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ELI5:How do people have photographic memories while others do not?

Photographic memories as you know them don't exist. In fact, everyone has a photographic memory because everyone can think in pictures. It's just used for people that happen to have above-average memory skills

How long would it actually take to learn programming from zero?

I'm a synthetic biology PhD student and I have recently realised the strong need for dry lab skills! Ive always had an interest for modeling biological systems, but the thought of learning programming seems overwhelming. Also knowing that it probably will take so much time to only achieve average coding skills makes me feel like I will never be able to achieve novelty/ publication standard understanding. Do you think I'm just being scared or should I concentrate on what I'm good at?

I’m going to disagree with others’ advice here and say that it would be most effective for you to take an intro to programming course. This is because although you can learn most coding by working on a project and googling, even knowing what to google (keywords etc) is challenging for complete beginners. Taking an intro course gives you the mental representation and vocabulary to become self-sustainable and helps you progress much faster. There are many free ones offered on Edx/Coursera etc, and since Python is probably the most useful and beginner-friendly language, perhaps start with that. It’s going to take a while. For me it took around a year of frequent coding to become comfortable and two years to become relatively fluent for research purpose.

I'm fascinated by phenomenology, but I don't have much experience with philosophy. Should I even bother trying to learn about it? Where do I start?

I came across [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaGk6S1qhz0) on youtube. I watched a few of the other sections, and I'm pretty blown away by these concepts. Like I can't stop thinking about it in daily life. I picked up a copy of *Being and Time* and a few "intro" books on phenomenology, but it seems like there's a huge amount of pre-knowledge of philosophy they assume you have. I guess my question is, is there any chance that I would be able to learn about the subject if I don't have much of a formal education of philosophy in general? What are some "essential" readings that I would need to get through first? I'm a chemistry major, so I'm (relatively) able to grasp difficult concepts, but this seems to blow anything I've ever read out the water. Any advice would be highly appreciated. Thank you!

Husserl and especially Heidegger are notoriously difficult. If you don't have both a general familiarity with philosophy and also particular familiarity with the German tradition Heidegger is responding to, you're going to find *Being and Time* a rather rough slog. If you want to read the big-name phenomenologists in their own words, the most accessible is probably Merleau-Ponty. The long introduction to his *Phenomenology of Perception* is a good place to start, and will give you a general framework for the way he's going to argue. If you really want to start with Husserl/Heidegger, the standard starting place seems to be Husserl's *Cartesian Meditations* and/or *The Idea of Phenomenology*. Neither of these are easy books, but they're at least a manageable size, so you can wrestle with them more practically than you could wrestle with *Being and Time*. There's nothing wrong with deferring to secondary scholarship. Cambridge has a massive series of "Cambridge Companion to [such and such]" which are often good starting points, and there are companions to Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre (the other most well-known phenomenologist), and Merleau-Ponty, as well as one just on Heidegger's *Being and Time*. Or for general introductions, consider Cerbone's *Understanding Phenomenology*, Grossman's *Phenomenology and Existentialism: An Introduction*, or Moran's *Introduction to Phenomenology*.

I think going through with an unwanted pregnancy and putting the child in foster care is irresponsible and wrong. Please, CMV.

I'm a pro-choicer by nature, and I respect that many women and men believe that abortion is morally wrong. The issue that I have is with an alternative option for many of these couples/moms/dads, etc, which is to continue on with a pregnancy and have a child that they do not want, only to leave the child in Foster care or put it up for adoption. I'm very open to the idea that someone could have a baby with a someone else lined up to take care of it (such as a relative or adoptive parents who are eager to raise it). The issue here is that many parents without those luxuries may still have the child and then put it in a home with no real future. The child's chances for success, health, and well being plummet drastically, and I think this is worse than not bringing a child into the world in the first place. Children in Foster care have nearly twice the suicide rate and suffer from many other issues, including deprivation, neglect, and abuse. http://www.cwla.org/programs/bhd/mhfacts.htm. To me, this is a terrible thing to throw on someone. I can't really process that, given the choice, this is an attractive option for a mother/parent. Please, CMV.

There are a lot of Americans who want to adopt a baby. In fact there is a shortage of babies. If you want to get rid of your child immediately after it is born the process is very easy. When at the hospital people can just ask the doctor and s/he can set it up for them or get someone else to do all the work Children in foster care were born to parents who planned to keep their baby but couldn't. Meaning they were either take away or the parent passed. It is rare for a newborn to go into foster care.

ELI5: Why did we have to learn farm animal sounds as a kid?

It isn't really about "what the animal sounds like", it's just teaching children how to make different sounds and about our culture. As a quick example, in most English speaking countries, the cat goes "meow", but in Dutch it's "miauw", and in Greek it's "miaou", and in Japanese it's "nyan nyan" or "goro goro" (for purring). Each word and sound are particular to the culture, and learning these differences is key to forming a relationship with your child and your culture; which is always an important step in childhood development.

Why does having a BMI of 40 or over make you eligible for a free flu vaccine (UK)? Is flu more dangerous for obese people?

Yes, most diseases are more dangerous for obese people. The chances of having other health issues such as heart or breathing problems increases with weight gain. As we cannot guarantee to have diagnosed everyone who actually has a heart condition or other illnesses it is safer and more cost effective to treat people who are statistically at high risk as if they actually have the condition. When you are unwell it puts a strain on the body. This includes the heart. If getting flu would put too much strain on you then you would be hospitalised. It's cheaper to give you an injection that have you in hospital for even a minor problem. Also it's better for you if you don't have a heart attack. This is all based on statistics. A healthy person, with good cardiovascular abilities, a strong heart, no lung problems, low blood pressure and a BMI way over 40 would probably not be at great risk from the flu. It's just hard to test if people are very healthy and obese so you play it safe in terms of health and cost.

ELI5: If humans have infantile amnesia, how does anything that happens when we are young affect our development?

Lack of autobiographical memory is not at all the same as lack of learning. You probably don't at all recall learning to speak, but the effects of early exposure to your native language are still burned into your brain and reinforced by a lifetime of daily use.

CMV: I don't think Nintendo had to apologize for not including gay marriages in Tomodachi Life

Nintendo fell under a surprising amount of heat for their recent "life simulator" game Tomodachi Life, because they allowed people to get married, but not same sex couples. In my opinion, he fact that this was controversial is somewhat ridiculous: this is a game which sole purpose is to be silly. You can make your friends/celebrities/fictional characters, and watch them interact with one another. One aspect of the game is that characters can get married and have a child, which is a mix of the two characters faces. There is a work around that allows same sex marriages, which is to make a male character a female or vise versa. You aren't restricted whatsoever to physical appearance, which allows quasi-same sex relationships. Now, this is a silly handheld game, which will likely be played mostly by children. Since their target audience is, in my opinion, children, I can't imagine the majority of them have decided whether they are gay or straight. And it affects the gameplay itself: If two of the characters get married, I want to see the ridiculous offspring of my roommate and Jennifer Lawrence for example. This element would be lost with the addition of same sex marriages (small factor, but still). This whole issue strikes me as one that is getting brought up by people who won't play the game, but are offended they weren't included. I can't make a female character in Madden, not can I make a black character in animal crossing, why did this become such a hot topic? I am completely accepting of gay couples, and wouldn't have complained if they had been included/will be included in the game, but it's so silly to get upset with a children's game company for staying out of a hotly debated topic.

It's true that this game is aimed at children, but that's exactly why it's important to include the possibility of same sex marriages. In a modern, western society we accept homosexuals and give them the possibility to marry, because we view all those couples as equal. By not including same sex marriage in the game, Nintendo isn't relaying this message. They're not necessarily saying that they disapprove of same sex marriage, but they're implying that same sex marriage is abnormal. And that implication will be taught to or 'absorbed' by the kids that are playing. Nintendo would greatly contribute to a more progressive society by allowing same sex marriage in Tomodachi Life, by showing kids that love can exist between two of the same genders. > This element would be lost with the addition of same sex marriages (small factor, but still). And this element isn't present in real life gay marriages as well, so it would be weird to include it in same sex marriages. The game isn't supposed to be social commentary, ofcourse, but it still will influence this generation's children, and it would be wise to include these messages.

[This Little Piggy nursery rhyme] How many little piggies are there?

For those who don't know, this is a nursery rhyme that is usually said while counting off one finger/toe for each piggy: This little piggy went to market This little piggy stayed home This little piggy had roast beef And this little piggy had none And this little piggy went wee wee wee wee all the way home I originally thought there were two piggies - one went to the market and got roast beef, and the other one stayed home and got nothing, but then is the "wee wee wee" piggy one of those or a third one? Or are there supposed to five - one for each finger/toe?

Well the existence of a market implies that there is at least one civilization worth of piggies, probably both little and large. So it's entirely likely that there are thousands if not millions of little piggies out there. Though in the story we only get to meet 5 of these piggies.

Why is ductility often listed as a separate property of a material from malleability?

To my understanding, malleability is a material's ability to be shaped (as opposed to being brittle and failing) and ductility is a material's ability to be drawn into wire. Is drawing into wire not simply a certain way to shape something? Are there materials that are malleable, but not ductile? Are there materials that are ductile, but not malleable? If these materials exist, why do they behave the way they do?

They refer to doing the plastic deformation using different methods. Namely, ductility is the ability to be plasticly deformed under tensile stress, whereas malleability is the ability to be plasticly deformed under compressive stress. Lead is an example of a material that is very malleable, but not very ductile. It gets deformed easily under compressive stress, but trying to draw it into wires will result in shearing.

ELI5 - Why are Railguns such a complex feat of technology? How is the Railgun any more than just 2 very large magnets and a generator?

I also understand there's some form of issue about the rails overheating (particularly in the U.S. Navy project), but isn't the solution to simply add more armor to them? How much funding could possibly be needed to do R&D on more heat-resistant materials?

Well for one a railgun doesn't need magnets. In it's simplest form you have two parallel rails and a conductive projectile. A railgun passes huge amounts of current through one rail, into the projectile as it slides forward, and out the other rail. The huge current combined with the sliding contact is the single biggest problem. The rails themselves erode from arcing under millions of Amps of current, and a gun that fires 5 shots isn't exactly acceptable. Of secondary concern, because they are somewhat solvable problems with the careful application of money and existing technology: The rails themselves are pushed apart with the same force that drives the projectile forward. Consequence of the design. So you need a hella beefy set of rails and mounts for them. Heat generated from a shot needs bled off with cooling so your whole gun doesn't melt after a few shots in a row. Lots of current means lots of heat in the rails. (Adding material increases heat capacity to an extent, but you need surface area, like a radiator to actually remove it long term) You need a crazy amount of current dumped near instantly which means big high power capacitor banks and beefy low resistance cables. You need to recharge said capacitors which also means that they can only go onto new generation ships with big powerplants.

If you put all the black holes of the universe on one side of an imaginary scale and all the rest of the universe on the other side, then which side has more mass?

The non blackhole side. There are several hundred billion stars in a galaxy, the lightest of which have a mass of around 1/10th of our Sun, overall the total mass of our galaxy is nearly a trillion times the mass of our Sun. In comparison, the supermassive blackhole at the center of our galaxy weighs only around 4 million times that of our Sun. The smaller blackholes around the galaxy don't significantly affect the balance of mass much. The same overwhelming ratios of mass hold for other galaxies as well.

What does lava smell like?

How is it supposed to smell?

It's tough to remember smells, much less describe them, but growing up in Hawaii I've smelled lava several times. It doesn't have a really strong odor on its own, it's like ... well, hot rocks. A bit like hot metal, say a soldering iron or a hot stove, a bit like regular stone, say a pile of dry gravel or concrete mix. Sometimes, especially right near the vent, there's sulfur gases mixed into the lava, in which case there's a strong sulfur smell, like overcooked hard-boiled eggs. But most of the time I've been near a lava flow, it's just a clean hot stone smell.

[Disney] Are all humans aware of talking and anthropomorphic animals?

We know a good part or the Disney univere is talking intelligent animals and it's hard to imagine the humans don't know that the animals are on the same intelligence levels as us. They are very human like and live around humans and even wear clothes on occasion. You can't exactly miss a team of rodents dressed in clothes constantly chasing after a cat that is stealing jewels. Some of the animals, most of the super intelligent ones actually, are even anthropomorphic such as Mickey and gang and we know humans know about them, house of mouse has them all hanging out together but outside of that and theme park appearances they don't seem to run into humans. So we know humans know but do all humans know? Bonus questions, how did the animals evolve and why are there still basic animals? You have animals that are still at regular animal intelligence, the smart animals that talk and act human (I know they don't speak English and it's translated for us, that was shown in Tarzan) and then there's the actual anthropomorphic animals that do speak English and have human like lives. And how is it that their lives don't intersect out lives? The anthropomorphic animals have towns of their own with no humans.

There are two levels of reality in Disney. At the higher level, Mickey and Donald, Jiminy Cricket, Bambi, and all the other characters exist as actors working for a studio. They are aware of the audience, and in the olden days Mickey would sometimes have conversations with Walt. Everyone is aware of everyone else. At the lower level of reality, it’s whatever makes sense for that story. Generally the only human characters who are aware of talking animals are the princesses, but that’s not absolute. To everyone else, the group of mice trying to assemble a dress just look like regular mice. The humans don’t see the clothes and don’t understand the squeaks. Disney princesses tend to have a greater connection to nature magic (or whatever) and can see the wondrous things that exist in the world. Everyone else simply fails to see what is really happening.

CMV: There is absolutely no reason for me to keep my Wii U and I should just sell it.

Complete minimalist here. In Christmas of 2013, I got a Wii U (only because my sister got a Wii in January 2008, and I only wanted to "upgrade"), despite it being very low on my wish list, and throughout its commercial lifespan, I only had no more than 6 games in my Wii U library, and I felt very regretful to own it only because it was a commercial failure. I really wanted to know if I should sell it for those reasons. Most of the great games on the Wii U were ones I didn't want to get only because I wasn't interested..... That is until I got advice to try out GameFly because even though a game does not look interesting on the cover, once I play it, I may not believe how much fun I would have. Now, since December 2016, my collection has grown to a relatively big extent. But now literally EVERY Wii U exclusive (Even the Virtual Console!) is going to get or has gotten ported over to the Switch, or even the 3DS to a lesser extent (as in the case with Super Smash Bros and Super Mario Maker), or in the case of third-party developers, PC (as in the case with Sonic Lost World), and there will soon be NO reason for me to own a Wii U anymore. I desperately need a Top 10 list of reasons to keep my Wii U, other than the points made below: "The Wii U has so many exclusives that are still not available on any other console!" No, it most definitely motherfucking WILL get ported over to the Switch because the console was a failure (which was the biggest reason why I wanted to sell it in the first place). "Super Mario 3D World!" That will be coming to the Switch, even if they decide to do so within 5 years! "The Wii U is backwards-compatible with Wii everything!" Well, when I sell my Wii U, I will trade it in with a used regular Wii with Gamecube backwards compatibility and connect it to my TV with a Component-to-HDMI adapter. "The Wii U can be hacked to make it do more than it was intended to do!" I actually feel that it's morally and ethically wrong to just tamper with a console's insides just to give it more potential! Please Change My View, I desperately need a reason to keep my Wii U other than the above reasons. If I do end up having to sell it, I would end up doing so while CRYING. _____ > *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!*

Wii u upconverts to HDMI. It technically has better output than your HDMI dongle. Virtual console, which probably not get ported to the switch in It's complete state. Nintendoland won't get ported. No more Wii fit u. Smash is still several years away. As are most of the ports you mentioned. Do you think Nintendo will canabalize the sales of Odyessey by releasing a 3d Mario one year later? No way. Most of all, you shouldn't sell it because you don't want to. This should be the most compelling factor. You have a connection with the system and that nostalgia is more valuable than the few bucks game stop will give you. You'll be lucky to see $100 trade in.

I believe that suicide should be legal and the government should provide a painless suicide options to all citizens. CMV.

**UPDATE:** There are too many comments to reply now, so I will summarize my opinion. I think that the subreddit did a great job at trying to convince me otherwise and provided many excellent counterpoints. I won't award anyone a delta since I haven't changed my view completely, but the following ideas deserve half-a-delta: 1) The effect on friends and relatives of those who kill themselves is unclear and we cannot be certain the net effect is going to be positive 2) Allowing legal suicides could in fact cause a lot more people to consider that option. It is unclear whether the long-term outcome would be positive or negative. --- Original post: Assuming that: **a)** Each person has complete body autonomy **b)** The government's goal is to maximize individual happiness of all citizens I don't see a reason why the government shouldn't provide "suicide booths" to all citizens for free, regardless of their current health condition. This would solve two problems: **a)** People who suffer from depression, terminal diseases, life in prison, lack of money, or simply general dissatisfaction in life will get the opportunity to end their suffering, fulfilling their right to body autonomy **b)** Society as a whole will become more happy on average, fulfilling the goal of the government. Potential counter-arguments: **1)** How can someone be 100% sure they want to kill themselves? Aka the "False dilemma" fallacy. Well, nothing is 100% sure. I'm not 100% sure I want to take out a loan, but I would still have to repay it later. A murderer was not 100% sure when he wanted to kill someone, but he still has to go to prison. Why not let people kill themselves when they're 51% sure? It's their choice, their responsibility. **2)** Depressed people need treatment, not suicide. Yes they do. But someone who is depressed still has bodily autonomy over themselves and they are still responsible for their actions (otherwise depressed people would never go to jail). Forcing them to go to a doctor instead of taking the easy route violates their basic human right. **3)** The government will abuse their power and kill off innocent people It already does that with the law enforcement. Thousands of innocent people go to jail because of the government. There should be a complex system involved in the "suicide booths" to prevent misuse by the government, but ultimately nothing is 100%. We can't fix the system for all people, but why not try to make it right for 99% of them?

I reject premise (b). The goal of government is not to maximize individual happiness. The purpose of government is large scale coordination of activities limited to enacted laws. Side notes: its irrelevant if suicide is legal. there can be no consequences for a successful suicide.

Do we have any photos of the moon landing sites taken from earth? How strong a telescope would you need to see any remnants of the landings from earth?

Just thinkin' 'bout how people say we didn't land on the moon n stuff.

No, there are no photos of the moon landing site taken from Earth.The equation for determining if a telescope can resolve a feature is called the Rayleigh criterion. It says that in order to resolve a feature with a telescope you need a lense with a diameter 1.22*(wavelength of light)*(distance to object)/(size of object). So in order to see a 1 meter feature on the surface of the moon you would need a telescope with a lens 250 meters in diameter. The largest optical telescopes in the world are about 10 meters so it is basically impossible take a photo of the site from Earth.

ELI5: Why do people move their feet (marching in place quickly for example) when they have to pee, and why does that make it feel like you temporarily don't have to pee as badly anymore?

I am guessing because it mimics the feeling of walking, and your brain knows you shouldn't pee while you're walking. Is that the reason? Is there another reason?

I’d say because it sends signals to your brain that distracts - similar to how if you bump your knees for example, vigorously rubbing that area makes it “feel better” because it sends a distraction signal

ELI5: If all drugs were legal wouldn't criminal organizations still have an advantage since they don't have to pay min-wage, taxes, and can sell at a cheaper price?

For a possible parallel, look at alcohol. Some people in rural areas still distill and sell moonshine, both as a sort of "Screw you" to the government, and also because it's strong and cheaper to buy with no taxes attached. However, bootlegged liquor is many, many orders of magnitude less popular than it was during prohibition, and the confrontations between moonshiners and the law are normally restricted to the odd standoff between a few people and a few cops or forest rangers out in the woods, rather than constant drive-bys with automatic weapons in urban areas (which we saw during Prohibition). So yes, there'd still be a smaller trade in illegal drugs, but the demographics would probably change drastically. Instead of powerful foreign-based cartels moving weed over the border by the bale, for instance, you'd probably have survivalist types and anarcho-libertarians growing it, illegally due to bypassing regulations, in the woods here and there, because "it's the principle of the thing".

ELI5: why are there rain delays in certain sports, like baseball, but not football (American or non-American) unless, of course there’s lightning.

Because football is less affected by torrential weather than baseball. While the passing and kicking game is *impacted* by heavy rain, you can still play a somewhat functional game of football no matter how heavy the rain is. Baseball, however, is simply not playable if rain is too heavy. For one, pitchers can’t grip the ball, and fly balls can’t carry at all. Puddles in the infield make grounders unplayable. There is really no way to adjust for these things.

Since there isn't any resistance in space, is reaching lightspeed possible?

Without any resistance deaccelerating the object, the acceleration never stops. So, is it possible for the object (say, an empty spaceship) to keep accelerating until it reaches light speed? If so, what would happen to it then? Would the acceleration stop, since light speed is the limit?

The most intrinsic problem is that Newton's second law (F=ma) is actually only a low speed approximation. If you are thrusting in the direction of your motion, the force is actually: F = (1-v^(2)/c^(2))^(-3/2) ma When v is much less than c, that first term is basically 1 and you get F=ma. But as v gets closer to c, the first term gets bigger and bigger, and starts to asymptote towards infinity. This means that the faster you go, the more force you need to get the same amount of acceleration. And the force you need ends up increasing so rapidly as you approach the speed of light that you can never beat it, and never reach the speed of light. (Side note: it used to be taught that your *mass* increases as you approach the speed of light, but we generally prefer to say that *force for a given acceleration* increases instead, because the required force actually depends on the direction of the force, and it's more weird and confusing if your mass depends on what direction you're being pushed from) But as a secondary point, space isn't *entirely* empty. There is a thin medium of ionised gas throughout the Milky Way, containing clouds of denser "molecular" gas. Even though the density is extremely low, as you approach the speed of light, you are going so fast that you are smashing through a pretty large volume of space every second, and you do indeed feel a drag force from smashing into these interstellar plasma particles (mostly protons). And not only does this slow you down, over time these high energy protons are going to cause significant damage to your ship!

ELI5: In humans, what is the functional difference between wide, flat noses and narrow, pointed noses?

Or is there a difference?

The various shapes of noses appear to be tied to adaptations to climate. The nose must properly heat and humidify the air that you breathe. In a cold climate, it's advantageous to have a narrower nose. That's so that when a person inhales, more air comes into contact with the mucosal surface of nose, which provides moisture. The narrow nose maximizes the surface area.

Why is it recommended to completely finish an oral antibiotic prescription, while topical antibiotics (ex. polysporin and other antibiotic creams) can be applied as needed?

Hello! I understand that when taking oral antibiotics, you're strongly recommended to finish the entire prescription, since finishing early could allow resistant survivors to reproduce and cause an antibiotic-resistant infection. However, with topical antibiotics like creams and ointments, it's recommended to apply liberally as needed either with or without a bandage. Is there a reason that topical antibiotics can be used only as needed? Wouldn't using them in this way enable antibiotic resistance? Thank you so much for your help!

It's because most topical antibiotics work by mechanisms that bacteria can't build resistance to ie they rip cells open. They're too toxic to use systemically but resistance isn't really a problem. Plus to be honest anything you can "treat" with a topical antibiotic probably doesn't need to be "treated" in the first place.

CMV: It is 'correct' to be depressed.

We can all agree that intelligent people tend to have higher rates of depression, but this view isn't going to be an appeal to that authority given how irreverent people are these days. Something that's always bothered me is popular understanding of depression. My problem isn't with semantics - the manner in which depression is classified as mental illness isn't the issue. The issue is the implicit suggestion that people who are depressed are either rationally unjustified in feeling that way, or have faulty emotional compositions. What I mean to say is that for a truly sane/intelligent/honest individual, the world *really is a depressing place*. However, I am **not** saying that the state of the world is more depressing place than it has been historically, but rather that contemporary people have too much access to existentially terrifyingly knowledge. The simple fact is that it has always been impossible to emotional evaluate all of reality in the same context, but previously it was also impossible to know of overwhelmingly large aspects of reality. The latter has become less true, to the information revolution and our generation is feeling the effects of knowing too much. I don't mean becoming too informed, or too smart, but simply being exposed to so large variety of information to the point of damaging one's ultimate outlook on life and the 'meaning' of it. Non-depressed people never really hear about the rational 'justification' of depression because the believers of this sort of argument tend to kill themselves and the rest of them don't usually see the point in dragging other people down for any reason. Please change my view. > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[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)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

Depression isn't sadness. Depression isn't being worried about the state of the world. Depression is being unable to leave your bed all day due to extreme lethargy. Depression is hanging out with your friends and being unable to enjoy yourself like you usually do. These things have nothing to do with your perspective of the world or whether the world is a scary or disappointing place.

Do the heavier elements that make up the Earth come from one specific supernova?

If they are the product of several supernovas, can we trace back the general area they came from?

This question can't be answered at this time. We have only a very small amount of isotopic compositions of meteorites, and they pretty much all appear to be the same. When we DO find some other meteorites with a different isotopic composition and a fair sampling of what that frequency is, we might know something. We do NOT have an isotopic composition of the asteroids, of mars, Venus, and the moons of the other planets, either. Those are where the answers may be. If those are all very much alike, isotopically, then we will know we came from one regional source, but we cannot know if it was from one supernova or many. That would require knowing the isotopic compositions of many stellar systems, which we must first sample physically, to see of those are different from our own, as they are likely to be. It's possible to know the elemental composition of stars by comparing their spectra to our own sun for heavy and ferrous metals. But this doesn't give much of a stable standard to compare with, either. So, from 1 SN, or several, we can't know at this time.

ELI5: What is buckling in structural engineering?

According to Wikipedia, it's a sudden change in shape due to an applied load that is parallel to the beam. How does this differ from compression in beam theory?

For ELI5: Imagine a dollar bill folded zig-zag, standing on it's edge on a table. If you are very careful, you can put a brick on the dollar bill and it will hold it up, because the paper is strong if the weight on it is exactly up and down (vertical). You know that if you poke the bill sideways, you'll make a crease and the brick will come crashing down. If you don't touch the bill, then you hope it will hold even more weight so you start adding dominoes to the brick. However, nothing is perfect, so some of the force isn't exactly vertical. Because of bumps on the brick or wrinkles in the bill the brick will cause a tiny bit of force sideways on the parts of the bill. Eventually you add enough weight that the sideways forces from an imperfect bill and imperfect brick cause the bill to crease and rapidly collapse. The point where that happens is buckling. Even in 'perfect' vertical loads, imperfections or non-uniform parts in a beam will eventually cause buckling with increased load.

[5th Element] What was the plan to recover the stones if everything went according to plan?

In the movie the Mondechiwans presumably have the stones and 5th element on board the primary ship that gets blown up. Secretly they have surgically implanted the stones in Pava Laguna who has a prior commitment and presumably scheduled to deliver a world famous opera concert at the exact time the stones are needed on Earth several systems away. So, let's assume the Mondachiwan's ship is not attacked. They are smoothly escorted to Earth. Zorg doesn't get involved. How were the stones that were surgically implanted in a galaxy famous opera singer going to get out of her and to Earth?

The same way they actually were picked up, just with considerably less shooting and explosions. They'd land, Lelu (or the Mondechiwans themselves) would explain the ruse, and they'd fly out to Floston and pick them up from the Diva. Remember the Diva wasn't surprised to see Lelu there, from her perspective it was all going according to plan until she got shot.

CMV: Respect for elders and authority figures shouldn’t be expected, but rather earned like the rest of the population.

First time poster here :) The idea that one should always maintain respect for those older than them, or more powerful, doesn’t seem to stand currently. And this can be perceived as largely constructive, as there is no longer blind respect for authority figures, and people are better able to speak out against oppression and injustice, even if having to stand against those older/more powerful. Additionally, this generation seems to be more critical of ideas, values and traditions held by this group of people, and this is essential in ensuring that younger or more vulnerable people aren’t taken advantage of simply because the other party is older or holds more influence. In this case, respect should be earned, but of course, one would always be expected to remain courteous and acknowledge the fact that age is often correlated with wisdom. However, by the same token, it should be acknowledged that this is not always the case, and so it shouldn’t be expected that their perspectives are final, or correct. However, the issue with this is that, it seems as though this general lack of respect has been emulated by mostly insolent children/teens, who act in defiance without any rational ideological backing, despite their own conviction. And this seems to be perceived as problematic in and of itself, with parenting a much more onerous task, and with the consequent diminished value of rules, laws and the like. So where do we find the balance?

1. Everyone deserves respect. Aretha Franklin wrote a song about it. 2. Elder people have earned respect throughout their lives by raising the next generation of humans. Building and maintaining a society and literally creating our generation is worthy of respect on it's own. 3. People in positions of authority deserve respect by virtue of attaining and maintaining that position of authority. It takes hard work and dedication to get and keep an authority position. That's built into the very definition of the word. 4. You are adopting a very "what have you done for me lately" approach to respect. If you have demonstrated your reliability throughout your life, it's insulting to have to demonstrate it again. Elders and authority figures have earned their respect. The only catch is that young people weren't alive while they were doing it.

[The Martian] Why didn't Watney just use the RTG he dug up to power the rover?

From the recent documentary film on the incident of leaving behind Dr. Mark Watney on Mars, it was noted that in order to extend the range of the rover, Watney did a battery swap routine as well as powering down all non-essential systems such as the heater. So he dug up the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator which I think powered the MAV's ISRU to provide a level of passive heating. Given that he did have some power limitation issues, why didn't he plug the RTG into the rover's power system to passively charge the batteries as he was going about? I know that RTGs aren't exactly powerplants that could power all the systems but it could at least passively charge the batteries that weren't in use as he was going about. He might not have had the technical know-how at the time but it puzzles me that he didn't try to do so after re-establishing contact with NASA who could have guided him on it during his journey to the Ares IV MAV.

He does for the pathfinder trip. It ends up cutting his recharge time from 13 hours to 12 hours. For the trip to the MAV, he has the RTG inside a plastic bag, in a tank of water. Not a very attractive situation for wiring. Also, over a day the RTG would only produce 2.46 pirate ninjas of power.

Can chimps pass down cooking?

Hi, I was wondering if you could teach a whole generation of chimps to cook, and have it pass on down generation after generation to perpetuity. So let's say you give a whole tribe of chimps a sort of relatively safe reusable firestarter device, and a frying pan/stand setup. You teach the whole tribe to use them using cooked food as reward. I'd expect some chimps to reject the notion of cooking food (some humans reject it too) but the one's that do would lead healthier lives, survival of the fittest, etc. Now as the children grow up, they are taught/observe how to cook food. Is it possible for this continue forever as long as the devices last and they have a supply of cookable food? Sort of like creating a culture of cooking?

I studied chimps for several years. One big issue with teaching them how to cook is you must first teach them how to make fire. Making fire would likely prove a bigger obstacle than actually learning that cooked food is better than uncooked. Chimpanzees have been demonstrated to have a capacity to understand cooking and even prefer cooked food to uncooked food: Cognitive capacities for cooking in chimpanzees. Warneken & Rosati. Chimpanzees have developed and use intricate toolsets to get to termites, honey, hunt galagos. Unless provided with human technologies (ovens, stoves, etc.) chimps would be unlikely to learn how to make a fire but even if the skill was learned, the act of fire-making would be difficult if not impossible due to the morphology of their hands. (They have tiny thumbs)

ELI5: Why is the penalty for attempted murder often so much less than that for murder, when often the only difference between attempted murder and successful murder is how successful a doctor or paramedic is in reviving the victim, which has no bearing on the severity of the act itself?

Attempted murder isn't necessarily always whether the doctor can revive the victim. It can also be a failed murder plot. It's like the difference between the different degrees of murder and manslaughter. Premeditated murder is punished more severely than provoked murder. Because premeditated murder means there was intent to begin with, provoked murder doesn't necessarily mean the person intended to do any harm, maybe it was due to an emotional state like walking in on your cheating spouse. Just as manslaughter is when you kill someone by accident as in vehicular manslaughter. You didn't mean to run down that pedestrian, but you did. unsuccessful muder could have been a muder of passion like walking in on your cheating spouse, but you failed to kill the person. You would be charged with attempted murder, but likely sentenced to a lighter penalty than actual murder because at most you commited assault with intent to kill. It's all about three things: Intent, Circumstance, and Result. Was it planned or in the heat of the moment? Was the intent to kill or just harm? Was the result death or injury? Or was the entire thing an accident thereby renduring it manslaughter?

ELI5: Why is it so easy for hackers to disrupt government services and access private information but no one has erased all credit card debt for everyone?

Because, no matter what movies and TV shows teach you about hackers, in the real world we have redundant servers and offline backups to prevent what you're talking about. Sure, it's remotely possible to delete all of that data at an institution -- but just for a few hours. Then they restore it, and you get 10 years in prison and the bank is just inconvenienced.

CMV: Your degree is not at important as the network you create and maintain

Higher education is important and essential for a higher paying job, and to have a skilled job. However, the degree you obtain does little to no good without a network of people looking out for you. After graduation, it is important to have people to reach out to. They can vouch for your work ethic and are able to use their network to survey job openings, and informational interviews. Without a strong network, having a successful career is much harder. I would like to say that it isn’t all about “who you know” but for the majority of work done after college, it is about who you know. This only becomes more prevalent when you continue to move up in the working world. You need to manage and maintain your network in order to get information about jobs. Moving throughout your career path it is essential to reach out to previous colleagues and others in order to find the next job. Without a network getting your foot in the door of a company is hard.

This issue is entirely job specific. Some careers are completely unavailable without the degree (doctor, nurse, lawyer, psychologist, social worker, engineer) while others put very little weight on a degree (sales, assistant). You've essentially taken a hard stance on an issue that is completely continent on the situation and is entirely not true in some situations and entirely true in others.

[MCU] What makes Kingpin such a good crime boss despite being very temperamental? What is he able to do that other crime bosses can’t?

Capital is a big part of it. Other crime lords slowly amass power and wealth through crime, then use that power and wealth to attract more, but their wealth is derived from criminal activity, will always be criminal, carries a lot of risks, and can easily be lost in a second. Fisk has an incredible amount of legitimately earned clean money. Fisk doesn't need to rob banks to raise money for stealing the Super Mega Death Ray, he can just buy it via a shell corporation. Working for Fisk means you're just as likely to be doing a legit job as you are a criminal one. There's also the stability that comes from that. If other crime lords are arrested and charged their assets are siezed, they go to jail, there's a power vacuum, and things get messy real quick. The organisation now has no leadership and no money. If Fisk is arrested... he posts bail, he hires the best lawyer money can buy, if the worst comes to the worst he does some jail time and has one of his lieutenants take over while he's indisposed. The money he legitimately has doesn't get seized, wages are still paid, and for your average goon way down the ladder nothing actually changes.

ELI5:Why we have evolved with the ability to physically shut off our sense of sight, but not any of the others.. hearing, smell, taste and touch?

Sitting on the tube and realising i made huge error of leaving my headphones at home it got me thinking, why can't i "close" my ears. That is, without of course sticking my fingers inside, why haven't i evolved to protect my hearing at will, much like how eyelids protect eyesight? I have been reading many papers on our senses and haven't come to any solid conclusions. Hopefully someone can answer this in a way that i can understand.

Just because you close your eyes, you don't "shut off" that sense. You're still very much able to see the light that get through your eyelids. Furthermore, eyelids were not evolved to turn off your sense of vision, but to protect them from different stuff that can get in to them and damage them, and keep them moisturised so they don't dry out.

[Fatherland]how is Hitler still alive in 1964, his drug addictions were already basically killing him when he shot himself in our timeline?

Hitler was regularly taking opiates by 1941, which is a year before the novel deviated from our timeline in 1942. EDIT:https://www.npr.org/transcripts/518986612?t=1651359365895

1. Being head of state gives you an impressive amount of medical care. The leading factor with disease is wealth, and the Reich would go to extreme lengths to avoid their Victorious Leader dying of an overdose in a back alleyway. Even in the 40s and 50s, we had enough medical tech to keep him alive. 2. The leading factor for *drug addiction* is extreme stress, and here hitler is no longer fighting a losing war against the entire planet. Basically, barring major incidents like a world war, world leaders live a long time. No-one can fight the reaper forever, but people with an entire state dedicated to keeping them alive can do pretty well.

[Buffyverse/MCU] Would the First Evil/Hellmouth have a lot of impact on the MCU?

Basically the Hellmouth opens in a small Californian town and for the fun of it we'll just assume vampires and demons have been roaming Earth without SHIELD or any other organization catching wind of them. Does the Hellmouth and the First Evil stand a chance in the MCU? You can use any time period during the movies.

Doctor Strange would be horrified to learn that the only people protecting the biggest source of magical turmoil from overflowing into the normal world was a group of teenagers and a middle aged librarian.

ELI5: How can electronics with rechargeable batteries tell how much energy is left?

My laptop can tell me exactly what percentage of the battery is remaining, but what is this number based off of?

A fully charged battery will be at a certain voltage. As the batteries energy is depleted the voltage will drop. A fully depleted battery will have a voltage of zero. By monitoring the battery voltage the device can estimate available battery power.

Is a thermometer affected by wind chill?

Are the measurements of either mercury or electronic thermometers affected by a high wind speed relative to it? I know humans feel the cooling effect due to the evaporation of sweat and was wondering if the same principle applied

Where humans feel cooling (or heating) based on the rate of heat transfer from/to their body, thermometers typically measure the actual temperature, rather than the rate of heat flow. Take for example the mercury thermometer. This device functions using the fact that mercury expands when it heats up. This property applies to pretty much every material, but mercury has properties that make it especially suitable for use in a thermometer (amount of expansion as function of temperature, liquid state at the entire range of everyday temperatures, etc...) At high temperature, the same amount of mercury will be less dense and occupy more of the volume inside the temperature. When it's cold, the mercury will occupy a smaller volume. Through calibration, one can put readout markings along the tube of the thermometer. In any case, it is the absolute temperature of the mercury that determines the amount of volume it fills. The only thing that wind might change is the speed with which the mercury comes in thermal equillibrium with the surrounding air, and therefore the speed at which the temperature reading is adjusted after the air temperature changes. In everyday applications, you probably won't notice this effect. You might see a small difference between a calm and a windy day if you take the thermometer out of a well heated house into the freezing cold outside. If it's windy, the temperature reading should drop more quickly as the wind helps the mercury to shed its heat more rapidly than if the wind wouldn't have been there.

(ELI5) How do hot teas help with sore throats?

Other commenters have commented on the chemical compounds within tea leaves, but there are also the important elements of heat and hydration. So even drinking warm water without tea leaves (sometimes with honey and/or lemon, or even just plain), can provide immediate relief for sore throats because: - **heat** reduces muscle tension, so warming up the throat helps throat muscles relax which can reduce soreness. Think about how having a hot bath or shower helps bodily muscles relax. The reason heat relaxes is because it encourages blood vessels in the area to dilate (widen) so that circulation improves. - **hydration** is an important general treatment for illnesses that often cause sore throats, such as viral or bacterial infections. These illnesses often cause dehydration because the immune system's response is to try to expel the pathogen from the body through processes like coughing, sneezing or even vomiting or diarrhea. All of these processes cause the body to lose fluid. So rehydrating is an important priority.

CMV: In the Naruto series, the idea that "Naruto is the hard worker, Sasuke is insanely talented" is flipped.

I know that among the fandom, it's common to say that Neji was right and hard work doesn't matter as much as "fate". I more or less agree, but that isn't exactly what this thread is about. Now obviously, both Naruto and Sasuke both work hard and are both talented. However, I'd say if they each lean more towards one, they actually lean the opposite way implied by character statements. Sasuke - so obviously Sasuke is more than a little intelligent and he got some powerups. However, in comparisons with Naruto, Sasuke's work ethic seems underestimated by the characters. He literally spent the whole series training. Since the massacre, which happened when he was a child, he focused his entire life training to kill Itachi. Sasuke was certainly a prodigy, but any child who dedicated every speck of free time outside of killer training school training to kill would be a killing prodigy. Then, he graduated top of his class and got onto a team with jonin sensei who also focused all of his training efforts on him. Im not at all implying this is anyone's fault, but it still means Sasuke technically "worked harder" at this stage. Then, he decides he isn't getting enough training, so he goes to Orochimaru, and constantly trains for three years. After that, he shifts to basically field training. Naruto - Naruto was highly disadvantaged, but that wasn't due to lack of talent, and while he worked hard, I'd say he didn't work as hard as Sasuke. We see at the beginning of the series that Naruto is bottom of the class and spends his time pretty much just fucking around pulling pranks. Despite this, he masters shadow clones in a few minutes with no help. Then, when he gets on his team, he matches Sasuke in tree climbing, and then gets unfairly ignored before the chunin exams. He spends his time fucking about trying to avoid Ebisu and then trying to help Jiraiya spy on girls before Jiraiya remembers to show him how to use his parentally installed nuke. Then after spending three years training with Jiraiya (technically a wash with Sasuke's time skip, although I'd argue that the results and personalities of the teachers indicate otherwise) he realizes he's been born with so much chakra, he can just use clones to train faster without any real consequences. This allows him to master extremely difficult abilities out of reach of people stated to be geniuses. The end of the series is a wash since both end up fighting a lot and being given powerups willy nilly. However, overall, I think it's clear that out of the two, Sasuke's hard work overshadows Naruto's, and Naruto is also more talented in terms of power due to birth circumstances.

Note: time=/=effort Sasuke is a gifted learner. When he puts in X effort to his training, he sees Y reward in his abilities. Naruto is not a gifted learner. When he puts in X effort to his training, he sees <Y reward in his abilities. In order for Naruto to increase his abilities at a rate similar to Sasuke, Naruto must put in more effort to his training. This is why the idea that "Naruto works hard, training comes easy to Sasuke" is true.

[DC COMICS] Who are the top 10 smartest people in the New 52 DC universe?

I know Batman, Lex luthor, Superman, and mister terrific. Who else?

I cant give a list but characters like Static, Braniac 5 and that scientist who created Firestorm (Name escapes me) would probably place on the list as a starting point. The problem with many of the Smart people is that there skills are not transferable or broad enough, e.g. while Bruce Wayne is smart at business and being Batman he probably cant come close to Mr Terrific in the physics department, even though most people say Bruce is smarter. Also (No Disrespect just making a observation) New 52 superman is pretty stupid, he hardly thinks his movements through and while he's by no means dumb, his recklessness and lack of knowledge show he isn't the Super smart guy he was pre-flashpoint.

ELI5: Why aren't there many engineers or scientists in congress/politics/government?

I get that people think differently but why isn't there an effort for this? I DO believe there are SOME issues that engineers would solve/attempt to solve better than current politicians.

Engineers do what they do generally speaking because they like to solve problems. Engineers design better things, fix broken things, make things more efficient. Making an engineer work in government would essentially be putting him into some sort of engineer-specific dante's circle of hell.

[Marvel] Have Apocalypse and Juggernaut ever fought?

We've got the Juggernaut, who throws around Hulk like a doll. We've got Apocalypse, who is nigh-unstoppable on Earth. ​ Have these two beasts ever fought each other, have they ever thrown hands at each other? If not, why not?

As i recall Apocalypse once didnt have enough to chip in for the sampler appetizer and clearly ate most of it and Juggernaut changed his shared netflix password and didnt talk to him for like three weeks.

ELI5: Why do share owners lend their shares to short sellers?

This is in relation to the gamestop short squeeze & short selling in general. Why do the original share owners offer up their shares to short sellers. Aren't they getting the same amount in 3 months as if he just sold them himself three months down the line? Is there some sort of benefit for the original share owner I don't understand? Bonus question: How / where do share owners list their shares for short sellers. Maybe do a ELI4 instead of ELI5. Thanks!

When a share owner is lending a share out like this, they are being paid a fee for it. Not a very big fee but... That is still more than getting nothing during that same period from the share just sitting in your account.

[Terminator] What if Sky-Net had sent one of the rubber-skinned infiltrator models back in time?

So, in the first movie, Kyle Reese talks about rubber skinned terminator models that people spotted easily. How would the 80s world that the Terminator is sent back to going to react to that sort of thing? I mean, how rubbery are we talking? Like, is the average person from the Eighties going to think "killer robot" or something like that? How would that impact the film?

Imagine a big ken doll that's built like a Mack truck coming at you. It's human from a distance but too big to be normal unless a weight lifter and doesn't act human except to say a few phrases. If it were sent back instead of a t 800 it'd be spotted pretty quickly and be involved in a massive shootout with police since the 600s were slower and bulkier than 800s and could barely trot. For reference watch the scene in salvation where marcus gets attacked by a 600 that was on patrol in the city. And the skinless 700 the new 800 rips apart at the end of the film.

[ASOIAF] What does the other three quarters of the planet look like?

So it's been mentioned that Westeros, Sothoros and Essos only encompass three-quarters of the surface of the planet. Has the other three quarters been conquered by the Others? Has Bran the Builder set up an empire in Northoros? Is Ibben simply the outpost of a gigantic whaling empire? Is Asshai bigger than anyone thought? Is everything else just Merling territory? Edit: Westeros, Sothoros and Essos only encompass one quarter. Forgive my error.

nobody knows, and anyone who has seen the rest of the world never survived a return trip, even the fastest ship takes months to get from Dorne to Quarth, and King Brandon Stark who sailed west with the most of the Northern fleet to find new lands, was never seen again. in this new age of dragons and the resurgence of magic, new discoveries are bound to occur.

CMV: There is NO legitimate reason to be an "anti-masker" and NO good reason anyone should refuse to wear masks. It is one of the most pointlessly selfish things someone can be in times like these.

So I work as a security guard. Lately a big new part of my job has been reminding people that they need to wear their masks. This as you might imagine inevitably has lead to many a heated conversation with people who just cannot wrap their heads around why I'm asking them to follow this simple rule. Even aside from what I consider to be obvious reasons for enforcing the rule, it's also just my job, which I need to y'know survive and stuff. But even when I try to make an appeal coming from that position, it just falls on deaf ears. Even if I did believe that this whole pandemic was overblown or some kind of elaborate hoax or conspiracy (just to be extra clear I absolutely do not believe that) I still would like to think that I would at least begrudgingly follow the rules out of courtesy for other's to put their minds at ease. As far as I've seen, any claims about actual medical conditions or arguments saying that masks reduce oxygen etc. have been thoroughly shown to be absolute bullshit time and time again. And don't even get me started on people who just can't deal with the discomfort of wearing masks in general, news flash: no one enjoys it but it's just how it is. All of that being said, if there are any actual legitimate points against any of this I genuinely want to hear them. I feel like it's important that I know in case I do find myself in a situation where I am wrong about this, regardless of the requirements set by my employer. So if you've got em' please do share.

There's one medical issue that actually collides with masks: Trigeminal neuralgia. Patients with that condition can't wear one since the mask itself would cause them immeasurable pain. But those patients know how to handle the issue and how to behave/handle their daily tasks including going outside. And they're the last to complain or rant in public about it.

Disregarding the fact that people are considered mature or an adult at age 18(in most countries). At what age do different philosophers consider a person an adult?

I'm guessing that people have different ideas of what's the ideal adult age. I think that I could consider myself an adult at age 25 and beyond. I could call myself an adult at age 18 anytime but I wouldn't feel like one.

What we mean when we say that someone is mature is that they have developed a certain set of capacities. These capacities can be a number of things, including things like the capacity to drive a car well. But the most important type of capacity we tend to associate with maturity is rational capacities. The reason that we don’t punish children as much when they commit the same crime as adults, or that we don’t let them vote, is that we feel they don’t have sufficient rational capacities to fully understand what they are doing. Rational capacities seem especially important for assigning moral responsibilities to people. The problem is that there is no clean line we can draw where before the line someone lacks rational capacities and past the line they have them. Further, it’s possible that there exists some very mature 15 year old who has developed sufficient rational capacities, and that there is also a very immature 25 year old who does not have these capacities. The law draws a line at a certain age because of pragmatic considerations. It is simply impossible to go case-by-case and decide whether each person is currently rational enough to take on the full moral responsibilities of an adult. So we draw a somewhat arbitrary line that we decide is good enough, but not perfect. Philosophers don’t have to draw such a line, so there’s no age that a philosopher is going to tell you that someone is an adult outside outside of the political community they’re in.

[Star Wars]So I'm a newly fallen Dark Jedi, where can I get some troops, starships, and a few super-weapons to take over the galaxy?

So I'm a newly fallen Dark Jedi. I don't feel like joining up with Snoke, Kylo Ren, and the First Order (my neck gets sore looking up at tall holograms, and Kylo Ren's a bit too whiny). How do I go about procuring legions of faceless stormtroopers, powerful starships, swarming starfighters, and a few super-weapons? Is this all just leftover Empire stuff? A lot of these designs are new, are there still evil researchers out there improving the equipment for armies of doom? Who's paying for all of this? Do I need to enslave a few planets to form a tax base first? Mind trick a couple of weak-willed venture capitalists? How do I learn more powers of the Dark Side? I don't really want to do the Master/Apprentice thing, I'm worried about being killed failure/promotion. Do I need to dig around ruins for ancient Holocrons, or would it be better to just surf through a bunch of Holonet videos and try to find something useful? Do most local libraries have guides on using the force (or the Death Star plans tucked away in historical archives)?

You think you can just up and decide you're a dark Jedi and that troops, ships and doomsday devices will just fall into your lap? Fuck off grasshopper, Papa Palpatine worked his entire life to build the Empire. Either you take it, or your don't. There are no handouts.

How do scientists schedule time with the JWST Telescope?

I’m assuming it’s an appointment thing, but I’m just curious if anyone knows how the process works?

Astronomer here. Almost all telescopes (JWST included) have a peer reviewed proposal process. We write proposals for using the telescope, explaining what scientific goals we have, how it impacts the rest of astronomy, why we really need JWST, and how it extends work we have already done. These are scrutinized by specialized panels of other astronomers and ranked in order of their merit. In most cases even if your proposal is good, you may not get time because the telescope is oversubscribed. The regular peer review process takes place about 6 months in advance and only once or twice a year. A small fraction of the time is kept as director's discretionary time, which is used for urgent new observations (e g. A new, unexpected supernova nearby). The director sends out the urgent proposal to senior astronomers in the field to do a quick peer review and decides on whether to grant the time.

ELI5: How come in some instances we don't feel pain until we look at the injury?

I remember getting a huge gash in my hand and I didn't feel a thing until my friend pointed it out to me. Happened to a lot of my friends too

The ability to ignore wounds like that was a significant evolutionary advantage: in general, getting wounds means that you're probably in danger. There are very few kinds of danger for which sitting around immobilised by pain and screaming is a good way to get out of the danger, but an awful lot where not having to worry about the pain and carrying on as you were is helpful.

ELI5: Why are people given a paper bag when hyperventilating?

I was just sitting at work and got a sudden case of laboured breathing. I thought, "Wow, I wish I had a paper bag so that I could-" and then I realized I really had no idea why I would need one. Can someone explain the purpose of the bag? Edit: formatting

When you hyperventilate you blow CO2 out faster than you can make it. The issue with this is that your body uses CO2 levels to judge if you need to breathe or not. If your CO2 levels are low it thinks you don't need to breathe and you pass out. To prevent this you basically need to maintain your CO2 levels by breathing in the air you're expelling, which is where the bag comes in.

ELI5: When a movie star signs up for a big budget movie how/when does he/she get paid?

Do they get a weekly or bi-weekly paycheck? A lump sum?

Talent agent here... they get paid multiple times in various ways. There's the lump sum upfront guaranteed money (ie We'll pay you $10M dollars to do this film), royalties (plus 2% of box office sales, TV broadcoasts and DVD sales), and bonuses/incentives (plus another $1M if you do a publicity tour in Europe, with another $500k if we do $25M in box office sales there), plus numerous other ways depending on the particular movie. The timing of how each of those is paid out (1 giant check vs regular payments) is completely negotiable, and varies from deal to deal based on what the actor prefers... some need money asap, some want scheduled payments to make taxes/finances easier to manage. Even who gets to hold the money before it's paid is negotiable (is it put in escrow, or does the studio get to hang onto it?). There's no one answer unfortunately... every last bit varies every single time.

ELI5:Why are the hairs that grow in moles thicker and blacker?

Moles are basically a tumor. The unusual cell cluster pushes on the follicle, making it grow hair faster than usual. They're darker because of the extra melanin in the area from the mole. It's actually a good thing if your mole grows hair because that's a sign it's not cancerous. I copy/pasted it from another ELI5 from a few months ago, credit goes to PurpleOrangeSkies.

CMV:Rio shouldn't have been chosen to host the Olympics at all.

In 2009, Rio de Janeiro, or the """""Wonderful""""" City, was chosen to hold the 2016 Summer Olympics. Rio de Janeiro has a lot of social and structural problems: the Guanabara Bay is too polluted for the sailing competitions (but there is a lake region just outside the city), the three illnesses carried by the *Aedes aegypti* mosquito (Zika virus is a smaller problem than rape, but still), violence (both by criminals and by the police), horrible public services (not a problem for the people coming to the city, but for the population), a crazy mayor who suggested the nonconformist to move from the city and also suggested to have kangaroos placed in front of the Australian team's rooms (when they complained about the Olympic village's structural problems), waste of tax money on white elephants (how we call useless expensive stuff), a country-wide economic crisis, etc. I imagine how come has Rio beat mf-ing Tokyo in the election. I imagine why would IOC imagine Rio would be ready in seven years. I was almost thinking that some cities that are the largest in small countries (like Oslo, Auckland, Dublin and Helsinki) would be a better host than Rio simply for being in developed countries. I think the countries that could host events like the Olympics should be, in my opinion, either the USA, Germany, the UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Netherlands, Belgium or France (maybe including Taiwan, Switzerland, Austria and Sweden; Greece is too broke and Israel has some issues with neighbors); with the list being able to change. Change my view over a less developed country being able to host a taxmoney-draining international event. _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[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)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

In 2009 Brazil was one of, if not the best, country in the world in terms of projected growth. We were just coming out the 2008 crash and Brazil was basically unaffected Also, you have to take into account hosting the games in a 3rd world country is great for the Olympics committee. In Brazil billions were invested in the Olympics, if the UK hosted the games, barely anything would have to be done. That's not really good business for the organizers, it's much easier to sell the event to sponsors when the country has to basically buy all the infrastructure needed to make it bearable

Does pressure affect the way atoms bond? Are there any compounds/reactions that are not possible at NTP but could be if the reactants are placed in a chamber with a higher/lower pressure?

We all know how pressure affects intermolecular forces, but how about *inner* molecular forces?

This might not be quite what you are looking for but there are actually many fancy materials that you can form at high to extreme pressures. For things achievable on earth a common example would be diamond. Less well known would be the various different types of ice (like ice V, VI, VII, XI). More theoretical and possibly existing inside of gas giants like jupiter would be metallic hydrogen. Something infamous for being a bit of a holy grail of material science. At ridiculously high pressures things start becoming exotic theoretical physics research such as the neutron pasta matter inside of neutron stars and other strange degenerate forms of matter.

[Harry Potter] I am Lord Voldemort. I control the Ministry, including its supply of Time Turners. Should I issue one to each one of my Death Eaters, to use to reverse time in case I am killed in action?

Time turners are obviously very dangerous, and I wouldn't want my followers using them while I am still alive, lest they unintentionally erase me from the timeline, but if I am killed, what do I have to lose? I could always cast a spell upon them that stops them from working while I am still alive. The Ministry should have tons of them, for Merlin's sake, they issue them to 13-year old girls who struggle with class workloads, they can't be that rare! Muggle schools don't issue Ferraris to students who struggle with getting to school on time, and if I really wanted every one of my followers to have a Ferrari, I could still easily do that! Even given my large amount of Horcruxes, regenerating a body is hard! It's so much easier to send someone back in time than to send an imposter to rig a months-long international wizarding sports competition to get some enemy blood again!

In the HP universe, time is fixed in the sense that the modifications done due to time travel have always happened- there is no changing established events since time travel becomes part of established events. So if Voldemort dies, he dies, end of story- time travel is not going to change that. Any attempts to do so have already been attempted and failed.

ELI5: Why do chameleons walk like they're pondering every step?

They are trying to look like a branch or leaves waving back and forth in the wind, instead of like a walking chameleon. If they just strolled along then their prey would spot them and they would starve, or predators would spot them and they would be eaten.

[The Matrix] What's so special about a hard phone line that allows it to bring someone out of the matrix?

Hardwired phone lines are part of the Matrix infrastructure. When someone hacks into the Matrix, encryption prevents them from leaving. So you need to get to a connection that is not being encrypted to get back out.

ELI5: Why is AM radio so much less popular than FM?

Is AM "dead"? Why?

Some people still listen to AM radio but not nearly that many. The reason is actually pretty simple. AM can't sound as good as FM. I'll explain why later. AM is good enough to listen people talking but it isn't really good enough for music. AM is mostly for talk radio like news or opinions. People dont listen to that as much as they used to. People mostly use the radio to listen to music now. AM sounds worse than FM because the channels are closer together. Let me explain what that means. Radio waves are actually a kind of light. We can't see them because we can only see a small part of all the different kinds of light. Light is a wave so it has a frequency, the number of waves that happen per second. Compared to light we can see, radio has a very very low frequency, very few waves per second. Frequency is the number that we see on our radio tuner. When you see 91.5fm that means 91.5megaherz or 91.5 million waves per second. When you see AM870 that means 870 kiloherz or 870thousand waves per second. Fm stations are separated by 0.2MHz or 200 thousand waves per second. AM stations are separated by 10KHz or only 10 thousand waves per second. Since there is 20 times more space separating FM, they can use 20 as many frequencies to transmit the sound. FM has 20 times the band width. That is why FM can do music well but AM can't. FM has so much more that it splits the bandwidth into two channels so you can have stereo sound, left and right. If AM tried to do that it would sound even worse. Stereo is more important for music than for voice. Edit: Thanks /u/rocknrollunicorn for the tip about stereo.

[WH40K] Can Dark Eldar revert to a lifestyle similar to the normal Eldar?

So one day a Dark Eldar wakes up after the usual 2 week long sadomaso torture orgy with a terrible hangover, takes a look at all the blood drenching his carpet, the pieces of brain matter hanging from the ceiling and the partially eaten corpse of a human child lying in a corner, realizes that he has to clean all that and thinks *'fuck this shit'*. He then has an epiphany, decides to repent his wicked ways and become a pacifist. Is it possible for him to stop staving off 'She Who Thirsts' their usual way and adopt a non-dark Eldar lifestyle of strict discipline and meditation while hiding behind a few walls of wraithbone? Or is their corruption and the grip Slaanesh has on their soul irreversible?

I think its possible.... but insanely unlikely. There would have to be some heavy shit go down for an Eldar to feel bad about anything non-Eldar. A human childs corpse in the corner torn to shreds is meaningless to a dark eldar. Do you ever get home and see an ant corpse in the corner of the room and have a life changing epiphany? Even if for some reason they do decide to repent they are bent beyond recognition and are basically coming down off the most intense high the universe has to offer, including some real actual highly addictive drugs... Once an addict always an addict. They might try to clean up but they will always know the feeling on flaying a human keeping them alive for days so they can sleep to their screams while pumping drugs and god knows what into their bodies so they can maintain a prehensile erection for 3 months. You dont just go home after shit like that. >Thought for the Day: Do not ask, "Why kill the alien?" rather, ask, "Why not?"

Brits and bad teeth. History of a stereotype

Everyone knows the stereotype, but where did it come from? British people have the best dental hygiene in the world, so is the stereotype one of opposites. Maybe we once had awful teeth and now we are over compensating. Where did the stereotype come from?

It's a stereotype that originated in America. In the early parts of the 20th century, aesthetic dentalwork like braces and teeth-bleaching became absolutely required for Hollywood actors, in the classical era where the studios cultivated an image of glamour and perfection -- Hollywood being America's cultural representative to the rest of the world -- and as such they became pretty common for even ordinary middle-class people. By the 50s, it became just assumed that if your teeth were crooked, you'd get braces to fix it. Fixing crooked or stained teeth became a medical issue to Americans. This didn't happen in the UK, or in fact in *most* countries. As you said, the British actually have quite good oral hygiene. But British actors and celebrities didn't cultivate the same Hollywood image of glamour, and so the aesthetics associated with that culture didn't become standard. People went to dentists to fix cavities and infections, but braces and bleach were considered a part of the *aesthetic* field, akin to botox or collagen in modern times. While the Americans were mocking the British in their comedies for having crooked teeth, Britons and Australians were mocking Americans in theirs for being vain and effeminate enough to bleach their mouth and don braces. Both of these things have faded in recent years, both as Britain started consuming more Hollywood culture, and as less-glamorous aesthetics like rock, punk, and hiphop music and gritty realistic cinema became the new hotness in the 70s and beyond.

ELI5: The skill behond the STRATOS jump, and why someone else couldn't do it just as easily.

I suspect anybody in good physical condition could ride in a balloon and jump out. The thing is you need somebody who can do that in the worst possible conditions. What if his parachute got damaged in the balloon ride? Would you be able to repair it or even tell if it's repairable? What if some technical gear failed? Would you know when to pull your cord if your altimeter wasn't reading correctly and the parachute failed to deploy? What if the chute failed? Could you cut free and open the backup correctly? There would be a lot of training that a regular guy would need to get to the skill level where Felix already was with his parachuting background. So it was easier to just pick a pro and build from there.

[General Fiction] Which normally-ruthless villains have the most interesting moral code, in terms of certain evil acts they will flatly refuse to do because of their personality or backstory?

FMA Brotherhood Kimbly had a real interesting moral code. He hated people who claimed to believe in something but then acted otherwise. If you couldn't walk the walk, he had nothing but contempt for you. ​ Kimbly himself liked murdering people, and slaughtered hundreds. ​ But he had more respect for surgeons who risked their lives saving innocents caught in war, than for fellow mass murderers who chickened out once they were in danger of actually dying.

ELI5: Who can the authorities prosecute during all these celebrity leaks, and is actually looking at the pictures illegal?

To answer what you're probably more concerned about, the only way they could really prosecute you for just looking is if any of the pictures are of someone when they were under 18, and honestly even then it's probably way too much trouble for the authorities to track down and load up the court systems with everybody who checked them out, given it sounds like hundreds of thousands have seen them. Now, for who they can prosecute: * The guy who hacked the iCloud accounts or whatever to get access to the pictures. Assuming they can find him and he's in a jurisdiction that would give a damn (lots of hackers are from places like Russia and China where the authorities don't really care to cooperate with US law enforcement), there's a lot they can charge him with, like unlawful access of a computer system (or some similar term), as well as lawsuits for harassment, copyright violation, etc. * People who distribute the images may be less targets for prosecution and more for lawsuit for copyright violation and harassment, but there's probably some kind of actual offense they can charge under. Here they'd probably only go after people who make a really big effort to distribute them, like people who maintain mirrors in the face of takedowns, if even that. Most likely they're going to focus on the guy who nabbed the pictures. One thing that recent history has shown is that people who try to take stuff off the internet tend to get huge blowback. Also note that in the US at least it's a pretty widely-held doctrine that you can't get in trouble for publishing something regardless of how obtained, except obvious things like libel/slander or classified information that you know is classified. So it's unlikely anybody distributing would get charged at all, and probably lawsuits wouldn't go anywhere either.

[LotR] How does Gondor supply all those men who light the beacons of Gondor?

As seen [here](https://youtu.be/i6LGJ7evrAg), the beacons span a huge distance, winding through desolate mountain tops, and each one is manned by at least one Gondorian (apparently at all times, just in case). Given their remoteness, how do these men survive? Are they constantly supplied with food and provisions? Do they live on those mountaintops? Do they serve temporarily? Given that there is a need for a supply chain, why not just use that chain to transmit the messages? Why bother having beacons at all?

>Are they constantly supplied with food and provisions? Yes. >Given that there is a need for a supply chain, why not just use that chain to transmit the messages? You act like there's constantly a line of people from Gondor to the beacons. It's just like one dude with a cart who goes by once a month and drops off supplies. But even if there was people going to the beacons daily, or even more frequently than that, they'd still deliver the message slower than the speed of goddamn light.

[Star Wars: Original Trilogy] Is the power to blow up a planet *really* inconsequential compared to the power of the Force?

The Death star blows up a planet, wholesale. On the other hand, the force users can wield a lightsaber. It would take several thousand years for them to dust the plant, at minimum. The best feat of raw strength of telekinesis is Master Yoda lifting the X-wing. So what? A crane can do that too. Manipulating weak minds? Unless the Jedi Mind trick can control the head of the estate and all his ministers, it is still not something that can compare to blowing up a planet. So my question is, under what grounds did Lord Vader claim that the power to blow up a planet (not the Death Star) is nothing compared to the Force?

Thanks to the dark side of the force, Palpatine and Vader were able to rise to positions of power where they are now able to tell the guy with the planet killing weapon what to do. That's what Vader means.

ELI5: Why are many female animals larger than their male counterparts but human males are larger than females?

It all has to do with how selective the females are for mates. Typically in mammals, the reproductive process involves really significant resource expenditures by the females. Plus, the amount of offspring produced in one birth event is relatively low. Cats will have maybe 4-10 kittens in a litter, dogs will have 5-10, and humans will have 1-2. Contrast that with a turtle who will lay 20-100 eggs depending on the species or spiders that lay hundreds. Mammals expend far more resources, time, and energy to produce fewer offspring, so the females are going to be very selective with the mates they choose. When competition among males for females is intense, the larger males will win the fight. As a consequence, animals with reproductive tendencies like mammals (high female selection, social animals, and extensive parenting), tend to have larger males than the females. As a contrast to that, animals who produce tons of offspring over a short period of time, expend less resources, and have low levels of parenting will have the females larger than the males. In these types of species, so many offspring are produced that there's little incentive for the males to compete with each other for females. Every male can get the chance to reproduce. Without a selective pressure for them to be large, they will be just large enough to survive to breed.

How big would an explosion have to be to measurably affect the Earth's orbit?

For instance, (ignoring environmental issues), if we took all the nukes and blew them all up in one location, would it affect the Earth's orbit? Or if we somehow took all the world's radioactive material, put it in one place and managed to ignite fission, would that do it?

None of those would do anything (other than destroy all life on the planet). Momentum is conserved, so assuming no debris from the explosion can escape Earth's gravitational pull entirely, the Earth must continue on its path.

[MCU] What would have happened if Hela fell out of the big rosy and landed in Sakaar?

She's too powerful most likely for the net or the obedience disks to work on so she'd most likely just try to find a way back to Asgard. She would probably go to the Grandmaster and ask for passsage to Asgard. If he refused she'd lay waste to the place. Remember Grandmaster thinks Hulk is awesomely strong Hela can wreck Hulk easily. Valkeryie probably goes out suicide by Hela trying to get revenge.

ELI5: Are there any other societies like the Amish that stopped with tech at different points in history?

They Amish chose not to use any technology after a certain point. Are there people out there that stopped even before the Amish or more recently?

That's not how the Amish choose what tech to use or not use. They didn't 'stop at year xyz.' They evaluate technological innovations amongst their communities and determine what technologies are considered useful enough, and what technologies are too disruptive to their way of life. Some use cars, some use phones. Each community has its own rules on technological usage, and the determining factors tend to be the protection of the family unit and guarding the self against sinful excess, sloth, greed, and the like.

ELI5: How does anti-venom render venom useless so quickly?

Venom is like a bunch of evil LEGO pieces that are designed to fit into critical spots on your cells (nerve, blood, etc). Antivenin is a collection of antibodies, which physically attach to the venom molecules like sticking more LEGO to them. The result is that the venom can no longer fit into the spots in your cells it must to have its devastating effect, and your kidneys filter the mess out for you to piss away.

So, Nuclear Subs can stay submerged for about as long as they can keep the crew fed and sane - no worry of oxygen. Why cant we make a space station like that - without worry of oxygen running out?

Nuclear submarines can produce oxygen by using electric power to electrolyse water. Spacecraft can do that too, and in fact that's how the ISS produces its oxygen, but spacecraft aren't surrounded by water so it needs to be sent up on rockets anyway.

ELI5: How come our bodies adapt so we only get the chicken pox once, but we always get the flu and other things?

Why can people's bodies adapt so we can only get the chicken pox once, but we can never adapt to the flu or the cold or other small sicknesses? [Answered]

It isn't our bodies. It is the illness. The cold and the flu are actually tons of different rapidly evolving viruses. You do actually become imune to a particular cold strain once you get it... but there are a few hundred more waiting to get you next. As to why the flu and cold viruses adapt faster than the chicken pox virus, i don't know.

What exactly are tensors?

I recently started working with TensorFlow and I read that it turn's data into tensors.I looked it up a bit but I'm not really getting it, Would love an explanation.

The word "tensor" is overloaded in mathematics, statistics, and computer science. In this context (TensorFlow, and data science more generally), tensor usually just refers to an array of numbers (which may be higher dimensional than a vector or a matrix, which are 1- and 2-tensors, respectively). This is similar to the way that "vector" is often used to mean "a list of numbers", even though the word has a more technical meaning in mathematics. The mathematical meaning is more complex, and is a bit hard to motivate if you're not already working in a field that would have use for them. A high level conceptual view would be that a tensor is a function that eats vectors and spits out a number. These generally arise in situations where you have a space, along with some kind of geometric structure, and the tensors themselves encode some kind of geometric information about the space at each point -- that is, at any point you have a bunch of vectors (which may describe e.g. the dynamics of an object, or some other kind of information), and the tensor takes those vectors and spits out a value quantifying some feature of the space. One very common example is given by objects called Riemannian manifolds, which are essentially spaces which locally look similar to Euclidean space, but globally might have a very different structure. At each point, these spaces can be "linearized" to look like the vector space Rn, and they come equipped with a dot product that takes two vectors and spits out a number. This dot product in some sense defines the local geometry of the space, since it determines when two vectors are orthogonal, and allows us to define things like the length of a vectors and the angle between two vectors. This "thing" is called the metric tensor.

[FMA]Why can't Father just use alchemy to make the giant transmutation circle?

Couldn't Father just use alchemy to make a hole in the shape of a giant transmutation circle rather than using Sloth to dig it?

Maybe, but it would be an immense effort and Father had better things to do. Sloth can dig the hole in a reasonable timeline without much trouble, and that gave Father plenty of time to work on the rest of the plan. In addition, an alchemical work of that magnitude is very likely to be noticed. Having someone dig a large hole isn't go to set off whatever alchemy detection methods are out there. Plus, why not? He didn't need Sloth working on a different project, so might as well put him to use.

[Bloodborne] A few questions about Blooodborne

Beat the game but still not completely sure what was going on... From a lore perspective, how does the Hunter's dream allow me to resurrect after dying? What exactly is the One Reborn and Rom? Was the Research Hall trying to convert people into Great Ones? Is there a difference between the Ashen Blood and the Beast Scourge?

In the universe, dream realms are actual distinct realms of reality that you can travel to physically. Some say they're the home of the Great Ones. They tend to be made be the Great Ones for humans who call out to them; The Hunter's Dream was made for Gehrman when he was "retired" by the Church and felt purposeless, the Nightmare of Mensis was made when Micolash and the School of Mensis used an Umbilical Cord to contact a great one, the Hunter's Nightmare (the DLC) was made when the the inhabitants of the Fishing Village that Gehrman and Maria "violated" called to a Great One for vengeance. So long as your spirit is tethered to the Hunter's Dream, you can project yourself out into the Waking World and die over and over. Micolash's body was dead in the Waking World, but his spirit was kept in the Nightmare of Micolash (when you kill him, he screams that he's "waking up," and that he'll die for good now). The One Reborn is a mass of corpses from when Micolash and the School of Mensis attempted to communicate directly with a Great One, which resulted in "the stillbirth of their minds" and sent Micolash into a Nightmare. It was reanimated when the Red Moon descended and the veil between realities broke down. Rom is likely an old associate of Master Willem's school at Byrgenwerth who was the subject of an experiment to ascend humans into Great Ones (as once happened in Pthumeru). Rom became almost a larval Great One, lined with eyes and granted a new form and new powers, but wasn't a true Great One. Yes, in their own way. Willem's school focused on using Insight to slowly and methodically expand one's understanding of reality, while the Healing Church and its affiliated groups used mainly large amounts of blood transfusions to try and accelerate the process. The results were mostly beasts, though the Choir succeeded in creating the Kin of the Cosmos, the smaller child-sized beings you find around the upper Cathedral Ward (and behind Iosefka's clinic in the woods). They could commune with the Great Ones, but weren't on their level. The player character is the only one who can truly ascend, through a combination of both insight and blood. The Ashen Blood, iirc, was a poison that the Healing Church put in Old Yharnham's water to give themselves an excuse to try large-scale blood ministration. The Beastly Scourge came about as a result of their blood ministry; when the Red Moon descends, the line between men and beast was blurred, and the beasts broke out. It's either that or the Ashen Blood was the name that they gave to the poison's symptoms. *edited for phrasing/content

ELI5: How does quicksand form, and what causes its texture?

How does sand become [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omBFjFGwRhs)?

normally, sand sinks to the bottom of water because it is more dense,a dn it settles against other sand, which it catches against (close up, sand is lots of little jagged pieces of rock) Quicksand is formed by water pushing up through a layer of sand- this pushes the sand apart so that the jagged pieces are forced away from each other and act more fluid. When pressure is applied to the sand, it forces the water out from between the sand particles and they lock up as they start touching each other again. If the pressure stays on the sand, though, the sand starts to push out from under you as the sand further down is not effected as much by the pressure and stays fluid, allowing you to sink.

[General] From where or when did the class/title of Paladin develop?

The Paladins were another name for the Twelve Peers-- basically, like the Knights of the Round Table, except there were only 12 of them, and they worked for Charlemagne rather than King Arthur. The name itself derives from the Palatini, the guards of the Roman Emperor's personal palace of Palatine hill. Like the Knights of the Round Table, the Paladins were famous for their feats of heroism (especially in battle against Moorish invaders from Spain) and their piety. As to the Paladin in fantasy, it came through D&D (like so many standard fantasy tropes), through Poul Anderson's novel Three Hearts and Three Lions, about a World War II resistance fighter, Holger Carlsen, who travels to a parallel, high-fantasy universe where the legends of the Twelve Peers are real, and turns out to be that universe's version of Ogier the Dane, one of the Paladins. Other important D&Disms that come from that novel include trolls that regenerate their wounds and Law and Chaos as forces that exist in opposition like Good and Evil.

[Seinfeld] How does Kramer keep his apartment?

He hasn't worked in 10 years (I think), how does he survive at all?

"*Kramer* goes to a fantasy camp. His whole *life* is a fantasy camp. People should plunk down $2,000 to live like *him* for a week. Do nothing, fall ass-backwards into money, mooch food off your neighbors, and have sex without dating. *That's* a fantasy camp." Kramer always has some scheme going on. Coffee table book, J. Peterman tours, recycling cans, tons of business ideas an inventions. He practically has a new one every week.

ELI5: Getting sick when the seasons change?

It's mostly down to timing. For one most schools start back up close to the start of fall. Schools are great places for things like colds to spread. Kid brings cold to school, spreads around class to class. Those kids bring them home, infect parents and siblings, who take them to their schools and work. Rinse repeat. Vacation times (Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break, summer in the US for example) give people an opportunity to travel and mix with new people and pick up things (and pass other things) and bring them back home with them. Then they go back to school or work. Many of these conveniently fall around changing seasons. Cold weather also tends to bring lower humidity, which may help certain viruses take hold. This may be due to thinner mucus and drying, cracking of the nasal mucus membranes. There are several studies showing some cold and flu strains spread more readily in winter vs summer. Also in spring pollen and mold counts spike causing people with allergies to have symptoms. Some people don't realize they even have a reaction to pollens or mold and may assign the symptoms to a mild head cold. Edit: word fix

Would destroying the moon effectively rid our world of werewolves?

On Dragon Ball Earth during a tournament, to prevent Goku (who had transformed into a gigantic ape) from hurting anyone and to bring him back, Master Roshi destroys the moon, ending Goku's rampage. Assuming we could repeat the feat, would such a solution work at preventing people with lycanthropy from becoming werewolves? Would there be any disastrous consequences besides changing the ocean tides?

I can imagine one particularly disastrous scenario - if you just "blow up the Moon", ie, blast it into dust, you'll create a gigantic ring around Earth composed of moonrock. That moonrock will be reflecting an enormous amount of sunlight. It'd be clearly visible throughout both day and night, from every place on Earth. Every werewolf will transform permanently. Anyone bitten will rapidly succumb, overdosed on "moon rays" as it were. You could spark the very werewolf apocalypse you hoped to avoid. I'd advise against this risk, all other dangers aside (climate effects, meteors, etc).

[MCU] Why isn't Thor's hair burnt off on Nidavellir?

It's made of the same extra durable Thor-matter as the rest of him. There's no reason to assume that a creature who's body is able to withstand direct exposure to a star, won't also have really tough hair.

ELI5: Why are there nuclear subs but no nuclear powered planes?

Or nuclear powered ever floating hovership for that matter?

It's been tried! But nuclear generators are very heavy, especially with the kind of shielding that you'd need to actually protect your crew from being irradiated. If you're in the ocean, that's a lot easier since added weight just makes you slower, it doesn't change what you need to stay aloft. For a plane, you gain the benefit of being able to stay powered almost indefinitely, but with the tradeoff of losing a lot of your capacity for crew and cargo.

[Star Wars ROTJ] Why did taking out the super star destroyer's bridge cause it to go careening down into the death star?

Surely the crew should be able to stabilize the attitude, take evasive action or simply bug out from some other part of the ship.

The Executor was in the process of a maneuver to better accommodate the approach of Rae Sloane's star destroyer, the Vigilance, so it could have a covered flank, the other flank protected by its extremely close proximity to the battle station itself. While its engines were firing (hence the order to intensify firepower rather than move the vessel. Remember the Executor's shields were down after sustained Rebel bombing), the primary bridge was destroyed and command couldn't be evacuated in time. Nor could backup command be restored before the maneuver continued to push it directly into the Death Star. Alternatively, the engines pushed it into the Death Star's gravity well. And since the ship was in a state of total chaos at the time, no one had the authority or foresight to save the ship before it crashed.

ELI5: How is it that Mayonnaise, which is made out of whole eggs and egg yolks, have absolutely ZERO protein?

I'm talking about on the nutrition facts. I mean, it must be in there, right? Thanks to a few people this post is now: [Explained]!

It has some protein, yes. Nutrition facts are essentially rounded, though: that's why you can have things with "0 calories." They still have calories, but if it's like .4 calories, they can say it has 0. A serving of mayonnaise is very small since it's a condiment, so if it has like .3 grams of protein or whatever, they have to list it as 0.

ELI5 : Why can't internal organs be itchy?

If internal organs can hurt, why can't they get itchy?

I think the body would evolve to discourage that. The only way to scratch that kind of itch is going to harm you. Consider the reason for an itch evolved in the first place... it's to get you to brush off bugs and other critters. And for this it's better to have false positives. But bugs don't tend to get inside you. And if they do, no amount of scratching is going to help.

How do we know the population of deep sea fish?

People bring up that the bottom of the ocean is less known than the surface of the moon, and yet, when I go to the Wikipedia page for Frilled Sharks, I see that it's classified as 'near threatened'. How do we know the population of such a deep sea species well enough to term it 'near threatened'?

In biology, where a species is either widespread, or for some other reason, counting individuals exhaustively is too difficult, numbers are calculated from exhaustively surveying a set area of habitat then extrapolating based on area of known territory. E.g. A bird species has confirmed sightings in 10 different areas that correspond to its known habitat. The combined area of these 10 sites is 1000km^2. Biologists sample 10km^2 and find 20 individuals and so the population is estimated at 2000 individuals.

ELI5: What happens when I’m passing out after seeing blood or getting blood drained?

I know a few people with the same problem. It's called vasovagal syncope. "You faint because your body overreacts to certain triggers, such as the sight of blood or extreme emotional distress. It may also be called neurocardiogenic syncope. The vasovagal syncope trigger causes your heart rate and blood pressure to drop suddenly. That leads to reduced blood flow to your brain, causing you to briefly lose consciousness. Vasovagal syncope is usually harmless and requires no treatment. But it's possible you may injure yourself during a vasovagal syncope episode. Your doctor may recommend tests to rule out more serious causes of fainting, such as heart disorders." -source, Mayo Clinic

[LOTR] No, that doesn't work.

No plan to hide or protect the One Ring will work. It calls out; someone will always find it, or the person who was supposed to throw it into space *won't do it,* or whatever. Every time someone asks "But what if we did THIS with the ring?!" the world gets dumber.

It's also irrelevant. Sauron was winning by attrition, no one could stand against his forces in any drawn out conflict. Destroying the ring was the only way to win, hiding the ring, especially in ways which safely seal it away for long periods, do nothing to inconvenience his plan

[1984] The epilogue implies that The Party is no longer in power. What exactly caused this fall?

When reading *The Principles of Newspeak*, it is tempting to say it's referring to the Party in the past tense, but that would not necessarily be an accurate deduction. Instead, the passage only goes so far as to refer to Newspeak in the past tense. Admittedly, Newspeak was such an important aspect of Ingsoc that it's hard to see how one could continue to exist when the other does not, but remember the Party is not a monolithic, immutable entity, no matter how much it would like you to think so. The Party *does* change, it *does* adapt, and it *does* make adjustments and accommodations based on the current situation. For example, witness how Newspeak was gradually introduced to the populace over a period of decades, in a series of editions. Each edition was produced based on observations and feedback from the previous one. For another example, is Oceania at war with Eastasia or Eurasia? Therefore, the possibility that Oceania would abandon Newspeak and leave it in the past tense is not altogether unthinkable. Perhaps they replaced it with a newer version of Newspeak, one with such different grammatical and conceptual rules that it deserved its own title, eg Newnewspeak or Truespeak. Perhaps the Party managed to suppress speech entirely. Ultimately, the nature of the Party, where they control the present ergo control the past ergo control the future, make it so that accurate historical records are by definition impossible. Therefore, while it's certainly *possible* that the Party is no more, we cannot say for certain that this is the case. And if the Party truly does not exist any more, it is also impossible to say for certain what the causes of its downfall were. Oh, and as an interesting final note, *The Principles of Newspeak* was written in Oldspeak. Apparently someone managed to preserve the old tongue long enough to write this tract far in the future.

ELI5: Why do pills such as Paracetamol come in a nice number like 500mg, But others such as Aspirin come in numbers like 81mg? why not 80?

For some medications it's because they come in both micrograms and milligrams so they make one of them slightly off so people don't accidentally take 1000x the usual dose. Baby Aspirin comes in 81mg because it's 1/4 as much as normal Aspirin which is "5 grain" or 325mg.

CMV: Friendships are reciprocal, and you should only put into a friendship as much as you're going to get out of it

I had a discussion with someone recently, and we were talking about the nature of friendships. I am of the opinion that you should only put in as much effort into a friendship as the other party/parties are putting into it. For the sake of your own mental health, I don't think that it makes sense to be devoting a lot of time and effort to give emotional support to someone who isn't going to be able to return the favour, particularly when the friendship is just starting to develop. For someone who is a long time friend, I'd be more inclined to stick around through the tough times, but there isn't enough incentive for me to be a pillar of support to someone who is a new friend. I believe that at the end of the day, we only have enough mental capacity and time to care about a few individuals, and it isn't beneficial to us to be spending these resources on people who can't or won't reciprocate. This is also where I'd like to draw the distinction between reciprocation and transactions. Transactional relationships are ones where one or more people in the friendship are specifically looking to gain something out of the friendship. For example, if I were to make friends with someone who is taking the same classes as me in school specifically with the intention of being able to gain notes, but also being willing to offer academic help in return. There is an actual sense of obligation to the transactional friend to provide a certain service. Reciprocal relationships, on the other hand, are ones where multiple parties in the friendship willingly contribute to the relationship, not because they are forced to or bound by obligations, but simply because they appreciate the other person and they want to repay the favour as well. My opinion is that good friendships are reciprocal, and that both parties are going to be putting in as much time and effort as the other person. It's mutual care, not one-sided. The other side of this is a "sunshine and rainbows" type of friendship in which one person is not actually contributing to the friendship, but yet is gaining a lot of support and is draining the other person. The person who isn't getting anything out of it might stay in the relationship in the name of "friendship", but to me this is undesirable as it will take a toll on the person's mental health with no guarantee of ever getting any returns out of it. I think that people should not invest time into such friendships as there is no value to them for such a friendship. I'm open to seeing things a different way, CMV! EDIT: After getting a few responses I think it might be necessary to clarify my stand on the idea of transactional friendships. Instead of framing it as reciprocal versus transactional friendships, I am more of the idea of trying to frame the actual argument here as friendships in which you get as much as you give, versus friendships in which you are getting less than you give. Both transactional and reciprocal friendships would fall under the former.

What about when your friend is going through a bad time? Let’s say they just lost a family member to an early death. Surely they need you to support them extra for a while with no expectation of reciprocity. To turn friendship into a scoreboard watching game means friendships end when they are needed most.

CMV that bitcoin is a flash in the pan and in 5 years we will all laugh at the people who used them.

I get the feeling that bitcoin has inherent issues that will eventually come to bite all those who deal with them in the ass. Namely I think there is going to be a major supply issue as the mining difficulty skyrockets. I think there is also going to be an issue with bitcoin black holes as people lose bitcoins from hard drive failures, criminal confiscation, corruption, etc. Finally, it is my opinion that its absolute anonymity will be its downfall. By bypassing the banking system, liquidity could be a real issue for businesses and individuals, as proving financial records would be even more difficult, not to mention there would be no 'pool' of bitcoin as there are dollars/euros/whatever in banks with which to make loans. But mostly my thought is that it is a flash in the pan, and in 5 years they will hold almost no value as commercial enterprise turns away from bitcoin for more reliable currency. I should note, this extends to nearly every form of crypto currency I've seen. I haven't found one that I think will last more than a few years.

>proving financial records would be even more difficult This is thoroughly untrue. Every bitcoin transaction is very public; it's the most fundamental part of the protocol, really. It would be good for you to read up more on exactly how it works.

CMV: The Eric Garner case shows a major problem in our justice system, and shows that we need a major overhaul of how we choose to indite.

What happened to Eric Garner was a horrible tragedy. But I don't blame the NYPD for it. Occasionally a cop goes insane and does something like this. The NYPD commissioner seems to be on Garner's side, and many officers have said that what the police officer did was not protocol and was wrong. But the police can't know if an officer will do something that goes completely against his training. The truth is the NYPD has been very good in racial issues and keeping crime low. Stop and frisk may seem to be contrary to that, but that was a policy that told the police to go into poor (black) neighborhoods and frisk people. This was not a decision made by the police. The problem with the Garner case is the justices system's failure to indite Eric Garner's murderer. Pantaleo murdered Eric Garner. There isn't really any question about this. He did not follow police protocol and attacked a man with his hands in the air and killed him as he begged to breathe. Pantaleo deserves to go to trial, for at least manslaughter if not first degree murder. There is no reasonable doubt or any question of what happened like there was in the Micheal Brown case. With Micheal Brown there was a lack of evidence and conflicting reports, so we can't know and therefore can't prosecute. But in the Garner case there was no question. We know what happened. My only conclusion from this is that the grand jury had a majority of either incredibly racist people or people who were incredibly loyal to the police for no reason. I believe that to fix this problem we need to stop using grand juries to decide whether or not to indite. They have proven themselves to be a horrible tool. Instead we should use a panel of judges, or just go to trial immediately when the evidence is this overwhelming. (EDIT: maybe not go to trial immediately. My main call is for a change in the process. I do not necessarily have the change needed.) The reason I want my view changed is that I'd like the believe that our system isn't horribly unjust. But all evidence says that it is. _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[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)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

We already don't *really* use grand juries to indict. The grand jury is a puppet of the prosecutor. It's set up in a way that allows the prosecutor to get indictments (or non-indictments) pretty much at will. Imagine if you had a trial where only one side was allowed to present evidence and the threshold for guilt is "is there any evidence at all?" That is pretty much what a grand jury is, and the prosecutor's sole ability to present or withhold evidence from it is why it's basically the prosecutor's puppet.

ELI5: What makes scientists think that there is more than three dimensions?

And how is time considered the fourth dimension?

It's based on math. You need two dimensions to determine the location on a piece of paper, or plane. You need three dimensions to determine the position in space. the fourth dimension you can determine the position in space at any given time. What will blow your mind is getting you head around the fact that some scientist believe their are even MORE dimensions.

CMV: I think arguments against equal pay that are based on women's lower productivity are invalid.

"Pregnancy and periods reduce the value of women as workers by bringing down their productivity and in a capitalistic society its only fair if companies choose to pay them less than they pay men" is an argument Ive encountered many times while debating equal pay. Here is the best way to logically dismantle such arguments without making women seem like charity cases who just need society to do them this favour and pay them as much as men for the same work: It is true that periods and pregnancy reduce a person's productivity and value as a worker, but so do migraine, horniness, being fat, insomnia, having too many kids etc. So a person who thinks that women's periods and pregnancy should be taken into account when deciding their pay is also logically committed to supporting the idea that employers should examine each potential employee on the aforementioned attributes, predetermine their productivity and set their wage accordingly on an individual basis. However I very much doubt any sane person would take the extreme position that wages should be predetermined according to how fat a person is, how healthy he/she is, how many kids he/she has etc. Employers don't have the right to examine each potential employee to see what physical features of their's has the potential to inhibit productivity and pay all of them accordingly, therefore periods and pregnancy should not affect women's wages. Edit: spelling _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[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)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

>It is true that periods and pregnancy reduce a person's productivity and value as a worker, but so do migraine, horniness, being fat, insomnia, having too many kids etc. So a person who thinks that women's periods and pregnancy should be taken into account when deciding their pay This is where you're missing the point. There aren't any employers going "Well, we just hired Kate and Eric, but Kates probably going to get pregnant eventually, so start her off at 10K less" The wage difference comes from choices made in the career field, such as taking the time off during/after pregnancy, making sacrifices in ones career for family, etc. If Kate and Eric have been at the same company for 5 years, and Kate took a few months off after having a kid her second year while subsequently adjusting her focus to accommodate that child (not staying late, doctors appointments, less travel, etc.) you'd be hard pressed to come up with reasons why she deserves promotions or merit based pay raises compared to Eric, who either does not have a child or doesn't have to make the same sacrifices.

Last night, I was running my fingers through my blanket. I could hear crackling sounds, and when i saw from inside the blanket, I could see flashes of light. How and when does this phenomenon occur ?

I also noticed that more fingers I used, the bigger the area of the illumination was. Is this due to static electricity ?

It's static electricity. You're seeing the sparks from the discharges, they should look blue/white colored. If you have a carpet or fuzzy jacket you can make your own "lightning shows" in the dark by building up voltage and discharging it with another object.

Looking for good texts on the concept of *reciprocity* in social, cultural, or even commercial contexts. I have a few already, but I wanted to mine the great wisdom of /r/asksocialscience for more.

Thanks. I owe you one.

I presume you've already found Marcel Mauss' 'The Gift' and/or Marshall Sahlins' 'Stone Age Economics' for more general theory? Are there specific contexts/situations/societies that you are looking at?