assuming you cleaned your sponge thoroughly each time it was probably more clean than using toilet paper today. This was at least the model for ass wiping in Ancient Rome I can't speak for other civilizations | 23 |
9myrs2 | Biology | Why are sun-dried foods, such as tomatoes, safe to eat, while eating a tomato you left on the windowsill for too long would probably make you ill? | Like you, bacteria need water to live. An old tomato will rot because it can support bacteria, while a sun-dried tomato can´t. & #x200B; Sun dried tomatoes are made in 4 steps: 1. Cut into strips and press to remove water. 2. Add salt to remove more water through osmosis . 3. Air dry. (BTW - This last step is done in a dehydrator, and not by letting it sit in the sun). 4. Add oil to prevent air moisture to re-humidify the tomato -OR- vacuum seal the container. & #x200B; | 11 |
a6h2f1 | Engineering | why are anti material rifles better at destroying military equipment rather then anti personal? And what part of it makes it that way? | As other's have touched on, anti-material rifles fire significantly larger cartridges(bullet + powder) than normal anti-personnel rifles do, even if numerically the bullets seem to be similar in size. A .308 Winchester round is 51mm long with a 12 gram bullet, but a .338 Lapua is 93mm long with a 19 gram bullet that leaves the muzzle with about 60% more energy Another factor that makes these rifles better against equipment than normal ones that you have ammunition options. Different bullets are suited for different jobs. Sometimes punching holes in something will take it out but sometimes you need to kill it with fire The standard 7.62x51mm round used in large NATO rifles primarily comes in variants of "Ball" rounds which are mostly lead and occasionally have a steel core to go through thin armor, there are some armor piercing rounds with tungsten cores and tracers but that's about as exotic as it gets. The 12.7x99mm round(.50 BMG or 50 cal) has a ludicrous amount of ammo options. You can get a Ball round, an armor piercing round, an incendiary round, an explosive round, or if you really want to bust something up you can use a [high explosive incendiary armor piercing round(HEIAP)]( URL_0 ) which will punch through armor while exploding and lighting fluids on fire. This round is understandably significantly better at taking out planes, cars, and anything full of fuel than just an armor piercing round. | 2 |
ccbbc9 | Economics | Why is everyone blaming the "boomers" for today's economy? | The "boomers" literally could not fuck up the economy during their careers if they tried. Most of the Eurozone was bombed to rubble in the back to back World Wars that killed or maimed just about every man and woman capable of holding a skilled trade. Any survivors with college training or skills worth having dipped out to America. Nearly every factory was obliterated. Those factories make parts for other factories, so rebuilding gets harder. Plus, anyone who knows how to build factories is either (effectively) dead, very busy, or has dipped out to America because shit sucks in Europe. There's no real financing in Europe either. Anyone that can cut loans likely did for the war effort and is crippled by interest payments on their loans to US companies, slowing growth because businesses can't get a loan for their new factory. That means from around 1945 through 1970 the United States was the only nation with a fully functioning economy with fully operational and well staffed factories stocked with engineers, scientists and skilled tradesmen. Plus, nearly every country owed us a TON of money. When the entire world needs everything, and you're the only country that can make anything, literally any economic policy is guaranteed to succeed. That means a ton of terrible economic policies that were being invented(?) could be proven as "growth models" because literally any model would grow in that environment. Around 1980, Europe finally had a full stock of 60-somethings employing 40-somethings training 20-somethings in all new modern factories meaning the US had fair competition for the first time ever. European economic policies had to be tested in a horrible environment, unlike the US policies which were guaranteed to succeed. With fair competition, the US economy naturally dipped. Boomers couldn't figure out why their shit wasn't selling as much, because they've never seen real competition. Now that the internet has made everything effectively equal for all but shipping costs, they *really* don't know what to do. So, in the greatest of human traditions, they blame the younger generation for being "lazy" and "not working as hard", while neglecting how easy their parents had made their lives by bombing the competition out of history. | 13 |
b4en6m | Technology | What is the goal of all the "sexy girl" fake profiles? | People are less likely to fall for a Nigerian prince, even if he's hot as fuck. Hot singles in your area > Hot singles in a different continent | 15 |
gimghb | Economics | Wolf of Wall Street, or just Wall Street. What do the guys on the phones do? These types of films feature offices full of guys on the phone. Sometimes they persuade the person to buy, then they hang up the phone, celebrate in some manner and then do it again. Now I've never received a call like this, nor has anyone I know. I've also never heard of anyone receiving a call like this, and don't know anyone who has heard of someone receiving a call like this either. Could someone please explain what they are doing, who they are doing it to, and why that person would listen to them? thank you | I work at a bank. I sit next to people who take those calls. They are in charge of managing our security portfolio. In an ideal world, the bank takes people's money and loan it out to people who want money to do cool stuff. But sometimes we don't have enough people approach us to do fun things, and other times the people who do have no experience with cool stuff or have tried in the past and only did boring stuff. So sometimes we have extra money. Because our deposit holders expect interest, we need to do something with that money. So we look for companies that are doing cool stuff and buy their securities. That is, someone else loaned them money to do cool stuff but doesn't want to hold the loan because they're good at finding people who do interesting things, not at raising capital to loan to people. Those people who are good at finding others that want to do cool stuff reach out to brokers, who are good at connecting them with people who are good at raising capital. Like our bank. So our portfolio managers talk to those brokers constantly. They may only bite on one deal in fifty, but those are million dollar purchases. Whenever our bank gets connected with a security, that broker makes a percentage. They get super excited about making a commission. And then they call someone else. | 1 |
nfksvf | Biology | When you remove large part of the skin after weightlose, what happens to the feeling between, do you feel a jump? Was kinda hard to explain just as a title, but the question is this: If you have a large patch of skin removed, for example after large weight loss, what happens to your perception of your skin/surface? So if you brush from one side of the scar to the other side, does the brain know/adjust so there is no jump between the feeling? Because the might have been 10 cm between that area before. Like if you close your eyes and touch on two areas of your arm, you kinda know how far it is between it, but what happen in this case if you remove skin? | There is no jump, but some areas may go numb where the nerve endings were severed. Some recover with time, some never do. | 1 |
7dis4f | Culture | Why do rich people spend hundreds of millions on famous paintings? | It could be an investment with plans the painting appreciates. It could also be to preserve it and possibly loaning it to be displayed at a museum. It could also be for egotism: to show their other rich friends that they have something the other doesn't. | 5 |
jp27l5 | Mathematics | is there any alternative to decimal system ? | Plenty. Base 2 is what computers use. Base 16 is often used in programming, as an evolution of base 8 system. Base 60 was used widely by the Babylonians and is still the system most often used to describe circular motion, including measuring time. | 4 |
jhq1vk | Biology | How do clusters of cells gain mass when undergoing mitosis? When you see videos (or video representations) of cells undergoing mitosis, it looks like one cell with "mass 1" turns into two cells each with mass 1/2, then those turn into four cells each with mass 1/4 and so on. It doesn't look like the cluster will ever increase in volume. When/how does it increase and why does it not seem to initially? | I’m assuming you mean the early divisions of a fertilized egg cell? In most cells, when they undergo mitosis (cell division), each cell division is separated from the next one by what we call the growth phases. So one cell, when preparing for division, will first increase in volume slightly to make sure its big enough for both daughter cells to contain all vital components. We call this the first growth phase, or G1. Then the cell divides and forms two smaller daughter cells. Once division is complete, each cell will grow again to reach its functional size. We call this the second growth phase, or G2. In a fertilized ovum, the growth phases are thwarted at first. The ovum is surrounded by a sort of membrane that restricts its size. The membrane plays a role in fertilization of the ovum and implantation of the embryo but I won’t go into detail here. The point is that this membrane stays around the ovum for a while, so the cells that divide within that membrane don’t have room to grow much. Once the cell finds its place in the uterus and settled there, the membrane disappears and the cels are free to grow. Also note that the ovum is the largest cell in the human body (with exception of neurons which are really just very long bois), so it’s not all that weird that the daughter cells are a little bit smaller. Also, the ovum in early development has limited resources for growth and pretty much relies on what it contains until it implants in the lining of the uterus and gets nutrients from there. | 1 |
7wyj0r | Physics | why does water at 20°C feel so much colder than air at 20°C? | You can't feel absolute temperature. By that I mean you can't touch something and say "this is 20C". All the human body feels as temperature is how fast heat is being transferred, to you or away from you. Heat being transferred away feels cold, heat being transferred to you feels hot, and how fast this is happening is how hot and how cold. So if you pick up a wooden ruler at 20C, it'll feel warmer than a metal spoon at 20C, because the metal pulls heat away from you faster. Equally, water is able to pull heat away from you a lot faster than air can, so as long as it's cooler than you are, it will feel a lot colder. It's the same reason that if you stick your hand in a hot oven at 200C you can probably put up with it for several seconds, but if you so much as brush a metal shelf (which being in the same environment, is obviously the same temperature), you'll get a more-or-less instant burn. This is what I mean, you'd instinctively say the shelf is hotter than the air in the oven but it isn't. Humans feel heat transfer, not heat itself, if that makes sense. | 1 |
71s75e | Biology | How exactly does a person faint from a sleeper hold? [This]( URL_0 ) article says that a brain can go up to 6 minutes without oxygen. Does the sleeper hold cause someone to faint from lack of blood? Or is it more correct to say that they faint from lack of oxygen? If it is lack of oxygen, how come one can hold their breath for minutes but sleeper hold will make them faint in about 5 seconds? | If you do a sleeper hold properly, a person can be knocked out in a couple of seconds. You are literally cutting off the flow of blood to the brain for just a few seconds, causing them to pass out. Source- Jiu Jistsu class | 3 |
7o8ncn | Technology | What makes gasoline so special that it can power engines and why is it so difficult to find an alternative fuel source? | it's flammable, high energy output, easy to transport, and stays liquid in decently wide variety of temperatures. lots of things can power an internal combustion engine. diesel, peanut oil, alcohol to name a few. | 7 |
akorhw | Other | Do doctors really give their patients x months to live? | The short phrase works really nicely in tv and movies. In reality, mortality rates, chances of making it to different milestones, with and without treatment are discussed in more depth. | 3 |
ed110n | Technology | if RAM is ridiculously faster than even the fastest SSD then why aren't we using RAM for storing all of our data instead of hard disks and SSDs? | 1. Nice idea to store your data in a device that requires constant, completely uninterrupted power to not lose it's *aaaand it's gone*. 2. Type | Price ---|--- 1TB HDD | 44$ 1TB SDD | 110$ 1TB DDR4 RAM | 3120$ See the issues? | 1 |
8x6v6h | Economics | How do commercial fireworks companies work? Do they hire a bunch of contractors just for the 4th? Are they able to make enough off of minor league baseball and other functions for the rest of the year? Do they each claim a geographic region? | There’s a hotel across a field from me that do weddings and every week or 2 they do massive firework displays I’m talking like 10-25 minutes of non stop fireworks, when you do the math for whoever they pay, it’s a fuckton of cash seen as most people around here charge atleast 350£ per minute | 3 |
6ya7z8 | Technology | Isn't Google killing other websites by displaying most of the content in search results? Why do these websites allow this? | Without Google visitors, they'd have no visitors at all. IMDB isn't charging you for that information, so you aren't their customer. They save money if Google sends you their data, and they get the good PR. Google respects robots.txt instructions, so they could easily tell Google not to do that and Google would comply. But they choose not to because it's a good deal for them. | 3 |
kjgdl6 | Biology | Why are burns due to chemicals or intense cold also called “burns”? What do they have in common with the regular burns due to fire or heat? Not sure whether to flair this as biology or physics, but any idea why? | Just to add on there are a few types of burn Radiation is on you missed, for example sunburn is a radiation burn from UV energy but there are other types too The other classes were wet, dry and chemical last time I remember | 13 |
bo9h0l | Biology | How does fire actually kill a human? | Usually, you die of asphyxiation from smoke inhalation first. Then the fire just burns away your body until it stops functioning. | 3 |
fo6g34 | Physics | Is there a theoritical limit to how hot somethig can get? From my highschool knowledge I imagine heat as a liquid and temperature as wetness, when you fill things with heat they become hotter and hotter and if you stop pumping it, it leaks away making them colder and environment hotter. But is there a theoritical limit to how hot something can get? If there is, do we know why and how it changes from substance to substance? | Sort of, but nothing like absolute zero. Once things become very, very hot, we have to start thinking carefully about exactly what we mean by things like heat, temperature and matter. Depending on the precise definition, you can do some math and come up with an upper limit, but it isn't the same as the wall you run into with absolute zero. | 5 |
isis0s | Biology | Why do anti-depressants take so long (months) to work? | I prescribe these medications to my patients so I might be able to help understand. They can take months to build up in the system. It's called "steady state", and once you take enough of them for enough time, the amount of medication in the bloodstream is constant and can continue to work in a therapeutic, or meaningful way. Sometimes we can take a person's blood to measure how much of the medication is in the bloodstream and then we know if the person is on a high enough dose or if they are taking too much and should take less. | 6 |
d53k40 | Chemistry | if shampoo strips away oils and conditioner replaces them, why are there shampoo + conditioner in one products? | The conditioner part is a silicon product that sticks to the hair more strongly than normal hair oils so it is not washed away by the detergent part. It makes your hair feel silky, but can build up on your hair (as it is not washed away) and hair salons dont reccomend them. | 6 |
dbmp3g | Biology | Why do bright lights leave a fluorescent impression in your line of vision? I have experienced this for as long as I can remember. I also see rainbow static when I close my eyes, and faint impressions of other things I have seen throughout the day. I know other people experience this, but I don't know what it is. | Specifically with bright lights, the rods and cones in your eyes use chemicals to function. When you look at something bright for a long period of time the rods and cones run out of the chemicals they use to function. When this happens, they stop working properly for a short period of time while the supply is built up again. Your brain typically misinterprets this as you seeing something that's the opposite of the image (ie a negative). I'm not sure about the other stuff though. Personally, I haven't heard of that. Could be your brain interpreting random signals your eyes are sending. | 1 |
hyl53y | Other | Why are observers allowed in courtrooms, but cameras are not? Just a thought I had. What is the difference between letting observers watch court proceedings, and letting outsiders watch via film footage? Are the viewers not the same as the observers in the room? | Because when cameras were first invented, photographers were egregious with using flash. It was considered a huge distraction and cameras were banned. If you want more info, look at the history of courtroom sketch artists and why they still exist. | 4 |
6f5ku9 | Biology | Why does background noise seem to calm some people? For example keeping the tv on when not even watching it when trying to sleep. | EEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! Is what it normally sounds like in my head. Thanks tinnitus! Having something in the background helps me forget its there and helps me focus or sleep. | 37 |
6gh5dr | Biology | How are people able to walk again after being paralyzed? | After being bedridden for a while due to an accident that caused damage to the lower spine, their muscles "forget" how to walk, but can can be trained to perform the action again, provided that no major damage to the nerves occurred, rendering communication with the brain impossible. Worst case scenario, they'll need specialized prosthetics to get around. | 4 |
61pdda | Other | Why do countries which aren't even at war, spend billions upon billions of dollars every year to fund the military | That's sort of like asking why houses and buildings that aren't being broken into have locks on the doors, or even alarm systems and security guards. Crimea used to be part of Ukraine as recently as 2014, and now it's not. They couldn't defend their territory, and now it's not their territory anymore. Edit: someone wants "nuance." Here: Ukraine gave up nukes hosted in their terrority in exchange for secure borders. You see how that worked out for them. URL_0 | 8 |
fswwg8 | Engineering | Why does a sandwich taste so much better when made by someone else? | I think other people are missing the possibility that you are just bad at sandwiches. Do other people enjoy your sandwiches less than normal? | 6 |
5uyyr3 | Technology | How does Mastercard know my clothing size? [This article]( URL_0 ) says that Mastercard knows my clothing size because "there’s enough information in a product’s Stock Keeping Unit, or SKU, to determine clothing size". This data could be used to estimate my weight and height and provide this information to flight companies. But how does Mastercard even know what I'm buying? I always thought that my local clothing store, or even bigger companies like H & M, C & A or Esprit, just submit my credit card data and how many Euros they want to charge. So how could Mastercard have any information about Stock Keeping Units? I never have to sign anything that'd allow H & M to transfer this kind of data. | Just because they CAN doesn't mean they ARE. That said, it's not unreasonable to expect them to request specific product data at the time of purchase. You likely agreed to it at the application phase, or it's considered public information that is t subject to privacy laws. | 2 |
fyeoes | Biology | Why our fingerprints don't wear out and rub off over time? | > Why our fingerprints don't wear out and rub off over time? They do, if you're handling abrasive surfaces or harsh chemicals all the time: bricklayers, for example. However, the skin on our fingers gets replaced quite quickly, so as the prints on one layer wear off, there are replaced with fresh prints from ~~Bel-Air~~ the layers beneath. | 1 |
g3ool8 | Biology | why are antioxidants good for you? I understand why oxidation/free radicals are bad for you, but how do antioxidants work to undo that? | A lot of science has come out in recent years suggesting that they do not have as many positive effects as once thought. Despite considerable research efforts, scientists have shown that the antioxidants are not in high enough concentration to meaningfully change the rate at which free radicals or reactive oxygen species are quenched in the body. That is because your cells produce many enzymes that quench antioxidants naturally and very efficiently. An enzyme is a protein that makes a chemical reaction faster/ easier/ more likely to occur. Antioxidants that you consume, however, are not enzymes. They are instead simple molecules that react more slowly and aren't as reusable or abundant as the antioxidizing enzymes already in your body. | 1 |
5r8y0r | Other | What's the difference between wisdom and intelligence? | “Knowledge (intelligence) is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” ― Miles Kington | 5 |
9p1d8x | Other | How do counterfeit bill detection pens work? | Sort of poorly. They put an ink with iodine in it on the note, and if the note is made of something like paper, starches in it will react with the iodine and brown. If the note is made with a cotton base, like an authentic note, it will not react and tend to be colorless. Of course, if the note is fake but based on cotton, it won't detect it. Additionally, numerous methods exist to make fake notes non-reactive to the pens, or to disguise cheap bills as more expensive bills which will also pass muster, being made from an authentic base. | 1 |
8b15pu | Biology | Why does venting about stuff that frustrates you help you feel better about it | Speaking and naming your feelings always helps your brain process those feelings, and emotional validation and social support also cause those good chemicals to flow through your brain. | 2 |
gvgwqv | Biology | Why does rest/inactivity often make us more tired, while activity can make us more energetic? The world is currently struggling with both an influx of major stress while people in great numbers are also unemployed and inactive. This is leading to a massive spike in depression and related symptoms. For these reasons, I was wondering if someone could give me a good explanation for why resting often makes exhausting situations even more exhausting. Thanks! | When you exercise, you need more energy. As a result, your body gears up to provide you with everything you need. You start burning more fuel to release more energy. You start breathing deeper to supply more oxygen to every part of your body. And vice versa the same happens. If you behave like a couch potato, your body is going to gear down. Most of the food you ingest will be shunted to storage rather than burned up for energy. You breathe easy, your heart rate goes down. Your question is kinda like asking why a car can drive farther when you hit the gas compared to turning of the engine while you coast. On top of that, your body isn't simply a vehicle for your mind. It's much more accurate to say your mind is an operating system to get your body where it needs to go. Any time you only use your body while your mind languishes or vice versa, you're not doing your physical and mental health any favours. You evolved to live in the moment when body and mind working in perfect synchronicity towards a single goal. That's why exercise is good for our mental health. | 6 |
6a4ct1 | Culture | What caused the hyperinflation in post-WW1 Germany, and how did they recover from it? | They had a massive debt to pay back after losing WW1 because of two things. One, they borrowed all they needed for the war and two, they had to pay reparations to the winners. (They were actually planning on winning the war, so their initial approach wasn't so silly). So, massive debt. The infrastructure was sort of ok, so they could have got back on their feet pretty quickly. However, the key here is that reparations were meant to be paid in gold (or in foreign currency) and they were unprecedented extremely high. The mark was devaluating (to be expected, since they had just lost the war). So, the government started printing more bills to buy foreign currency at *any* price. The more bills you print, the less worth your currency is, and so on, and so on. Creditors realised that this was going on, so they demanded the reparations in goods, which didn't help Germany at all with their internal economy. Inflation went on, people stopped saving, because money was constantly losing value at a rapid rate. Germany stopped being able to buy stable foreign currency to protect itself from inflation. They just couldn't afford it anymore. Then, economists introduced a new currency associated to the countries own goods and economy subject to strict control to stablise the market, which they managed at some point. When this was achieved, it replaced the country's currency, cutting like 12 zeros from the old worthless prices. The quality of life of the middle class deteriorated a lot during this short period allowing the rise of nazism. | 4 |
lk704q | Other | How come photographers on Earth can capture our galaxy during one of those amazing time-lapse we see. But astronauts can’t take a picture of it in space? Sample video: URL_0 | Long story short... Exposure. Getting those big galaxy shots from the ground require a long exposure. On the moon they used short exposure time focusing on what was right in front of them. | 2 |
gh2zyz | Technology | Where do the telecommunication companies get their internet? | They *are* the internet. They link up to other telecom companies via expensive cables owned by one or both companies, so you can send messages from your computer, through your ISP, through the other ISP, to *their* subscribers' computers. That's it, that's literally what the entire internet is. | 2 |
705ymt | Other | How is a nuclear missile flying over another sovereign nation's airspace not deemed an act of war? | It is. Since the Korean War never ended, North Korea is officially at war with the US, and is threatening Japan because it hosts US military bases. | 12 |
j7fsbr | Other | Why is it so much easier to confuse left and right than up and down? | Because it's on a different axis for which you have no physical and inherent point of reference. Down is with gravity, up is against. There's a constant physical reminder of this. Imagine if gravity were always pulling you left - it would be a constant reminder of what left was. As humans are largely externally symmetrical, they need to memorize left vs right. | 10 |
5zf7yf | Technology | how can my smoke detector not be set off by my cigarette or fireplace smoke, yet goes off the moment my toast starts burning. Not sure this has been asked yet. If it has link me to post? Reddits search function is weird... | Smoke detectors work by having a radioactive substance and a radiation detector inside. The detector keeps getting the emissions from the substance, and this keeps a circuit open. Whenever enough particles that can block the radiation get between the emitter and the sensor, the circuit closes and the alarm goes off. Fireplaces and cigarettes actually burn pretty cleanly, meaning that the smoke they create is made up of very fine particulate matter that the radiation can get through, unless you've got enough present to be difficult to see through. Burned toast smoke, on the other hand, creates larger airborne creosote-like objects that can easily block the radiation. This is due to the oxidation reaction being much less efficient, resulting in larger particulate matter being released into the air as smoke. | 3 |
ijldo4 | Other | On a two lane highway during construction, barrels are often placed on large stretches blocking lanes for months with no actual construction going on in sight. Why is this? | There’s a lot of work that takes place before highway work - surveys, inspections, utility locations and so on. These require frequent visits to the site by various groups and the site needs to be safe during this time. You could set up cones each time. But that’s expensive, setting out the cones/barriers/barrels/etc is fairly dangerous to the workers doing it and disruptive to traffic, and would need to be coordinated between multiple parties. And then you have a situation where the road lane extents change from day to day, which creates its own hazard as the drivers don’t get used to the lane arrangement. After they have everything they need there might be design and engineering work done in the office for a few weeks, along with an approval process and some preliminary site preparation work that is done in sporadic bursts. They could take the barriers down for this, but they’d be going back up soon enough anyway, so similar to the reasons above they leave them up. Then during construction the work might not be during office/commuting hours, or it could be happening elsewhere along the same run of road, might not be readily visible from the road, or could be sporadic as trades take their turns, and some things require waiting periods between work, and there’s a lot of testing, inspection and site investigation - say you uncover a conduit where your not expecting it - gotta stop work and then find out what’s going on, then come up with a plan to move it. Depending on other work going on this might mean you can’t do anything until the issue is fixed. Same if you uncover unexpected ground water or other conditions. And similar to above it’s normally safer to keep the barriers up than move them on a day to day basis. | 14 |
6dikp4 | Other | To cool your home, when is it better to open your window or not? | I would open them about an hour and a half before sunset (and make sure to open windows that allow a cross-breeze!!), then leave them open until roughly a couple hours after sunrise. Or, if you will not be home at that time go ahead and close them before you leave your home. My experience is that i went from May 2016 all the way until May 2017 without using AC at all, and i do live in South Carolina, USA. Not uncommon for ungodly hot temperatures during the day, but if you open windows and use ceiling/box fans, hot temperatures can comfortably and sustainably be mitigated. Once again, ceiling fans are a must!! Good luck and stay comfy, friend! | 3 |
heqq6d | Biology | Why do hospitals induce comas on patients? Why not just heavily sedate someone? | If I remember right, that's exactly how they induce a coma- heavy meds. I wish I could remember what it was named, sorry | 4 |
9z7jn0 | Technology | Graphic card drivers or drivers in general? What are bad drivers? What makes them bad? | Drivers are the programs your computer uses to talk to hardware. The computer wants to draw a blue circle, but doesn't necessarily know how to tell your fancy card from Nvidia. It tells the driver "draw a circle", and the driver tells the card. But wait! You replace your fancy graphics card from Nvidia with a card from AMD. The AMD card doesn't speak the same language as the NVidia card, so you will need to install a new driver. Good drivers do that translation very fast, and don't make the computer crash. Bad drivers do the job slowly, or cause the computer to crash. There are also degrees of good and bad: a specific version of the drivers might be faster and more stable than another. | 1 |
ljzcgt | Other | why do people get more satisfied/happier getting their "wants" instead of "needs" Why is it that even though "needs" are what help us to stay alive and get through everyday, getting "unnecessary" things usually makes us much more excited/happy/more satisfied when we know those are things that aren't going to help us daily. Wouldn't it not make more sense that the brain is wired the other way to ensure survival? | My best answer would be this: Humans thrive in families and need social connection. If we have needs that have to be met, our emotional side could actually help us to survive when we can’t get our needs met by ourselves. Instead, we seek out others from the group and in compassion, they give us what we need. This way not only are our needs met, but we also get a boost of those feel good hormones. Also worthy to check out this study (although it’s a monkey study and that’s not cool it’s findings are pretty interesting nonetheless) URL_0 | 2 |
g36kl7 | Biology | Why do children and teens grow in spurts or bursts, rather than continuously? | One possibility is that the hormones associated with growth inhibit other necessary processes, such as the immune system. For example the hormones associated with wakefulness/alertness, such as cortisol and adrenaline, can and do suppress the immune system, but the immune system is allowed to activate during sleep and clear infections. Anabolic hormones like testosterone also suppress the immune system, so the body drops its testosterone levels when there’s an infection. It could be that the body would end up neglecting other really vital processes if it was growing all the time. I saw the Netflix documentary featuring the scientist who found that babies measured weekly grow at a steady rate but measuring daily reveals a surge in growth one day of the week and little growth on the other days. I’m thinking that might be what this question is about. Now imagine that these growth hormones deflect energy from the immune system during the time it’s supposed to be most active: at night. Would it be better to weaken the immune system a little bit every day, or allow it to be highly active for 6 days a week and take a little bit of a break on the 7th day when there’s a surge of bone growth? If an undetected infection started building on one day, the immune system could play catch-up the next day. The infection wouldn’t have a chance to get very far. And of course a baby’s body could easily just skip its little growth spurt for the week if it’s actively sick. This could work with other processes too: digestion, mental activity, physical activity, etc. If a baby loses its ability to absorb nutrients as well on the day it’s growing—and it needs those nutrients to grow—then it’s pretty obvious why it would have to shut that process off to stock up on protein and calories until the next spurt. I don’t know the exact answer for you or even if the exact answer is known to science at all, but this sort of balancing priorities is the reason why living organisms in general have a lot of cyclical processes. | 8 |
63fgwp | Culture | Why was Michael Jackson so popular and acclaimed? | I'll add to all the comments here by saying that Michael definitely had a sound all his own. Nobody at the time sounded like Michael and if they did, everyone compared them to Michael. Also the dancing. Today, pop stars incorporate dance into their stage performance but it usually feels like an afterthought (because it is). Michael was a brilliant dancer, amazing singer and had an iconic look. | 6 |
lb0fnc | Other | How are buyer side real estate agents incentivized to get cheaper deals for clients? If they are paid on percentage commision, wouldn't it be best for them to have a higher buying price? | Realtors live off their reputation. They will get dumped by an agency or license revoked if they fuck over a client. Having a good deal means more business and better reputation and building out repeat business. | 6 |
i8l56w | Other | - why is the G string on a guitar the hardest to tune? | Because you can’t get it out of your mom’s butt? (Buh-dum-pshhhh) But seriously...it’s the longest string on the guitar from saddle to nut so it’s got slightly more length to stretch and contract with temperature. That’s all I can think of. | 1 |
iii2y9 | Biology | Why do horses need to have their hoofs trimmed? How do wild horses hooves not grow out of control and cause them pain? How does the hoof trimming process work with horse shoes? Basically, I am really curious about the overall horse hoof care and maintenance. | Wild horses wear down their hooves from walking on hard ground and rocks and things. Every 6-8 weeks, domestic (and some feral/wild) horses get their hooves trimmed to make sure they grow in an appropriate shape that doesn’t destroy the horse’s joints over time. The farrier would remove the shoe, then proceed normally—trimming the hoof, trimming the frog, filing the hoof, sealing/conditioning the hoof, and applying a new shoe if necessary. Oh and hoof picking first, but everyone does that all the time. Anyway, shoes can stop horses’ hooves from wearing out too fast on asphalt, getting stuff in them (sand shoes), or from destroying the horses joints once arthritis, metabolic, or degenerative disorder sets in. It’s very interesting to watch. | 2 |
7vv9eg | Repost | why is the C drive named the C drive? | Similarly, the next step was the D: drive, which was commonly used for the cd disk drive or dvd disk drive. Now a days it’s often used for a partitioned hard disk or a second hard disk. E: became commonly used for USB or other exernal drives. | 5 |
hw1nhe | Chemistry | How avoiding to eat meat reduces carbon emissions in the atmosphere? | Cows are a large producer of methane which is a greenhouse gas. If we stop eating as much beef products then the methane production slows. | 4 |
6kmkc0 | Other | Why were there so many recorded serial killers in the 60s, 70s and 80s as opposed to the present day? | It probably has to do with the overall decline in violent crime since the 90s, but I can't say with 100% certainty. | 7 |
o2ko3b | Technology | What does 'Legitimate Interest' mean/include on cookie banners? Is there an agreed definition of what can be considered a site's 'legitimate interest', and if yes, what is it? Or is it just the wild west, i.e. 'this is my site and I say it's in my legitimate interest to maximise my income by tracking and selling your data in exchange for my content'? | Wild West, they can choose whatever definition they want - just say no to everything especially when Apple asks if an app can track you. They’ve given that option so you can protect yourself so do it Source: I’m a dev, I work with cookies Slightly off topic because this isn’t cookies specifically but… Used to work for a larger retailer and the amount of data they collected was crazy - most of it unused but “might be useful one day”. They used to have “data warehouses” (huge servers) to store it all but that became too cumbersome so they implemented “data lakes” (massive storage) instead. Essentially all that data just gets poured into a “lake” and just collected and collected. Then one day when you need to target a specific subset of people, you run a query and grab whatever data you need to push ads/products to them Now that’s just one company that only wants to sell you things… push that out to multiple governments/bad actors across the world with much bigger resources and a potentially worse intent (either now or in the future) and you can imagine the scary consequences and/or dystopian nightmare we could one day find ourselves in… Limit the amount of day you give away wherever possible. Get a VPN (recommendation: Proton) and use Duck Duck Go (browser and search), close down any old accounts you think of and no longer need etc etc etc | 3 |
9p00p7 | Technology | connecting 2 computers with usb | It is possible but you need a specialized cable that has a processor built into it. & #x200B; USB is designed to work between a host and a device. The computer is the host and the other piece of equipment is the device. The host has one kind of US chip inside it and the device has another. In order to make sure that no host was connected to a host or device to a device, the shape of the connectors for each end of the cable were made to be different. & #x200B; With the new version of USB connector, known as USB-C, the connector is the same on both ends. Also there are specialized cables that have USB-A (host connector) on both ends. Those cables have a chip inside that acts as the "device" and talks to two different "hosts" (each computer) at the same time passing information between them. | 3 |