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5t2hj1 | Other | why does the sun feel so good on your skin when you have a fever? | Because when you have a fever, your body is internally very hot, which means heat is flowing out of your skin rapidly, so you feel cold. When the sun hits your skin, you stop feeling cold because heat is flowing into your skin as well (almost 2 horsepower worth of heat per square meter). | 1 |
e5f2z9 | Physics | How does ebb and flow work? | Imagine a pair of slightly loose jeans without a belt. You put your fingers in the waistband and pull it out right. So, now there’s a bulge where you’re pulling (the moon’s gravitation) and the jeans are tightest on the opposite side. Now, run your hand in a circle around your waist to simulate the moon orbiting the earth. Wherever the moon is, the water bulges towards it. That means there’s less water everywhere else. The moon moves constantly, so, so does the water. | 2 |
bsi6hw | Economics | Why does it seem so challenging now to send a manned crew to the moon, when we were able to accomplish this over 50 years ago? | Landing on the moon is a huge engineering challenge. Can we do the math easier ? Yes. Are our computers faster ? Yes. But that doesn't help the logistics. You still have to train the crew. Build the ships. Test the computers. Run all the simulations. The actual calculations that are faster now than 50 years ago are a very small part of the total mission if you want to run it with s high chance of success. | 22 |
i9odkl | Economics | How do game devs make money off of free games? Like i know some games have ads,but surely thats not the main source of money that the game makes. | Micro transactions. The vary majority of games are free but charge you in small increments for things like skins in Mobas, that shiny OP weapon in mmo's to 'energy' on mobile games. And that 1-5$ pretty transaction may not sounds like much, but you get a few million willing to pay it and it adds up fast! | 2 |
f5wjhy | Economics | When the federal reserves buys bonds from the market, where exactly is the money coming from? | By printing money - or more accurately, by crediting the reserve balances of their member banks. | 1 |
6vwbr2 | Culture | U.S. reporters rarely aggressively ask follow-up questions about statements by public officials that are obvious lies or don't make sense. When a politician says something clearly false or diversionary, the reporter usually just carries on as if nothing happened. | Most of the media exists to serve existing political interests and won't call out obvious bullshit. Also, troublesome reporters tend to get exiled from press pools. | 27 |
6ajmc7 | Biology | Why are we unable to cultivate truffles? We have made leaps and bounds with genetic engineering, selective breeding, and soil analysis. How is it despite all our modern technology we can't replicate the growing conditions required for truffles? Why are we dependent on pigs to find wild truffles? | Basically they depend on extremely specific soil conditions and an extensive network of tree roots. They do plant some truffles, in the sense that they set up very truffle friendly areas, and plant trees treated with truffle spores, but the whole thing takes a long time to mature, and may never bear truffles in farmable quantities. | 6 |
o36l8y | Earth Science | How do rivers (such as the Thames in London) have tides? The River Thames in London is a tidal river, it's not the only one in the world, but it's the only one I know of. How does a river which surely has a constant supply of water flowing into it have a tide? | The whole river isn’t tidal, but the estuary is. Estuaries are where the fresh water meets the sea. The tides in the river are caused by the sea, not by the river itself. | 2 |
6kgswu | Physics | How can a sailboat reach a speed, which is more than twice of the original wind speed? At the Americas Cup, there have been many occasions where the boats where more than twice as fast as the wind speed - i just don't understand how it's possible | The sails work more like wings than sheets being pushed by the wind. The same way an airplane wing going through the air generates upwards lift, those rigid sails generate lift in a sideways direction, and this is what allows it to move faster than the true wind. | 3 |
fbbq0x | Culture | Why is tipping such a big deal in the US? Why can't a service charge just be included in the total amount of the check? | It needs to end. It's a fucked up system that guilt people into paying extra for their meals and services. I didn't really have an issue with it in concept until I saw a tip jar a t a McDonald's drive up once and thought "what the fuck". Before that I had always avoided situations where I would be expected to tip. It just makes me really uncomfortable; I worry that I didn't give enough and so never go back. It really makes it hard to get haircuts since I have to find a new place each time. If it were limited to restaraunts it would be OK. But tattoo artists expect tips, hairstylists expect tips, everybody nowadays expects a fucking tip and if I don't pay it people accuse me of being cheap and uncaring. As I said. Tipping is a broken system. Pay these people at least minimum wage (not required in most areas where tipping is customary) and just end it. | 2 |
heb3fv | Other | If most of the world's ocean hasn't been explored, how do we know we've already discovered the deepest trench? | We know the depths of all parts of the ocean, but we haven't actually been there and observed the life/conditions there more closely. | 4 |
m5cug4 | Technology | Really confuse about ddns | Ok so the internet is all numbers that are addresses like for houses. But numbers are hard to remember so people made domain names to hide the numbers that's dns. So unless you buy a static address your address constantly changes making it hard to attach a dns to that address. You would have to keep updating your dns with the new address each time it changed. This is where dynamic dns or ddns comes into play. Instead of you updating the address each time a service updates the address each time it changes keeping your dns pointed to the correct address. | 1 |
baf73q | Other | Why do bubbles in any form of water rise in a zig zag pattern and not straight? | As the bubbles rise to the surface they leave an unsteady set of alternating vortices behind. This phenomenon is known as the [Kármán vortex street ]( URL_0 ) You can imagine each vortex pulling the liquid on alternating direcions giving rise to the zig-zag. | 1 |
b95urk | Economics | Why do movies cost so much to make? Budgets are often in the millions. Is it the equipment? Paying the actors/crew? | -Every person working on a major film is very likely at the top of their field. That means big, big paychecks, and not just for the cast. -Equipment costs can be in the millions. -Cost of special effects, props, and sets is easily in the millions. -Marketing costs millions. | 5 |
irtdj4 | Technology | I read a comment about a dude that said if you need more computing power SSH into your colleges server how would that work, and what does SSH mean? | It's just a way to log into another computer and run a program on it. You'd need a username, password and the name of it to be able to log into it over the network. Often college / universities have powerful computers that are accessible to those doing computer related subjects so they can run their programming assignments. | 2 |
adlt7g | Technology | Why do phone batteries degrade over time such that they go from 100% to 1% very quickly, but can continue to run at 1% for hours on end? | Nearly anything that uses fuel has a "reserve", an amount below empty that's there in case you plan badly. Cars have the same thing with their fuel gages. You can get a fair amount of distance out of it when the gauge says E. | 2 |
6v15ky | Technology | Why you shouldn't take Eclipse photos with your smartphone if you can normally take pictures of the full sun without any problems | I heard on the news last night that you can use your phone to watch the eclipse. Stand with the sun at your back, put your phone on a selfie. I'm not going to do it because I live in central Florida and the sky will look like an ordinary cloudy day. | 8 |
d00265 | Technology | What is the process of emulating a console exclusive game, such as Bloodborne, to a PC playable game? | There's two parts to this: First: Any computer program, whether it's a game or a "regular program" (and consoles are just specialized computers), is eventually just a series of "commands" for your processor. We call those instructions. There's quite a number of different processor kinds with different instruction sets. Consoles used to have very specialized processors which very specific instructions that come in handy for running games. Today (I think) most consoles use the amd64 instruction set, which is the same you have in your laptop/desktop PC/Mac. Don't get confused by the name, Intel and AMD processors both work with the amd64 instruction set. amd64 is the name for the instruction set that modern desktop processors understand. If you want to run a program that is written for one instruction set on a processor that has a different instruction set (for instance, Nintendo Switch uses the ARM instrcution set), then that program will use some instructions your CPU doesn't understand. So you have to "translate" those instructions into instructions that your CPU does understand. This is usually not a one for one translation. Second: Any program that is not an Operating System (OS) is expecting that there is an OS "underneath" where it runs on. The OS is exposing certain functionality to the program (for instance, the program can tell the OS "give me more memory", and the OS will hand it out). Consoles have very specialised OSes. So you also need to emulate the behaviour of the console's OS and expose the same functions. So, basically, emulation is making your PC behave in such a way that Bloodborne thinks it's running on a PS4 when it actually isn't. All this emulation comes at an overhead, so emulated software will usually run slower than on the hardware / OS it was meant to run on. | 1 |
hhy3ek | Technology | Why does windows takes way longer to detect that you entered a wrong password while logging into your user? | This is per design. It knows fairly quickly that you entered the wrong password. However if it just gave you the option to type the password again as soon as possible it would allow someone else to continuously guess passwords. To prevent this there is a built inn delay in the password checking so that you can not type passwords too fast. | 10 |
fghagj | Technology | How does a car like Koenigsegg Agera make more than a 1000hp with just a twin-turbo V8 whereas the Bugatti Veyron required a quad-turbo W16 for similar performance? | First and foremost, Bugatti built a W16 explicitly for the purpose of "because they can." That isn't to say it's not without it's benefits, but the Bugatti has always been a halo car, designed to showcase Volkswagen's finest capabilities. Now to talk about the numbers. Gasoline has an available energy density of about 45 megajoules per kilogram, about 10kWh per litre burned. A typical engine will extract 1/3 of that, so that 1 litre/hour corresponds to about 3kW output. That means that to extract 1000hp, (736kw) you have to have a fuel flow of just over 245litres/hour - which at 15:1 air:fuel ratio means 3676 kg of air per hour - which at 1.225 grams per litre equates to roughly 3 million litres of air - or roughly 833 litres/second. Rolls Royce did that with the Merlin engine by making it 27 litres - but to develop that power at a 1500rpm propeller speed (13 litres per revolution = “only” 260 litres at 1500rpm) they had to add superchargers to increase air pressure and run the engine at 3000rpm, gearing it down for the prop. A Merlin engine won’t fit in the back of a Bugatti. A heavily turbocharged 5 litre V8 can develop 1000hp but it would self destruct in the 12 minutes required to do a sustained speed run, what the manufacturer promises. No other car can promise to perform at it's peak level for nearly so long. Making an engine strong enough to last would result in a very heavy engine. 1000kW generators, expected to run continuously, are the size of cars so they can run slow enough that they don't suffer structural and material failures. Top fuel dragsters make 15,000 hp in a v8, but the engine has to undergo a complete tear down and rebuild after every single run. Just some numbers I dragged up from a similar comparison, the Veyron produces 1184 hp at 6400 rpm using 8 liters of engine - that is 23.125 horsepower per liter per kiloRPM. A Konigsegg produces 1124 hp at 7300 rpm with 5 liters of engine - that is 30.8 horsepower per liter per kiloRPM. By increasing the number of cylinders, they reduce the load per cylinder and increase reliability. Finally, I googled dyno charts for the two engines. You have to understand, it's not about peak numbers, you need to look at torque and horsepower over the entire RPM range, it's the area under the curve that matters. The W16 has a flat torque curve from 2,000 rpm onward, and horsepower absolutely skyrockets, and the Konigsegg just doesn't compare. | 2 |
cxti7o | Technology | Why is restarting the computer often solves the problem? | Your computer has 2 memory devices, 1. RAM 2. Hard Disk The data is permanently stored in hard disk and when your computer is turned off data still remains in the hard disk. RAM on the other hand is opposite data stored in RAM remains there only as long as there is power. Once you turn off the computer all the data in the RAM is lost. Now, why are there 2 memory devices? Your Processor is very very fast but your hard disk is very very slow but the RAM is very fast so what the OS does is that whenever you start the computer and open an application the OS takes the data from hard disk and puts it on RAM and the Processor accesses the data fastly from the RAM. But the problem is RAM is very costly so you have very less quantity of RAM and when your computer is running lots of applications the RAM gets filled up, now as the RAM gets full problems start to occur as not all applications can put their data on the RAM as the small RAM is getting shared between all the applications. Restarting the computer clears the RAM and you start as a fresh slate and that's why restarting solves the problems. | 2 |
da4x9g | Psychology | What is a god complex? | A person's belief that they are in control (in one way or another) of everything or almost everything. For instance, if I believed that my parents died in a car crash because I wanted it to happen, that might be an indication of a god complex. If I had similar beliefs for many other things that happened in my life, it would be a God complex. God complexes often come coupled with immense feelings of guild and some megalomania. | 1 |
hzchom | Engineering | How can internet cables laid on the ocean floor for thousands of kilometers remain effective... while an HDMI cable can lose its effectiveness after as little as 5 meters? | Are those cables actually on the ocean floor or are they "floating" somewhat meters under surface? Genuinely asking | 12 |
ev99yv | Other | How is it possible that homework has no correlation with academic success, when repeated practice is important to so many other activities? | The kids that don't need to do homework do it, and the ones that need the practice don't bother. | 30 |
gisw0l | Biology | Why do people have eyebrows and other animals don't have? | They do, ever see a dog do ‘puppy dog eyes’? Horses have them, donkeys, monkeys, apes, the list goes on. | 1 |
6z4o8j | Physics | What caused the water to disappear (and in what manner will it return) from the Bahamas coast? URL_0 | They storm is a low pressure system. The center sucks water up. Think of it like a straw. The water has to come from somewhere, outside of the center of the storm. So there's a bulge of water under the center of the storm, and lower water around the outside. | 23 |
dud985 | Biology | Why is it dangerous to eat raw chicken or raw eggs, but you can eat rare steak, which is very bloody? | Chicken and eggs frequently have salmonella contamination. This is because chickens carry the bacteria, and in processing the meat, the bacteria naturally gets spread to the smaller pieces. Beef don't carry salmonella, but it can be picked up in the processing plant. Because beef is often eaten in larger pieces, the contamination from processing stays on the outside, and is killed with even slight cooking. However, ground beef, because of the smaller pieces, is much more easily contaminated, which is why people can [die from eating it. ]( URL_0 ) It is still really important to keep kitchen utensils and your hands clean while preparing beef though. | 1 |
kcuk0l | Engineering | when you turn your left right indicator on in your car, and it makes a ticking noise, what actually makes this noise? Is there like a small speaker that plays the ticking sound that is pre recorded? Is it due to some metal clunking together in the car? | Originally the sound was caused by a component called a relay - this is a type of magnetic switch that allows you to interface low power electronics (like a cars dashboard) with high power electronics (like the headlights). So the click you hear is a small magnetic switch turning on and off (exactly like a house light switch clicks when you switch it). A lot of modern cars however no longer use this system - modern led indicators for example don't need to use relays in the same way, so the sound is often played by a small speaker in the car - it isn't necessary, but a lot of people rely on it as a sign that the indicators are active (the same as watching the blinking light in the dash), so it is recreated in modern cars that don't make the sound naturally. | 2 |
97ekez | Biology | A lightbulb flickers 50/60 times per second, but we see it as being constantly on. How is it then possible for the human eye to see differences between 60 and 144Hz monitors? | The power may be at 50/60 hz but the filament stays hot enough to put out light the whole time. Turn a light off in a dark room and you can still see it glow for a caouple seconds. | 2 |
krpqt3 | Other | How does crypto currency (Bitcoin) have actual value? I'm trying to get a better understanding about this area, but when I Google and try to read up on it, most of the information is written with the assumption you have some understanding in this area. How is crypto currency any different than an in game currency? What real world value does it have? Also, what is Bitcoin mining? Someone was talking about it the other day and made a passing comment that made it sound like you were...finding new Bitcoin? Like literally mining for more? Sorry if this is really dumb or obvious lmao but it's confusing the hell out of me 😂😂 | It looks like there are a few good explanations of why it has value (because enough people accept that it does) As for the mining question. As I understand it, there is a process by which you can use computing power to solve specific math or computer problems. I'm not sure of the details, but these calculations count towards a certain percentage of a bitcoin. There are controls in place (blockchain?) That verify that you have done the required work and thus you are granted a coin or a percentage thereof. So 'mining' is just shorthand for 'ran the required computer processes to create a bitcoin'. This required effort is partly what gives them value - they are limited in number and someone can't just 'print' more bitcoin. As for Blockchain technology. I don't have a good understanding of it, but it's a security feature that contains the transaction history of each bitcoin so you can prove its legitimate. Each bitcoin has a blockchain attached to it. | 4 |
9vnqu0 | Other | how do socks prevent our feet from getting sweaty | If you wear shoes without socks, when your feet sweat some of that sweat stays on your skin (there's not a lot of evaporation going on) and a lot of it transfers to the shoes. That's bad for your feet and bad for your shoes (stinky). Socks absorb the sweat and are easy to change and wash. Certain materials are a lot better at this that others, especially materials that are moisture wicking and odor resistant. | 3 |
koel1q | Earth Science | If the winter solstice is the longest night of the year, why does it mark the beginning of winter, rather than the very middle of it? | Societally it is because the seasons are things we invented, so we can decide it happens whenever we want\*. Historically, it is because the solstices and equinoxes were easier to define astronomically than some arbitrary point halfway between them. A more physically based answer is because the temperature/weather lags behind solar radiance. This is because of a concept called 'thermal inertia', which basically means that the environment still retains some warmth from summer and autumn. A simple model of weather would have the winter solstice be the day that the most heat was lost, but that means it gets colder the day after, and the day after that, etc. Actual weather is more complicated, but it still holds that the coldest day should occur a significant time after the solstice. \*cultures from more equatorial regions often defined the seasons differently. People in Sub Sahara Africa defined seasons by the direction of the crescent moon, which corresponded to the rainy and dry seasons. Ancient Egyptians defined their season/year by the star Sirius, which could first be seen predawn approximately 1 month before the Nile flooded. | 4 |
c97ud7 | Other | Why are pear cakes rare? | I have found that browning pear cubes in a skillet until they're just soft, with sugar and cinnamon, goes well with whipped cream. | 12 |
6v77qh | Culture | Why do girls/women scream so much in comparison to boys/men? | Don't try to understand women. Not even at a very young age. I gave up around the time my daughter was 3. | 12 |
hww000 | Technology | Why are modern artists able to draw hyper-realistic art using just a pen/pencil, but artists from 100+ years ago weren’t able to? Edit: In regards to what I mean by hyper-realistic, I’m referring to artwork seen here: [Pics]( URL_0 ) these are almost photograph quality. | Who says they couldn't? A lot of very good art was painted and in a photorealsitic way in the past, Joseph Wright is just one example though 100 years ago Cubism was 'in' so a lot of art barely resembled reality, abstract art, impressionism and others also don't focus on realism as that was for the realm of the Realists. What's in sells and artists don't generally draw for the fun of it and will often create art in the form that is currently trending as that's what sells and art supplies aren't cheap. Hobbyists will of course create art for pleasure but the serious full-time artists won't as they won't spend time and resources on creating a photo-realistic portrait if everyone is buying Cubism. Look at Mondrian, he spent years painting landscapes and was practically a nobody, he visited Paris, saw the Cubists and became famous for painting a few quadrilaterals in a non-uniform grid some bright colours. I'm sure if you delved into the back catalogue of artists a hundred years ago you might find some high quality sketches but you won't find them on display (unless there's an art gallery with literally no other pieces by an artist and they picked up a few cheaply in an auction) art galleries won't display art that doesn't fit the mould of their sections, so they'll have a Cubist section with Monet, Mondrian etc. but you won't see their non Cubist work in another section nor will you see artists famous for another form who did some Cubism in their spare time. So just because you haven't seen it or won't see it unless you sift through the art not on display it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. | 27 |
6ze3t3 | Physics | What's the difference between 'space' and the 'void' outside the known universe? | [The observable universe is just a horizon created by the finite age of the universe]( URL_0 ). There's no indication that the universe changes significantly at the boundary (becomes the 'void' you're asking about), since we keep getting new observations from out there as time goes on. Most likely the universe goes on infinitely. | 2 |
690ara | Economics | Why do people say that Reagan's fiscal policies were so terrible if the 80s were some of the most prosperous times for the middle class? | "the 80s were some of the most prosperous times for the middle class" Source? I don't think your stipulation is generally accepted as true. The 80s were arguably better than times since, but the late 40s through early 60s brought much greater gains in income and living standards to the middle class than the 1980s saw. | 2 |
d0unyn | Biology | how do selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) work and why do they make you feel worse before you feel better? | Our body sends messages along strings like wires to tell our brain how our body parts are doing. The wires are called nerves and they talk by sending special juice or chemicals back and forth to each other where they meet. If the nerves feel grumpy and stop talking to each other we feel bad and grumpy too. A Dr. can provide medicine if the grumpy feeling is not going away and makes us not want to do the things we should. The medicine will find out where the grumpy nerves are and knows how to make them talk. The medicine has special keys that fit inside the door to the chemical's house. The medicine blocks his doorway so he has to go and talk with the other nerve before he can go back home. The nerves become friends again after talking it out and we feel better too. It takes some time for the nerves to become friends and they get annoyed because they are locked out of their houses. So it may feel worse for a few weeks until the medicine has them talking nice to each other. | 3 |
5my1q2 | Other | How are so many different movies able to claim they are the "#1 Movie in America" | First, because anyone can make the claim, there's no "official" body governing what the #1 movie is...I can claim that this is the best comment on the internet...anyone gonna stop me? Second, because you can apply any criteria you want for what #1 means...it's similar to the way every car and truck built by any company is the "best"..."Best in class towing capacity," "JD Power and Associates highest safety rating," "Best in class cargo space," "The best-selling car in America," "Most awarded car company in the last X years," etc...there's a category you can apply to basically anything that allows it to be the best. | 3 |
7morzj | Other | Why do the high and low temperatures for the day rarely reflect actual temperature? I live in the Pacific Northwest and today it says High 46, low 45, currently 37. This happens a lot. Why does the forecast look like that? | In some regions the forecast is very accurate. Where it is not, there are two main reasons: 1. Microclimate. The temperature is forecast for a specific location, such as downtown or the airport. A few miles away, due to mountains or bodies of water, the weather may work differently. 2. Lack of data. Most weather systems move from west to east, and most weather monitoring stations are on the ground. So forecasters on the west coast are at a disadvantage, with no cities far west of them. | 1 |
6uria4 | Biology | Why do we occasionally get sudden, random and sharp pains without there being any visible external stimuli or pre-existing medical condition? | It could be several factors, most likely just nerve impulses getting jittered. Stress can cause it, when someone is under stress their body produces specific hormones that can make them sensitive to pain and muscle tension which could lead to intense, sharp pains. I've also heard that vitamin D or iron deficiencies can cause it too. I always thought of it like someone has a voodoo doll of me and is clearly fucking with me. I know it's not the case but it's fun to think about. Edit- For the people ~~whining~~ concerned about my choice of word, when I say "jittered" (an actual word) I mean when the pain receptors are activated and send the signal to the brain via nerve fibers, sometimes that signal gets fucked up. More times than not, that's the source of a sharp pain that doesn't last long, but it can also happen from stress/tension in the muscles or vitamin/mineral deficiencies. | 7 |
mnoy04 | Biology | If both ADHD and autism are considered neurodivergent, why do we only have ADHD stimulants but no medication to treat autism? This isn't meant to be poor in taste. I have autism myself, but am I'm often really confused when it comes to the whole I understand that ADHD/autism are often co-morbid and that autism doesn't need a cure. I'm just stumped on how ADHD is considered neurodivergent even though there's medication to control symptoms, while the severely autistic are left to struggle in constant sensory overload and become extremely agitated to the point of violence towards themselves and others. | "Neurodivergent" literally just means "brain that works differently from the norm." People with chronic depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, OCD and any number of other mental illnesses would also be considered neurodivergent, not just people with ADHD and autism. It's not really related to whether or not we've found an effective medication for the specific disorder in question. Now, I *do* realize that people tend to use the term "neurodivergent" for autism and/or ADHD much more commonly than they do with many other psychological disorders. I suspect this is because there is this extremely popular push with these two disorders to frame them as... well, not actually disorders, but a natural and valuable difference in the way you think. It's framed as similar to how some people are good at math while others are good at geography, you know? Like, ADHD isn't a *disorder*, it's just that some people are good at focusing on a single task, and other people are good at more indirect, creative thinking. The term "neurodivergent" is commonly used as a more positive (or at least neutral) descriptor among those who dislike the idea of referring to autism or ADHD as disorders. Speaking as someone who *has* ADHD, I'm not personally a fan of this idea. I don't *like* forgetting literally everything that isn't written down. I don't *like* losing my train of thought in the middle of a sentence and forgetting what I was saying before I'd ever finished saying it. I don't *like* the listless feeling of desperately needing stimulation but lacking the focus to find an activity that would provide that stimulation. I don't *like* that I run out of mental energy halfway through the day without medication. And hyperfocus is *not* a superpower when it means going 10+ straight hours without eating, drinking, or going to the bathroom. Still, I think neurodivergence is a useful term, if largely because it provides us with its opposite - neurotypical - and gives us an easy way to refer to the ways our brains work differently. Because they do, and it's valuable for us to have terms like this to explain to neurotypical people that they *can't* empathize with us normally, because the way their very brain chemistry would respond to a certain situation or trigger is not the same. There's a lot of this "just buckle down and focus" stuff, as if my inability to focus is a *choice*, and terms like "neurodivergent" can actually be really help to solidify the idea that no, it's not, I literally can't do what you're telling me to do because that's really just not how my brain works. But I'm really not a fan of this insistence that it's "different, but just as good." No, it's not just as good. There are some genuine benefits - I get hilariously excited about literally everything, and that's a pretty fun way to be - but even accounting for those, I would prefer not to have ADHD, thanks. | 38 |
c74nzv | Biology | Why are 9/11 first responders getting cancer so reliably? | When the towers fell the fires and collapse kicked up a dust cloud that contained things like asbestos/glass/and plexiglass like material. Asbestos basically acts like very tiny prickers/thorns and when they get in your lungs they stay there forever. Cancer is basically your cells not working properly. They die off and rebuild. When you get cancerous cells they can do things like lose the ability to die off at the right time (sort of the off switch being permanently be stuck to “on”) and when the grow or generate they can do so in abnormal ways. When you have little asbestos needles in your lungs for 20 years you have a much higher chance of them messing up that process of cells dying off and regenerating normally. | 3 |
8sb8ku | Biology | Most doctors use the stethescope on patients no matter what the symptoms or ailments are. How would a stethescope be useful in seemingly unrelated problems like diarrhoea for example ? | You use a stethoscope to listen to bowel sounds in a patient with diarrhea. And regardless of your complaint, getting a baseline on lung sounds and heart sounds is just safe practice. Something like diarrhea can cause havoc on other body systems, so it’s important to check them. | 3 |
8bab6x | Biology | What is the biology behind being a light sleeper vs a heavy sleeper? | It’s learned. When you’re a baby you get calibrated to the ambient noise. If whenever you slept there was perfect silence, you grew up as a light sleeper. If you often slept through noise, you grew up to be a heavy sleeper. This is why it’s popular nowadays to have the baby’s crib in the living room so it learns to sleep through the noise of making dinner, doing dishes, doors opening and closing, etc. | 11 |
hy3a8e | Biology | How does dead weight work? | Her kinetic chain is completely relaxed. If you asked a friend to lay on the floor completely relaxed, and tried to pick her up by her shoulders, she would be rather heavy. If you asked her to tense up into a plank, it would be somewhat easier, you would be able to use their heels connection to the floor to lever them up. Like Thahat says. | 3 |
m7wvag | Biology | Why does Australia have so many weird creatures compared to everywhere else? What is it about their geography or other factors that makes them so attractive to the scariest bugs and other creatures? | One reason is Australia is completely isolated. All the rest of the world is or was recently connected (in a evolutionary time frame). Since they were all connected, many thing evolved or developed on a similar path. Australia disconnected from the others on a much earlier timeline and had longer to evolve animals in a different way. | 3 |
7gr5kk | Biology | How can professional kickboxers and MMA fighters be able to hit things with their shins with so much force? So i just saw this on twitter URL_0 this lady his using the middle of her shin like its not attached to her body, if i bang my shin i am in agony yet these people can use their shins as a weapon without as much as a crack to the bone or a whimper How is this possible? | Its all about conditioning the shins, essentially numbing the nerves and bone, so that the nerves die and you become used to the inevitable pain at the same time There's a great post [here]( URL_0 ) that explains: > There's basically 3 factors from my point of view. Your own pain tolerance to start. You can pretty much do anything to me short of the obvious ones (jam shit in my eyes, kick me in the beanbag) and I'll be okay. My pain threshold is pretty crazy as is so that certainly helps. As time goes on your body gets used to what you're doing and you get more durable, things get more tolerable. Like exercise right? First time you do it it's hard, your body strains, you really suck at it and everything aches. Then a month later your routine isn't as hard. Six months later hey I'm halfway decent at this and I can walk fine the next day, that kind of thing. Three is your body itself is helped by factors and I'm not a doctor so bear with me but you do deaden the nerves in your shin one way or another really. We had drills to kick wooden posts, we got whacked in the shins with stuff (to varying degrees not like some guy full force drove a cricket bat or something into us and we had to take it) and your friend adrenaline also helps out as it does with any contact sport. If you've ever played a physical sport like hockey, indoor lacrosse, American football, rugby etc you tend to get hit in those sports and you don't really notice unless it's a huge impact. After the game you check yourself out and you have bruises and stuff you never felt when they happened. So your body toughens, your shin bones get stronger, your nerves kinda fuck off and you get more used to hitting and getting hit. | 1 |
a4a2ap | Biology | How can we make an educated guess about the time it is when we wake up without seeing a clock? | Light through the window puts you in the ballpark. But also take into consideration the times you’ve been out by a mile. I’m a shift worker but on days for a project and after 2 weeks my body now wakes me up 5-10 minutes before the alarm goes off, every flipping day, even on weekends. | 1 |
7avs8g | Physics | Would shooting a missile at an incoming nuke still cause the explosion? | Almost certainly the nuclear warhead would not detonate. However, there are explosives and radioactive material would disperse, but nowhere near the impact of an actual nuclear detonation. | 3 |
ckcwri | Other | Is it possible to make a product similar to chocolate from other types of beans? | Chocolate isn't actually a bean. It's a seed, sure, but not a legume. I'm sure you could get a chocolate-like texture from other sources, after all it's mostly just ground seeds and sugar with a tiny bit of salt, a splash of vanilla, and maybe some wax to harden it, and flavors can be mimicked with the right chemistry, so yeah, probably. | 2 |
cltu42 | Other | Why isn’t there nearly enough ads against littering as there are against smoking? | Littering actually has a very minor impact on a global scale. In addition, littering is not physically addictive the way smoking is, nor is it detrimental to one's personal health. In addition. These are just a few of the reasons why nobody - or very few - will fund such ad campaigns. | 3 |
b1dbyh | Biology | If two people were sleeping face to face very intimately close together, could you steal each other’s air where one or both of you would not get enough oxygen? | Air contains about 20% oxygen and about 16% when you exhale so even exhaled breath has enough oxygen in it, what it does contain is extra carbon dioxide which may make you breathe more rapidly. | 1 |
7tea2j | Technology | What is the process behind film and video game remasters? Is it just an easy cash cow where minimal work needs to be done or is there a complex/delicate process to it? | The answer is: It depends, there is no general answer. * There are remasters or "HD versions" that are really low effort. Some just replace some textures, re-make some HUD-elements to work with modern resolutions/ratios and that was that. * On the other end of the spectrum are basically re-implementations of the original, with new textures, new orchestral audio, new (in times entirely) voice acting, technical recoding, new bugfixes, etc. The effort is still much lower than making a new game, as all design and art is there - just creating some new version of the art is easier than coming up with it in the first place - is there, a lot of the code can get reused etc etc, but still a lot of work goes into it. Most remasters are actually somewhere between these two extremes. Usually it's some technical adjustments for modern resultions, some re-doing of old images, textures, some new graphical effects, maybe a bit audio. Often the "new" version contains all patches, DLC/add-ons that have shown up, at times community work (patches, some mod-idea), maybe some fixes for old bugs (but no complete round of new bug fixing; priority is usually to get it to run "at all" on modern operating systems and that is mostly it). To answer the posed question: compared to creating a fully new game even doing a complex rework it is an easy cash cow. ;) | 2 |
l7ckr5 | Economics | Stock Market Megathread There's a lot going on in the stock market this week and both ELI5 and Reddit in general are inundated with questions about it. This is an opportunity to ask for explanations for concepts related to the stock market. All other questions related to the stock market will be removed and users directed here. How does buying and selling stocks work? What is short selling? What is a short squeeze? What is stock manipulation? [What is a hedge fund?]( URL_0 ) What other questions about the stock market do you have? In this thread, top-level comments (direct replies to this topic) are allowed to be questions related to these topics as well as explanations. Remember to follow all other rules, and discussions unrelated to these topics will be removed. **Please refrain as much as possible from speculating on recent and current events.** By all means, talk about what has happened, but this is not the place to talk about what will happen next, speculate about whether stocks will rise or fall, whether someone broke any particular law, and what the legal ramifications will be. Explanations should be restricted to an objective look at the mechanics behind the stock market. EDIT: It should go without saying (but we'll say it anyway) that any trading you do in stocks is at your own risk. **ELI5 is not the appropriate place to ask for or provide advice on stock buy, selling, or trading.** | What's the difference between buying a stock and buying an option? | 489 |
mnt0y5 | Biology | How is it know for certain that no two people have had the same fingerprints? There are/were bajillions of people and only so many swirly patterns. Also, same question but with snowflakes. | Well, the fingerprint thing is actually not true. Two people can have the same fingerprints [(this guy from Oregon was falsely convicted for a terrorist attack in Madrid, because his fingerprints were functionally identical to those of the actual bomber)]( URL_0 ). It's not common, sure, but it's not impossible. You're right in that there are so many people on the planet that we couldn't possibly get the fingerprints of everyone. However, I think the issue is that you're interpretting the fingerprint/snowflake rule as a hard-and-fast... well, rule. Truth is, there's nothing saying that two fingerprints/snowflakes CANNOT be identical. It's just that there are so many factor and variables that go into the creation of each, that the odds of two snowflakes or fingerprints developing in the exact same way to form an identical final products are extremely extremely small, and usually not even considered. | 3 |
aiy4ug | Culture | Where did the idea of countries and their borders come from? At what point in civilization did we did decide that "we should own this piece of land, but only up to this point, then that's your piece of land"? What was the rationale behind it? Where did entire prospect of land ownership even develop? And a bit related, why are we so precious over land which we can't inherently own, nor have any control over? Is it a primordial instinct, or does it originate from agricultural and resourceful benefits? | You've guessed the correct answer. People hold on to control of land because they want its natural products, such as plants, minerals, animals, and water. So they pick an area they are willing to defend. | 1 |
fbzczm | Biology | Why do older couples die around the same time? I've heard that older couples always die around the same time. A big factor is said to be that older people without family emotional support will die faster. I don't mean medical treatment but more along the fact that on the emotional level they tend to not want to live anymore. | I has to do with stress hormones, normally intended to put your body in to overdrive for a fight or flight response. When a close loved one dies, there's a lot of emotional stress involved, consequently stress hormones get released and create more load on your heart and cardiovascular system as the body goes in to survival mode to battle whatever the source of the stress is. Extended release of stress hormone and overclocking of your cardiovascular system can be dangerous for someone with a weak heart and why there is a greater chance of death for an elderly person after a loved one passes. This phenomenon is understood well enough that the medical field has actually named it Broken Heart Syndrome. | 4 |
e1tn3p | Physics | Why does splitting an atom have such a devastating effect | The atom is made out of smaller subatomic particles, protons and neutrons. When you spit the atom they go flying off, like shrapnel from a grenade. Send enough of them out and they’ll hit other atoms, splitting them in turn, causing a chain reaction. It’s not always a devastating effect though. Nuclear reactors utilize controlled fission reactions to heat water into steam and spin turbines, which is used to create electricity without any carbon emissions. | 4 |
eih3qq | Physics | Why does ice-cream melt faster against a hard surface compared to air? When you put some ice-cream in a bowl, it always seems to melt closer to the bowl first. Is there a physical reason for this? | You probably put it in a bowl that's straight out of the cupboard so is at room temperature. The heat warms the ice cream, while the ice cream is cooling down they bowl, by thermal conduction. Air is a good insulator, because the molecules are further apart on average so don't transfer heat to each other nearly as quickly as a solid. Expanded foam and similar are even better because the air is trapped so the hot or cold molecules can't move far. Ice cream touching anything warmer than itself will melt the parts in contact. Try putting your bowl in the freezer first. | 2 |
6hb2r3 | Culture | How does Justice differ from Vengeance? | Justice is about ensuring a stable society while vengeance is about validating someone's emotions. The distinction becomes apparent when you consider the endgame of either process. Justice is designed to *resolve* conflicts in a society while vengeance *perpetuates* them. So if I murder a member of your family, then you seek vengeance on me by killing me. At which point, my family seeks vengeance on *yours*... and so forth until one family or the other is dead. In contrast, a justice system is structured to avoid this. I murder a member of your family, I get sent to jail... and it ends there. | 2 |
9u8zkn | Chemistry | Why is it not posdible to make drinkable freshwater from salt water (ocean water)? | I live in South Australia.. we built a desalination plant because we are one of the few states that doesn't have good access to fresh water. Sure we have dams and they're going ok now, but in drought, as drought gets worse, we will have less and less. They don't use the desalination plant at the moment because the water we have in dams and the river Murray is doing ok. So it is possible, we have the technology to do it. We just haven't had to use it yet because we've had good rain cycles since they built it. | 2 |
f8hj9g | Engineering | How do sewers in skyscrapers work? | \ > And how do they make sure that a blockage on a bottom floor doesn't make the building flood with poop water? & #x200B; I do plumbing service in industrial and commercial buildings. Let me tell you that there is no way to make sure that a blockage on the bottom floor doesn't make the building flood. If, however unlikely, the bottom of a skyscraper drain stack got clogged you're looking at a shit tsunami through the lobby, with a pretty spectacular geyser coming out of a floor drain or mop sink. This does happen in condo or residential towers somewhat infrequently (mostly on bathroom sink stacks) if a stack get's clogged somewhere then whoever the lowest person above the clog will have everything draining into that stack from the units above them coming out of their plumbing fixture. Instead the solution is to make sure the stack never clogs. This is done through preventative maintenance, and inspections of the pipes. Though even without maintenance it would take A LOT to clog one of those up. & #x200B; I've only worked in buildings up to 55 floors, so engineers might design something different in taller ones, but typically it's just a straight drop from the roof to the lobby or basement for the drains. | 8 |
bec3yy | Biology | If we don't really have pain receptors on our physical brains, why do headaches hurt our heads? | You have pain receptors elsewhere in your head, the sinuses, the face, the skin on your skull. There are many causes of headaches, not all of them are known. See past questions URL_0 URL_1 | 2 |
ixxvpe | Technology | What is a "Best Boy"? Whenever I watch a film, every time without fail there will be something called a "Best Boy" in the End Credits. What is it and what does it do? | On Reddit, this is any photo of and ostensibly male dog or cat. In film and theater, a Best Boy is equivalent to a Foreman or crew lead. In the electrical department the chief/head electrician is called the "Gaffer" and chief of the lighting and rigging department is called the "Key Grip." Sometimes the two departments are combined. The titles Best Boy Gaffer and Best Boy Grip are also used, respectively. The best boy is the most senior worker beneath the department chief. This term may have originated from electricians. The best boy would be the most senior apprentice working under a master electrician. The term Gaffer or "Godfather" may occasionally be used outside of film for a master or lead electrician. | 4 |
igva6z | Technology | What is volt and Watt??? | Think of rolling a ball down a hill. Volts are how steep the slope is. Watts are how fast the ball is rolling. | 1 |
5oq4yo | Culture | Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with tax records? | The law permits many things that can be quite terrible. The very fact that you call them a scandal seems to show that you recognize this. 'Permitted by law' is a fairly lax standard when it comes to moral high ground, or wise government leadership. The president is permitted by law to declassify documents, but it's not always in our best interest that he do so. Obviously being involved in scandals or otherwise intertwined, even legally, in certain dealings presents at least the risk of other powers having leverage on an individual. When that individual is the President, such leverage can be quite important in both how he and his countrymen fair. | 3 |
jizsmv | Physics | Is there a difference between different brands of AA batteries? If so, what’s the difference? Prices vary a lot and some have marketing that say words like “Ultra” and “Super long lasting”. What’s the difference? (Excluding rechargeable ones) | Some of the difference between batteries is simply branding. For instance, the difference between Energizer and Energizer Industrial is simply the packaging. However, there are several different battery types that do have a significant difference in performance. The lowest grade of batteries are Zinc-Carbon. These are not terribly common anymore and really will only be found as the cheapest of the cheap off-brands. They usually contain 400-900mAh of charge. The next lowest grade are Zinc-Chloride, which are often called "heavy duty" batteries. These are the cheap bulk ones you get at the dollar store and the kind that come preinstalled in low-end electronics. They generally hold 1000-1500mAh of charge and are called heavy duty despite having less charge than the more common Alkaline batteries because back when they were first invented, Zinc-Carbon batteries were the norm. The most common AA batteries are Alkaline. That's what regular old Energizer or Duracell are. They can hold anywhere from 1700-2850mAh depending on their formulation, so that's where you will see the difference between same-brand labeling like Energizer vs. Energizer Max, where both are Alkaline but the Max has a formulation that allows the battery to hold more charge. Then you get into the high end batteries like Lithium Iron Disulfide, which are more expensive but hold an even higher charge, generally 3000mAh or more. Basically, to know which kind of battery you are getting regardless of the branding, read the packaging. It should tell you both the type of battery and the mAh rating, so even if it says "ultra" or "super long lasting," if it has a low mAh rating you'll know the battery is no good. | 6 |
70rljl | Culture | Why is it "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" instead of just "life, liberty, and happiness"? What makes "the pursuit of" so important that it needs to be included? | Our founding fathers are brilliant. They knew that happiness is something that is found differently, uniquely by everyone. So what they're saying is that it is the pursuit of happiness to which you have a right, not to happiness itself, because some people never find what happiness is, or struggle between happiness versus contentment. So rather than adding this guarantee, the forefathers said that Americans had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness! Source: my mother is a scholar of American history with a focus on the documents that founded our nation's birth. | 4 |
6hwv3e | Other | Why is carpet used in the floors of vehicles? It seems the worst possible material to use. | Qualification: I live in Detroit Metro and several of my Dungeons & Dragons players work at 2 of the 3 big automakers. I hear lots about the materials chosen for cars and wear and tear. I have no clue. 🤓 Kind of a neat question though. I'll ask. | 31 |
9bapxj | Biology | people say they are lonely while pushing people that care away | I do this myself. I cant speak for everyone, but in my situation it becomes blurry as to who means me good.. so I decide to take my life in my own hands not letting someone else even have the chance to let me down. I'm 4 or 5 years down this path, haven't seen my family since. Friends? None.. I purposely keep it short when talking to co-workers or people out so I won't even have someone thinking "let's be friends". All of my previous friends I have left behind (I moved to another state). I went without a cell phone for a year or 2, then I got one but of course by now no one would even have a way to reach out if they wanted to. I've deleted all forms of social media aside from Reddit, actually to be honest I came here because I figured the people from my small little home town would never use this, and even if they did chances of us knowing it's each other is slim. The crazy part is that I've condition my mind to think things like "people have died when they were 5. Some people leave their whole life paralyzed. Who am I to expect a perfect life?" And oddly enough, that Maked me smile and gives me courage to the point that I don't want to reconnect with my family or older friends. Another thing I tell myself alot is a qoute by Shakespeare, "Nothing is good or bad, thinking makes it so." Well, I want to delete this but since I've typed all this, fuck it. Post. | 2 |
dl4lvb | Biology | What are beaks? Are they a type of skeleton or some separate organ that's found outside on the head of a bird? And if it breaks, can it grow back? | Bit of both. They're part of the skull but in a lot of birds there's an extra bit that grows over it like a fingernail, so some birds can break a bit and it grows back and some birds grow a flashy bit of beak for mating season then shed it (e.g. Puffins). | 2 |
90xm9q | Mathematics | So what exactly are Hilbert's Problems? I know that Hilbert's Problems are 23 problems suggested at the beginning of the 20th century by mathematician Hilbert to be some of the hardest problems facing mathematics at the time. What I'm asking is what the problems actually are, in layman terms. For instance, wikipedia says that the 12th problem is as follows: > Extend the Kronecker–Weber theorem on abelian extensions of the rational numbers to any base number field. I opened up the link to the Kronecker-Weber theorem and got this: > In algebraic number theory, it can be shown that every cyclotomic field is an abelian extension of the rational number field Q, having Galois group of the form {\displaystyle (\mathbb {Z} /n\mathbb {Z} ){\times }} (\mathbb {Z} /n\mathbb {Z} ){\times }. The Kronecker–Weber theorem provides a partial converse: every finite abelian extension of Q is contained within some cyclotomic field. In other words, every algebraic integer whose Galois group is abelian can be expressed as a sum of roots of unity with rational coefficients. And for Abelian Extentions: > In abstract algebra, an abelian extension is a Galois extension whose Galois group is abelian. When the Galois group is also cyclic, the extension is also called a cyclic extension. Going in the other direction, a Galois extension is called solvable if its Galois group is solvable, i.e., if the group can be decomposed into a series of normal extensions of an abelian group. None of this seems helpful to me if I don't already have at least an undergraduate mathematics degree majoring in mathematics, maybe an even higher qualification, and I don't even start college until the autumn of 2019. | I mean, that's kind of the point. Most of these problems are difficult questions in already difficult fields. The first time I heard any of these terms was when I took abstract algebra in the latter half of my BSc degree. Some of the problems are really easy to simplify and explain to a person with no prior experience in advanced mathmatics, others would require a dictionaries worth of definitions to explain simply, and by that time you can argue it isn't simple anymore. | 3 |
94s5og | Engineering | Why can't long cables be stretched perfectly straight? I'm thinking about electricity cables for example. | They can, and are, actually, when the situation demands it. Electric trains with overhead catenary wires must have the wires parallel to the ground. This is achived with a curved support wire and a straight wire underneath. [wiki on catenary wires]( URL_0 ) Edit because of rampant pedantry: They are not perfectly straight or parallel, they are relatively straight and parallel. Perfection is not achievable in real life, one must always draw the line at measurably good enough for the purpose at hand. Perhaps the 5yr old or laypersons definition of perfectly straight is straight to the eye from a distance? | 7 |
atx1no | Mathematics | Why is it that positive real numbers and zero have the property of being able to describe quantities, but other numbers do not? I can make a coherent statement of "this sandwich has 12.9 grams of protein" or "this sandwich has 0 grams of protein," but I cannot make a coherent statement of "this sandwich has -5.3 grams of protein" or "this sandwich has (2+5i) grams of protein." | The statement would sound fine for other metrics, such as temperature. Obviously, a sandwich cannot have negative grams of protein. Using URL_0 describe things is fine as well, so I’m not sure what the basis for your statement really is. | 5 |
8t38sm | Engineering | In places where water is scarce, could a dehumidifier collect water from the air that would be potable? It's been humid in my area for a couple days, and my house dehumidifier has been emptied a few times which got me wondering about the water quality in the tank. Is there enough water content in the air to pull liquid water out in places where people don't have enough water to drink? Also, how would the quality and pureness rate? If the machine was kept clean would the water be drinkable? | The quality depends on the machine itself, the materials it's made of, etc. Strictly speaking, the condensation effect affects water directly. There's not "need" for it to collect other unwanted stuff from the air. In fact, you could filter the air to remove dust before using the dehumidifier, and end up with very pure water. The problem is that, where water is scarce, humidity is also low. This would require a ton of energy and yield little water in those cases. It won't work in a desert. Collecting dew, which is a natural version of what the dehumidifier does artificially, is mentioned as a survival technique if you're stranded on an island for example. Islands are a great example of where there may be humidity, but not drinkable water. I'm not sure how effective it is, but likely better than nothing. It just wouldn't be cost effective on a large scale, to provide water for a whole village for example. | 7 |
ctwguq | Culture | Why are we obligated to censor people's identity, when we share a post/picture that they have made on an open and public forum? | Lets understand that you can't pull out a 1980's etiquette book, flip to the section about shit talking people, and find an answer to this question. We have a brand new thing (i.e. the ability for you to go and find out what some random person on the other side of the planet has said to an audience of a dozen people) and show MILLIONS of people who are ideologically aligned with you, what that other person said. This was never an issue average people dealt with before but it WAS an issue newspapers dealt with. Generally the divide was about "newsworthiness" and if the person was a public figure vs. a private citizen there was a huge difference. TV preacher - OK, Teenager at a political rally - Not ok. Now though everyone has this ability. So what's the solution? We don't know. I have a very strong intuition that society cannot function if a few thousand "influencers" regularly pick out random people to be crushed for no offense other than having the misfortune to come across such person's online path. It isn't so much a question of justice - maybe the guy who slapped a black baby and called it the N-word should be nationally destroyed. But more a question of having arbitrary systems of punishment in our society. I can absolutely guarantee you that I could get you fired from your job, and ostracized by a significant chunk of your friends, based on something you have said, done, thought, or used to think, say, or do. And if the only think preventing that from happening to people is blind luck I don't think that represents a very just society. | 5 |
cps0dj | Biology | What is the REAL difference between the traditional Veggie Burgers that have been around forever, and these relatively new Plant-Based Protien versions? | Mentioned a bit below, but to clarify, the Beyond/Impossible burgers are much more "meat" like in that they "bleed" via a plant-based heme (leghemoglobin), and have a very similar taste to beef. As noted below, there have been a variety of veggie patties in the past with a meaty texture (rather than just the common legume/cereal grain pressed patties) via myco or textured vegetable protein, but not at this level. TL;DR - The two main new burgers are designed to emulate meat in virtually every way, rather than just being a tasty/healthy plant protein patty shaped like a burger. | 5 |
dyfocj | Economics | how does money laundering work? Not scenarios in movies but if your a typical seeming chap in a middle class suburb how is that even possible without drawing suspicion? | You have some store. Let's say the store makes 5000$ a month. You report earnings as 7000$ instead of 5000$. You now have made that 2000$ "clean." Repeat that over and over to make your illegally earned money seem like it was legally made. It is a process over time. | 13 |
iis76z | Other | If domesticated horses in stables need hoof care in order to live better, what happens to wild horses who don’t have someone to do it for them? | Their hooves wear down by walking and running around on rough wild ground, instead of mostly standing around in soft-floored barns and pastures. | 4 |
jofpxw | Other | Why is it even possible to 'stop the count'? | The legal basis for stopping the vote count is based on a very fringe interpretation of the laws and a misunderstanding of the election process. Nobody will stop counting the votes unless there is a court decision which agrees with this fringe interpretation. The closest thing we have to the current situation is the 2000 presidential election in Floria. There was a supreme court decision in January, two months after the election, that said that the state did not have to recount the votes for the fourth time even though all three previous counts had showed different numbers and Al Gore had requested a recount. They cited the costs of doing another count of the votes and the delays to the presidential election process. However that was a very different situation to the current one as all the votes had been counted several times and it was just the recount that were stopped. Another way to stop the count is of course by force. But even then the ballots could be counted at a later time. But this also raises the question of what happens if the election is not valid. This could happen when there are uncounted ballots for various reasons. As far as I know this have never happened before in the US and the laws regarding this will differ between states. It is possible that there might have to be another election but this takes time to organize. This is uncharted legal territory and the laws are not very clear on what to do in these cases. But one thing the laws are very clear on it is that the President does not sit in office a day more then 4 years without winning another legal ellection. | 5 |
hzlpyc | Technology | Why does turning something 'off and on again' fix it? | Turning things off turns off all processes going on. When something problematic is happening, or perhaps a glitch it will get rid of it, until you repeat what causes that error in the first place. Turning things on also allows for any updates a software installed to finalize. This can prevent issues and cause the device to run smoother. | 3 |
8egio2 | Biology | How can neuroscientists make people move? "Penfield found that cortex areas controlling bodily movements did not control acts of the will: “When I have caused a patient to move his hand by applying an electrode to the motor cortex of one hemisphere, I have often asked him about it. Invariably his response was: 'I didn't do that. You did.' When I caused him to vocalize, he said: 'I didn't make that sound. You pulled it out of me" So my question is how is neuroscientist able to send electrical signals to the brain? Is there a probe going through the skull or something? & if that's the case how is the patient able to be conscious | > So my question is how is neuroscientist able to send electrical signals to the brain? Is there a probe going through the skull or something? Yes. > if that's the case how is the patient able to be conscious You don't have to be unconscious to be operated on. It's usually a better idea just because it makes things easier for everyone involved. But for brain surgery, it's typical to keep the patient conscious so that you can interact with the patient to make sure that you're not causing damage, or affecting the wrong areas of the brain. | 1 |
5uhr0x | Culture | Why is it appropriate for PG13 movies/shows to display extreme violence (such as mass murder, shootouts), but not appropriate to display any form of sexual affection (nudity, sex etc.)? | Assuming you live in the USA.... Much of it is cultural as well. As a Francophone Canadian, I see the dichotomy on a regular basis. Our state broadcaster is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Société Radio-Canada (anglo and franco divisions, respectively). The English language side will have violence (though nowhere near as much as US productions) and zero nudity and sex. Tbe French language productions have plenty of contextual nudity, but very little violence. And the violence that is shown is essential to the plot. Breasts and full rear nudity are not hidden even if the show is during primetime. As another example, English radio stations censor some works like bitch and fuck. That same song played on a French language station will not be censored. In short, French Canada still holds European standards (to an extent) while English Canada holds American standards (to an extent as well) possibly due to the massive media import from the US which that segment of the population consumes. If you want to see what some or most of the rest of the world sees, check out r/nsfwadverts | 51 |
ct9pwk | Biology | What causes the ear-piercing sensation caused by grinding forks against plates or nails on a chalkboard? Or even the thought of it? | I get a very similar sensation when I rub some types of synthetic materials together or with other objects, my family doesn't get it. | 14 |
7tpclx | Physics | How does a constant force spring work? | A constant force spring is basically a sheet of steel rolled up similar to a roll of tape. When the spring is completely rolled up, it’s in its “relaxed” state. When the spring is unrolled, the force delivered from the spring is held constant due to the equal distribution of the circularly rolled steel (no angles or sides means there’s no resistance). Honestly, the best comparison I can make is one of those rubber snap bracelets. When they’re rolled up, if you try to unroll it the force is the same (constant) until it’s completely straight. Not the best example but the only one I can think of at the time. Edit: by no resistance I mean that there’s nothing that keeps the spring from not maintaining a constant force | 1 |
bhy26p | Mathematics | What was the breakthrough for cracking the German Enigma? I was watching the Imitation Game and when it got to the part where they cracked the Enigma, their explanation went right over my head. Could someone explain Enigma and how they figured out how to crack it as well? | The "breakthrough" for why they could decipher messages is mainly down to the fact that lots of groundwork was put into the machine by Polish mathematicians. "Ultra [the British code-breakingmission] would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles" Gordon Welchman head of bletchley park hut 6 Polands mathematicians were deciphering the enigma machine whilst it was being developed from the initial type 1 and later as the Nazis made it more complicated with more rotors. Poland designed and built the first "bombes" that then Turing improved which would help decipher. In 1939, before the war, a secret meeting took place in a forest in Poland, where the polish intelligent service handed the French and English a working enigma machine each, and all their information. Imagine your in England and suddenly your told to decipher enigma. And you have to start from scratch. And suddenly your given 10 years worth of code breaking info, theory, designs of decrypting machines and a working enigma. Suddenly the game changes. That's the real breakthrough. It's a shame they didnt let the original polish mathematicians work at bletchley. How much faster they could have progressed working with Turing. Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Rozycki were then forgotten for their work. | 3 |
8ego66 | Other | If a suspect is presumed innocent until proven guilty, how can they post pictures of the accused before anything is proven? Aren’t law enforcement violating the rights of innocent people when they do that? [USA] | If they present it as "this is the accused", then they are simply presenting a fact. Facts are a much more protected sort of speech. | 1 |
5yqzf0 | Repost | Why does the voice in our head sound like our voice but isn't actually audible? | Actually, the voice in our head is whatever we make of it. We can mimic anyone's voice, but we usually use our own because it is us that thinks our thoughts, not someone else. If that makes any sense. | 2 |
g62evs | Technology | Why can the task manager stop lagging programs but we can't ? | Because the Task Manager is very, very rude. When you click on the "Quit" button in an application, you are asking it nicely to clean up after itself and shut down. The application might say no - for example, it might say "you haven't saved your file yet; do you want to do that before I quit? You might lose your data." But when you click on "End Process" in the Task Manager, you're not taking "no" for an answer. The application will quit, now. No cleaning house. No friendly messages. And if the application can't quit, the Task Manager will force it to quit. The Unix console equivalent makes this a little clearer. The command is "kill". You can kill nicely ("kill -s quit application") or you can kill with extreme prejudice ("kill -9 application"), but you're still killing it. | 1 |
72fkzl | Physics | negative Kelvin temperatures | What does absolute zero really mean? --- The belief that 0K impies that all motion stopps is a popular misconception. Quantum mechanics tells us that bound particles cannot have an arbitrary amount of energy. Instead, they can only hop between energy levels. And the lowest of these energy levels is still not 0J. Thus, a bound particle must always have motion energy. What absolute zero really means, is that all particles are in this lowest energy state, which is called ground state. And Heisenberg's uncertainty principle tells us that this is impossible. What is a negative temperature? --- Negatve temperatures are not, in fact, colder than 0K. In a sense, all negative temperatures are even hotter than all positive temperatures. So.... how can the temperature of a system be negative? This is a consequence of the "proper" definition of temperature: **1/T=( & delta; S/ & delta; U)*_V,N_*.** Here, S is entropy, U is internal energy, V is Volume and N is the number of particles. What this equation says in words is, that 1/T (the inverse of temperature) is equal to the change in entropy over a variation of internal energy when volume and particle number are constant. Thus, **if the entropy of a system decreases as it gains internal energy its temperature will become negative.** This can only happen in very peculiar cases, as an increase in internal energy usually leads to an increase in entropy, but it is possible. Since those systems are kind of weird, they are not very stable. When a system of negative temperature comes in thermal contact with a "normal" system of positive temperature, the negative temperature system will lose energy to the normal system, because unstable systems want to become stable if they can. That is why I said negative temperature systems are hotter than positive temperature systems: a system A is hotter than a system B, if A will lose thermal energy to B when they come into thermal contact. Which is exactly what happens here. | 2 |
5pokog | Technology | How did MS-DOS make Microsoft an OS power house? | The *very* short version is something along the lines of IBM, the computer manufacturer, was releasing a new thing called a 'Personal Computer' to businesses, and needed an O/S, so they scouted around and Bill Gates saw an opportunity, bought in an existing O/S called Q-DOS, modified the source code to the Intel architecture to run on the x86 chipset and called it MS-DOS. | 3 |
b2cpl9 | Technology | When the FBI seizes a domain and a website why do they put an image saying the site has been seized instead of just deleting it completely? | There’s a potential for more data to be captured from those who visit afterwards than they could capture from a DNS lookup for a nonexistent domain. | 2 |
74emn5 | Engineering | Every month there’s a new micro SD card with more space than the last. We’re fitting gigs of data when a decade ago we could only fit megabytes. But what’s the theoretical limit of how much data we can store in a micro SD card? How can we keep fitting more data in smaller spaces? | Last I read, the SDXC standard put the maximum at 2TB of file space per card, though capacities haven't reached that yet. Physical limitations on cell size my not allow this, and newer standards for SD cards are shifted to throughput speeds instead of capacity. So right now, pending a new file standard, the upper limit is 2TB. | 5 |
b29xm7 | Chemistry | What is the difference in formulation between hand soap, shampoo, body soap, dish soap, and laundry detergent? | Disclaimer: I'm not a chemist, but I have used soap before. As I understand it, chemically, all soaps do basically the same thing (trap molecules of oil/dirt and allow them to be washed away) But soaps for different purposes have different "strengths" and additives. For example, hand and dishsoap usually have extra antibacterial chemicals, body soap usually has moisturizers, etc. | 3 |
ifmfur | Engineering | Why do some electrical plugs (USA) have 1 large prong + 1 small prong and some have 2 small prongs? And then some larger things, like portable heaters, have all 3 prongs (large + small + circular prong)? | So the plugs that have a large prong and a small prong are to keep polarity correct. The plugs with two of the same sized prongs are not polarity specific. And the plugs with all three require an equipment grounding conductor (small round prong). Source: am electrician | 3 |
7a2tbq | Other | Why aren't police departments footing the bill instead of the tax payers when it comes to court settlements? | Most police departments are taxpayer funded. Where do you think the money is going to come from? | 2 |
6269fv | Repost | VPNs | First and foremost: Explaining VPNs in general is quite a difficult task, if my answer does not satisfy you, please clarify what you want explained about VPNs. General explanation: VPN means Virtual Private Network. What this means is that a VPN connection (whichever kind is used) will connect 2 seperate networks over a public medium (usually, the internet) so that it seems as if the networks were directly connected via a direct wire connection. There's a number of uses for technology like this, for example to link home office workers to the main office or to connect 2 different offices (Company HQ in City X with Remote Office in City Y). VPNs are necessary because these networks usually transmit sensitive information (client data, company secrets, ...) which should not be send via the public internet. There are different technologies to implement VPNs (IpSec and SSL) but explaining these and the differences between them would probably go beyond the scope of ELI5 and this question. | 6 |
5o0h3q | Mathematics | How does the sum of the in infinite arithmetic sequence "1+2+3+4..." equal -1/12? | [Numberphile]( URL_0 ) S^one =1-1+1-1...= 1/2 S^two =1-2+3-4... 2*S(two) = 1-2+3-4+5... + 1-2+3-4 = 1-1+1-1+1... = 1/2 2*S(two)/2 = S(two) = (1/2)/2 = 1/4 S^two = 1/4 S=1+2+3+4... S - S(two) = 1+2+3+4+5+6... -(1-2+3-4+5-6...) = 0+4+0+8+0+12 = 4*S = 4*(1+2+3+4...) S - S^two = 4*S S^two = 1/4 S - 1/4 = 4*S S - 1/4 = 4*S; subtract S from both sides... -1/4 = 3*S; divide both sides by 3... -1/12 = S S = 1+2+3+4+5... = -1/12 | 2 |
kpiczp | Engineering | Why aren't we making plant based fuel from eucalyptus trees instead of Fossil fuels? | There are only so many eucalyptus trees that are the right types to produce biofuel and it takes a ton of work to transport them and then convert them into usable fuel (and only certain kinds of fuel at that). They can't grow back quickly as well, so once you cut down an area you have to replant it and then wait years for it to regrow. So the cost is going to be very high, even if it's better for the environment. Fossil fuels are a lot more convenient. It takes a lot of money to set up an oil well, sure, but then you're going to get tons and tons and tons of oil out of it with very little work, and that oil can be processed into many different fuels using refineries that we already have built and invested in. And oil companies aren't going to replace all that without a really really strong business reason. Fossil fuels are going to run out at some point, but for now they're still cheaper and more flexible than most biofuels. | 3 |