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Why can't an object/ship in stationary orbit just use thrusters to descend straight down in a controlled manner?

Because while it has the same angular velocity in stationary orbit, it has vastly different linear velocity. Both are going around 7E-5 radians per second, but the ship is going around 3000 m/s while the surface moves at around 460 m/s. Which means a big change in velocity, its just more effective to use the atmosphere to slow you down than to use a whole bunch of fuel to slow you down. But that being said it is possible to follow a path that would look like its coming straight down, but you would have to pay for all that 2500 m/s delta V yourself instead of using the air.

[Squid Game] So for the Second Game (Spoilers)...?

Why did Sang Woo mislead his teammates about the nature of the game and which shape they should pick? Surely if you have 3 other allies willing to listen to you, it'd vs better to keep them around rather than sabotaging them to potentially have them killed off. Then you're left with no allies. It'd be extremely easy to say "hey guys, let's all go triangle". I get that you want more players to lose so the total increases, but doing it that early on with 187 players still active is just mind-bogglingly brain damaged. Ali saw Sang Woo almost like a saviour, and Gi-Hun treated him as the coolest childhood friend and smartest guy ever. Both of whom could fall for a misleading prank/trick at a more critical time in a later round.

Dude just had a really selfish nature. He probably always knew that he'd do anything to win the money once he knew what the stakes were. Any opportunity to minimise everyone else's chances was something he had to take, in this zero sum game. Might not have occurred to him he'd need solid allies for future games, or maybe he was confident that he'd be able to trick anybody, if it came to that.

[LOTR] If Sauron had won, would he eventually have been able to free Morgoth from the Timeless Void?

Was freeing Morgoth ever a goal of Sauron, given that he instructed men to worship Morgoth which suggests Sauron still had respect for Morgoth? Sauron even had a Temple of Morgoth built in the Numenorian city of Armenelos. Would Sauron tolerate being subservient to Morgoth after conquering Middle Earth? Or was Morgoth worship a trick since people would be suspicious if Sauron explicitly said "worship me" and Sauron no longer had any loyalty to Morgoth?

I don’t recall it ever being said that Sauron ever considered this an important goal. Whenever he’s talked about it seems he’s always happy to try and dominate the world for his own gratification (It must be said he would not be able to do this if Morgoth came back and destroyed everything)

[DC] I'm a prisoner in Arkham City. What would incentivize me to join, say, Joker's gang rather than Two-Face's? Or Penguin's?

Joker is straight crazy, if you're a member of a rival gang, he sees you as fair game. He'd think nothing of killing or maiming or torturing you. If you're in Joker's gang, Two-Face or Penguin wouldn't touch you, they don't want to have Joker turn on them.

ELI5 : How do stocks work ?

If you had a lot of money, could you not buy a bunch of shares of a (usually stable) stock, which would cause the share price to rise (cause of a surge in demand caused by all the shares you just bought) and then sell your shares at the new price, making a bunch of profit. Rinse and repeat.

As soon as your big sell order hits the market, people see that and the prices offered to buy will start to drop. If you split your order in multiple small orders then the execution of those will similarly make the price start to go down. You can't just buy or sell an arbitrary amount at the current price, only whichever volume is on offer at that price at the moment. So what doesn't happen is: Step 1) Buy 1 million shares at 10 USD. Step 2) Price goes up. Step 3) Sell 1 million shares at 12 USD. It's more like: Step 1) Try to buy 1 million shares at 10 USD. You get some at 10 USD some at 11USD some at 12 USD some at 13 USD some at 14 USD and some at 15 USD. Step 2) Try to sell at 15 USD? You get some at 15, some at 14, some at 13 etc. Net profit: Nothing.

Lack of alternative of Critical Theory?

I’m at university and notice while critical theory plays a huge part in how we understand our world, but in my attempt to learn both sides and to avoid the trap of only being exposed to a single side, there seems to be a lack of critics and theory that oppose critical theory. Why? Have I missed something? Are there no serious opposition to critical theory? Because I haven’t been able to find books, essays or anything serious that argues or offers alternative ways of understanding our world.

Read Toril Moi’s *Revolution of the Ordinary*, Rita Felski’s *The Limit’s of Critique*, and Amanda Anderson’s *The Way We Argue Now*. All three come out of a dissatisfaction with the dominance of Theory and all propose philosophically informed alternatives.

[Dune] So, how intelligent are Mentats naturally?

Is sapho juice just INSANELY effective, or are they naturally like savants?

Think of human savants of our world. They can do one task better than any other human on the planet - some can match insanely huge numbers. Some can reproduce any music after hearing it once. Some can sculpt incredible works of art. But the *most* savant person is incapable of doing anything other than that. They cannot function in society. The guy who can multiple two 10-digit numbers instantly can't even dress himself. Imagine is a person can do all that savant stuff, and still being able to function normally. That is a mentat. They have unlocked all the savant side of their brain while not turning off the functioning part of their brain. That is what the juice of sapho does. But just like people, not all mentats are created equal. Some are vastly superior to other people. Piter De Vries would be if you or me became a mentat. Thufir Hawat is the Stephen Hawking of mentats. So much that the Baron gloats about having him in the '84 Dune.

ELI5: How does light pollution work?

Air is made of tiny particles that can absorb and bend light. When there are lots of lights in one area the air bends the light in all different directions. You see this bending as a faint glow around cities that overpowers the ambient light from stars.

CMV: Millennials don't have it worse than any other generation. Some things have gotten worse, some things have gotten better. Each generation faces their own unique challenges.

I know this is a hot button issue for Millennials. Let me start by saying, I am a member of the Millennial generation. I was born in the late 80s and grew up in the 90s. I graduated high school in the early 00s and am now in my early-mid professional life. The oft cited view is this; Baby Boomers are the most self-interested generation that has set up the Millennials up for failure. They are continually only interested in sucking every last cent out of the environment, the people, the colleges, etc. I say that this view is doom and gloom. I conjecture that this situation is not unique subject to control for the following factors: 1.) Normal economic cycles of "boom" and "bust" 2.) Socio-economic/race/gender/ethnicity-based opportunities (i.e. different folks may have had better opportunities based on these factors) That is to say, on the whole, all else being equal, I think that generations is a poor fault line to evaluate success on. Millennials have seen the advent of so many beneficial technologies opening up avenues of success and innovation that are absolutely unparalleled. These include: 1.) Rise of mass communication 2.) On-demand media consumption 3.) Deregulation of the airline industry (cheap, fast travel) 4.) Rise of non-traditional career paths (alternate valuation on skill sets); think Snapchat, Facebook, Occulus VR 5.) Advancement of medical science (longer, more healthy lives) 6.) Advancement in agrarian sciences (cheaper, better food) Granted, there is the case for student loans, runaway housing prices, "joblessness", and the like. I submit to you that these are all factors that have opportunities for mitigation, but that are not palatable to Millennials as a whole, and such continue to plague the generation as a whole. Examples include: 1.) Student Loans - target a career with tuition reimbursement, go to a comm. college and xfer, join ROTC or use GI Bill after a stint in the military. 2.) Housing - try living in alternate locations with lower COL relative to salaries in that market. Follow a trade that is in-demand, regardless of geographical area (HVAC, RN, etc.) 3.) Job Growth - target underrepresented markets in the Midwest or southern states. I think the most common argument against these remedies is "I don't want to do that" or "I'm not passionate about that" or "I shouldn't have to join the military to live". Hey. I get that we don't want to do things sometimes. But sometimes these things are necessary. Sacrifices must be made. Want to complain about student loans? At least you didn't get shipped to Europe for 4 years to fight in your 20s. If one thing is true about our generation, it is that my generation has been conditioned to think that everything must be ideal. Sure, it would be great if everything was, but it rarely is. Please, CMV. _____ > *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

As with any sort of absolute statement, the validity of it depends on what things you prioritize. If the most important thing to you is being able to build a debt-free life and support a nuclear family on a modest job, then you could say that millennials are pretty screwed, because it's next to impossible to have that kind of life without incurring debt these days. And to many people, that IS what matters, so it's not unreasonable for them to see themselves as struggling compared to previous generations, even acknowledging that we have a lot of cool shit that no one had before. Being able to look up porn at a moment's notice isn't necessarily worth the negatives.

[Halo] How was Maria-062 able to just leave the Spartan-II program?

This question is actually two-fold: Why was ONI okay with her just walking out, and why did she want to leave? There were only 33 surviving S-II's at the end of training and Maria was one of them. That means she was one of 33 humans in all of the UNSC that could/did successfully complete S-II training. ONI doesn't seem like the type of people that would just let a resource as precious as that just up and walk out. Even if she was critically injured they would have found something for her to do, as they did with the S-II's who failed augmentation but survived. As for the second part, all Spartans know is war and camaraderie (with the exception of Grey Team), why would one even consider something other than fighting the Covies was an option? It's all she has been taught since she was a child

This is the case of the ONI making some lemonade. Production of the Spartans was a new step for the human species, an adaptation to deal with the new threats we found seemingly everywhere we looked once we got out into the stars. It wasn't simply about combat, it was about moving the species forward as a whole so that we'd be in a position to defend ourselves effectively from monstrosities that had been the exclusive domain of fiction writers and holo producers just 20 years earlier. When 062 was injured, ONI was put in the difficult position - she was physically incapable of being deemed mission effective but she was (for the most part) physically and psychologically intact. ONI could've shoved her in a closet or relegated her to some desk job, but they realized they had an opportunity to conduct a new and entirely unexpected experiment. Can Spartans and non-enhanced humans crossbreed, and if they can, what are the results? Can former Spartans, now so physically dominant that they are effectively their own sub-species, be reintegrated into normal human society? What are the effects of having intelligence enhanced assets in the civilian population? ONI let her "retire" because it was literally the most useful and informative thing 062 could do for the war effort and the species at that point. Unfortunately, all records of their observations are still highly classified.

ELI5: How can concert tickets and big clothing drops seemingly be already sold out at the exact same second they go live?

For context: Was just attempting to get Anderson .Paak tickets from TicketMaster however their site was already displaying that they were sold out at the exact same second they went live.

Either someone had access to buy before that, or a lot of buyers were just faster than you. There's many examples of employees buying the entire stock before the sale goes live. And there's also many examples of people making software to buy tickets as fast as possible (seconds) as soon as sales opens, leaving little chance to people who buy manually.

Why do the rats in the rat park experiment chose the plain water over morphine ?

Do they learn that the morphine has negative effects ? Or is the it that plain water stench their thirst more ? Did the follow up experiments and discussion elucidate the mechanism that shapes that behavior ? Thank you

the concept that rat park operates under is that social creatures need connection to survive and be content. it’s not that they learned a negative outcome of a drug side effect, it’s that they only used and abused morphine if they were alone in their cage. When they had a social realm, they no longer felt the need to fill the “void” that was left by loneliness. The argument is that this extends to humans in that humans find artificial means to replicate their lack of social support. From the sociological perspective, it is learned behavior. They learn that the morphine water makes them feel good and so they go back to it until they die. But there are reinforcing factors in that the other rats create a community and in that community, none of them drink the morphine water because it does not benefit them socially. From the psychological perspective, the research I’m aware of is that humans have vices they use for comfort. When life stressors outweigh the social support of the individual, they turn towards whatever vice to bring comfort. Unfortunately, these vices have the power to adversely affect relationships due to stigma. There is plenty of research to suggest that drugs themselves are not addictive in the way that we assume, but rather they become addictive because of extremely bad life circumstance such as homelessness, or there’s a learned response to taking certain drugs that makes them addictive to the individual, only because they’ve been told that these drugs are addictive. Source: I’m a senior Psychology/Sociology double major and I’ve taken 2 social science drug classes within the last 2 years.

In Dragon Ball Z after the Frieza saga why is everyone so willing to forgive Vegeta for slaughtering a village of Namekians?

Everyone just seems to forget, even when they wish all the people killed by Frieza back they forget about this entire village that Vegeta brutally slaughtered

You can thank Bulma for that. During the final battle the Z team (except Goku) is teleported back to Earth. Bulma, feeling sorry for Vegeta offers him a place to stay at Capsule Corp because she secretly had feelings for him for unknown reasons. He's never fully trusted until the Cell Saga when he comes to the Z teams aid, however.

[General] How did adding mass to planet-wide cities affect their gravity?

In our multiverse, there are dozens - perhaps hundreds - of planet-wide cities teeming with many billions of sentients. Most of these cities were built with imported construction materials and have led to planets bulging with impossible structures. On some of the more improbable planets, entire mountain ranges have been dwarfed by city blocks. Entire planetoids have (probably) been mined out of existence to add to these cities. So... how has gravity been affected on those planets?

The impact is almost non-existent. Even if you added a *solid* five-kilometer layer of matter on top of Earth, that added layer would only increase Earth's volume by about 0.2%. The increase in mass - and therefore gravity - would be similarly insignificant, unless you used materials of ridiculous density. On top of that, a city is nowhere near a solid, there's plenty of empty space(ie. rooms) and it's rare for buildings to exceed that height, even in very advanced settings. All in all, even if all the matter came from outside of the planet, the average inhabitant of the planet wouldn't even notice the difference. You'd need proper equipment to measure it.

ELI5: Why is it that the 80s, 90s, and many other decades in the 20th century had such distinctive personalities, but the last 15 years seem to have been a blur that we don't refer to by any particular name?

Partially because of how far removed we are from them. It takes a fair deal of distance to actually analyze something like that. Additionally, digital media have allowed niche cultures to become far more prominent, leading to each decade to have less of a uniform character.

[300] How long would the Spartans survive if they had not been betrayed and outflanked?

People are overlooking something crucial. The Spartans crushed everything thrown at them. Everything. Cavalry, monsters, grenades, immortals. Xerxes had no more aces. He can do two things. Throw more slaves at Sparta. These slave warriors don't cause casualties. In fact, the longer the fight goes on, the more intimidated the slaves get. They did and will again rout. The Spartans don't get overrun. It's a game of attrition, right? WRONG. People here who have no understanding of history and the movies forget about the parallel battle going on at sea. Athens was battling with Persia at the same time on sea! With 50 warships. They begun fighting while Leonidas was still going strong. They learned of his demise after they've fight battles already. And remember what happened next in Rise of an Empire? Gorgo, the most badass woman of ancient Greece (also in actual history), wife of Leonidas, comes to join and win on sea. So, on the Sea you have Athens, Sparta, Delphi, Acadia, Olympia, Thebes. Leonidas is probably getting bored of slaughtering Persian slaves when the Greek armies come in to finish the job. Ephialtes, the gollum of Sparta, ruined it big time.

Is the sweating response localized? If you warm one of someone's legs, will the other start sweating?

Sweating response might be localized, but body temperature is systemic. Yes, maybe the warmer leg will sweat first, but eventually you're going to warm the body systemically. Here's a simple test you could do. Jump in a hot tub, but don't submerge your head. Eventually your face will turn red even though your head isn't in the water.

CMV: I think COVID will remain a significant problem for the foreseeable future

When I say foreseeable future, I'm referring to the next couple of decades. COVID is not affected by the seasons - winter, fall, summer, it does not stop. This has been the case for basically two years in a row now. It is nothing like the flu. The virus mutates. Eventually, it will mutate into a form that evades the vaccines. All viruses do this eventually. This will require us to get a new vaccine shot maybe twice a year, for the next 20 years or so. If the virus mutates into a more deadly form, then we will be living in one of the most frightening times within human history. From a scientific standpoint, I don't actually see how we stop it. Viruses are the one thing humanity doesn't really know how to beat. We can treat against them, vaccinate against them - but the virus somehow, someway lives on.

Next month the FDA will give full approval for the vaccines. When that happens, employers, and schools will make vaccines mandatory. It will likely be required to be vaccinated to fly, travel to a foreign country, etc. this will lead to a massive number of people being vaccinated, enough to a point where we reach herd immunity and the virus will stop spreading as much If the virus mutates, it won’t mutate more rapidly than we can create new vaccines and currently there’s evidence that current vaccines are still very effective against variants. Lastly, it’s important to remember that humanity has overcome far worse. Covid is 10x deadlier than the flu. That’s bad, but it pales in comparison to the bubonic plague - which wiped out 1/3 to 1/2 of Europe and smallpox - which wiped out over half of the population of the americas

[Star Wars] How was Count Dooku seen after the Clone Wars?

Largely the same as he had been during the war. A traitorous Jedi who joined the separatists and seemed to want nothing more than the total destruction of everything the good people of the Republic/Empire held dear. The Empire made sure to twist the narrative into such that many people believed that Dooku never left the Jedi order at all, and that he was largely responsible for turning all of the Jedi against their former allies. Granted, his name also largely disappeared from the records as the Empire worked to erase knowledge of the Jedi and their history from the galaxy. Decades after the war, only the most hardcore students of history would remember him. Luke pieced together a few scraps of Dooku's life, but not the whole picture.

CMV: Cop cars should have to dim their lights at night to a noticable, but less intense level. [US]

I work at night and 90% of my driving time is after the sun is down. At least twice a week, there is someone pulled over and the cops lights are so bright that it's blinding to a point where I cannot tell which lane they're in - if they are even in a lane - or if they're on the side of the road. It's more of a hazard than anything. Especially in rural areas with little to no street lights and construction zones with people working. I'm not sure if they have the capability to dim the lights, but they should be able to. Change my view.

The point of cop flashers is for people coming to slow down. There could be a wreck where both sets of headlights were broken, or where there are not easily visable hazards (black car parts at night most usually) so cops need to be able to have their lights seen far and potentially over nearby hills at night. You aren't supposed to be passing a cop with flashers above 30 mph in most states anyway, so the need to slow down is kinda purposeful because if you're zooming by a cop and hit a car that lost its lights, well now it's just a bigger wreak than they were called out for in the first place. Pulling people over the lights brightness just means that there is no denying that you know when a cop is pulling you over even if you have your radio so loud you can't hear sirens. It's functional for what it's supposed to do, and that just so happens to be grabbing everyone's attention with an annoyance.

CMV: English speaking nations should do away with "Miss" and "Mrs.," and only use "Ms." instead.

Miss means a young or unmarried woman. Mrs. means a married woman. Ms. either means an older unmarried woman or can be used for any woman. For men, they all just have Mr. regardless of age or marital status. It is much simpler and more streamlined to just have one for all women as well: Ms. It's sexist and demeaning to divide women by age and marital status, and has a huge potential to insult since often the speaker has to make a judgment call as to how to address a woman by assuming her age range. Many married women idealize "Mrs." but that's only because it's something that currently comes exclusively from getting married and it makes sense that people latch onto traditions and customs pertaining to a significant life event for them. But once Miss and Mrs are eliminated and women only go by Ms, then marriage won't often come with that Miss to Mrs change that many women desire so the emotional attachment to Mrs will go away. Just because some women enjoy a sexist custom isn't justification to keep the custom.

It is a useful distinction if the married woman took her husband's last name. That way you know it is not her maiden name. Whether or not a wife should take her husband's last name is another argument, but it happens very often, so whether or not it is right has little effect on this argument. It is also useful in dating, because it is often the man who does the asking out, and having a woman referred to as mrs. indicates that she is automatically not available. These are a few ways that the title can exist without being sexist, because it has a functional use.

Does Earth's rotation affect our weight?

Yes. The centrifugal force you experience will slightly reduce the effective gravity. By how much? **~ 1/300 Cos[Latitude].** Where does this come from? The centripetal acceleration, a_c, is (*omega*)^2 *R, where R is the distance from the axis of rotation (radius of the earth) and *omega* is rotation of the earth in radians per second. The earth makes 1 rotation / 24 hours. So we need to do some unit conversion: *omega* = (1 rot / 24 h)(2 PI radians/ 1 rot)(1 hour / 3600 sec) = 2 PI / 86400 rad/sec = 0.000072722 rad/sec a_c = (0.000072722 rad/sec)^2 (6.3675 x 10^6 m) = 0.03367 m/sec^2 a_g = 9.81 m/sec^2 (gravitational acceleration at the earth's surface). a_c/a_g = 0.03367/9.81 = 0.00343 ~ 1/300 This last bit gives the ratio of how much the centrifugal force affects us versus how much gravity affects us. Lastly, you have to take into account that when you are at the equator, the centrifugal force is more potent than when you move towards the poles of the earth. Basically this is taken into account by remembering that *omega* is determined by the distance from the axis of rotation. At the equator, this is the radius of the earth. As you move north or south, your distance from the *axis* of rotation (not point at the center of the earth) decreases. The formula for this is: R = R_earth Cos[Latitude] Using this as R in the formula for *omega* gives the result in bold above.

Why did Nietzsche eventually break with Schopenhauer's philosophy?

What caused him to lose faith in it, so to speak?

Not inspiring enough. N and S were both interested in philosophy as a way of life or ways of being human. N's doesnt deny S's philosophy but rather takes it to the next level. It is like S 2.0. S's proposed way of life was basically taking walks, viewing art, and doing philosophy-which was fine, until N wanted more. S was a pessimist, N actually wasn't satisfied with pessimism- he wanted more. Contrary to popular conception, N was no nihilist, he was just drawing attention to nihilism. Nihilism was the very thing he was fighting against. N didn't want to just view art, he wanted to make his life into a work of art and become everything he could be. In short, S's philosophy wasn't life affirming and inspiring enough. It was very passive.

Why do microscopic images have to be artificially colored?

Why do images of bacteria or other tiny organisms particles have to be provided with color? Can telescopes not pick up their natural colors?

Bacteria don't have much color on their own, so often they're stained. Things inside a cell, minus, say, chloroplasts, have almost no color at all, so those are almost always stained with a reagent that makes the feature of interest stand out. When you get down to, say, single molecules (yes, we can see single molecules with a microscope) the amount of signal you're dealing with is very, very small. To have a color camera you must divide the signal by at least 1/3, plus extra losses for additional filters, so it's prudent to use a detector that can see all light that hits it in a single channel and use filters to isolate the signal that you want. False coloring for multi-channel imaging for interpretation is very useful, as well. By falsely coloring the signal from images of the same sample taken with multiple filters we can see where the signals overlap more clearly than if we used true coloring. If your question is actually about electron micrographs - they don't see color at all. The color has to be added after the fact, largely for artistic effect.

CMV: Condemning somebody to hell for a sin is hypocritical because everybody is a sinner, so by that logic you are condemning yourself too

I was browsing the CMV and I saw a post stating that homosexuality is wrong and you will go to hell for engaging in it because it is a sin. By that logic, isn't everybody condemned to hell then? Isn't everybody a sinner? I remember I had a conversation with a guy trying to convert me, and he states that its not about good deeds or even avoiding sin, its about accepting Jesus..because if you accept Jesus you wont want to sin anyway. So accepting Jesus is a get out of jail free card it seems like. Everybody sins no matter what, so accepting Jesus automatically absolves you of sin? It also doesn't make sense to judge others for their supposed sins, because if you sin you are in the same boat. Or is it the amount of sin. I will brag and boast because I sin less than you. Oh well, at least I try not to sin. Or maybe people keep a tally of sins and then compare each others scores? It all seems to very hypocritical. Original sin , we are all sinners, so one shouldn't judge anybody else for their sin, and yet so many do.

>Thus Jesus said, "If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.” Luke 17:3 Rebuking is not the same as condemning. We are all our brother's keeper and holding each other to a standard while forgiving those who repent is one of the foundational parts of Christianity. Only God can condemn. I.E. decide that the person who sinned hasn't repented and been cleaned of that sin.

[Fight Club] What are the consequences of Tyler Durden's Project Mayhem?

Not as much as you'd think. There wasn't as many off-site backups then as there are now, so most of the financial records were legitimately destroyed. This means nobody has any debts.... but a lot of people got their savings wiped out too. Thats transfers a lot of wealth from the upper classes to the lower classes, but the people hit the hardest are the middle classes, whose retirement savings just got blown up. In the short term, there's a depression. Creditors just lost a lot of assets, and there's no guarantee it won't happen again in the future. This makes loans very difficult to get, and stops the economy dead in its tracks until the people who organized this attack are brought to justice, and some kind of protection against this sort of thing can be figured out. Document backup services become the fastest growing area of the economy for a bit. In the long term, nothing much changes. Destorying those towers affected a tiny fraction of the overall wealth distribution in the world. It disrupts the system, but doesn't bring it down completely. With Tyler dead at the hands of the narrator, there's no one to carry on the crusade. Project mayhem gets tracked down, its members are arrested, and everything goes back to normal.

CMV: People become more conservative over time because they change, not because the issues change

A big part of this opinion comes from my experience of having a liberal left-wing father turn into a Trump supporter, so here's a bit of background information about what happened. My father lived under Maoist China as an adolescent and immigrated to a Western country (not the US) when he was a young adult. Needless to say, he became fascinated with politics since he was a teenager, as a result of living under a country where political ideology permeated every part of everyday life. As a result, he's always had quite a bit of cynicism towards socialism but that's another story... Anyways, when I was growing up since the age of 8/9, he would tell me stories about history and politics and we would watch the daily show with Jon Stewart quite regularly. Even though I didn't quite understand everything that was talked about, my dad was always a huge fan of Jon and that greatly influenced me with me being a liberal democrat currently (used to be a big social democrat)... He hated Bush Jr (still does btw, he remained consistent on that), and loved Obama. He would show me clips of Obama speaking with his inspiring "yes we can" slogans, and he even tried to help me with my public speaking problems/stage fright, by showing me tips Obama gave on addressing an audience. When Jon was nearing retirement, we'd watch the last week tonight show with John Oliver together instead. But I could see over time, that his appreciation for liberal ideas lessening. He became more and more disillusioned with Obama, going from slight disappointment, to seeing Obama as a weak willed failure and a sell-out. Around this time was also when Trump first announced his run for presidency. We both took him as a joke originally, but as time went on and the Republican primaries went down to just a few candidates, my father became more and more sympathetic and supportive of Trump. We'd have endless fights over it, with me feeling a little betrayed that my father had abandoned the ideas and values he had raised me on. After Trump won the presidency, my father only became more and more of an ardent supporter but he knows that me and him disagree so he tries to bring it up as little as possible. However, every once in a while, the topic comes up at the dinner table, and it usually ends with both of us steaming off and not talking to each other for the rest of the day. I've tried to become more calm about it and so has he. We've talked about why he really supports Trump, and a lot of it just comes from this jadedness and cynicism towards the system that he projects from a lot of the regrets of his own life and a lot of the dreams that never came to be as he grew older....I confronted him about that, and he just replied "you wouldn't understand, until you've lived a life where all the dreams and optimism you currently have now, are shattered when you get to my age". For him, he supports Trump no more than he sees Trump as a protest vote, a way to say f\*\*\* off to the establishment and the political elites and a system that he fought for in his youth, which only abandoned him when globalisation came around. A middle finger of sorts to the upper class liberal establishment that advocate for political correctness and telling people what to say, think or who to vote for (as he puts it).... I asked him why he doesn't support Bernie then, and he said basically Bernie didn't have strong enough views on social issues and he didn't like how Bernie called himself a socialist...He thought it was insulting to all the suffering people under past socialist regimes had to deal with. (Father's very anti-illegal immigration, doesn't really like multi-culturalism but is very pro-choice on abortion, very pro gun-control, and about as tolerant of lgbtq a boomer from socially conservative china can be) He almost swapped sides because of Trump's refusal to do anything on gun control... Sorry if this was really long, and if it came off a bit like just venting...but I've been thinking about this a lot and it just seems to me most people don't have any fixed political beliefs and rather just position themselves according to the where the Overton/normal discussion window is currently. A progressive who fight for the goals of today, will still fight for new progressivist goals if they were born after all the current day goals have already being met. Similarly when someone gets older, they change, they care more about stability and security, become more cynical, jaded and no matter which direction the issues have shifted in comparison to their youth, they will align themselves with the conservative side of the overton window. (Not talking about everyone, just commenting on how quite a majority of the demographic become more conservative as they grow older)

It seems your father wanted change and was upset when Obama didn't fulfil that promise. Now he seems to be supporting Trump for that very reason. That doesn't necessarily seem like has become more conservative, more that he feels Trump is more likely to deliver the change he wants. In the end though, he's ultimately going to be disappointed. Maybe try approaching it from that angle?

[Steven Universe] Who manages The Big Donut? Who's the boss of Lars and Sadie?

The big donut is a corporate franchise, with Sadie acting as manager. It's a small town and the books always line up (Sadie's production orders are on point). With low overhead, two employees and no accounting funny business, corporate lets the place run itself.

How many galaxies/stars do we visually lose every year due to them accelerating and passing through the cosmological event horizon?

I was reading about dark energy on Wikipedia and this question had me pondering on a bit. edit: Hello everyone, I appreciate all the feedback received from this post and I'm grateful for such well presented answers. I realise that this sort of question can raise many different answers due to the question being too general. But as I understand from most of the replies... The reason the light from those stars will never entirely vanish is because even when the star/galaxy passes the cosmological event horizon, the space between us and them is only expanding and so the light that was sent before the star/galaxy passing the cosmological event horizon will only stretch due to the expansion and continue to reach us but through other spectrums of light as it continues to redshift. Would this be correct? I would also like to bring forward a question that has been brought up by a few other redditors. However as it may seem there is no exact answer to it, I'd like to ask a question similar to it: Which stars/galaxies have most noticeably redshifted or faded from visual light? I'd definitely like to read up on this topic so any names or articles would be great. Thanks again guys!

We don't visually lose them. The light that they emit now will never reach us, but the light they emitted before will take longer and longer to reach us, so they'll just gradually get dimmer and more redshifted, but never completely disappear.

[Star Wars] Is the galaxy too big to be effectively governed by one government?

Yes, of course. The Republic suceeded for as long as it did by mostly preserving/respecting local authority and not interfering much outside of inter-system disputes. But the needs/wants/troubles of Coruscant, Naboo and Bespin are VERY different, and trying to put them all into one top-down fascist system worked *terribly.* They needed a freakin' PLANET-DESTROYING LASER to keep *their own people* in line. And it didn't even work! The larger the system of government, the worse it will work. The galaxy is simply WAY too big.

[LOTR] Gandalf and the Balrog are both Maiar, which I understand to be the 3rd class of angel-type beings created by Eru. If they are on the same "power level", is their fight analogous to the archangel Gabriel battling Lucifer?

"Archangels" would be more analogous to the Valar, especially of you're going to name Lucifer who would be Morgoth. But yes it is effectively a fight of an angel vs a fallen angel. Gandalf describes the fight saying from a distance an onlooker would only see a storm raging about the peak of the mountain. Maiar would also be "the second" if you were to generally rank power. Eru created all the Ainur. The 14 most powerful (and Melkor if you count him) are the Valar, and the others are called Maiar. Just being Maiar does not me equal though, as they all are different.

ELI5: Why do CPUs and GPUs need fans and intricate cooling apparatuses, and where is the heat coming from?

Electrical resistance. They get hot for the same reason the heating elements in an oven do. However, there is an additional factor involved. Calculation is, on a fundamental level, a form of work. You're flipping physical bits from one to zero and back, and that has a cost. In this case, that cost is expressed in the form of waste heat. Entropy will always have its price. You need to cool them down both because they could get so hot the circuit boards melt, and because increasing the local temperature increases the minimum amount of energy necessary to flip a bit. The computer will get slower at higher temperatures, so keeping it cool is also keeping it functional.

Are there any human bloods types that we know of, that no longer exist?

Please forgive the grammatical error in the title.

Blood decays without a trace quite early in the process of decomposition, well before any fossilization sets in. It would be a stroke of pure luck to find remains even from a few hundred years ago, let alone hundreds of thousands of years on which the bllod type can be determined.

[MCU] Can Ironman not being in winter soldier be explained by the fact that he destroyed his suits in ironman 3?

The events of Winter Soldier mostly happened over a few days. The only point where Tony would have been involved was potentially when SHIELD began the manhunt for Steve, but its unlikely that the corrupt SHIELD leadership wanted to get any of the other Avengers involved as it increases the chance of discovery and could potentially give Steve more allies to fight against them. Tony likely saw what happened in the news after the helicarriers were destroyed, got confirmation from Steve what went down, and decided to sit this one out in order to keep Pepper happy since it appeared Steve/Nat/Nick had it handled.

[Marvel] What if...? #3

In today's strange would tour we visit earth 619. Here, during a field trip to Osborne labs young Peter Parker is attacked by a radioactive octopus. He gradually gains octopus related superpowers including surface adhesion (tiny suction cups), ink spray, camouflage skin, amorphous skeleton, under water breathing, extra tentacle limbs (that he can of course store inside his body when needed), venom, super strength (5 ton range let's say), super acute vision, and super intelligence (octopi are known to escape captivity). Later, with the dying words of uncle Ben ringing in his ears he decides to use his new powers for good. So, what if Peter Parker became the Astounding Octopus Man?

The car crashed down and with a desperate dive Peter - or as he was known to the people of New York, Octopusman - just managed to avoid the flying steel. Deep laughter rang out across the street and Rhino stepped from the kerb into the middle of the road. "That the best you've got *'Pussyman'*?" Peter pushed upright, *come on* he screamed internally. *This guy is going to kill you if you don't do better than that. Stop trying to brawl with him and start* ***thinking***" Rhino was fast and incredibly strong, stronger than Peter anyway, but he was stupid and predictable. Once again he lowered his head and charged, but this time, instead of trying to tackle him, Peter watched him come and then, at the last moment he flattened himself against the pavement, his boneless limbs allowing him to go completely flat for a moment and let Rhino pass over him. With a thrust, a stream of black ink shot from his hidden pouch and covered the Rhino's face, it's gooey consistency blinding to his skin and proving resistant to being wiped away. After a few steps he came to a halt and pawed at his face, roaring in anger at his impaired vision. Now, half blind, Rhino was vulnerable and Peter made his move. He wrapped his arms around the beast-man and was flexible enough to absorb the thrashing as Rhino fought for freedom. Finally he suckered his mouth to the Rhino's exposed neck, biting and leeching his venom into the huge man's body. It only took a moment before Rhino began to tremble and struggle for breath, then he collapsed to a knee and then finally slid to the ground. Peter loosened his grip and reformed beside him, his suckers aching from hanging on so tight. Sirens were near, the police were coming and it was time for Peter to escape, they still didn't seem to see him as anything more than a criminal. As the first officer approached Peter ripped a manhole cover up and began to slip down. The officer, seeing Rhino gasping for air cried after him. "What have you done? How do we treat him." With a final wave Peter sipped away, calling out "Just treat him for octopus venom!" The officer stood by the hole as his partner caught him up. "Where the hell d'ya take someone to be treated when they've been bitten by an octopus?" The first officer shrugged. "hey, what about that young scientist who's in the paper for all that octopus research?" The other nodded. "Peter something? Good idea and thank God he moved to town at the same time as Octopus man!"

How does an elephant move its trunk if the trunk doesn't have any bones to support the muscles?

Beep. The elephant trunk is an example of something called a muscular hydrostat. Other examples include the tongues or ordinary mammals such as ourself, the arms of cephalopods, and the wiggly squiggly bodies of roundworms. The tissues of which these structures are made are effectively incompressible, so such a structure's volume is effectively constant. Muscles arranged in longitudinal and circumferential patterns can be selectively contracted to shrink some dimensions, which causes that volume to redistribute: squeeze the structure around its circumference, and it lengthens as it gets thinner. Squeeze along its length, and it shortens while engirthening. Such complementary, opposable sets of muscles are referred to as "antagonist muscles," though we personally do not know whether this word use is limited to muscular hydrostats or applies to other actuator types. You might also like to know that muscular hydrostats are a type of volumetric actuator, a more broad category of hydraulic mechanical stuffs, which includes some of the more powerful means by which arthropods move their limbs, including grasshoppers' and jumping spiders' powerful limb movements. Boop.

ELI5: Why are there different glasses for different drinks, and why does a beer glass make it taste any better?

Different glasses achieve different things. Wine glasses have long stems to keep you from warming the wine while holding it, as wine is usually sipped. Scotch/Whiskey glasses (drams) are short and wide, to allow for a couple of ice cubes (on the rocks), but also allows a wide opening for the drink to breath. This also allows you to smell (nose) of the drink. Beer glasses are generally thicker glass, which allows the beer to stay cooler, longer. As beer is usually consumed in quantity (more than a couple of ounces) the size is larger.

CMV: Giving your child a name that people are never going to spell/pronounce correctly is selfish and foolish

I'm not talking about when you have an authentic name from a foreign culture you belong to while living in another country, I'm talking about when parents take regular names and spell them "uniquely" or just give them a name that is generally more difficult for people to pronounce. I may just be a little biased on this view because I have a "uniquely" spelled name that also gets mispronounced on a semi-regular basis. I just see no point in doing this. It makes your child's life more unnecessarily difficult when that have to constantly remind everyone that "I'm Rebekka but R-E-B-E-K-K-A." You simply are trying too hard to make your kid "stand out" when you are just giving them a burden, and it only really says something about you as a parent. I know some people who also have these kinds of names may be offended by my opinion, but I feel very strongly about this, even if I come off as whiny. Yes, you can change your name but it is generally long process and time and effort can be saved if you simply just give your child a regular name. Edit: Grammatical errors. Edit #2: I keep having to make the same defenses over and over again, so my view is yet to be changed. 1) I am NOT against names with specific cultural connections. e.g. If you are Japanese go ahead and name your kid Tadashi or Minami. I see nothing wrong with that. Someone already pointed out to me that "Rebekka" is a Hebrew spelling. 2) I am NOT talking about last names. (I should have specified that in the title) 3) My main argument IS against just random made up spellings and pronunciations that have no meaning whatsoever other than being "totally unique." 4) We have the ability to change our names BUT not until we are of LEGAL AGE. Children cannot change their names because they are not adults who can go to court on their own. Edit #3: I've come to the conclusion that whatever the reason you may dislike your name, whether it be spelling or being too common, all people have to wait for a certain age to change their name, anyway. I STILL think a spelling like Bytnei or Dayved is ridiculous. Edit #4: If your name has a few different ways to spell it I think that's fine like Kayla or Kaela, so long as the spelling isn't going to result in your name being butched by everyone. I also have learned that a lot of names I consider to be "made-up" spellings actually have cultural connections. I still don't think that Paeyden is one of those. ALSO: There should be no laws prohibiting parents from naming their kids what they want (unless it's Stupid Head or whatnot), but I still find Cyndiee or whatnot to be that obnoxious and unnecessary ways to spell your child's name. _____ > *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* *

Leave given names to the side for a second and consider this. Some people like unique things, other people like "normal" things. Some people like to be/act/look unique, while other people like to fit in/not stand out. To some people, having a unique/made up/strange name would be fun and for others it would be a drag. Consider the thought that your parents were trying to give you something special and fun instead of giving you a burden to bear. It's also fully possible that you are different from your parents, in which case, feel free to change your name later. But in terms of this CMV, perhaps they weren't being foolish and selfish, instead they were trying (even if they failed) to give you something unique and special to be cherished, in which case it wasn't an act of foolishness or selfishness, it was a misguided act of love.

[Fallout] How's the rest of the World holding up?

I'm a bit shaky on my Fallout lore so I might seem a little naive. I understand North America is now an irradiated wasteland after the nuclear exchange with China but what kind of state are the rest of Earth's countries in? Is China just as desolate and lifeless? Has the entire world become barren due to the effects of the nuclear warheads? More importantly is England okay? Edit: Furthermore, is civilized society still in existence elsewhere in the world?

Well Europe and the Middle East had limited nuclear exchange before the rest of the world. So they're probably twice as irradiated. If you look at China in Mothership Zeta (if we consider that crap cannon) than we see a glowing crater. No hope there. We know Mexico is mostly irradiated from Raul. Another thing to remember is that only the US had the Vault Program. Overall not good, I'd say.

Does chaotic motion truly exist?

Hi all, I’ve always found the concept of chaotic motion to be very puzzling, specifically the behavior of [chaotic motion machines](https://www.fatbraintoys.com/toy_companies/fat_brain_toys/chaos_machine.cfm). I am a camp counselor at a summer camp, and our camp recently took a field trip to a science center in our city. I found the chaotic motion exhibit to be the most interesting as it featured one of these machines and allowed the user to witness its unusual and seemingly unpredictable behavior. My question is this: Does chaotic motion truly exist? If the same amount of force is applied to get the machine in motion, will the behavior of the arms be different every time? It seems to me like the phenomenon of chaotic motion results from the difficulty to recreate the exact conditions of the last spin of the machine, and this is what I tried to explain to the campers in my group (who were also interested in this exhibit). Thanks so much!

>Does chaotic motion truly exist? Yes. > If the same amount of force is applied to get the machine in motion, will the behavior of the arms be different every time? It sounds like you're misunderstanding what chaos is. Chaotic motion is completely deterministic, and for the same exact initial conditions, you'll get the same result every time. But chaotic systems are *extremely sensitive* to initial conditions. That means that if you start the system with one set of initial conditions, and start an identical system with *slightly* different initial conditions, after some amount of time, their behavior will be totally different from each other.

Why do Microwave ovens set to low cycle high/off in intervals instead of steadily using lower constant power?

I have always wondered when microwaving foods why operating at 50% power for example the food is cooked at 100% power for 50% of the time instead of 50% power 100% of the time. Is it a functional effectiveness? cost saving? Why not supply 500w instead of 1000w?

Microwave ovens utilize a device called a cavity magnetron to produce the electromagnetic radiation used to cook your food. The basic gist of how this device works is similar to how blowing air past the top of a bottle creates sound, only with electrons instead of air. If the voltage isn't high enough, then the resonance required for it to operate doesn't occur. Cutting the voltage in half will result in a device that just produces a little heat, and no radiation. Cutting the operating cycle in half produces the desired effect. Pulsed operation is very common in electronics as a means to produce varied output, as it's generally easier to control. However, there are always side-effects of doing this, like noise from the pulsing itself. Your food doesn't care about this noise, so it's considered acceptable.

ELI5: Postmodernism

EDIT: What's with the mass downvoting going on in this thread? :/

There were a group of artists and writers that grew up during the first large scale wordwide modern war (WWI) and also lived through the second World War. This generation of creative people witnessed so many horrible things that the art that they made was really trying to make sense of all those awful, evil parts of life. These writers and artists are called "modernists" and they really invented a lot of the ways that we tell stories today and how we decide whether something is a good or bad story. This is because the "modernists" really wanted to unite all of the evil they had experienced, with all of the good they knew that people could do. After all, these people saw so much killing and war, but they also saw people inventing so many wonderful new things. Think of if people were all riding horses now, but by the time you're finished with High School most of us have cars! It was too bad though that none of the "modernists" ever really felt like they *were able* to tell one story that explained all of the bad things and all of the good things together. They never figured it out, and thought that they failed. The artists that came next are called "post-modernists" only because they came *after* the "modernists." They saw that the "modernists" weren't able to come up with a story that explained all the good and bad stuff humans could do, so they decided that there was *actually no way to explain it*. That's why a lot of "post-modern" artists don't really try to create anything that is totally new and original. They figured that if the "modernists" tried so hard to tell this story they've pretty much tried everything that can be tried. The "modernists" wrote every book, painted every picture, and sang every song trying to "figure out" what life was all about. tl;dr (and you're over 5): Modernists tried to unite humanity with one grand narrative, but couldn't. Post-modernists decided the reason that they couldn't was because there is *no* way to unite the entire story of humanity in a grand narrative. Since there is no way forward we're stuck just regurgitating the art of the past, forever. "Post-modernism" is based on "quoting" and using other works of art as a way of coming to terms with the fact that there probably *is* no way that we can explain why people can do so many great things, but can also do so many really bad things at the same time.

ELI5: How do we determine if an animal has feelings, is self aware, or is sentient?

On the topic of animal cruelty... I feel like it isn't bad to eat animals, and birthing an animal just to be eaten may seem harsh, but are the animals even aware of their own existence? Edit: Wow! Thanks for all of the responses, I have read many but I'm gonna start reading the rest! I'm starting to feel guilty for my opinion up there, but I know you all just wanted to help! Edit 2: I came here to see if I should feel bad eating a burger... Now I'm back to the question my sentience phase. Thanks Reddit. Edit 3: While I would like to get more comments if anyone has anything to say, but I feel as though this has been answered the best it can. I got a little ethics lesson in as well.

This is an interesting question and there is no single answer. It's not really a question of is an animal "self aware" or "not self aware" and more, "how self aware" is an animal. Even though it is a bit more complicated than this you can think of there being levels of self aware. The standard test is called the mirror test. It's very simple but really clever. You put a mark on an animal (when it is asleep or not paying attention) in a place that it can't see it, like on it's head. Then you put the animal in front of a mirror. If the animal sees the mark in the mirror and reaches up and grabs the mark then it recognized that the animal in the mirror was itself. If it doesn't do that then it doesn't realize that the thing in the mirror is itself and then probably doesn't even have an idea of "self". You can look up lists of animals that can pass the mirror test. Great apes can definitely pass it. Elephants can, probably some types of birds but it is a little less easy to test a bird. There are some other tests too, some are "easier to pass" than the mirror test meaning they show a lower level of self aware, and some are more difficult.

This may seem heartless, but don't take it that way: How did 16 people manage to die in NY as a result of Sandy when they had days to prepare/evacuate?

Just wondering. Was it the flood waters? Loss of power/life support? What was it?

Almost always its auto wreck related. Sometimes its people begin hit by large chunks of flying debris. And there are always people anywhere who will ignore warnings and stay in a dangerous area. No body thinks it could happen to them until it does.

[General Superhero] How do companies keep NDAs with super-hackers, psychics, and the like? Good compartmentalisation? Do they train important employees against stuff like that?

They do whatever is necessary to keep secrets - ridiculously strict security, ban on external media and internet connections, no cell phones in protected areas... And mandatory psychic defense training. We see in Inception that CEOs can be trained against extraction which royally screwed Cobb's first on-screen job since his researcher failed to know this.

[Warhammer 40K] Why does the Imperium use servitor skulls?

None of the original brain matter is used, just the skull itself, so the entire exercise seems pointless. Wouldn't it be easier to just build a regular metal casing instead of disfiguring a corpse?

Skulls are a important symbol in the Imperium, you find it everywhere. Does not mater if you were born on Cadia, Kreig, Catachan, Macragge, Mars or Holy Terra, you all have the same skull. And to continue serving after death is seen as a positive thing too.

[MARVEL] If Black Panther's vibranium suit absorbs kinetic energy, how can T'challa kick it across the room in a mannequin?

I just realized this when rewatching Black Panther during the scene where Shuri introduced T'challa his new suit. There is no resultant force if the suit takes in all the energy, so how does it fly away?

It's been a while but it's possible the suit, without being worn by a person, responded in that way just to showcase the ability. Remember Shuri works on her tablet then begins recording, so she could have toggle the ability on/off.

[Yu-Gi-Oh] Does Yami just cheat all the time?

I was having a friendly conversation on everyone's favorite [image board](https://archive.moe/tg/thread/40787576/)^† when I noticed quite a few people claiming that the King of Games was an incorrigible cheater. While I can certainly imagine Yami doing such a thing, I was wondering if anyone knew of any concrete evidence that this was the case. I hear this sort of rumor all the time, but I've never actually seen a first hand account of this. If this is true, does Yugi know about it? How does he feel about the situation? ^† *It's not necessary to follow the link. Furthermore, it's merely an archive of the thread.*

During the second-to-last episode, Ishizu says "the Pharaoh didn't predict what his next card would be, his will power made it so. It appears the Pharaoh's determination was so strong he actually influenced fate with his own will."

ELI5: What does Facebook have to gain from buying Whatsapp for $16 billion?

How does buying Whatsapp benefit Facebook? How can they make money from it and how could it possibly be worth $16 billion?

The main benefit is Whatsapp's client base - Whatsapp has roughly 450 million users. Facebook, like many other companies, earns its revenues from ads and selling premium services, so now they'll have 450 million more clients earn money from. Also, Whatsapp, being a chat application and essentially a social network, is in direct competition with Facebook. This allows Facebook to eliminate the competition.

Do humans make bodily or vocal noises above or below the human hearing (20Hz to 20,000Hz) threshold?

Anything that causes a vibration causes a sound, because that's what sound is. While it may not be audible, pretty much any movement your body makes technically makes a sound. Waving your hand frantically may cause vibration of a few Hertz, for example, even though it's probably very quiet too. Of course, that's just an example you could easily mimic on purpose. Short answer is yes.

[Ender's Game] Question in main post due to spoilers

At the end of Ender's Game, Ender finds the Queen's egg in a replication of the Giant's Game as he played it. How did the Buggers manage to find the image? Even if they could read human minds or hack into computers lightyears away, how did they know Ender was the one human they needed to find?

The humans have the ansible, which is how the communicate over distances of light years. It's based off of the hive mind of the buggers. Because of this, it's assumed that this sent information that somehow got picked up by the hive mind, such as the contents of the Game, messages about Ender and so on. Ender's actions, which showed him to be an innocent but capable person that didn't harm others out of pleasure like Peter, didn't act out of pride like Bonzo, but also wasn't timid like Valentine, or subservient like Dumper. But most importantly, he was capable of existing as his own person able to put the needs of a species he was told to hate, in front of his own, which Alai couldn't do (seeing as he was elected as Caliph after returning to Earth), Bean wouldn't have worked, as he even realizes that even though he will always save the supreme commander, he will never be the supreme commander. It's because of these and his ability to think outside the box, and of course realize the true nature of war, that led the Buggers to select him to help them. This allowed them to recreate the Game and hide the egg in a place they knew he would find it. And know that their only hope of survival was to have Ender take the egg to a suitable planet and allow the species to regrow.

Is a graduate Programmer with a certificate more valuable than a self-made programmer nowadays?

Hope everyone is doing great! I just turned 25 years old, and last year I took my B.A. degree in English Studies, Linguisitics. This year I was enrolled in an M.A. program related to Linguistics, but I left it because I felt it wasn't fro me, as, in my country, the only thing I can end up doing is teaching English. Since childhood, I was fond of mathematics; I just admire numbers, brain calculations, and solving problems. Similarly, recently I found out that I want to have a career in IT or CS. To be honest, I am not that knowledgeable about CS, but I feel that I am passionate about programming, etc . I was watching YouTube, and somebody highly recommended for beginners to start learning C++ or java as it is an objective language. So, I am just looking for your points of view regarding my situation, I really feel lost as I have to find a job to help my family and I want to learn sth I am pasionate about. Any advice or information concerning programming is much appreciated

Can you find a masters in CS that will take you ? Doesn't have to be the best. But it will help a lot. CS has a lots of parts (maths, algorithms, data structures, networking, operating systems, databases...) That all work together. It's not easy to be a self-learner. It can be done, but it will require diligent study for a number of months without the support of an organization (curriculum, teaching assistants, group projects, professors, friends to ask questions to, network/connections, and a degree to put on your resume)

ELI5: Are showers better for our hygiene than baths?

How true is the fact that when we bathe we sit in water full of our filth? Is it more unhygienic because of that? Or does the dirt perhaps gets diluted in water and all those facts are really myths? Is there any scientific paper about this topic?

Say you have one dirty spot on you. A shower washes away the dirt because of the flowing water. A bath dissolves the dirt and spreads it evenly all over you as you soak in the dirt containing water. It is obvious what is more hygienic.

ELI5: Why are some plastics so strong until a tear is made?

For the same reason that some knots are so strong until you cut them. Plastics are long tangled and branched carbon chains, with the hardness of the plastic determined by the length, "tangledness", and "branchedness" of the chains. Once a cut or tear is made, you now only have to cut or pull out a few chains along the edge instead of cutting through the whole mass.

ELI5 why nuclear bomb tests don’t cause nuclear winters and other effects from nuclear bombs?

They do cause all the same effects as a nuclear weapon dropped in war. The only difference is one of numbers. It is anticipated that if nuclear war ever occured that the involved nations will launch all of their available weapons. In the case of the U.S., Russian, and China this total will be in the thousands. There have been quite a few nuclear tests performed over the last 80 years, but they were spread out over time and still don't approach anywhere near that total.

CMV: There should be an age cap that prevents politicians over 70 years old from holding public office.

I’m from Britain, but this applies to any country. As the age of retirement in the UK is 60-65, I believe it is entirely reasonable to stop politicians from serving over the age of 70. In any industry, the retirement of the older generations makes room for others to progress into more experienced roles and new people to enter into the new vacancies. But in politics older politicians, who may have entered in their 50s but have stood for re-election over the next 30 years, continue to serve into their 80s. In the UK, there are multiple politicians who only enter politics because they have retired from their previous careers. Though it is unquestionable that there have been great older politicians, it is well known that older people generally tend to hold on to values and beliefs from their younger years, and this means politicians in their 70s and 80s are holding on to values and beliefs from 30-60 years ago. Is it any surprise that younger politicians often support modern movements (climate emergency, LGBT+ rights, women’s rights, etc.) more than the older generations? Out of 650 members of Parliament currently serving in the UK, there are 81 MPs aged over 65, a total of 339 over the age of 50, and only 14 that are aged under 30 (all of whom are unknown because they are in the back benches). Parliament’s role is to do what is right for the country, currently and in the future. With just 2% of MPs aged under 30, how can we justify politicians over the age of 70, who realistically have a limited future, shaping the country that the younger generations must live in?

> Though it is unquestionable that there have been great older politicians, it is well known that older people generally tend to hold on to values and beliefs from their younger years Why is it an issue in a democracy? Either people will agree and vote for them or they wont.

ELI5:How does your body decide when it is time to start puberty?

I undestand that puberty is caused by hormones like testosterone and estrogen, but what causes these hormones to be released? Does your body measure time and decide to release testosterone after a certain amount of time?

Adequate levels of leptin, released by fat, causes the hypothalamus in the brain to release gonadotropin-releasing hormone. This hormone causes the pituitary gland in the brain to release follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone. Both of these work in the testes/ovaries to begin sexual maturation and production/maturation of sperm and egg cells, and the release of sex hormones like estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, etc. So basically, your body does monitor its own growth to decide when to start the process of puberty.

ELI5: Why do some bruises turn yellow or green after their purple phase?

The black / purple stage of a bruise is blood soaked into the tissue under the skin, due to ruptures in the capillaries. Oxygenated blood is the red colour you're used to seeing. Deoxygenated blood is darker and lacks the red, so you get the purple colour. As the bruise heals the first thing that happens is your body absorbs the iron in the hemoglobin. The rest of the red blood cells are broken down into biliverdin (which is greenish), which is in turn broken down into bilirubin (which is yellowish). Because the process is consecutive you all ways get the same sequence of colours, though how quickly it happens will vary.

[Marvel/MCU] Has Thor seen Point Break by the events of Ragnarok? He obviously realized what his code name is to activate the Quinjet but he seemed annoyed by it. Did he understand the reference?

Yes, and for the same reason that I've absolutely adored Thor's personality shift over the course of so many movies: he's fully-embraced his position of authority over the people of Midgard, which requires study of the local culture. Hence Thor's adopting of the modern lexicon, and expletives like "son of a bitch" even if it takes a second for him to translate.

Why is derivative notation d2y/dx2?

And not dy2/dx2 or d2y/d2x?

Often, dy/dx is written d/dx(y), where "d/dx" is an operator. It's an abuse of notation but well understood. If you apply an operator twice it's common to write it as "squared" - another abuse of notation. e.g A(A(t)) = A^2 (t). If you square d/dx you get d^2 /(dx) ^2. Apply that to y and drop parentheses and you get d^2 y/dx^2 . So it's a combination of notational abuses, but it's kind of stuck because it's cute.

[Kung Fu Panda] What kind of disaster was Master Oogway trying to prevent by not giving Tai Lung the Dragon Scroll?

I mean, Tai Lung destroyed the entire Valley of Peace, out of anger and resentment, because he *didn't* get what he thought to be his destiny. How much worse could it have been if he *did* get the Scroll? (I'm strongly assuming that Master Oogway always knew that >!there's no special ingredient.!<)

I don't think Oogway was trying to prevent anything. It just wasn't Tai Lung's destiny, and the Darkness he saw in Tai Lung was somewhat incidental to that, as well as a convenient reason. That said, we sort of saw what would happen if Tai Lung had been given the scroll. His reaction to finding out the truth was one of immediate violence, in spite of the fact that the fight was no longer ongoing. It was very similar to his reaction of having been denied.

Where does the energy come from to facilitate gravity?

I hope this isn't a silly question with an obvious answer, but it's something that I thought of recently which I can't figure out. If one object lies within another's gravitational field, they will move towards eachother, right? But of course, for any object to move, it requires energy. And that energy has to come from somewhere. But where does it come from in this case? To use the real-life example that made me wonder this. There's a clock in my lounge room which is one of those old-fashioned style one that uses weights. As the weight is pulled down to the earth by gravity, it moves the gears in the clock to make the clockwork operate. Every now and then you have to reset the weight when it gets to the bottom of the chain. But aside from that, it just seems like you're pulling energy to power the clock out of nowhere. This feels like something that should have an easy enough answer that I ought to know, but I can't figure it out. Can someone explain this to me? Edit: Oh wow, I didn't expect so many responses, haha. So much reading.. But I understand a lot more about gravity, and even energy now guys. This is interesting stuff. Thanks!

You basically gave the answer yourself. Every once in a while you have to reset the weight. What you are doing then is increasing the distance between the weight and the earth and by that you are increasing its energy. We call that energy potential energy. When the weight slowly falls down again as it powers the clock, its potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy.

ELI5 : Why does Alcohol make a person dehydrated

There are two stages in producing urine. The first stage uses a lot of water to help the kidneys filtrate waste products. The second stage recycles the excess water and recircles it into your body. When drinking alcohol this second step is interrupted and doesn't work as effectively thus you will produce more urine and waste lots of water. So basically alcohol makes you pee until you are dehydrated.

ELI5: What is your "gut feeling" and why is it usually right?

I've always been curious about this

Confirmation bias tricks you into believing your gut instinct is usually right. You often forget the times your first choice was wrong, but remember the times your gut was right all along because it is seemingly more noteworthy.

ELI5 : Why lawnmower mufflers suck

Car/Truck mufflers do amazing work muffling noise. A car is nearly silent when running with a muffler, compared to what it would sound like with open manifolds. When I fire up my Honda push mower, the whole neighborhood knows about it, and it's actually kinda quiet as mowers go. So eli5 : Why can't lawnmower mufflers work like automotive mufflers?

Well a car muffler is about 100x larger. That's why. The sound bounces around way longer before exiting the muffler. If you attached a larger muffler on a mower it would be quieter, but it would also be more expensive and much heavier to push around.

ELI5: What happens in the body after eating a grease smothered meal, and how does the body adjust to constantly eating greasy foods?

Grease is liquefied fat. You need the molecules and compounds in the fats to make nerves, connective tissue, and hormones. The liver produces bile and the gallbladder stores bile. When you eat greasy foods your gall bladder releases vile into your stomach to break fats down into their base compounds. If you eat too much fat the liver will turn it into glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis and you can either burn it or convert it into human fat for later use.

ELI5: what causes “the spins”? Or, rather the feeling of spinning while intoxicated; especially on THC and alcohol at the same time?

I, and others that I know, have experienced “the spins”, spinning feeling, from consuming alcohol and THC together in varying degrees. Why does one experience this, and why do these substances cause it?

Your body has three ways of measuring position and movement. Your inner ear is coated in little hairs that sense the movement of fluid. Your eyes can see what's going on. And your body can feel through touch. With three systems, your brain is normally pretty happy as long as two of them agree. If you close your eyes, the other two systems still know what's going on so everything is still good. As others have said alcohol messes with your inner ear system. While your eyes are open your eyes and touch both still know what's going on so you don't feel too bad. When you're lying in bed and close your eyes, you now only have one working system, touch. Your eyes are telling your brain nothing, so it ignores them. Touch is telling your brain that you're lying on your back. Your inner ear is telling your brain you're on a rollercoaster, so that gets fed into the calculation and you feel like you're spinning. That's also the reason why you feel mostly fine when your eyes are open, and horrible when you close them.

Do fish get “out of breath”?

A fish may linger near the surface because he’s trying to breathe more easily. Remember, fish breathe *dissolved* oxygen—not oxygen that is already combined in the H2O molecule. Naturally, these dissolved oxygen levels tend to be higher near the surface, where interaction between air and water takes place. A fish that is not receiving enough oxygen will try to compensate by gravitating toward that area. Similarly, you may notice your fish lingering near the bubbles of your air stones or other bubble-producing décor

Is modern IDE/Editors are evil?

Hi everyone. Sorry if it’s in wrong topic, but hope you understand me and appreciate any help. I am Web developer and use VSCode with smart functions like IntelliSense, Autocomplete, VSCode AI extension, ESLint autofix, Prettier autoformat and etc. Until 2018 (started at 2010) i am used Notepad++, i am not cared about any feature like formatting as did it manually or via CLI lately. These days i learned way better and faster. But in todays days cannot live without modern IDEs / Editors as on these i see what argument calls, what it does live. So, question: i became bad developer by using and sticking with these functions and cannot live without these? I now not remember everything like before, but solve tasks faster and much efficient by googling and preventing issues by auto linting. Also, who use vim/emacs: do you use plugins for these things like smart autocomplete? Thank you. Regards, Davlat

Are you a bad cook using a blender instead of a knife? Are you a bad handyman prefering a cordless drill over a screwdriver? Are you a bad driver using a gps instead of paper maps? Is it more impressive that you don't use those things? Sure. But take it from someone that can. It's not the pragmatic thing to do.

ELI5: Why are steering wheels on buses positioned more horizontally than vertically?

Why are steering wheels on buses positioned more horizontally than vertically? A friend casually raised this issue the other day over lunch and it stuck with me. I assume it has something to with better handling but I don't know for sure.

It’s for leverage. If power steering fails, you’ll be able to turn easily if the steering wheel is in the horizontal plane. Notice how they are bigger for this reason. The simplicity in design other comments suggest it’s just a bonus, one extra joint it’s not big deal nowadays.

I believe that, besides basic biological differences, such as reproduction, there isn't really any need for a gender definitions such as 'Masculinity/Femininity' CMV

To be more specific, I understand why we would need to list other human beings as 'Male' and 'Female' when it comes to reproduction, or accepted biological differences such as increased testosterone and estrogen. My main problem lies in this idea that there are a correct 'Feminine' and 'Masculine' behaviours that we should or shouldn't exhibit; especially considering how much we've progressed in society now. As an example, there are many stereotypes that are often attributed to different genders, such as Men are not in touch with their feelings, or women don't play computer games. Personally I think any such things are mainly determined by our society and, therefore, are archaic and outdated. I think it is possible for a man to be far more intouch with his emotions than some women. So we shouldn't define characteristics in this way. **EDIT** Well I didn't expect this many responses, I want to thank everyone for the effort in getting back to me. I believe my question should maybe have been phrased a little differently but, if I was to do so, I'd have a pretty obvious answer. Special thanks to Dr_Wreck and NefariousMagpie, I enjoyed their conversation a lot

So long as physiological and psychological differences exist between men and women, the usage of masculine and feminine as descriptions of attributes and behaviors will retain meaning. Sure it's not meaningful or productive to *idealize* men or women a certain way, but acknowledging real differences between men and women is important if one values intellectual honesty.

CMV: Drawn/Animated pornography is a much more ethical ways to consume pornography than traditional pornography and should be a transition that people strive for.

With the unethical nature of traditional pornography becoming a hot topic right now and arguments over what is the most "ethical" solution I'm suprised to see drawn and animated pornography isn't brought up often. The fundamental problem of traditional pornography seems to be that there is way to ensure the age and willingness of anybody on the internet, regardless of the medium (Pornhub, Only Fans, etc). I'm not here to argue the "lesser evil" of these different forms of traditional pornography, they all have this fundamental problem. For animated and drawn pornography this fundamental issue is gone. Not to say there are no unethical practices in producing animated or drawn pornography, notably artists who are overworked, but in comparison that seems like a rather minor abuse. I am not saying that everybody is realistically able to "transition" to viewing more or only animated or drawn pornography, everyone is wired different, but for people who can also "get off" to it should make an effort to limit or eliminate regular pornography from their viewing habits as it supports an industry full of abuse.

One issue with this is that animated porn is usually unburdened by social, moral and legal norms. This can cause the more extreme and questionable genres of porn to proliferate and this may lead the few IRL porn productions that will remain to normalize these genres. Basically, when almost everything is imaginary, public scrutiny might go away and leave the real stuff to turn to moral rot. Interesting idea, though

Why exactly do economists dislike corporate taxes?

...and what would they propose to replace in order to raise revenues for the government? Would this amount be significantly more than purely corporate taxes? Why are they not simply taxed on gross income? How is it considered 'inefficient'? ​ I have heard of a consumption tax, would this be something like Value Added Tax?

The reason economists don't like corporation tax is that it distorts investment in the economy. The very simple example is that if you imagine a firm has a profitable venture (π) with probability (p) of being successful and cost c to attempt, then the firm will invest if: E(πp)>c Adding a tax distorts the left hand side of the equation and reduces the potential gains of the project being successful, and therefore stops firms from investing in otherwise profitable ventures. The reason this is bad is that all investment (savings) is for future consumption, and thus distorting investment (savings) function reduces consumption in the long run. It's also why a progressive consumption tax is popular among economists, because it causes the least distortion in behavior. Other popular taxes are pigovian taxes (ones that fix an externality) such as carbon taxes. Finally, another popular tax is a Land Value Tax.

ELI5: Why are combat boots better than hiking or running shoes in a warfare?

I am reading a lot about the RU logistical nightmare during the current war in UA. With all those additional hundreds of thousands of troops being mobilized, it seems they cant even afford to properly equip the ones already on the warfare. I have even seen soldiers that are wearing sneakers instead of combat boots. My question is, why does it matter? Especially in a warmer months. Why cannot all soldiers just wear the “trail running” shoes or basic “hiking shoes”. How can it be that worse then proper military boots? Cannot it be even better, since it is usually lighter and more comfortable?

A couple of reasons. Combat boots are better at keeping your ankle from twisting. Sneakers are great on a flat road, but not when you're running through uneven terrain. Combat boots are much better at keeping water, rain, snow, etc., out. Sometimes, a soldier has to keep his shoes on for days at a time, and trench foot is really nasty and can permanently cripple a soldier. A sharp piece of metal (common in battlefield conditions) can pierce the bottom of a running show or slice through an unprotected ankle, so combat boots help protect from such hazards. Boots also help against other hazards, such as snakebites, insect bites, walking through thorns or poison ivy, walking through disease-ridden swamps (or even pools of blood), etc.

[The Simpsons] How does everyone tell the difference between animation (like Itchy and Scratchy), and live action (like McBane)?

I would think that if animation mirrors their reality almost 100%, as to make it nearly indistinguishable from live action, then the Itchy and Scratchy cartoons would traumatize children much in the way that watching a real live cat getting tortured in our world would traumatize us. So there must be a visual difference between the two that we do not perceive. What does it look like to them?

animals in the Simpsons universe aren't anthropomorphic so there's that to start with, Itchy and Scratchy also follow traditional 'cartoon' physics (ie over the top violence, pull giant weapons from their pockets, burst their eyeballs out of their head when scared/surprised etc)

eli5: Why can't you use licensed music on YouTube or Twitch but can when posting a video on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok?

Tiktok pays money for some songs to be licensed on their platform. You won't be able to find every song there, but there are quite a few. Other platforms generally do not pay for licenses and instead usually allow royalty free music where the artist has agreed that they don't need money for the music to be available.

Can someone give me a quick and dirty explanation of what neutrinos are and how they operate in the universe?

Neutrinos are little bits of practically-nothing that the universe uses to balance its books. Whenever an interaction occurs in which angular momentum would not normally be conserved, the universe tosses a neutrino onto the table as a way of making change. Look, you *said* you wanted quick and dirty!

CMV: Pride is the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins, because it pretty much leads to all of them and Social Media feeds it.

CMV: **Pride:** a sense of one's self-worth that is out of proportion to reality. The others: **Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy & Sloth.** I believe this country is living too much of the sin of Pride in this day and age which is really the root of most of our problems. "I want this and don't want that so it should be" while that is the Catholic talking within me, I notice the sin of Pride all of the time, whether people want unregulated or the opposite: the banning of: Guns, Speech, Religion, or what ever thing you personally like or dislike. It is pride which puts the mindset that it is OK to ban it or promote it. "I don't like guns so I want to Ban them and now I shall google links to support my premise". "I want a massive amount of money so I will write a song called WAP and promote lust". "I want more money and I will make videos about making it rain cash and gold which leads people to Covetousness and thinking material things are everything". "I tweeted something and others made fun of it and I must call them a name (Or someone did a CMV I don't like and I must call them stupid) which is Anger". I can go on. Social Media posts of "Look at me getting the Vaccine" while stopping the line to get a photo is playing against our personal pride and moving into narcissism. I feel like Social Media takes us there faster because we are missing the face-to-Face connection that one would have when debating, confronting, judging or being jealous of others. There is just too much room to tell yourself you know everything because you can google faster than the other guy. Pride keeps a politician from opening up when it is time if it make him/her looks bad personally. Now if you go super political on me that is fine, but remember when I talk about Pride I am referring to Presidents too and I mean all of them. There are some that probably had less than others, but not in recent years. I want to be this and not that, I am the one who should decide that for you, I know what is good for you more than you do, I know what you need and don't need. My favorite: I am right and you are clearly a racist nazi even though I have never met you. We need to check our Pride. Big time... People have a natural tendency to look inward first and point outward next. "What is good for me and why are you not providing me with what I expect?" I have recently read more about these sins, Catholic Church History (Which is full of Pride based mistakes like anyone else) and really have learned a lot. If you spend time thinking about Pride and trying to check your narcissism and judgement of others (Especially online), you may be happier person and all these evils AKA "Ism's" we cant stop discussing might resolve themselves. Maybe, just maybe some of these reddit discussion can become fun and engaging again with out the usual, "you are not replying because you are too stupid to understand, you nutbag" type of posts.

> the banning of: Guns, Speech, Religion, or what ever thing you personally like or dislike. Whether you agree that their idea is right, it's uncharitable to describe people who take a more strict view to certain things as pride. Like whether you think they're right or wrong, you understand that people who want to ban things like guns do so because they believe it will reduce suffering in the world, not because they arbitrarily think highly of themselves. In fact, to assume the motives of other people to be based in sin is kinda … prideful. Ironic. Nah dude, the order goes (worst to least worst) greed, wrath, envy, sloth, pride, gluttony and then lust if you even count that one. Greed has caused incalculable suffering in world history. Countless wars fought over resources, companies screwing over millions for a quick buck, cutting corners on procedure risking lives for money, charging exorbitant prices for things that cost a pittance to make just because you know people will pay any price to not die, bankrupting them to fill your coffers. Greed has fucked the world harder than pride ever could in its dreams.

Is a hot sauce only going to be as hot as the spiciest ingredient?

I understand the heat of a pepper is determined by the capsaicin concentration, but some companies promote their hot sauce by explaining it's a blend of multiple peppers. Wouldn't the sauce only be as hot as the hottest ingredient?

Yes. The spiciness will only be determined by capsaicin concentration. But people also like the consistency and taste of their hot sauce. Different peppers have different tastes. So blending certain peppers together will taste better than just a jar of pure capsaicin.

What would Baudrillard have to say about all the live action Disney remakes?

Copies of copies of copies?

He would consider them incredibly meaningless. Especially the new Lion King remake since it is just a rehash on an old and succesful idea. He goes more into his theory that would support this argument in *Simulacra and Simulation* (1981) in case you didn't know. Wisecrack also has a video explaining his theory with *The Big Bang Theory.*

[lotr] Are the members of the fellowship aware that Gandalf is a 1000 year old spirit or something?

Legolas almost certainly is, as the Elves in general are much more aware of his true nature as one of the Maiar. At the absolute bare minimum they know he isn't human. Gimli is harder to say, though likewise he's probably aware that there's more to Gandalf than seems. Seeing as Gandalf adventured with Gimli's dad to reclaim Erebor and all. Aragorn probably knows what's up too, as he's a Ranger and also has deep connections with the Elves. And he has some previous connections with Gandalf. Boromir is a bit more iffy. He might just think Gandalf is a wizard and nothing special. The Hobbits are probably pretty oblivious.

[Tolkien] What is Sauron's end goal, anyway?

I've heard a lot that he's obsessed with order and control. Say he gets the ring back and completes himself once more and uses that power to find the rest of the ring bearers, bring them, and in the darkness bind them, and then his army spreads out and conquers all the lands of Middle Earth. What does he do then? Is there some Great Work he seeks to accomplish?

>...it had been [Sauron's] virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction. ...though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron's right to be their supreme lord), his 'plans', the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself.* > >\* [footnote to the text] But his capability of corrupting other minds, and even engaging their service, was a residue from the fact that his original desire for 'order' had really envisaged the good estate (especially physical well-being) of his Subjects'. So no. No great work. No real "master plan" to speak of. Sauron became so fixated on the planning and organization that the plan itself became the goal, rather than merely the means to achieve some larger end goal.

[1408] Why not have a fake room prepared?

The manager of the Dolphin goes through a whole verbal argument, bribery, risks legal consequences, all possible ways of warning people not to go into 1408. Why not just set up a fake 1408? Just change the numbering scheme of the rooms for the floor, shift them all by a couple of numbers (he mentions 1404 has the same layout) and don't rent out the real 1408. Set up a show of "no we possibly couldn't" when someone shows up to check out 1408 and then give them the keys to the fake room. People only ask for this room specifically bcs it's infamous. No one will notice that a random room in a giant hotel isn't being rented.

I don't know if the answer is different in the movie, but in the short story the room is haunted just because it's a room located on the 13th floor, and the numbers in its room number add together to 13. So if you make a fake 1408 and call the fake room 1408, it's going to be haunted as well. You're either going to end up with two haunted rooms instead of a safe, fake room that you can put people in, or the hauntings are going to move to the fake room. It's unclear if the imagination of people give the hauntings life or if the evil entities are just attracted to those numbers, but as long as people or spirits believe the fake 1408 is the real 1408, the fake 1408 is going to continue to be haunted.

How do fish survive in frozen lakes?

When lakes freeze over during winter. Only the surface freezes and apparently the fish etc survive in the water below the surface. How is the oxygen in the water replenished through the ice? Wont the fish use up all the oxygen and then suffocate to death

If the lake is big enough, the fish will never use up all the oxygen that is solved in the water. Also, fish use very little oxygen during winter, when temperatures are low and they move less. And, there should always be enough fresh water flowing in underneath the ice.

ELI5: Why do we hallucinate after prolonged periods of no sleep?

As an insomniac I've read a lot about this sort of thing. The truth is we don't really know about why we need sleep or the effects of sleep deprivation. The best answer we have for your question is that after a while your brain starts to force itself to sleep even though you're body won't let it. It starts shutting down and tries to enter a REM sleep phase even though your body is still up. If anyone has more info I'd love to hear it.

Why do large animals like horses not suffer from the same bone and joint problems that large dogs experience?

One might think that bones are bones and convective tissue is connective tissue. Is it something to do with density, or the overall structure? Perhaps a better comparison would be tigers. They have more similar weight bearing characteristics. Do old tigers get arthritis? If not, why not? Could the dog issues be addressed with selective breeding, or is there something inherently different about their tissues?

You basically hit it on the head. Selective breeding has been extremely detrimental to the health and development of domesticated canines. Horses evolved over hundreds and thousands of millennia to become the sizes they are. Natural selection has permitted equine development to proceed in a manner that permits such size and weight/strength. Human interference has only been prevalent in canine breeding for the past few hundred millennia, since we started selecting wolf pups for obedience and cooperative traits. Not nearly enough time for the animals to properly adapt to their new bodies. Animals do suffer from multitudes of bone and muscle diseases. It's only natural. But due to selective breeding in the domesticated dog, human greed and vanity has exacerbated negative traits alongside the superficial ones we select for. Stunted noses lead to breathing issues; longer limbs lead to skeletal development hiccups; thicker bodies prevent proper organ spacing; etc., etc.

How does radiation affect the nucleus of an atom?

In chemistry/physics, you always hear about radiation exciting electrons to higher energy levels whenever they absorb a photon. How does this work when looking at the protons in the nucleus of an atom? I've never heard about protons absorbing photons, or having discrete energy levels. But because they are a charged particle, surely they are affected by electromagnetic radiation, right? Any insight would be appreciated :)

Yes, nuclei have discrete energy levels too, but the excitation energies are typically on the order of hundreds of keV to a few MeV in low- and mid-mass nuclei. So in order to excite a nucleus, a photon usually needs to be a gamma ray or at least a hard x-ray.

Does a large magnetic field repel air?

Meaning, if you had a vary large magnetic field being produced by a coil. wouldnt the large magnetic field repel other electrons in the area? so if there was air, wouldnt the electric field being pushed out from the wire make the air be pushed away from the wire? Edit: Look up "Coil Gun' or go to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_7fgcnzhmw This is what I mean. the aluminum in this video is neutral and is not being negatively charged in any means. Any electron will undergo this effect. every atom is conductive, just some are better than others.

Nitrogen is slightly diamagnetic and oxygen is slightly paramagnetic. A strong enough magnetic field will repel nitrogen and attract oxygen. Air being a mostly non-ionized gas is electrically neutral and has almost no magnetic moment.

[Star Wars] During the time of the Republic, was it illegal to just be a Sith?

Yes, and then no. More specifically, in Legends there was an Anti-Sith Law, but it was repealed a little while before the start of the Clone Wars. In both canons, Mace Windu's attempted arrest of the Supreme Chancellor was basically deemed unconstitutional. Of course, Windu was actually arresting Palpatine on conspiracy, not on the basis of his religion.

ELI5: "Charged as adults" - why does this happen so frequently in the US?

I say frequently, maybe it's not *that* often, but I have read of 2 cases this week where a really young person (12, 13 years old) is being charged as an adult for murder and attempted murder, facing enormous lengths of time in prison. I understand that the age of criminal responsibility is not 18, but does charging minors in this way not render the juvenile courts obsolete? Here in the UK the only time I can recall it happening was the the James Bulger murder (defendants were 10 years old), and that was the mid-1990s. [edit] Would a 12 year old end up in a prison with adults if found guilty? Or would they go to a juvenile detention centre? Are they 'legally' an adult? [edit] I'm marking as explained as it seems that being tried as an adult is used as a device to allow for harsher sentencing in the case of a premeditated crime [edit] wow, thank you for all the answers! I have learnt a lot! :) some really interesting links too

Serious crimes will get them charged as adults (eg murder and the like). Mainly, this is because, by committing/attempting murder (the premeditation is the crucial part), the suspect has demonstrated that they know what they are doing is very wrong and could have a very serious impact on someone's life, and they tried to get away with it. In this case, they have the requisite understanding of the law and its consequences to be tried as an adult. Less serious stuff, like theft or vandalism, is treated more leniently because it's not as serious and doesn't have the same "gravitas", if you will.

If we assigned a 3 digit number to letters a-z, plus punctuation and space, then mapped that onto pi or e, would we get a "monkey's writing shakespeare" effect?

Also, at what point would computing power make this more viable than scientific research to understand the universe?

A number for which, in some base, every possible string appears at some point in its expansion is called a "rich number". Your question essentially is "is pi or e a rich number?" The answer is: We don't know. Most people suspect that they are, but it has never been proven. What we do know is that the probability of any real number being rich is essentially 1. We know this because there's a stronger property, namely that every string of a given length appears in the expansion of the number with equal frequency (that is: the string "01234" appears as often as "56789", for example). A number with this property is called a "normal number" and it should be clear that if a number if normal, it is also rich. It has been shown that the set of numbers that are not normal has a "Lebesgue measure" (a way of measuring sets) of zero. That means that almost all real numbers are normal. And therefore almost all real numbers are rich. But are pi and e among the rare exceptions? We don't know.

ELI5: Skin colour relating to sunburn susceptability.

If darker colours absorb heat/light and lighter reflects, why is it harder for darker skinned people to get sunburn? Wouldn't absorbing the energy from the sun make you burn more? Has it got something to do with uv being outside of visible light spectrum?

The darkness of your skin comes from a pigment called melanin. The darker your skin, the more melanin in it. Melanin absorbs UV radiation, it's the thing the damages cells which leads to sunburn or in worst cases to cancers/tumors. Think of the dark pigmentation in your skin as an umbrella against rain. The umbrella gets wet, but it protects you underneath it. Melanin gets hit by radiation, so that the vulnerable stuff beneath it doesn't. Do note, even people with a lot of melanin will burn in the sun eventually. It's resistance, but not absolute protection. An umbrella won't save you from a typhoon.

I think parents should be held more accountable for the behavior of their offspring, CMV

Parenting has a dramatic effect on a child's outcome in life. I think we should have a system in place that reflects that. If your child is good, you reap benefits. If the child harms society, you don't. Let's give parents a tax break (or EITC) that varies accordingly to their child's earnings, or something. If the child is convicted of a criminal offense, the money decreases.

How do you account for many parents being in a better position to raise children than others? What about children with disabilities (physical and mental)? How about the simple fact that children aren't robots? While parents can influence them, they're ultimately their own conscious beings who make their own decisions.

If we turned off every electrical light in the whole world, would light pollution go away instantly, or take time?

Light would dissipate at the speed of light - so it would appear instantaneous to humans to the extent that photons would stop bouncing off of the air and traveling back to eyeballs in a fraction of a fraction of a second. You probably wouldn't immediately see a wonderful dark sky, though, because human night vision takes time to acclimate to dark. The rods in your eye contain a protein which is destroyed by energetic light (not by low energy red light, importantly). When that protein in your rods is destroyed by a photon, it sends a signal to your brain, allowing you to construct a gray-scale image (night-vision is color blind!). Rods are much more efficient in detecting photons than are the color-sensitive cells in your eye, the cones. In bright light, all of the light-sensitive proteins are destroyed and they take about half an hour to build back up completely. So in half an hour or so, the effects of light pollution on your sight of the night sky would be gone.

CMV: Black people can be racist towards White people

This came from an argument I had with a friend. Sorry about the white/black language just trying to get my word out. They were arguing about how black people couldn't be racist to white people because white people were the ones with power (In USA). I guess they were going off the racism definition of prejudice + power. I was going off the definition of oxford dictionary which says racism is " prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior." I guess the argument annoyed me a little because it seemed like they were thinking I was a closet racist. Based on the oxford dictionary, I argued that black people could be racist towards white people and gave instance of the hate crime where 4 black youth in Chicago captured a white person and tortured him (I think it was judged as a hate crime as well?) I mean I want to be clear that I know systematic racism exists especially with out prison system but I found it ridiculous to have a standard that the minority races couldn't be racist towards the majority races. Edit: Also another thing, can someone elaborate about the academic definition and how its conception was generated. If someone can make it clear why racism=prejudice + power I would understand the other POV arg more clearly.

It all comes down to definition, the argument goes that racism is not Ethan just thought, it has to be active discrimination and oppression. As black people rarely have the opportunity to discriminate against white people in a meaningful way, they can’t be racist. I disagree with the argument, but that’s what it is.

If looking further into space means looking back into time, can you theoretically see the formation of our galaxy, or even earth?

I mean, if we can see the big bang as background radiation, isn't it basically seeing ourselves in the past in a way? I don't know, sorry if it's a stupid question.

The stuff that we're seeing in the distant past is also really far away. To see something, say, a billion years ago, it has to be far enough away that its light traveled toward us for a billion years. So we're not seeing our own past, we're seeing the past of other stuff. We can't see our own past this way because the light from our past is moving away from us, so we'll never see it.

ELI5 - How does a rice cooker know when the rice is done?

It depends on 3 things. 1. As a rule of thumb rice is done when all the water is boiled off. 2. When water is boiling it keeps the thing at 100C, any more energy just makes more water turn from liquid to gas. 3. When a magnet gets too hot it gets less sticky. So they have a magnet that's holding a electric connection to the heater that cooks the rice. When you press the cook tab, you hear a clunk, that's the magnet sticking. The water in the cooking part with the rice starts boiling, when it's gone the temperature starts going above 100C. That temperature makes the magnet less sticky and it falls off, breaking the connection with the cooking parts. That or it's a boring temperature sensor and a microchip.

ELI5: How you become eligible to be knighted and the process that follows

The most common Order of Chivalry is The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, which has five "ranks." From highest to lowest, these are: 1. Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (GBE), limited to 300 1. Knight Commander or Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE or DBE), limited to 845 1. Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE), limited to 8,960 1. Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) 1. Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) GBE and KBE/DBE automatically make the recipient a knight (male) or a dame (female), which allows them to use the title "Sir [Name]" or "Dame [Name]." Note that these honorifics are used only before the first name, so you would, e.g., refer to Sir Patrick Stewart or Sir Patrick, but never Sir Stewart. As part of the British honours system, membership in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a **means of rewarding individuals' personal bravery, achievement, or service to the United Kingdom and the British Overseas Territories**. All members of the order are appointed by the current British monarch, who is Sovereign of the Order. Typically, they do this under the advice of the governments of Britain and the Commonwealth. No more than 858 Officers and 1,464 Members may be appointed per year. Other Orders of Chivalry include the Order of the Garter and the Order of the Thistle. Some Orders of Merit also come with an honorary knighthood at their highest ranks. Men may also be knighted separately from membership in one of these orders, giving them the rank of Knight Bachelor (Kt). Only citizens of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth can be full members of these orders. Foreigners are considered honorary members only, and while they may use the letters after their name, they do not take the title of "Sir" or "Dame."

When adding salt to a mixture of water and ice, why does the temperature drop?

So far I've understood that at 0 degrees celsius, there is an equilibrium between the ice and water that remains largely the same in ideal conditions. Salt binds up some of the liquid water molecules, making it harder for the ice to freeze the solution seeing as there are fewer free water molecules to freeze. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) This causes a freezing point depression. * Why does adding salt cause an almost instant temperature drop? * Salt is used to melt ice, so wouldn't the temperature drop freeze the water, or is the temperature drop still above the new freezing point? I'm asking because of a small-scale experiment where I mixed snow, water and lastly ice; the temperature dropped very fast.

The temperature drops because the system is in equilbrium between the solid and liquid states of water, and in the presence of salt the liquid can exist at lower temperatures. That is one of several properties called "colligative properties" of liquid solutions. The mechanism is that the dissociated ions in the dissolved salt solution pull at the polar ends of the water molecules on the boundary between solution and solid, breaking the hexagonal crystalline structures that make the ice solid. (Edit: Note that the ions don't remain affixed to the water molecules, they only change the dynamics that are going on at the solid/liquid boundary. Thanks, arble, for pointing that out.) The reason the solution drops in temperature is that it takes energy to remove a water molecule from an ice crystal. That energy comes from the kinetic energy of the surrounding liquid water molecules: when a water molecule is lifted from the ice crystal structure, it leaves with less speed than the impacting water and salt molecules that knocked it out. Eventually, the average kinetic energy of the liquid water is less than it used to be (i.e. "the water is colder"). The temperature drop is rapid because (A) the heat of fusion of water is large (i.e. it takes a *lot* of energy to pull the water molecules out) and (B) the system is tightly coupled thermally, since it is after all an ice-water bath. Contrariwise, if you flush the liquid salty water out and replace it with distilled water, the distilled water will freeze against the extra-cold ice, and warm up the system to 0 degrees C by releasing kinetic energy as the water molecules snap into place in the ice crystals. Using salt to melt ice on a sidewalk depends on the fact that the sidewalk is in a large approximately-equal-temperature environment. The sidewalk cools well below 0C right away, and begins absorbing heat from its (presumably near-freezing) environment. That is different from an ice-cream maker or similar system, because in an ice-cream maker you isolate the ice cream and icy brine from the environment, to prevent it absorbing energy from outside.

How come earth is magnetic even though earth's core is above the Curie point (Temperature where nothing is magnetic) ?

Does it have something to do with the pressure or something ?

The Curie point refers to permanent magnetism, where half filled outer electron shells allow an atom to be magnetic. When the atoms in a substance are aligned such that their individual magnetic fields are in the same direction, the substance is magnetic (see ferromagnetism for more details). Above the Curie point, this breaks down, because the atoms won't stay aligned. The earth's magnetic field, on the other hand, is created by dynamo action--that is, the flow of electrically conductive fluid (the outer core). This is driven largely by rotation and convection, which creates circulating electric currents, and thus, a magnetic field. The sun's magnetic field is created in a similar way, only with plasma instead of magma.