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What was the earliest known relationship between early humans and wolves/dogs, and what did they both stand to gain from the relationship?

I’m not gonna do the fact-finding for you, but it was at least 10,000 years ago. The branching of wolves and dogs started with some wolves that weren’t as scared of humans as the other ones were. The brave ones lived closer to humans. They ate human garbage (bones and food scraps). They began to associate humans with easy food. Humans who weren’t scared of the wolves tolerated them hanging around because they didn’t bother them. They cleaned up their messes, and kept other, meaner predators away. Over time these benefits became more and more pronounced and humans actively fed wolves in order to keep them around as protectors. Then companions. And hunting partners. And utility animals. The friendlier and more cooperative wolves got more special treatment, and over generations they were bred into primitive dogs. Once the dog-human Bond was well established, selective breeding to achieve certain results began, and the oldest breeds were born.

ELI5: I read about a "Zip Bomb" today that is a zipped file that is only 42kb when compressed, but unzipped is 45.5 Petabytes. My question is how can so much information be compressed into such a small file size?

Imagine a file that's literally just 45.5 PB worth of 1s. Like in binary just 1111111111... etc It's really easy to compress that, yeah? You just say "45.5 PB worth of 1s" and you've got the exact same data in a compressed form. You want your zip bomb to look legitimate, though, so you alternate more than that so that the compressed form is, say, 42KB. Any useful data couldn't be so compressed.

[Harry Potter] Why Grindelwald told Voldemort where the Elder Wand is?

It happened in the movie

He knows Voldemort will figure it out eventually. Everyone knows that Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, so obviously he would be the one who ended up with his wand. The only reason Voldemort didn't figure it out already is because he's dismissed the possibility. Dumbledore having the wand all along doesn't make sense to him. He's known Dumbledore most of his life, they've dueled with neither side winning, and Dumbledore never gave any indication of having it. He's been told that the wielder of the wand is supposed to be undefeatable, so how could Dumbledore have beaten Grindelwald and taken it? Maybe Grindelwald didn't have it when they fought, so Voldemort goes to ask him where else it could be. So instead of lying, Grindelwald takes the opportunity to mock Voldemort for going all this way for nothing. Voldemort doesn't know anything about the Elder Wand, just that it's powerful and more power will help him defeat Potter's wand. He just barges in while ignoring the context of the story of the Deathly Hallows and Dumbledore and Grindelwald's history, and it's part of what gets him killed.

[Star Wars] What is one thing that should exist in the Star Wars universe, but doesn't?

Maybe kinetic bombardment? Taking from the scene in The Force Awakens where Chewie, Finn and Hann use Hyperspace until the last possible moment to get on Starkiller Base... I don't see why it isn't possible for one faction to loosely outfit an Asteroid with basic ship consoles and a hyperdrive, give it coordinates and program it to stop at a specific point and then blast directly into a planet at super-speeds. Then again, with how smart and independent some droids seem to be in the Star Wars Universe, whatever AI runs the programing for the Planet Cracker Asteroid would probably refuse, or turn on it's handlers.

[Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3] What happens to the Rings between stages?

Do they only exist for a finite amount of time? Do the animals he rescues take them? Do they get absorbed by Sonic? Where do they all go?

Specifically speaking to the games and not the movies - we know rings are used as a form of currency. The best guess is that after freeing a bucket of animals, who have been trapped for who knows how long, Sonic being the good guy as he is gives the animals his left over rings so they can get back on their feet.

ELI5: Why is the budget for a cartoonish CGI movie (toy story 3) higher than a realistic CGI movie (Pacific Rim)?

I just gave those as example but overall the costs are pretty equal and Pacific Rim looks very realistic and it was 190 million and toy story 3 was 200 million. I also looked up other realistic ones like Transformers Age of extiction (210million) and avatar (234 million). The last two are more expensive but still in the same ballpark. So why aren't they massively more expensive, they look like they took more time to make? Captain America Winter Soldier (170 million). EDIT- Thanks for all the explanations I've marked it as explained.

Think about it like this - in a movie like Pacific Rim if you need a car in a landscape shot you pick a place to shoot, gather your actors and crew, rent a car, and shoot it. In an animated movie you have to build the land, the road, the sky, the clouds, your characters, literally everything - then hire your actors to voice the part, pay technicians to make the characters be able to move, pay animators to make them move, this goes on and on... TL;DR: You literally have to build and move everything.

[Star Wars] Where did the name "Millenium Falcon" come from? Are there Earth like animals on this galaxy far far away?

In works that are still canon, we've seen; * Ducks on Naboo. * * Statues of Horses on Naboo (ty, yurkland) * Rats in Jabbas Dungeon on Tatooine. * Multiple species of snakes all over the swamps of Dagobah. We've heard reference to other animals in canon works, like when 3P0 yells out, 'Die, Jedi Dogs' during the battle on Geonosis. In direct-to-video works of questionable accuracy, the Ewoks were seen to have horses, hamsters, honeybees, chickens, ferrets, fleas, ponies, barn owls, ravens, wild wolves, and really low production values. In various novelizations, colloquial mentions have been recorded of mineshaft canaries, domesticated cats, hermit crabs, pandas, rabbits (for pulling out of hats as part of live entertainment acts), sharks, pigs, and whooping cranes, but most-if-not-all of those should likely be regarded more as metaphorical translations of colloquial phrases than as actual exact species matches.

CMV: Residential Real Estate Holding groups need to be banned.

I understand that housing supply and city planning can be quite a complicated mess and at the end of the day is a necessary evil. However the amount of properties being purchased and rented at exorbitant rates is ridiculous. This is only works because of the artificial scarcity in most areas. For example about 5 out of every 6 rentals in our area is owned by a company. Some of these have even gotten the reputation of application fee scams due to the fact that they are empty year round despite this being a pretty hot renters market. I support free business but this is slowly leading to a housing price out issue. Almost $3,000/mo for a 3bd home is ridiculous. However since most of the properties around here are owned by these companies there really isn't much else to do if you want to live in this area unless you pay $2,000+ for an apartment and deal with apartment living. (Don't even get me started on apartments.) Can someone CMV and show me if I'm viewing this wrong?

I don't think you're wrong, but I'd say the core issue is the shortage of housing being exploited by these REITs, rather than the REITs themselves. We should make it easy to build dense housing: no more single family detached only zoning. All residential housing can be dense residential. Also get rid of things like architectural style review; we're building housing not a sculpture park. Finally, impose a tax on unoccupied dwellings. This should lessen the shortage being exploited.

ELI5: The Khmer Rouge.

I don't really understand what happened, can anyone break it down for me?

I fielded an answer to a "Why was the Khmer Rouge so bad/What was the Cambodian genocide?" question a few weeks ago. It follows: > Wow, where to begin. The Khmer Rouge was a communist revolutionary government in Cambodia in the mid/late 70's. It was founded by a group of largely western-educated Cambodians who entirely rejected concepts of the free market and individual liberties. Instead, they attempted to construct an entirely self-sustaining nation through a rigid regime of top-down social engineering. This included the abolishment of banking, finance, currency, and some religions. People living in urban areas were (often forcibly) moved to the rural areas of the country to work in agriculture (again, often against their will). It was a bold and frankly inhuman stab at what could conceivably be called a "classless" society. > The genocide came in a number of forms, which included but were not limited to: > * **Famine.** The urban workers relocated to the fields knew nothing about agriculture, so land was not nearly cultivated to its full potential, resulting in mass famine almost immediately after the regime took control. > * **Disease.** The Khmer Rouge believed that the country should be autonomous in all respects, including medicine. If the country did not have the resources to produce a certain drug, that drug was entirely unavailable (at least to the non-ruling class). As a result, thousands died to common and preventable diseases. > * **Execution and reeducation.** Violations of the regime's anti-capitalist tenets were generally punishable by death. If you hoarded food, you could be executed. If you harvested wild crops, you could be executed. If you traded for a profit, you could be executed. Naturally, if you ever spoke out (publicly or privately) against the regime or its principles, you could be executed. Needless to say, corporal punishment was doled out without judicial process. Additionally, torture and execution were doled out on those suspected of being an enemy of the regime. This included anyone with material ties to the former government, many people with college-level educations, individuals of other ethnic backgrounds (including Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai), virtually any practicing religious person, anyone unable to grow their assigned crops (at quotas well in excess of those achievable before the regime took power), almost anyone who spoke English or French, and even people who simply wore glasses. > In short, it was an attempt to reboot civilization (sans capitalism) and establish a society without wealth or class. As explained above, the Khmer Rouge did not tolerate non-believers well. As with many genocides, it didn't start that way. But things got out of hand quickly. **tl;dr:** Western educated dictator class sought to completely rewrite civilization and invent a classless society. Mass famine and genocide ensued.

[Black Adam] Why doesn't Superman or Justice Society save Khandaq before Black Adam awakens?

Because to the rest of the world, Intergang was the legitimate authority of Khandaq. You know how people say history is written by the victors? Well, Intergang was winning, by a lot. They have the Eternium to fight off outsiders, and the money to bribe the ones they can't fight. The JSA doesn't maintain their legitimacy by overthrowing governments, and Superman isn't in the business of deposing anyone. They might have gotten involved if someone had explained to them what was going on; but the situation clearly wasn't high on Amanda Waller's priority list until Black Adam starting throwing tanks and helicopters around.

Iridium and similarly hard metals are difficult to machine due to extreme work hardening. Is "grinding" based machining also affected?

I understand how drilling and traditional milling would be made essentially impossible due to rapid work hardening, but couldn't a "grinding" approach be used to get around this? Is there something I am not understanding about work hardening? Does work hardening affect materials at such a "small-scale" as sanding away tiny pieces of the material?

Iridium can be machined, it's just a lot harder to do than other materials and there are much eaisier ways to form it. If you want to cut it with an endmill you are going to want a properly coated tool that has a hard coating capable of handling high temperatures - depending on your setup you might be able to do it with PCD or AlTiN tool. Most machinists would get pretty pissy if you tried to get them to run the job though, the tools just won't last that long and it will take a lot of babying, you might have to swap tools regularly before failure in the middle of a job, use very low speed/feeds, etc. You can grind it, that's not a problem. Best way to cut it is probably EDM. Milling is only the "worst" option, not impossible. BTW grinding is not an ideal solution because the grinding tool will wear over time and it is hard to hold tolerances. Grinding can be done very precisely but will often use in-situ measuring machines to machine-measure the surface, which is costly but for example one of the best ways to form a complex lens.

[Marvel] If Daredevil never went blind, how much of an impact would it have on the rest of the Marvel universe(s)?

If he had super senses, and was never blind? He may become something like Wolverine or Batman, but without being trained by Stick, so he'd just be learning on the go how to use his powers, and he wouldn't be the profecient martial artist he is. He'd probably die his first night out, or just go a different route to crime fighting. If he just never became a hero, or got any powers? That power gap would almost certainly be filled. He moved in, because *someone* needed to. If he didn't Elecktra might, maybe some new Hero would pop up, the possibilities are endless.

ELI5: how did scientists discover different hormones in our body given that hormones are just tiny particles and how did they study it to know their purpose?

Hormones are secreted from different parts of the body, if those parts are damaged or removed the hormones they produce are no longer made. One of the earliest observations of this was in the 1840’s when scientists noticed animals lacking testes had different sex characteristics than other males, and ultimately discovered testosterone. Other hormones where discovered in similar ways. Scientists noticed that removing the pancreas from a dog will give it type 1 diabetes, they then realized that grinding it up dog pancreas, purifying it and injecting it into people with diabetes relieved their symptoms (and was a big deal as diabetes used to be an agonizing way to die, the only treatment was starvation). Adrenaline/epinephrine was isolated from the adrenal gland (they sit above your kidneys) and was incredibly useful for its ability to constrict blood vessels, particularly to stop bleeding during precise/fine surgical procedures.

CMV: the search for objectivity has been marginalized, and that's a dangerous fact.

First, let me argue that the search for objectivity has indeed been squandered. After World War 2, the advertising industry began to discover and explore the fruits of psychological research. Its goal: presenting reality in a skewed way, designed to entice people to buy products. It was the first serious dent in the armor of objectivity. Next, the 1960s and 1970s broke many myths about the infallibility of authority. The Man, we learned, had been lying to us. The undeniability of that fact (think Nixon) made an entire generation deeply skeptical about any kind of authority, and raised fundamental questions about what is true or not. But it went beyond that. Exasperation with a stale political system and an obsequious media led to activism: groundroots campaigns of people coming together to fight for a cause and to bring about change. When confronted with more apathy among the populace than they had hoped for, activists became convinced that the problem was not that *their cause* was wrong, but that *their presentation* was: the opposing side was just better at using lies and tricks to keep the general population indifferent and docile. So in response, activists became adept at applying the same tools and tricks, perfected in advertising: play to people's emotions, manipulate them psychologically, in short: propaganda. What was objectively true took a back seat to what you could convince people of. Then the political right saw the wildly popular success of this approach and began applying it to their own ideologies. They themselves began to present patently delusional statements ("Evolution is false" or "Climate change does not exist") as perfectly valid talking points in the public debate. The political left couldn't call them out on it; they had abandoned objective truth long ago. But the worst offenders in the war on objectivity are the media. They may not have been paragons of truthfulness in the past, but with cost-cutting, a 24-hour news cycle, pressure from their media conglomerate owners and, above all, the blurring line between media and entertainment, media outlets put the final nail in the coffin. They traded objectivity, which requires hard work and makes for bad ratings, for impartiality, which is a nice word for playing referee in the verbal equivalent of a pro wrestling match. People instictively prefer to watch conflict, drama and horror, so let's give the people what they want. Which brings us to today. Objective truth has become a quaint, old-fashioned concept at every level of society. Individually, we present ourselves cautiously and with careful planning on social media, making sure not to damage our "personal brand." Collectively, we're a set of hive minds: everything we read or hear that we disagree with is roundly dismissed. In order to do this, we invariably interpret every human action as having a hidden agenda: what's the angle? Is it about money, power, fame? Scientists, politicians, journalists: in our modern world, all of them are suspect, and none of them act without ulterior motives. It's become very hard to convince us that someone could actually sacrifice their own personal interest for what is objectively the truth or the right thing to do. The few people who do that are suckers who are being taken advantage of. When we meet a person we disagree with, we grow suspicious, not curious. We retreat more and more into our echo chambers, to avoid the danger of hearing or seeing an opposing view, for fear they might be right. We're polarized, like little children unwilling to apologize or see reason. And it's no wonder we're so defensive: the vast majority of opinions we encounter *are* deliberately manipulative: every Facebook post, every ad, every political soundbite, every news story has been carefully crafted to change our opinion, to win us over, regardless of what is true. Now, the typical reaction to this kind of rant is to say that objective truth is an illusion anyway. Even if there is, on a philosophical level, something that can be called "objective truth", us humans can never hope to experience it, because our observations, preconceptions and so on cloud our judgment. And of course, this is objectively true. But read my title again: the *search for* objectivity has been marginalized. The problem is that we no longer *care* about objective truth, and revert instead to the Dude's mantra: "That's just, like, your opinion, man." The second part of my view is that this loss of objectivity is dangerous. Numerous radical, objectively false viewpoints are demonstrably damaging to society. The measles are back in full swing, because too many people believe that vaccination causes autism. The West is woefully behind when it comes to controlling climate change, because too many people believe that it's a myth. Those are just random examples. But in a more general sense, people don't know who to believe anymore and follow whoever appeals to their emotion or who shouts the loudest. The validity of your claims is now measured only by the size of your gaffes or the quality of your soundbites. Donald Trump is a popular candidate because he's brazen, loud and unapologetic. No matter how ludicrous or unsubstantiated his claims are, he will simply never embarrass himself: he's incapable of embarrassment. That simple quality is a big part of why he's the leading candidate for the GOP today. If The Donald makes president, it'll be the final victory over objectivity. Please reddit, 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!*

We didn't "lose" objectivity - it was never there. For proof that idea, look at 19th century snake oil salesmen. Put whatever nonsense you want into a bottle, tell a crowd of people that it will cure all their ailments and collect their cash. P.T. Barnum's often cited quote is particularly relevant: "There's a sucker born every minute." Humans are terrible judges of objective truth. They *always* have been. Evaluating anything on it's factual merits and not based on one's emotional predispositions is really hard. It takes a lot of mental effort. Preconceived notions and personal biases are like concrete: once it hardens, you're stuck with it. History is replete with examples of people being subject to their own ignorance or hubris and suffering as a result. But we move on regardless because, for all that, the power of society to overcome pockets of people being ignorant is formidable. Remember when there was a not-insignificant number of people who were freaking out because of cell phone radiation? Those people are all but gone now. The vaccine thing will go away in time as well. People will gravitate towards the spectacle. They always have. This is a known property of society, and it's something we've learned to deal with.

What would be the economic viability of an independent Quebec?

Hello, I was genuinely curious how economically viable an independent Quebec would be. There are some who say that independence would be an economic disaster (naturally those who are against it) and those that say it would be business as usual (those are who for it). Has the evidence shown anything for either side?

I think brexit is a decent analogy for business as usual case on a smaller scale. Quebec (assuming it didn’t shrink substantially) would be similar in size (gdp wise) to Israel, Denmark, Ireland and South Africa so comparing it to Canada as a whole would probably be unwise. Those 4 are developed (not using OACD measures, colloquially developed) yet flawed in some ways economies that rely heavily on some sort of national strength but can’t do everything so cooperating with other nations is important. Oil would be a major missing piece IMO. Like brexit, it would be a disaster for some industries and a boon to others. Establishing a currency would be painful and reliance and cooperation with the BOC would likely be important. Brexit is a good analogy as we see that the union provided a value greater than the sum of its parts.

cmv: Pro-life is a violation of human rights and the decision by courts/government on the baby's life is a overstepping of authority unless the baby can be considered as public property.

Hello, I know this post is going to be bombarded with religious people but the decision of abortion/ no Abortion solely lies with the mother as she is the one carrying it and is in her natural right to the decision regarding her baby. This can be compared to as the right to oxygen, food and water as these are the natural needs of a human being. Secondly, the government/courts must have the authority over the baby to make any decision regarding it but since the baby acts as a private property, technically the government/courts cannot interfere in the matters related to private property as that would be a violation of their jurisdiction.

Humans cannot be owned as property by anyone, including their mothers...in the US there’s ample precedence for that. That being said, there’s also precedence for a government body stripping parental rights in instances where say, a parent is abusive. There are plenty of good pro-choice arguments out there, but the “mom has full domain over the child” is just simply not one of them.

What reason do I put to recommend a reviewer for a journal paper?

I'm going to submit my first journal paper this week, and have got to recommend some reviewers. However, what reason do I put for recommending them? I can't leave it blank, so what are they looking for? I want to put something like "expert in the field" or "knowledgable on topic area", but this seems so vague it's almost pointless. Anyone ever had to do this?

>I want to put something like "expert in the field" or "knowledgable on topic area", but this seems so vague it's almost pointless. That's more-or-less what they're looking for, so it's not really pointless.

What limitations are currently stopping us from collecting and using lightning bolts?

Is it the inability to quickly route and store the varied amount of voltage and or amperage?

Engineering difficulties aside, from a practical standpoint, a lightning bolt has energy in the range of a few megajoules to possibly a gigajoule. Even if this could be collected and used, it's about the same amount of energy that a large power plant delivers in one second, so even if it were possible, harvesting lightning wouldn't contribute very much energy to the electrical grid in the long run.

[Warhammer 40k] What do the Custodes think of the Imperial Cult and Emperor worship in general?

With the Emperors explicit order to not be worshipped why did the Custodes even allow the fomation of the Imperial Cult and the Ecclesiarchy? And with some many things in the Imperium revolving around the worship of the Emperor from the billions of pilgrims to Terra and to the Age of Apostasy, wouldn't the Custodes stand against them? For as the Emperors companions one would think that they would honor him in that way too.

The Custodes don't involve themselves with anything outside of the Imperial palace. After the Emperor was struck down the Custodes went into a period of mourning that still lasts to this day; never leaving the palace at all. They personally may not worship the Emperor but their only concern is the protection of the Emperor, not enforcing any sort of decrees or law.

What is the current accepted risk of Covid-19 infection through fomite transmission?

I apologize in advance because I know this has been asked before, but I would just like some clarification if someone is willing to give it. I have read the \[CDC update that came out earlier this year which detailed how the virus is spread primarily through respiratory droplets and not surface transmission, which said the chance was around 1 in 10,000 for every infected touch\]([https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-research/surface-transmission.html](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-research/surface-transmission.html)). After doing a little more digging though, I saw that \[some of the studies tested outside objects, like traffic light buttons\]([https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00966](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00966)). I'm wondering then, is the risk really considered that much higher without accounting for environmental factors like wind? The reason I ask is because I work at a grocery store that has basically done away with some of the early Covid safety precautions of last year. I go about my day touching self checkout screens, money, and even produce likely hundreds of times a day. I wash my hands frequently and use hand sanitizer a lot as well, but am I still putting people at risk?

Fomite transmission does not appear to be a significant factor in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Some of the early data showed prolonged detectability on some surfaces , but this does not necessarily translate to infectability. This is a very labile virus, with a lipid coat that doesn’t do well outside of its host. Having said that, if you were infected, snotted into your hand, touched something plastic and then your customer touched it and stuck their stupid finger in their nose, it could definitely happen. So hand washing and not putting our fingers in our mouths, noses, and eyes is a very effective method of preventing this, and all kinds of other infections. Thank you for being concerned over the safety of your customers. We appreciate it!

ELI5: What makes days feel like they're moving faster than others?

Like, I've noticed some days just feel faster than others whether or not i'm actually doing anything. Why is that?

This can depend on how many things we're focusing on or dealing with but is also highly subjective Fundamentally the more new things (or different kinds of things) we're focusing on means our brains pay less attention to the passage of time If we're focused on a single thing then our brain pays more attention to the passage of time Another aspect is how 'known' a task or action is, if your brain has done something many times then it is not working to lay down new pathways and is left to free associate, this can cause time to seem to pass quickly as we're not focusing on the passage of time. Of course if you are thinking about time you will notice it, if you're having fun or concentrating or very busy then time will seem to pass more quickly as you haven't thought about it This is all theory, we don't know exactly why

[Discworld]About the Luggage.

I know it's made from sentient/sapient pearwood, but why does it have teeth and a tongue? Also, where do it's legs come from? And why does it have a gender? One would imagine it was just a lump of wood magically brought to some odd kind of a life... It has made children with a female Luggage, so it clearly has a gender and some kind of reproductive organs (i don't want to know) I haven't seen these questions answered in the books (granted, i haven't read quite all of them, i haven't read Raising Steam, some of the Tiffany books, and i haven't had a chance to read the supplementary science of Discworld books), so if they are, i'm sorry.

*Cracks her knuckles* Right, I've been reading these books obsessively for the last 10 years. Here's where it pays off. *Ahem*. The Luggage is the magical result of a large wooden chest made out of sapient pearwood. This is the most intelligent, malevolent tree on the Disc, and will only grow in areas of dangerously high raw magic such as the sites of magical battles during the time of the Dark Emperor (who was a sourcerer and therefore a source of raw magic). The Luggage is, as a result, a multidimensional middle-finger to the entirety of logic and reason. It's produced from a substance that's so far down the end of the probability curve it's approaching normality from the other side, and as a practical upshot of this it's also massively influenced by belief. For example, Rincewind is always faintly suspicious that it can stare you down when it doesn't have eyes. However, the fact that he believes it can means that it will, in the future, continue to be able to do so. People believe that something so ridiculously and almost cartoonishly malevolent as the Luggage needs to have big, tombstone teeth and a mahogany tongue, and therefore it will do. Plus, as Ponder Stibbons likes to explain to Archchancellor Ridcully when he doesn't really want to have to explain how reading invisible writings works or similar... "it's all done by magic Archchancellor".

Eli5: why new recruits going into the US military are required to have their wisdom teeth removed?

I can't find a good answer online.. You guys have any insight?

The won't force you to get them out prior to basic, unless they're in such terrible shape they need to out due to medical necessity. I'd recommend doing it prior to going in if they're likely to need to come out anyway. Far better than to recover at home in familiar surroundings than to be recovering on an unfamiliar base with doctors that aren't likely to go stronger than Motrin for pain.

ELI5: Why do they add the letter T, then plus of minus, before saying how many seconds until a rocket launches

As others have said, T is the time of launch. What nobody mentioned yet is why times are given as T minus X. The launch takes months to plan. They don't know what day it will be, let alone what time. But they do know that they must (for example) test the engines at T minus 10 and run certain checks after launch at T plus 20. So all the plans talk about T minus and T plus. When they get a day and time for launch, that plan doesn't change because everyone knows what to do at T minus 10. Nobody thinks of it as 11:50. And what if there's a delay? You can't rewrite everyone's schedule. But you can say "we are now delayed. We are now at T minus 60 again". Everyone knows exactly where they are in their duties.

[Arrival] How did humanity used the alien language to advance the human civilization after the events of arrival?

Costello said they would need humanity's help after 3000 years, so if humanity is going to help them, humanity must have been technologically very advanced civilization after 3000 years (even better than that of aliens).Now the technology the aliens already had was incomprehensible to humans. So why none of the visions of Dr. Louise showed noticable advancement in technology?

Why should the aliens need humanity's technology to help them? Maybe it's our philosophical viewpoints. Maybe we breed faster than them, and they need soldiers. Maybe in 3,000 years we develop an inoculation against the baby shark meme that has infested their society from their first contact.

ELI5: What is the difference between BMP, JPG, PNG, and TGA photo formats.

I was looking through my FRAPS settings and I was curious as to the difference between the formats and which one would be the best to use.

Note: this is a simplified explanation. This is because this thread is in ELI5. BMP stores your image as data in a grid. It essentially stores information as X1, Y1: blue. X2, Y1: blue. X3, Y1, red. It (normally) has no compression at all and takes up a huge amount of space on disk. TGA works similarly to BMP, but also supports more features. Most important is the ability to store "transparency" - that is, how "much" of a color shows as opaque vs how much it lets whatever is "behind" it bleed through. This format takes even more space than BMP in normal situations, but can support compression (it usually doesn't). PNG is similar to BMP and TGA in that it is "lossless". If you save your image as a PNG, it will look EXACTLY the same in the future. No data will be lost. Like TGA, it also supports transparency. The key difference is that it's a more modern format and is always compressed. This means it will take SUBSTANTIALLY less space than BMP or TGA under default settings. JPG is the "lossy" image storage format. Saving an image as a JPG will always lose data - even if you already have a JPG, and change only a small item - after re-saving it, you will lose more data. It works by telling the computer "I want an image that looks like this". The computer then decides what the best approximation of that image would be to the human eye, and how best to save that without taking up too much space. It then saves the approximation to disk. This means the image will ALWAYS lose data. To summarize: * BMP has its uses. But typically most people do not want to use this format unless you need it specifically for a programming reason. * TGA used to be the "de-facto" lossless format years ago. It currently takes much more space than PNG and isn't worth your time unless you need it specifically for a programming reason. * PNG is the best format to use if you MUST have "lossless" image saving. Since it's compressed differently from JPG, it can actually beat JPG in size AND quality when the image contains large blocks of exact solid colors. It also is the only good choice among these 4 for transparent images used on web pages. * JPG is the best format to use for photos if size is a concern. It offers the best balance of speed, usability, and quality for images which come from a photographic source and have many real-life incongruities which are otherwise indistinguishable to the naked eye.

CMV: The movie Primer was unnecessarily confusing and should be remade

I really enjoyed the movie "Primer", although like most people I didn't understand what just happened the first time I watched it. The things that were great * The plot. * The acting\- so natural and not overdramatic * The time machine, and its effects, which were really cool and well thought out So, now that I've gone through and figured out what the plot even is, I've come to the conclusion that 1. its not actually that hard to understand what happened once i looked at the timeline charts online 2. The problem is in the movies execution, the plot is not inherently too confusing for mainstream 3. that this movie is a \*great\* candidate for a remake which more clearly explained things while keeping the plot exactly the same Consider the movie "Memento" (which, obviously, is not a fair comparison because memento is a big budget hollywood movie and Primer is an indie on like a 10k budget, but go with it). The premise of memento could easily be incomprehensible, but instead it was easy for mainstream audiences to get. Memento deliberately invoked confusion in the audience to help us empathize with the main character, but took great pains to avoid confusion otherwise\- for example, using b&w vs color to separate the two converging timelines, showing us the beginning/end of each scene twice so we would make the connection, etc. Primer is confusing unintentionally, and in the wrong ways. If the plot is complex the editing should be crystal clear, and it isnt. I often found myself unsure if Abe or Aaron was talking\- in other scenes (such as when Mr Granger shows up) the fast paced cuts made me have to rewind and rewatch what should have been a very simple scene (Abe and Aaron are planning to create a paradox, instead Granger arrives from the future to stop them and then collapses) The final third, full of twists and reveals one after another, is inherently hard to follow and requires the audience to pay attention. This is a time when the action should have been slowed down, and the twists over\-explained. Instead the action sped up and half the plot points were implied in passing. This film is only 80 minutes long\- it needed another half hour of runtime. For some reason the beginning when they were building the machine is very deliberately paced but the final act is so breakneck its literally incomprehensible to most first\-time viewers? Weird pacing choice Therefore, I think Primer is perfect for a remake, either by a different director or by the same director with more experience and a bigger budget.

I would say it is editted in a confusing matter deliberately to illustrate how confusing daily time travel will eventually get. It's an obvious choice by the creator because you can mention the difference in pacing yourself in your initial statement. The whole point of the movie is time travel in practice is never going to be as cut and dry and easy to understand as Hollywood films make it out to be- and your suggestion is for them to make the film just like other Hollywood movies- thereby totally neutering its message.

ELI5: How does mopping work?

Okay, you have a bucket of water and by immersing the mop in the water then rubbing it on the ground, then putting it in the bucket and repeating somehow the dirt is transferred from the floor into the bucket, even as the water gets dirtier and dirtier. How does this actually work? Is it some form of arcane magic? o\_O

Water is actually really "sticky". The dirt sticks to the water more than it sticks to the floor. Even if the water keeps getting dirtier, the dirt can't "unstick" from the water to go back to the floor. Adding soap makes the water even "stickier" to help pick up even more.

ELI5: We can’t drink spoiled milk but we can consume butter milk, yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese etc?

Why can we not drink raw milk or expired milk but we can consume various forms of milk mixed with bacteria/cultures?

The primary difference is the bacteria present when the milk is spoiling. Some are toxic and cause the milk to go bad. Some are not toxic and produce the yogurts and cheeses you know and love. When they make cheese for example everything is carefully sterilized first so the only bacteria present are the cheese cultures that are added. In your fridge there are all types of bacteria and the bad ones cause your milk to become unfit for consumption.

CMV: Eileen Gu is a competitive sports traitor in terms of nationalism.

Important edit up front: There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about the point I am making. To make thise completely simple. Within a "nationalistic perspective and framework", if she is competing for China to benefit China and "grow the sport there" while growing up in, training, and planning to live in the USA then she is betraying the USA to benefit China. As opposed to someone who moves to another country to benefit themselves but tries to grow the sport in their own country by sponsoring athletes there or doing training seminars etc. Imagine a reverse scenario that could be possible. A Chinese table tennis player grows up in China, trains in China and plans to live in China...but competes for the USA...and tries to grow the sport in the USA as opposed to in China Edit: After reading a comment that says that she was sponsored financially by Chinese backing since she was 9 years old. Then depending on how much the backing she got was intended for Chinese national interests, and how much of her knowledge and training came from America then Eileen Gu is essentially a mole within a "nationalistic framework" of thought.

In order to be a "traitor," you have to assume she owes some measure of loyalty to the US. In particular, she needs to have some special duty to "grow the sport" in the US that she is breaching by doing it in China instead. Can you explain what that duty is and where it comes from?

[40K/DC] Superman lands on Holy Terra

So, instead of landing in smallville, Kansas. SSuperman's craft lands on Holy Terra in the Dark age of technology, how does this affect events leading up to the 41st millennium?

In all likelihood, he'd have been taken in by the Emperor and used as part of the geneseed for the Primarchs assuming he found out about him. Otherwise, you just have normal Superman in Grimdarksville.

ELI5: What is the true difference between Crackers/hackers and Script Kiddies?

Hackers, in the classical sense, are a lot like a good baker. They can work from scratch without directions, know what they're doing and why, and can adapt to different things if they don't get the result they expected. Script kiddies are like someone following a cookie recipe off a bag of chocolate chips. They have to follow the directions exactly and won't know how to fix it if things don't come out right.

ELI5: Why do we produce tears when we are sad?

Emotional tears are different from reflexive tears (tears that come from smokey rooms, cutting onions, etc.). When you cry because emotions, it releases a hormone that causes you to feel less stressed after you have cried. This is also why we cry when we are in pain or extremely frustrated. There are also some evolutionary psychologists who think that emotional tears gave our predecessors a leg up, as it served as a cue when somebody was emotionally distraught. This would help the tribe quickly identify somebody who was in need and help them out however they needed.

[Truman Show]Since the show ended we, the Studio have been using the dome, the largest structure in the world for tour groups. We are going to lock a big tour group inside while tricking them into thinking a nuclear war happened and the air outside is deadly. What should we name this new show?

I don't think the name is what you should be worried about. Unlike Truman, these people will have families. They'll fight back a lot more than people who are worried about a guy they saw on TV being treated badly.

CMV: If being vegan were so great and natural, vegan food wouldn’t include mock meat, milk, cheeses and the like.

I understand that being vegan for religious or health reasons is absolutely a thing. However, a common track for vegans is about environmentalism and how humans were made to be vegan/vegetarian. If that were true, why are we so preoccupied with creating vegan versions of products that non-vegans eat? It’s not to be inclusive, since most non-vegans wouldn’t enjoy e.g. a vegan cheese. Doesn’t eating vegan versions of non-vegan foods just perpetuate the idea that veganism is less natural than the alternative, harder to maintain and on the fringes of society?

The thing that mock animals products are designed to address is the cultural and mental element of meat eating. It's kind of like quitting smoking - you can just go cold turkey (in the vast majority of cases this never works) or you can incrementally achieve your goal by switching from cigarettes to vapes to nicotine patches and then finally quitting.

[General]When it comes down to the core 'Science' in Science Fiction, which universe has the greatest integrity in its fictional physics and application?

I don't want to exclude iterations of 'magic' from this, but it seems when it comes to most instances that have it magic is simply an unexplained, or vaguely explained, thing that isn't questioned. This could also be applied in same aspect to far off science fiction wherein everything works because its just 'technology.'

A lot of Michael Crichton's books have at least some foundation in real world theories and possibilities. Some of the books are simply conversations about the implications of a new technology that just happen to be set in a thrilling narrative.

[DC] Has Child Services ever investigated Bruce Wayne?

I imagine Bruce's sons fighting criminals every night would leave them with bruises, black eyes, bloody noses, and so on. These would probably be seen by their classmates and/or teachers at whatever schools they attend, and people would naturally assume that Bruce might be abusive to them. So with all that, wouldn't the authorities and Child Services start to get suspicious and want to give Bruce and his home a closer look?

He's really, really rich and connected (specifically providing a large chunk of the polices funding and equipment) in a city that is really, really corrupt. No, the authorities have no interest in giving Bruce and his home a closer look.

[judge dredd] what is the mortality rate of judges

With how much violent crime there is I would think high but I am curious if there training and equipment makes up for it. Thanks for your time

If you count the time they are performing the "Long Walk" bringing law to those outside mega-cities when they are technically retired, the mortality rate is virtually 100%. Judge Dredd mentions that most Judges don't live long enough to take the Long Walk, so even discounting that phase of the career it is very high.

Why do biofilms form? What is the mechanism bacterium use to communicate with each other in such a situation?

I thought prokaryotes were just a nucleoid and some ribosomes contained in a cell wall. When they form a biofilm, what the heck is going on? After taking courses in biology, I came across this strange phenomenon. I've got a rudimentary understanding of cell biology, but I'm still confused as to how such simple structures as prokaryotes can perform hive mind actions like forming a biofilm.

Quorum sensing would be the correct term here. A bacterium can detect the presence of other nearby bacteria because they secrete a ligand. This chemical signal is receive by the sorounding bacteria, and depending on the concentration of this signal, different actions are taking. This type of activity is also exhibited when bacteria form single layer formations. Let me know if you need a more detailed explanation of how bacteria communicate chemically.

[Men in Black] So since the agents are named after letters (Agent J, etc.), does that mean that there are only 26 active agents at one time? And what about other countries - does the Mexico MIB have an Agent Ñ?

There are 26 *high level* agents, each with a single letter code name. These are the agents with a large amount of autonomy and respect, the best of the best. They are the ones that get the "world is about to end" missions. A single letter agent can grab any other agent and order him to fetch a glass of chocolate milk and it would happen no question. Then there are up to 676 secondary agents with double letter codes. They're the ones who deal with an alien that needs to be served a fine for an expired human suit, or other non-emergency grunt work. Double letter agents will occasionally get teamed up with single letter agents. This is a sign that they may be being groomed for higher levels, and when a single letter agent retires or is killed this is the pool they pull the replacement from. Contrary, a double letter may often get assigned slime vacuum duty or sitting at a desk at intake customs. This is a sign they're going nowhere. There was an agent that was recruited directly to single letter status, without having to put in the time as double letter, but that was a unique case and the agent that recruited him was the most respected agent ever so had a lot of leeway. The MiB division that operates out of America was the first and set many of the precedents, so generally other countries follow their lead and stick to 26 letters from the English alphabet, though that's not always the case. For example, MiB Russia has 32 single letter agents with Cyrillic letter names. MiB China has 25 single letter agents with pinyin characters, though there are grumblings at the "Westernization" of their agency. Source: please look into this light to see the source

[Star Wars] Would Palpatine have punished Krennic or Tarkin in any way for the Death Star if they survived, since they were both somewhat responsible for it's destruction ?

Krennic absolutely. He willfully aided and abetted the spies who ran off with the plans of the Death Star and designed the thing to be vulnerable in the first place. His death would have likely not been quick and would probably have been shown to the next engineering team as ‘encouragement.’ Tarkin probably would have walked away alive, albeit likely sidelined or retired. Ultimately Tarkin was following the doctrine he designed for the Emperor and so skillfully instituted across the galaxy when the Death Star exploded. He had successfully tracked down the main rebel headquarters and was about to crush it with unspeakable force, demonstrating the overwhelming power of the Empire and securing its security for years to come. Then some teenager managed to blow up his battle station due to the aforementioned espionage. Nobody was expecting that.

ELI5: Why do search engines tell you how long the search took?

Honestly, they're kind of bragging to show you how good/fast/awesome they are. There is no other reason; it might be interesting to a very small segment of the population, but it's more about people going "Wow, 20 billion results in 0.02 seconds!"

ELI5: Where do illegal drug chemists get the skills to make hard drugs such as meth or krokodil?

It doesn't really take skill; all you need is a "recipe" and the necessary equipment. Discovering new compounds to get people high is where it takes skill. That's more the purview of designer drug manufacturers than meth cookers.

ELI5: What is the difference between Visa, Mastercard and a credit card and how do the way of payments differ?

Visa and Mastercard are both companies that facilitate electronic payments between consumers using a card, merchants, and banks. Mastercard issues credit cards (a card that works like a small loan, that you normally pay off by the end of the month or accrue interest) and also debit cards (a card that works more like cash, in that it immediately takes the money out of your bank account). VISA technically does not issue cards, but rather licenses their name to financial institutions like your bank or credit union, and facilitates the transaction.

eli5:Why does buying in bulk make an item cheaper?

Why do buying 1000 apple cost cheaper than buying one apple? Edit: ok i should add on a little, lets say one apple cost u $1 from buying it from your farmer supplier and u are selling $1.2 each, do u think its worth it to sell it at $1 per apple for some guy to clear 100 apple at a go?

Well, that example is not quite accurate. I'd say buying a thousand apples would be cheaper *per apple* than buying a single one's price. This is due to less packaging, more efficient for the seller than selling individually and hoping they don't go bad and to waste, etc. Economy of scale

[Avatar: The Last Airbender] How does combustion-bending work?

All bending works by the focusing of chi, which is aided by physical motion. The very best benders don't rely on these movements to the same extent as younger benders. For example, Bumi managed to break himself free from a cage in the air with motions of his face. Combustion bending is merely the intense focusing of chi out through the forehead and at a target, where it causes an unfocused concussive blast of firebending, which is really a primitive form of energy bending (not as Aang does it, but as actually directing energy as explained by physics). In the case of Sparky Sparky Boom Man, the blow to his head may have actually concussed him - he could no longer focus on his target visually and presumably couldn't focus his chi, causing the blast to go off much closer than intended as his chi was unleashed.

Why are bugs attracted to the light?

Never really thought about it honestly, and this summer i've been sitting outside and the spot lights are on and all the bugs keep dive bombing it.

Moths navigate and orient themselves by using the sun as a guide. For example, Mr. Sample Moth likes it on his left, means he's going the direction he wants to. Porch lights, street lights, etc, confuse them. They will fly in circles around it because they think they're flying straight. In their heads, the light is on the correct side, so they must be heading the right direction.

CMV: Public Colleges That Prevent Free Speech Shouldn't be Eligible for Government Funding.

The 1st amendment protects free speech and expression. However, people will argue that the 1st amendment only protects you from the government censoring your opinion, not private organizations such as websites or private companies. However, public colleges receive billions of dollars in funding from the state and federal governments. If taxpayer money is being used to fund these universities, their administration should be held to the same standards as the government. One question might be "what criteria would you use to determine if a university fosters free speech?" The answer is simple. You can kick out students that speak out in ways that are disruptive to learning. Some examples of ideally non-protected speech: - screaming during a lecture or presentation - pulling fire alarms to silence other's speech - verbally threatening others - attempting to create fear through actions with no academic or political value(such as wearing a KKK uniform, holding a sign with the N word on it, and going around harassing African American students in order to make them feel unsafe). Those things don't carry much value and just cause trouble and hurt the learning environment. You can't kick students out for unpopular political opinions, "micro-aggressions", or any sort of structured speech that the moral majority disagrees with. As long as speech is provided in a civilized manner(arguments based on logic and statistics rather than personal/character attacks), a student shouldn't be able to get kicked out for it. **TL;DR:** If public universities receive government funding, they should be held accountable to the same standards the government does in regards to the constitution. If they don't want funding, then they can make their own rules.

> You can't kick students out for unpopular political opinions, "micro-aggressions", or any sort of structured speech that the moral majority disagrees with. As long as speech is provided in a civilized manner(arguments based on logic and statistics rather than personal/character attacks), a student shouldn't be able to get kicked out for it. I know many people whose learning has been disrupted by microaggressions. Your distinctions seem entirely arbitrary. Why is a microaggression okay, but the sign with the n-word on it not okay?

Evolution: If modern humans have been around for ~200,000 years, why have no other post-human species branched off of us yet? Is there a projected timeline for that to happen? Will we even recognize if it's happening?

Speciation generally happens much slower than that. Further, you probably wouldn't even recognize the branch until well after the fact. It's possible that if technology hadn't advanced then some of the distant clusters of humans would become isolated enough to eventually branch off, but at this point there is constantly gene flow amongst nearly all human populations. For speciation to occur you need some mechanism (physical separation being a good one) that prevents genes from flowing from one group of species to another. This separation allows for the slow build up of mutations that allow them to start to move off in different directions. Even with limited interbreeding of the two groups you keep sharing all the mutations from each side with the other, preventing a branch from occurring. So if, for example, one of the groups of island people were never "refound" by the rest of the human population for many tens or hundreds of thousand years, they could have become a separate species.

[Mass Effect] If the Genophage is cured, how will that change the Krogan Rite of Passage?

To those unfamiliar, the [krogan](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Krogan) are a warlike species native to the extremely hostile planet [Tuchanka](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Tuchanka). They were granted space travel by the [salarians](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Salarian) to help them in their war against the insectoid [rachni](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Rachni). However, after the rachni were defeated, the krogan experienced a massive population boom which led to the salarians and [turians](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Turian) developing and deploying the [Genophage](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Genophage)\- a genetic mutation that massively reduced krogan fertility. On Tuchanka, all young krogan go through a Rite of Passage when they become adults. Practices vary between clans, but we see the Rite for Clan Urdnot in detail. It involves fighting Tuchankan wildlife in three distinct waves, each wave representing an important event in krogan history. First, they fight [varren](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Varren), representing their mastery of Tuchanka. Next, they fight [klixen](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Klixen), representing their war against the rachni. Finally, they face a [Thresher Maw](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Thresher_Maw), which represents the Genophage- an enemy that cannot be defeated, only survived. It's possible, depending on the player's choices, for the Genophage to be cured in Mass Effect 3. The unbeatable enemy is beaten. How does this change the Rite? Will *all* young krogan be expected to kill the Maw now, not just survive it? I suppose killing most of your young adults is one way to get around an overpopulation crisis... Come to think of it, how would the Rite portray the war against the Reapers? I shudder to imagine.

Going with the "golden" setup here (>!Wrex lives, genophage is genuinely cured!<), it's important to remember that a young krogran's krant are allowed to assist them in the ritual, but it's by no means necessary. As the genophage would only have been cured by teamwork and cooperation, that may be mandatory; work together to achieve something once thought impossible.

[Ghostbusters] Do Egon Spengler and Ray Stantz deserve (a lot) more recognition for the invention of proton packs? Wouldn’t the military have interest in them? The Nobel committee? They seem pretty impressive.

Among folks "in the know" Stantz and Spengler get their due credit, though a lot of lay folks give Venkman too much of a share due to how he's positioned himself as the leader/face-man of the crew, and the "legit" science community does it's best to ignore them, since they don't want to legitimize "fringe" science. If the military had a ghost problem they'd be keen on the proton packs, but in terms of a weapons system it leaves a lot to be desired. It's heavy, short ranged, erratic in it's firing path, and could turn into a nuke if you cross the streams; a machine gun or missile launcher is cheaper, lighter, more accurate, infinitely safer to operate, and don't take a dude with multiple doctorates and a fungus collection to perform basic maintenance. As far as the Nobel, they'd have to publish their findings, and Venkman would fight them kicking and screaming the whole way. He doesn't want academic accolades, he wants money, and publishing means that people might knock off the designs and steal their market share.

[Star Trek] Are no ballistic weapons used by federation ships? The Borg can hardly “adapt” thicker or tougher armour on the spot I presume, why not just bring a damn railgun to kill a cube?

Ballistic weapons just flat out won't work. The Borg wouldn't even need to adapt. Any ship's navigational deflector is already doing the job of keeping small, fast, physical objects from impacting the ship. We're not even talking actual defensive measures, just normal navigation systems on even the most lightly defended scouts or science vessels has this problem solved. The Borg wouldn't even divert resources to think about the situation.

ELI5:What are Hedge Funds and what do they do?

It's an investment scheme. Basically a group of people all put their money into one big pot, and the hedge fund manager(s) invests that money in various things with the intent of making more money. Each person who put money into the hedge fund gets a share of the profits that is in proportion to how much they put in. They also proportionally share the risk. It is similar to a mutual fund but hedge funds generally make more high risk investments and are only open to higher level "accredited" investors.

[DCU] Does being half-Atlantean affect Aquaman's powers? What would be different if he were completely Atlantean?

Is his hydrokinesis weaker? How about his ability to communicate with marine life? I know for a fact that Arthur can stay on land for far longer than 'full-blooded' Atlanteans, but how else does his hybrid physiology separate him for his fellow Atlanteans? Overall, is Arthur weaker than if he were completely Atlantean? Or is he like Blade - stronger, without any of the weaknesses (or less affected by Atlantean weaknesses/vulnerabilties)?

Usually he doesn't have hydrokinesis - most atlanteans don't. In the movie it seemed to be the function of his trident, which is a magical artifact of bygone age, and in comics he had it when he had a water arm, which also was magical.

CMV: languages that use a Latin-script alphabet should move towards eliminating accent marks.

My reasoning: I have some level of proficiency in five languages, using three alphabets between them. I have recently gotten more into language learning and am studying four more, all of which use Latin script (the alphabet used by Romance, Germanic, and Celtic languages among others). In doing so and using my phone for learning programs, I have realized just what a pain accent marks are - slowing everything down and not adding much to comprehension. Words are faster to type without accent marks, and text looks neater. To a fluent speaker, their exclusion should present no impediment to comprehension. The concerns: I am aware that there may be a few Latin script languages (Vietnamese comes to mind) that are so reliant on accent marks that losing them would seriously impede communication. These may be excluded. Further, I am aware that demo in accent marks makes pronunciation more ambiguous and may make the language more difficult for children or new learners. I have a proposed solution: Hebrew normally excludes vowels (a more important textual feature than accent marks) from professional/adult writing, including them only for children or new learners. There might therefore be, say, learners' French which includes ç,é,è,ï,ô, etc and professional French which excludes them.

I would counter that accent marks actually provide for less ambiguity, more possible phonemes, stress marking and ease in differentiation of homophones, while at the same time aiding the reader in inferring the correct pronunciation or meaning. Accent marks have a wide variety of uses that are ultimately beneficial. In many languages with more-or-less regular rules on stress placement, such as Spanish, accent marks can differentiate words, such as "esta" (this) vs "está" (he is); the former has stress placed on the first syllable, whereas the latter has it on the second. In Spanish, stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable when the word ends in a vowel, n or s, and on the last syllable otherwise. "Está" violates this and needs to be marked accordingly. Similarly, accents also allow for differentiation of interrogative and relative pronouns, cf. "¿quién?" (who?) vs "quien" (who). In other instances, they simply aid comprehension in terms homophones, such as "si" (if) and "sí" (yes). Even more, an accent mark can hold stress on a specific syllable for inflection purposes: the addition of "me" to "mira" in order to form a command would push stress one syllable over, but by writing "mírame," we're able to preserve the proper stress without ambiguity. In other languages, accent marks change the pronunciation of a vowel without resorting to using additional letters that complicate things. In French, the circumflex opens the vowel so that "hôpital" differentiates from "bonne." The "ô" signifies /o/, where as "o" in this case is "/ɔ̜/" in IPA terms. We can also look at accent marks as providing an avenue for more vowel pronunciations without the need to either guess or come up with convoluted spellings to achieve them. English has roughly 12 vowels depending on the dialect spoken with an additional eight diphthongs, but there are only five vowels and no accentuation possibilities. In comparison, Portuguese has around 16 vowels, but is much easier to deduce due to five of them being marked nasals with a tilde and the use of the acute accent and circumflex for specific sounds. Even more, Portuguese has a huge volume of diphthongs and triphthongs, but comprehension is easier since accented vowels provide clues on how to differentiate them.

ELI5: Do men’s and women’s hygiene products (shave gel, lotion, face wash) actually do different things for men or women, or is it a marketing thing?

Most of the ingredients are the same, though some manufacturers claim that their gendered products are tailored more towards the different areas that each gender tends to shave more. The main difference in ingredients is the scent. Fragrances and oils can be incredibly expensive, which could go towards explaining some of the difference in price. We know women place more emphasis on the fragrance of a product than men (some men being happy to purchase without smelling the product at all). At least when it comes to bathroom products, men and women discriminate on price differently. Men are more likely to take a cheaper product and see that product as equivalent. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to see a more expensive product as superior. Thus reducing price could be a good strategy for men's products but could actually lose you sales on women's.

[Back to the Future] Why does Earth Angel get a positive reaction?

During the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, Marty subs on guitar since Marvin sliced his hand open earlier getting Marty out of the trunk. Marty starts off decently, but as soon he starts to be erased from existence he starts messing up and then stops playing altogether for the majority of the song. The band notices, Marvin gives him a look and the piano player even asks if he's alright. Of course once George kisses Lorraine and secures Marty's existence, Marty gets back up and closes out the last few bars of the song. But regardless - the performance was missing the guitar almost entirely! Yet the crowd and the band all show their approval to Marty, thinking it's such a good performance that Marty should join them for an encore! Did anyone actually listen to how Marty just butchered the song?? The only explanation I can think of for why the band thinks it's a good performance is cause they are all stoned out their minds on the reefer. As for the crowd... Maybe they all somehow magically hear Alan Silvestri's orchestra accompaniment (which is clearly score, not source). This is backed up in Part II when we revisit the dance and the newer Marty witnesses George and Lorraine kiss - we again hear the Alan Silvestri orchestra even though they are nowhere to be found. Maybe everyone was on the reefer that night...

The band was just keeping up appearances for the sake of the show. As for the crowd, years of experience as a performer tell me that crowds don't notice shit. This is especially true if they're a lot more worried about dancing or smooching than listening to the band. They might have a vague notion that something sounds off, but that's it. If you think you've caught every mistake at every concert you've attended, I've got a bridge to sell you.

need help with work bully

there is a staff member at my work (responsible for organizing orientation, budgets sheets, etc) who is making my life miserable. im a new tenure track hire and this staff member constantly makes demands of me which are not my responsibility. he orders me around and talks to me like im his secretary. i have pushed back politely and firmly, and he has raised his voice, lied/exaggerated things to manipulate me into doing his bidding, cornered me, blocked exits, and accused me of not pulling my weight. i finally went to the chair and told him about all the demands that this admin has been making and the chair said that i'm doing everything i'm supposed to be doing at work (the bully told me i wasn't doing enough), and that he would talk to the staff person about it. but i'm not sure if the chair gets the whole gist of the issue. chair travels a lot and is not always around when these things are happening. the staff member is on his BEST behavior when chair is around and kisses his butt. i've already had many nights of insomnia and anxiety and ive been avoiding this person as much as possible. but i know that this situation is not tenable. it is distracting me from my research and my work is suffering. i've considered the following options: 1) telling this bully more directly about his effect on me, 2) talking to my faculty mentor, 3) talking to the ombudsman my fears are that no one will believe me or that they will think that this is no big deal. if i talk to him directly, i'm worried that he will yell at me again or accuse me of even more things or use my concerns as a weapon against me. what do you think is the best approach?

Complain to HR if your chair won't act. Yelling is almost always the sort of thing where they will intervene, at least at a reasonable institution. Especially when it is a staff member yelling at a TT line hire. Refer them to the chair every time they make requests/demands of you. Say no firmly and more often.

This might sound like a stupid question, but was the sky pitch black eons ago?

I’m new to this sub and I was curious, since I had nothing to answer this question with other than my own headcanon. So this might actually have a short answer than expected. So light takes a super long time to travel right? Since what we’re seeing up there (outside of the solar system) are dead or dying stars and the info hasn’t reached our eyes yet. So was there a time when no light from outside the solar system had reached the earth, making the sky pitch black at night save for the sun?

Within the galaxy, the light travel times are actually quite short. The whole Milky Way is only about 100,000 light years across, and we're about 30,000 light years to the centre. But most of the stars you can see in the night sky are less than 1,000 light years away, and many are less than 100 light years away. It takes us about 200 million years to orbit the galaxy. The shortest lived massive stars live for millions of years, medium ones live for billions of years, and long-lived low-mass stars live for trillions of years. A molecular cloud will form collapse into stars, and then be blown away by those stars, over a period of 10s of millions of years or so. Stars form and move so slowly compared to the light delay time that we're pretty much seeing every star in the night sky as it is now, except for small variations. Except for a few extreme objects, almost every star you see at night is still alive, and unchanged from what you see. The Sun was also not the first star in the galaxy. There were a couple of generations of stars first. So once the Earth formed, the light from other stars was already all around, and the first night of the primordial Earth would have been a starry night (if the atmosphere was clear).

ELI5: How well-supported is the big bang theory? Are we fairly certain it's true?

Yes, and overwhelmingly so. However, you have to be careful about what you mean when you say "Big Bang Theory", for it is *not* a theory about how the universe was *created*, but rather how it has *evolved*. Despite what anyone will tell you, we physicists currently have no idea how the universe was created.

[DCA/Marvel] How do supervillains get food?

I’m sure villains who wear masks like Scarecrow and Mysterio are fine out in public. But what about all those villains that walk around committing crimes in broad daylight with nothing covering their face? Every time Doctor Octopus or Magneto go to the grocery store or out to eat at a restaurant, I’m sure there’s a dozen people calling the police. And it makes sense because a majority of them are either on the run for a crime they committed or have recently escaped prison

- They have enormous stashes of resources - They live in self-sufficient strongholds - They order online - They go and simply buy trusting no one will recognize them - They steal Also: human memory and recognition are flawed. Very flawed.

ELI5:Why isn't there a good defense for companies against DDOS attacks?

As someone who plays Blizzard games, I found myself locked out tonight as a result of DDoS attacks. This was most likely because Blizzard issued a ban wave against cheaters and hackers. But this seems like a recurrent problem for various companies. If it's so common, what is it about a DDoS attack that makes it so hard to defend against? Also, keep in mind, I'm not a hacker nerd, I really do need you to explain it like I'm 5, but someone who grew up in the 70s who is 5, not someone who is 5 in 2016. Thanks!

DDoS means Distributed Denial of Service attack. Now you obviously experienced the part where service was denied. The key here is that it was distributed. What that means was rather than one guys with his one machine trying to keep their service too busy, the attackers used a great number of compromised system that all worked together to keep the service too busy. Because they are using so many separate machines to attack, there's no commonality they can use to filter them out early, because each of those machines start by connecting and pretending to be potential real customers. But processing them all through this process just overwhelms the system before they can identify the bad guys from the good guys. As a metaphor, imagine there is an old school pizza store taking calls for delivery. A speaker at a local conference tells his audience who are staying at hotels all over the city to call this one store and go through the process of ordering a pizza, only to wait right until they are going to take a credit card number and then say, "oh never mind" and hang up. Suddenly the pizza shop is incredibly busy trying to take orders and all their resources, including phone lines and people taking orders are super busy. But for the most part it is fake orders. Legitimate customers might occasionally get through, but mostly they get a busy signal because all their lines are busy. Even most people trying to place fake orders usually get a busy signal. It's kind of like that, only with internet servers being the pizza shop and potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of fake callers.

ELI5: How come the ocean isn’t making the ocean floor compact? Like, the pressure at the ocean floor is absurd, the weight of the ~4km of water is a lot and yet we see the sand loose.

The pressure exerted on the sand at the bottom is experienced in all direction. They are separated because they have different densities. Imagine you have a plate on the floor of a pool. Apart from just it's inertia and the viscosity of the water you could easily pick it up. Large pressure differences on either side of the object are what causes noticeable forces. Now imagine the same circumstance except this time there is a drain at the bottom leading to open air and the plate is covering it. The force from the weight of the water is much greater than the force from the weight of the air so it's pressed into the floor and difficult to move.

Endless prerequisites & accessible books that get around them?

I'd love to read some Hegel, but I've heard that you *really* should know your Kant before you get to Hegel. I'd love to read some Kant, but I've heard I *really* should only do Kant after Hume and Leibnitz. Lebnitz requires Descartes; Hume (maybe) requires Newton. I'd love to feel like I'm deeply understanding what I'm reading, but on the other hand, I don't have the time or motivation to read thousands of pages of prerequisites to get to what I really want to read! Dear r/askphilosophy, what are your favorite introductions to the big names in modern philosophy that don't require mountains of prerequisite reading? Can be a book written by them or a secondary text, so long as it's particularly accessible. Applies to any figure often seen as impenetrable: Hegel, Kant, Husserl, Bataille, Deleuze, etc.

Well the good news in the consensus here is that you don’t actually need to read all the prerequisites, and if you needed to, probably no contemporary philosophy would get done at all. For getting into Hegel, Terry Pinkard’s *German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism* gives a good overview of the major thinkers and discussions leading up to him, as well as a good overview of his works and some important thinkers after. We also have tons of writings and lecture transcripts from him aimed at students where he explains the thinkers he’s responding to in more detail and gives lots of examples, so there’s actually tons of accessible Hegel stuff to read to get used to his terminology and context. The introductory sections to his Encyclopedia is a very lucid introduction and any of his lecture series on subjects you’re interested in are easier to get into. Don’t have a list for every difficult thinker but these questions get asked all the time, so if you use the search bar and type keyword like “start” “(Philosopher Name)” chances are you can find years and years of threads where people ask for and receive solid recommendations for secondary literature and easier starting texts.

eli5 how Google claims not to 'sell' your data, so what does Google do to give data to others, and what data is being shown to them?

Google does not directly give your data to anyone. They don't want to- access to your data is the secret sauce that makes Google ads more valuable than ads from other places. Instead, companies can come to them with an advertisement targeted towards men in their 30s in the American Southeast that like baking, and they can make sure to show that advertisement to that group of people. Since they're only showing the ads to the people most likely to respond to them, they get more responses and so Google gets more money from the advertiser, while being able to sell ad spots for other demographics to other companies.

CMV: I don't care that facebook and there social media sites sell my browsing info to ad companies

*other social media sites What does it even matter? The service is free to me because I'm the product - that was obvious from the beginning. I can't believe it was a shock to anyone. And how does it negatively affect me? So instead of getting ads for bunion pads, I get ads for period pads. Worst case, the ad doesn't matter to me and I ignore it. Best case, it's actually a product I'd use and I learn about it when I otherwise wouldn't have. And I get to keep using social media for free (maybe a bad thing but that's a whole nother post).

The problem is that these little pieces of your browsing info can be pieced together to incriminate you. There's no regulatory agency making sure this info isn't leaked from the ad company. For example let's say you search, "drug store" on Google maps, then a couple hours later, the term "when is the right time to have an abortion", then a few hours later, you're back on Google maps searching "Planned Parenthood". Of course, abortion isn't illegal, and it's nothing to be ashamed of, but what if you are from a religious background? What if someone chooses to share this information with your family? What if you run for president one day under a heavily religious campaign (as they all seem to do), and your opponent just happens to find a way to snag this data? Of course , they probably wouldn't get it straight from Facebook, but that ad company, who's really regulating where they sell that info? Suddenly there's 'leaked documents' showing that you had an abortion in 2020, and guess what, now it's 2040 and abortion is a felony in your country. What if this whole time, you were making these searches to help a friend, or if the pregnancy was the result of abuse, or if the searches were all completely unrelated? People will always draw their own conclusions with little bits of information like this, and we don't know how this info will be weaponised against us one day, either by some unforseen adversary, or, more likely, our own government.

ELI5: Why is a population decline in a country considered a bad thing?

The problem, especially with extreme population decline, is that eventually you have too many retired/elderly folks and too few workers to support them. Either directly supporting elderly parents, or paying into social security. A slight decline may be fine, but many social systems are set up on the premise of constant population growth. The same thing can happen even without a population decline if you have a very large generation (such as the baby boomers) who will all retire as a group.

[Question] Why did the Fed get rid of conventional monetary policy in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis?

The zero lower bound was a major factor. They couldn't set interest rates below zero, this constraint meant other avenues of monetary policy had to be consider. This being QE, paying interest on excess reserves, etc. It was because they got to a point where conventional policy could no longer be done.

[WH40K] Could the Emperor "fix" things in the present?

So, if the Emperor were to heal totally and wake up today (as in the WH40K present, not 2015 :P), would he be able to fix things in the galaxy? Fixing, of course, being relative to the Imperium/mankind in general (sorry Tau), finishing his webway, destroying/crippling humanity's enemies, etc. Also, after millennia of devotion and worship from most of mankind, what kind of creature would he be?

The Emperor is not subject to the same effects as Chaos Gods, as he's entirely bound to a mortal frame, basically manifesting as an immensely powerful Psyker. The devotion and worship of mankind will not have had any impact on either his power, or his outlook. As for can he 'fix' things... probably not. The Webway project is almost entirely a failure, he lacks the leadership and capabilities of his Primarchs, and the Imperiumis faced with far worse threats than he had to contend with during the Great Crusade.

[Star Trek] What are some legitimate reasons to turn off the safety protocols on the Holodeck?

I mean, it seems like every couple of months something goes wrong on a Federation starship and somebody has to struggle to survive in an environment that is both lethally hostile and wholly illusory. A whole lot of trouble could be avoided, and lives saved, if you just made it completely impossible to disable the safety protocols. I'm not entirely au fait with the programming protocols, but it should be possible to basically hardwire it into the system so that turning off the safeties also turns off the entire damn Holodeck. Obviously there's a reason they don't do this, but what is it? Why do they want it to be possible for a Holodeck to murder random crewmembers in the event of a power surge or somebody getting drunk and thinking it'd be cool?

The Federation is a very Liberal society; they prioritise personal freedom in many instances. If someone (Miles O'Brien for example) wants to go kayaking on a dangerous river then he's not really going to get the full effect when he knows that there's no danger. He doesn't really get to experience the satisfaction of overcoming the challenge and bettering his skill, so he disables the safeties and occasionally gets injured, as is his right as a Federation citizen. The Federation has educated him to the level where he's not at risk; he knows full well what will happen when he disables the safeties, and that's his choice, but as far as the Federation is concerned that must be his choice either way. I wouldn't be suprised if that was a privilige he held as an adult/Starfleet personell/qualified engineer. Children may not be able to disable the safeties. tl;dr: the Federation doesn't make idiots. If you wanna risk your life that's on you.

Is academia so competitive now that it's pointless to try if you aren't exceptional/remarkable?

People will suggest to major in engineering instead of physics or mathematics due to academia being so extremely competitive. Has it reached a point to where if you're not, say, winning math olympiads during secondary school, you should probably not bother with a mathematics degree & academia, and instead default to engineering & industry instead? I'm wondering how the landscape looks for any and all fields right now, but especially STEM. Do you need to be effectively the #1 best applicant out of 300-3,000 applicants to recieve an offer? Do you actually need 1-3 post-doctoral positions to have a chance? Is all of that just hyperbole from bitter people? It reminds me of how some children in europe begin training at 5 years old in these expensive soccer camps, so that they can have a chance of being on a team when they grow up. Is that what it's like now? Are you competing with people like that?

I don't think being exceptional/remarkable is as noteworthy as people make it out to be. Plenty of geniuses can't get a job. Plenty of them quit before they evem graduate Being average and knowing how to play the game (publishing, schmoozing with faculty, getting into tje right subfield, etc) is more important. Work ethic is more important etc

ELI5: How does super glue work and how is it different from a regular glue stick?

Most regular types of glue just harden as water or solvent in them evaporates. If you want to glue something really well, you have to stick it really tight together with a clamp and let it cure for a bit. Superglue however doesn't need to dry out. Instead, it "polymerizes" - that means the individual liquid molecules start attaching to each other until they become a solid. This reaction is triggered by moisture in the air, and happens so quickly that you don't need to hold it clamped for hours.

CMV: It's not racist to try to preserve cultural heritage in certain spots with native ethnic people or who speak the language natively.

Classic examples like Venetian gondola rower or City centre markets where you hear the old traditional women speaking in a particular accent and story. No one should be discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity for a job or command of a language (as long as it is professional), so if someone from a different ethnicity (to the majority) was born and raised in a city and wanted to work in that particular job, all for it. But completely unrelated immigrants, just doesnt fit the role. I feel like this tradition is maintained by governments and town councils by means of bureaucracy and elitism that ends up keeping 'outsiders' from applying but every now and again you see immigrants with rough accents selling tourist trap smoothies at a traditional market and it doesn't make any sense. It's partly the commercialisation and banality of the 'transition' that affects me the most rather than the person doing it, and I feel like I am idealising something that was never really set in stone and is tending towards an attitude of "everything in my time was better, so we need to keep it exactly as is, nevermind the fact that the previous generation was totally different". Thoughts?

Well first we need to unpack the idea of cultural heritage as a tourist commodity. Why do you feel entitled to seeing something 'traditional' when you visit when the commodification is already very artificial, and why should national origins have any bearing on that anyway? The 'traditional' market you're seeing isn't really authentic to any sort of historical market, a real historical market would have no smoothies and a lot more business owners jostling to get the best animals and goods before the others did. And it would smell a lot worse. So it's all smoke and mirrors really, it's a modern creation based on nostalgia and catering to tourist's interests. Does it really matter then that the guy who sells you the 'authentic venetian' baubles (made in China) is Syrian or whatever

ELI5: How has The Pirate Bay not been shut down with the owners so public?

The owners of the Pirate Bay go around talking about the site and don't hide from society Silk Road style, but how has the Pirate Bay not been shut down itself? It's definitely not an obscure site, and Megaupload already went down before because of pirating and copyright infringement on tons of their downloads. EDIT: Holy crap, this got more upboats than my actual karma amount. Go knowledge :P EDIT 2: Thank you, /u/Orsenfelt for your answer! This question was really bugging me.

It's like playing whack-a-mole, the entire site is like 30mb of data. It gets uploaded to a server and a domain name gets pointed to that server. If the domain name gets taken you point a different one at the server. If the *server* gets taken down you upload the site to a different one, and point the domain to that. The Pirate Bay is just a collection of signposts, instruction leaflets on how you can get copyrighted material. Megaupload actually hosted the files themselves, terabytes of data that can't be easily moved from place to place.

ELI5: Is there a maximum hot?

I know the maximum cold is literally no heat energy, absolute zero, but is there a highest possible temperature in the way that speed has the upper limit--as far as we know--of light?

Theoretically no. However, technically you could only attain a temperature as high as the energy of the universe would allow. Something like the exact moment of the Big Bang would be the hottest temperature that could ever be achieved in the universe. This is called the Planck temperature which is the highest theoretical temperature you can achieve before the temperature starts to cause conventional physics to begin to break down. But this doesn't occur until 1.416785(71)×10^32 kelvin so we have a ways before we get to that temperature.

ELI5: Has there always been the same amount of water on earth?

No. It is theorized some/most water was brought to Earth by cometary bombardment. Also, some (miniscule) amount of hydrogen is constantly lost from the atmosphere to space. However, it is relatively insignificant to the total amount. Water is also sequestered in rocks and ice in varying amounts throughout geologic history.

ELI5: Why do we have wisdom teeth?

It seems like all wisdom teeth are good for is being removed. Why does everyone have them?

Our jaws have actually gotten smaller as we have evolved, along with the fact that we no longer have use for them as we can keep our teeth healthier and learned how to cook. As the wisdom teeth come in, they get impacted now because most people do not have the room in their mouth for them to properly grow in, which is why it is common practice to remove them now before they completely grow. Some people don't even have wisdom teeth because we have no use for them. It's actually a good argument in evolution's favor.

ELI5: Why does basically everyone in a hospital get an IV regardless of their situation?

Is there anything to it other than keeping patients hydrated and getting medicine into their system when necessary?

A lot of the time it's just to have an established line, so that if things go south, you don't have to waste the time to start one. With some people it's not easy to get a line in, especially once their BP starts to crash, and they need medicine right now.

Eli5 Why do steep rear windshields need a wiper and normal sloped windshields dont?

For example on a minivan there's a rear wiper and a front wiper, but not on say a Toyota corolla. Why is that?

It's not because of the angle of the rear window, it's because of how much dirt sprays up from the back of the vehicle. On most cars, the trunk is between the rear window and the back of the car, and the window stays relatively clean and dry from road spray from the back of the car. On minivans, hatchbacks, station wagons, etc... The rear windows get very wet and dirty simply from driving on a wet road, so you need a way to clean the rear window for visibility. Though the angle of the rear window might affect how well rain washes the rear window, generally car rear windows stay cleaner. Also, pickup trucks have a steep (vertical) rear window, but no wiper, because the truck bed is in between the rear window and the back of the vehicle.

ELI5: What happens in the stomach of a lactose intolerant person after eating dairy ?

Nothing special happens in the stomach. It's the intestines where it gets real. When someone is lactose-intolerant, their guts lack the enzyme *lactase* (either partly or totally) that usually breaks it down into simpler sugars. Do you know what doesn't lack the ability to break down lactose into simpler sugars? The bacteria that live in your guts. They can very happily break down the lact**o**se, and *their* byproducts (hydrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, etc) are what we note as the symptoms of lactose-intolerance. The presence of these byproducts, as well as the lact**o**se itself, also causes more water to flow into the intestine, causing diarrhea.

If marijuana causes an increase in heart rate why does it not cause cardiomyopathy like cocaine?

So marijuana causes your blood pressure to drop, and as a reflex your heart rate increases, but it's not working against higher blood pressure- there are still risks as the elevated heart rate for someone with cardiovascular disease can lead to a heart attack. Cocaine is a stimulant forcing your heart to beat harder against increased blood pressure, and when you work a muscle harder, even your heart, it gets larger- in the case of your heart this eventually can reduce its efficiency forcing it to work harder and harder to accomplish less basically

[Marvel] Do superheroes also get discounts and free meals at restaurants on Veterans day?

Someone like Captain America and Punisher would be obvious because they've served in the military. But could someone like Spider-Man swing by an IHOP for some free pancakes?

Im sure Captain America does, but if the Frank Castle flashes his I.D. assuming he would and has one someone might call the cops or the mob. As far as the rest of heroes goes its probably more like a police/firefighter discount assuming the hero isn't wanted by the law and popular enough to be recognized.

ELI5: How do the big YouTube channels (pewdiepie, Yogscast, etc) avoid getting three strikes from frivolous/bogus copyright claims?

They aggressively pursue their rights. Every-time they get a strike they reach out to YouTube and let them know what happened. Given their size and value to YouTube they likely get handled very quickly.

[Star Wars] Why don't the Inquisitors use tracking fobs to find the Jedi, like the Mandalorian uses to find bounty targets?

I don't think we have enough info on how the Tracking Fobs work right now or the limitations of them. We know the Tracking Fobs are tuned in to a target's chain code somehow. Maybe Jedi just didn't let themselves get signed up for the chain code? Maybe the Jedi used forged chain codes. (That has been done) We can just guess right now. Not having a chain code would disallow a Jedi from using commercial travel from planet to planet, but it seems like Jedi-in-hiding are using backdoor methods of getting around.

ELI5: Why can't spiders climb up the side of the bath tub?

To confirm, I didn't kill the spider, I put it outside. They're great for getting rid of pesky bugs, plus... Live and let live right?

They climb using the hairs and little microscopic hooks. Think of it like rock climbing. If there weren't any type of way to hold on to something with your hands and feet you wouldn't be able to climb a nearly vertical wall. Same is true for the spider. The tub is a smooth and relatively vertical surface for them to climb.

[The Dark Knight] How did Batman and Rachel survive the drop off the skyscraper?

During the penthouse/party/whatever you want to call it scene, Joker drops Rachel off the building, and Bruce jumps off after her. I've watched this scene multiple times, and there is no use of the cape to slow down the fall like in TDKR. How did they survive?

Watch the surveillance footage right before the crash onto the car, and listen carefully to the sound. The cape is clearly fluttering with the same strong resistance that it displayed when Batman flies to Lau's tower to arrest him. Batman's cape doesn't have to be at full wingspan in order to slow a fall.

ELI5: Why do women look different than men?

I understand the need for wider hips / breasts, but what's the point of creating two distinct creatures (one with a normally larger and muscular frame) and another with a smaller and more 'aesthetic' face and body? Wouldn't the human race be simplified by just having a single organism that can reproduce with itself?

Men and women look different (sexual dimorphism) because of the presence or lack of the Y chromosome and different gonads which in turn leads to different hormones. Natural selection has selected certain features in males and females which made them reproductive successful. Males for example are larger and stronger because they often had to physically compete for females. >Wouldn't the human race be simplified by just having a single organism that can reproduce with itself? Not quite sure what you mean by simplified. Generally speaking sexual reproduction gives an evolutionary advantage because it allows for genetic diversity.

How did broken bones evolve to heal if a broken bone is usually a death sentence for a wild animal?

I was just thinking that many broken bones need to be "set" in order to be able to heal (which is not possible for a wild animal to do to itself), and even with that, healing a broken bone can take weeks or months. A wild animal that is incapacitated by a broken bone would probably die before the bone could heal. Given that, how could bones have evolved to heal?

I think your premise is misleading. A _complete_ fracture (as opposed to one that does not go all the way across the bone) of a long bone like a femur would be difficult to recover from in the wild but * most fractures are incomplete * most bones are not "alone": ribs and the lower bones of the limbs of many animals run in groups that support each other * phalanges (fingers and toes) and other bones are not continuously weight-bearing and will naturally be held in place by the tendons and ligaments If you break a rib, for example, there is little medicine can do for you (Advil and some tape to help stabilize it); you are reliant solely on your body's ability to heal.

ELI5: Why are the helmet-straps that the British military use in formal dress placed under the lip instead of under the chin?

The dress bearskin hats have a chain strap so when not firmly affixed will hang naturally around the lip area, however the chain will allow the chain to go under the chin when needed to keep the hat firmly on.

[Harry Potter] what makes one person better at a spell than the other?

Does pronunciation account for anything? Like Hermione said.

Pronunciation only matters because inexperienced wizards need it to focus properly on the spell. Truly powerful wizards can cast nonverbally, as they don’t need the words to help guide their focus. There seems to be a certain level of raw power/will that wizards can pump into their spells (If we believe Fake Mad Eye Moody claiming that he could tank the Avada Kedavras of teens, or accept that the Elder wand can produce more powerful versions of any spell). But since that’s imprecise, the other criteria probably comes with accuracy and speed of casting. Obviously nonverbal magic is going to be quicker, and the faster you think a spell, the faster you can cast it. Assuming that even nonverbal spells require the somatic components of the wand, then a certain physical fluidity must be required in order for a wizard to cast his spell, while simultaneously moving in a such a way that leads smoothly into his next movement/casting. Other wizards probably couldn’t duel at the level of Dumbledore because they wouldn’t be able to chain a variety of spells together in such a rapid series of movements. Think of the “swish and flick” upwards movement leading smoothly into another spell motion, all while concentrating on reading your opponents and deciding on a counter immediately. Imagine a novice duelist being in the middle of an incantation when a curse comes his way. He might stumble over the shield charm’s words and movements that he needs to use, as they’re interrupting his current train of thought. Edit: Think about Snape and Harry’s “duel” at the end of HBP. Harry is pretty undeniably a wizard with decent raw “power” (think about his strong af Patronus that can fuck up all the dementors.) He can cast a spell, maybe quickly and powerfully, and that’s usually enough to overcome and rip the wand out of the average death eater’s hand. But when he faced Snape, bloodlusted, everything he used was parried with ease. How did Snape do this? Because to Snape, Harry was the character in a fighting game that keeps using the big wind up heavy attack over and over again. Powerful, yes, but easy to read. Snape, on the other hand, is performing a combo that easily lets him cast while staying able to parry at any time.

[MCU] During the events of Spiderman Far From Home, what do the general public know/ not know about the snap?

To what extent their knowledge of the blip are? Do they know about the infinity stones? Thanos and how he looked like? Different alien races?

Maybe not the full exact details, but they seem to know pretty much everything. In particular, the help group from Endgame references Thanos by name in their posters and the in-flight TV in Far From Home has a documentary called "The Snap" with a picture of the complete Infinity Gauntlet as its poster. For the record, the Blip and the Snap are semi-synonymous, but the latter refers to the specific event caused by Thanos while the former refers to the five-year period after the Snap and in particular, the five-year displacement experienced by the people who were snapped.

CMV: the entire “humans weren’t meant to be monogamous” argument falls apart when you take children into account.

I often come across discussions that center around the fact that now humans live such a long lifetime, monogamy is unrealistic and out-dated. But every study I have ever read on the topic of childhood seems to prove children have the best outcomes in a two parent home with parents who have a good relationship. I don’t see how this is compatible with the idea that marriage and long term commitment are passé. If, as a species, we thrive best when raised by a couple, there must be SOMETHING to the idea of marriage.

The idea of children needing a home with two parents is more of a cultural aspect of western society than something inherent. There are other arrangements. Some cultures take a more community rearing approach where the individual parents aren't so important and children will be raised as children of the whole village. Another approach is to have stable polygamous relationships. They will be similar to monogamous marriages but will have more people involved so the children have several stable parents rather than just the two.

ELI5:What makes your stomach hurt when you are hungry and what causes your stomach to growl?

The growling is called borborygmi and it's caused by fluids and gasses moving through the intestine, not the stomach. The stomach sits left orientated, partially in the ribcage, wedged just below the diaphragm and part of the liver. The stomach itself is pretty thick and relatively deep in comparison to the coils of intestine found in the soft, superficial portion of your gut. You shouldn't be hearing much of anything from there when it is empty. Usually borborygmi is more specifically sounds in the large intestine. If you put your ear to someone's stomach area you're more likely to hear the exact stomach noises. So why noises when your stomach feels empty? Food sits in your stomach for about 2 hours on average, getting churned around and broken down into a more fluid state called chyme. Then it passes to your small intestine, emptying the stomach. This is where things have the potential to become noisy! Everything moves down the line at this point- chyme from stomach to small intestine, undigested remains from small intestine to large. As well, both stages of intestine spend several hours digesting- peristalsis (more churning) of the food mass in the small intestine where additional digestive enzymes are mixed in and the majority of nutrient absorbtion takes place, then mostly reabsorbtion of water (not churning) in the large intestine as the leftovers are slowly made into poop that go into the rectum for storage and expulsion. Once all the food moves down, stomach is ready for a new job and feels left out from all the action the intestine gets to have! Also realize your stomach contracts a lot for its digestive process and you don't feel it so much then, but you might feel it as it expells food to the small intestine. The body isn't particularly good at identifying where the stomach is. Most of your guts don't cause pain directly at their site, the body doesn't quite know where they are, this is why we feel heart attacks down the left arm with some chest tightness and not stabbing heart pains.

How are spacesuits sealed from the vacuum of space when assembled?

I understand that the space suit provides air pressure to keep the fluids in your body in a liquid state, and that the suits are assembled in different pieces for the limbs and such. But how are these separate pieces sealed from the vacuum of space when assembled? (i.e. where the separate pieces connect)

The same way as docking. Joints lock tightly so air can't escape. It's like putting your finger over the neck of a bottle and flip it upside down. The liquid inside won't come out because your finger is in the way. Basically, a space suit is an upside-down water bottle with a finger on the neck.

[FMA:B] If alchemy is so insanely powerful and can be learned from books, why are there so few alchemists?

Investing can be learnt from books, why isn't everyone Warren Buffet? It takes a special kind of person to pursue Alchemy, same as any other profession. Its hard, requires endless hours of study/practice and not everyone has the drive to become an alchemist.

ELI5:Why can't flies get out of open windows as soon as you open them?

Imagine being in a very large room, and you can only see a small part of the room at any time. Someone makes a small opening (door, window) in one part of the room. You can't leave immediately since you don't know it's open until you explore it. On top of that, flies are very bad at figuring out transparent obstacles. A window might look open, but is actually closed.

ELI5: How are people able to think themselves sick? (somatoform disorder)

We don't feel sick because we are sick: we feel sick because certain patterns of neurons in the brain fire. Most of the time, they are firing because we are sick, but not always; and doctors aren't sure why they fire when we aren't sick. And the real answer is "we don't know". In many ways, somatoform disorders are the evil twin of placebo effects; and we really don't understand *how* or *why* either work, we just know that they *do*.

[X-Men] On Krakoa, the mutant nation is now performing mass resurrections on dead mutants, thru the efforts of the Five. Are there any moral implication of them bringing back the dead and on such a massive level?

The just-started Way of X series is going to be dealing with this. Nightcrawler has had a long history of being a devout Catholic, and the ritualistic deaths and rebirths for depowered mutants, and other mutants being nonchalant about death, is really freaking him out.

[Mad Max] Why are there a disproportionately high number of people with American or English accents in post-apocalyptic Australia?

From the comments of Furiosa who only vaguely seems to remember what power lines look like, we can pretty safely assume we are at least 25 years post-apocalypse. If this is the case why does she (and a few other characters) possess non-Aussie accents? I mean surely their accents should have assimilated by now.

Those ain't English accents, it's the Cultivated Australian dialect, similar pronunciation but more inclined to call you a cunt in general discourse. Can't explain the seppo though - might be she grew up around another seppo and kept her accent to retain a sense of indiviuality and separation from those around her.

ELI5: How is a new video game sometimes "ready to play" when less than half the game is downloaded?

Some games are packaged in a way that gives you what you need to start the game first. The game is a bunch of separate files. There’s sound, music, levels, character models etc. if the game is set up for it, you can download the title screen and the first level, and start playing before the final boss is downloaded.