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67sk1o | Technology | How does Adblock remove ads from YouTube, Twitch, and the like. Also why haven't those sites prevented Adblock? | Adblock apps have giant lists of where advertisements are located and when told to load them by the site.. don't. Sites cannot block them because they run on the user's computer and websites cannot touch them. At the most they could refuse to serve up content if ads are blocked, but that usually results in the uses simply leaving the site and never returning. This kills the site. | 1 |
ke5nnm | Biology | How does ejaculation actually take place? I understand the sperm and semenial fluids are seperate and mixed in the urethra before ejaculation. but I don't get the process over time. The epididymis stores semen.. but does it not release them into the vas deferens until the actual point of ejaculation or are the vas deferens full the entire time the male is erect? Also, what happens if you almost cum and stop? does anything work backwards? can the semenial fluids from the prostate and seminal vesicle work there way back into the vas deferens into the testies themselves? | First, epididymus contracts to gently push sperm cells into the vas deferens. This tube massages them forward to the prostate like your gut pushes food. Here they reach another chamber, and mix with liquids from the prostate. The prostate pushes liquid and cells out through the urethra. questions: 1) the mature cells are stored in the epididymis, and are pushed into the vas deference only upon ejaculation 2) like almost sneezing. All the muscles get ready to contract, but don't. When you don't quite sneeze, nothing happens except your body gets ready to. 3) it is meant to be a one way system due to the smooth muscle contractions. Once it has reached the prostate, nothing goes back. The pressure is low before. Any sperm that does not leave is simply broken down and reabsorbed. However, if pressure is high enough after the prostate, or if there is some weakness in the muscle, it can get into the bladder. | 1 |
f3op42 | Engineering | Why aren't sidewalks designed like roads? Im not talking about asphalt vs concrete, im alluding to the flat nature of sidewalks. Why are they not slightly sloped to prevent massive puddles like roads. & #x200B; Why is it that pedestrian pathways has not seen much change/modernization? | Currently researching the same topic for my design project. Walking paths have somewhat been changed and made to a near universal design. As a designer and some engineering I can say that flat walkways are the safest, the width allows people to walk in either direction, (with the exception of bike paths). It is better on your joints and is the best possible balance especially for elderly, there is no need for a slope because normally the sidewalk may puddle but the majority will fall over the curb into the gutter entering the drainage. I mean obviously not everywhere is the same but generally this is why sidewalk don’t need changing design wise | 3 |
8x0y1l | Physics | Why do darker objects absorb more heat than white objects? People at work think it’s a myth but when you physically touch them you can easily tell the difference! | Dark objects absorb the energy from light where white objects reflect it. Dark objects will also cool faster than a lighter colored object of the same temperature | 3 |
luqp0n | Technology | If an electric car plugs into an outlet that takes its power from coal or gas, isn’t that just trading one pollution for another? | Yes, but a good portion of electricity is renewable these days and becoming more so every day. And even if there is pollution, it’s not spewing out of the back of a cars directly into populated areas. | 11 |
curn6r | Biology | Does excessive porn consumption affect the brain negatively? | We all know porn isn't real. At least we should all be taught it. The way people act and 'feel' in porn is fake. On the chemical level, your brain relies on dopamine to reward and teach itself what's good and bad. When you constantly watch porn and feel good you are reinforcing these realities into your brain. As well as this in order to feel good each time you watch porn your brain needs more dopamine. In real life you aren't able to live out those realities from the fantasy that is porn. So you aren't able to get those high levels of dopamine to feel good again. So you go back to porn in order to feel that way, which in turn increases the level of dopamine that you need. This is a never ending cycle that only leads to more and more extremes to find pleasure. This is why it can be called a drug. Because of this addicting nature. TL:DR When you watch porn excessively over time your brain adapts to these realities and begins to make it the norm. Unfortunately you can't achieve those realities in real life, so you turn to porn again and again. These can be seen as addiction. Edit: Yes, yes it does. | 2 |
ka8q12 | Other | How were the trenches in World War 1 and 2 made? Did they predict where a battle would be ahead of time and dig there, or did they dig them during battle over time? | WW1 when the German advance stalled they would choose the best terrain and started to dig in. You always hear about how bad the standing water in the allied trenches where. That is because for the largest part it was Germany that had chosen the better terrain and the allies had to make due with what was available to prevent the Germans from advancing. | 3 |
a5f9in | Biology | How do UV rays cause mutations to happen within cells resulting in skin cancer? | Ionizing radiation imparts enough energy to break bonds within your DNA. When those damaged DNA is used as template for replication, they create defective cells/proteins. | 2 |
7rm41g | Physics | 1) Why is there gaps or spaces between galaxies? 2) What fills these gaps or spaces? 3) Why aren’t galaxies connect like a web or something? Something I read about earlier and it fascinating me | If there was no such thing as gravity, then everything would be kinda evenly spread out yeah (that's one of the posssible end states of the universe). But due to gravity, almost all of this matter clumps up into clusters/galaxies. | 3 |
b678m3 | Engineering | Network Routing "Routing calculates good paths through a network for information to take. " & #x200B; But how? | There are a lot of different ways, but it basically boils down to this: Each router sends messages to its neighbors and then learns information about its neighbors, such as who they are and how long it takes to communicate with them. Through this, each router then can learn about the overall network and the times it takes to reach various areas. For example, Router A communicates with its neighbor, Router B, and knows that it takes 5 milliseconds on average to talk to it. Router B communicates with its neighbors A and C, and knows that it takes 5 milliseconds to talk to either of them. But, when A and B are talking to each other, B tells A what it knows about C and based on this information, A can deduce that it would take an average of 10 milliseconds to send a message to C through B. But let's say that C is also a neighbor of A and the direct connection between A and C only takes 7 milliseconds. Well A can tell the difference and it would know that it should send information destined for C directly to C, rather than through B. | 1 |
5ylw0c | Culture | Why do mentally ill people self-harm? | This is a very serious topic that is often made fun of. I haven't done it in 3 months, but I've had a lot of temptations to. I'm 15 male and depressed. It just makes me feel lighter. It feels like a release and it helped me get through the weeks of pain. | 10 |
etvexu | Psychology | How come most people who experienced trauma don’t get PTSD? Since trauma causes PTSD, how come most traumatized people end up okay? | Are you sure most people who experience trauma don’t get ptsd? | 2 |
briyy7 | Other | How do ticket sales work for sports playoffs with multiple games per round, when a game that is supposed to take place in two days may not happen? I've never been to a playoff game for the NHL or MLB for example, so how do ticket sales work if say a sixth or seventh game may not take place? Do tickets not go on sale until the day before the game, or do people get refunds for purchasing tickets for games that won't happen? | They are refundable. My stepdad gets season tickets every year and it includes playoffs tickets. So he gets a refund for any playoff games that don't happen. | 1 |
6w69t6 | Physics | Would the Attack on Titan 3D Maneuver gear work on Earth? If not, anywhere else? | No. 3DMG relies on rapid changes to momentum that would wreak havoc on a human body that weighs 150-200 lbs, especially since most of the force would be applied to one section of the body. Your second question is the more important. At 1.35 m/s^2 , there is a planetary body where the average human of the same dimensions would weigh only around 30 lbs, and furthermore large-scale monsters like the Titans could theoretically move around. Plus, it can be theoretically terraformed for human life. That location is, of course, Saturn's moon, **Titan**. | 4 |
a8y39d | Engineering | why are so many German roofs built very steep so snow falls off, then with little fences so snow doesn't fall off? | Professional roofer here,not German tho but Norwegian.. close enough. Steep angle roofs have many advantages over less angled roofs.. in general they more easily keep the water out since it doesn't lose much speed when hitting the roof.. they for the same reasons tend to last longer. Water is the big enemy of a roof. Even if it doesn't go all the way through, having water soaking the roof itself will shorten it's lifespan. So I'm guessing now, the shape is traditional but back in the day it was practical. Snow can weigh a lot but that's an easy problem to fix.. more material or thicker material. Loads of other countries with more snow have less slope as a traditional norm so I doubt it has anything to do with that. | 13 |
5tfcy0 | Culture | Why are vinyl records making a resurgence, but not other retro recording technologies like casette tapes or 8-tracks? | Cassette tapes are making a comeback, particularly for artists in subgenres like [vaporwave]( URL_1 ) and lo-fi hip hop, which both embrace the sounds of [tape warble]( URL_0 ) and vintage recording anomalies, as well as the revival of the lost art of making mixtapes. The problem with any large scale production is that cassette decks aren't being made as often anymore (if at all), so when you spend $8 on a cassette it's likely that some old cassette deck will ruin it. But people still have cassette decks in older cars and home stereos, so it's worth the risk to immerse oneself in nostalgia. (The same cannot be said for 8-tracks, where working 8 track decks are harder to come by and the playback of music leaves little to be desired.) Record players are still readily available, as well as pretty affordable... and they look great in a home stereo setup. They're also more easily repairable, unlike a cassette deck which has many internal moving parts that can destroy your cassette ribbon. Vinyl is much more marketable. Artists these days don't make much on digital music sales, therefore by pairing a physical copy of their music that the listener can actually touch and feel with some nice artwork, they are more likely to make that sale (and will often times give a digital copy for free). Listeners get to own the album that sounds far better than a compressed Mp3, they're supporting the artist, they're supporting local record shops; manufacturers are happy, record label is happy... it's a win/win/win/win on all sides. *TL:DR - Vinyl is more aesthetically pleasing than 8 tracks or cassettes, a better investment for audiophiles and a better monetary return for artists and labels, and record players are a more reliable instrument for playback than cassette players or 8 track players.* I love this quote by [Brian Eno]( URL_2 ): “Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.” edit- links, punctuation | 5 |
6fd86p | Other | Why so many people hate the company Nestlé? | Their CEO is on record claiming that water is not a human right. He would force people to pay to open their mouths in a rainstorm, and jail those who couldn't. Nestle has been stealing water from California for over 25 years. Their permit to take water has been expired for that long and they refuse to both stop taking water AND pay for a new permit. They didn't lower their illegal water intake by a single gallon during Cali's drought. As far as I'm concerned, Nestle's profits off of anything (and anything purchased with it) that used that water for those 25 years are proceeds of criminal activities and should be confiscated immediately. The CEO should be arrested and locked away (or publically beheaded, which is what should happen to anyone who even thinks that one human has the right to tell another human they can't drink water). | 3 |
7ei091 | Biology | Do bacteria have bacteria? | If you meant inside of them, maybe yes..some bacteria eat other bacteria. Whats interesting is viruses. Many bacteria are infected by viruses which sometimes forms a symbiotic relation. | 3 |
7stplc | Technology | If a car can run for years on a car battery by recycling energy through an alternator why can’t we develop an “alternator” for your home to reduce energy consumption? | Cars burn gas to run the motor, which drives the alternator, which is basically just a couple magnets spinning inside a large coil of wires. This magnet and wire design is commonly called a generator, its where the wires outside your house actually get the power from. | 4 |
a832bn | Other | What would the international response be if a super power, say Russia or China, tried to invade Mexico? | The question is: Who would come to Mexico's aid? Ideally, it would be the United States, as we are the nearest major superpower and have the capability to shut off access to Mexico through the Pacific and Atlantic, and have a vested interest in not having a vassal state on its southern border. Other countries aligned with the United States may provide some support, such as the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The European countries may additionally provide some support or sanctions if they were able to do so and Russia was the instigator. However, such a response from Europe would be fraught with the risks that Russia would retaliate against Europe. Diplomatically, the UN would not be able to do much as Russia, China, and the US are permanent members of the Security Council, and thus can block any resolution. | 4 |
imk5sr | Economics | Why can we almost always only buy white rice when "brown" rice is what's actually harvested? Even in regions where it's grown people eat white rice (like Indonesia for example) | Where are you shopping where you can only buy white rice? I see brown rice at even small local grocery stores and drugstores. | 19 |
6pu72y | Biology | How do we "hear" sounds inside our head during a memory? Since there is no audible noise, what exactly is happening that allows us to perceive those sounds? For example, when a song is stuck in your head all day, or you are revisiting a recent conversation that you had? | When you remember something, be it a sound or a sight or action, your brain fires many of the same neural paths as when the original event happened. For instance, if you practice playing a flute, then later imagine yourself practicing that flute, your brain will fire many (but not all) of the same pathways that fired when you actually practiced. So it's an imperfect impression, and you're missing the parts that come from the physical input (your eardrums vibrating, or in my example your fingers moving on the flute keys), but enough to recall it in your head. | 2 |
6feet0 | Other | Why is it that on Reddit practically everyone knows correct grammar while other parts of the Internet don't know any at all? Also, why does there seem to be an increase in English proficiency between barely passing seniors going into adulthood? | The amount of times I've seen, "payed" instead of, "paid" is absolutely infuriating (here on Reddit). | 8 |
k28usq | Biology | Is alcohol in any way good for us or is it purely a deteriorating drug? | Alcohol consumption looks like a J shape when talking about the relationship with heart disease. There is evidence that moderate amounts of alcohol per day (1 drink for women and 2 drinks for men) is associated with a lower risk than abstinence. But any more of that significantly increases the risk. | 4 |
nxk2kp | Biology | can someone explain the psychology behind the reluctantly to admit when you're wrong? | There’s are some very interesting physiological and psychological studies from the last 10 years that get into a potential chemical element. But for ELI5: stubborn people feel rewarded for sticking to what they believe more so than they do for learning and adapting to new information. Some of this relates to the reward of belonging to a group over the desire to objectively evaluate the accuracy (or moral values) of that group. This is also why such people will self-victimize, a way to validate their group and belonging by preemptively attacking an often imagined foe, which also often has traits the group itself has but is very insecure about. | 3 |
5nk2bk | Economics | If there have already been 2 unsuccessful NFL teams in L.A. why do Dean Spanos and Stan Kroenke think that it will work now? Los Angeles has had the Rams and the Raiders before and both left. Now they are about to have the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers. How could two owners think that a city that historically could not support one NFL team can now somehow support 2 of them? | In modern professional sports in the US, franchises move primarily over stadium funding issues, and not over support. Their primary revenue driver is media deals anyway, ticket sales are really about the optics for the television viewer, and not about the small revenue stream they bring in. LA is the second biggest media market in the US after NYC, given that the NFL splits their TV deals into AFC and NFC packages that are currently owned by CBS and FOX respectively, having an LA team in each conference allows them to sell two Seperate TV packages with the LA market included. Once Kroenke was willing to finance his stadium on his own, the last roadblock was removed, and now LA has two franchises. | 3 |
l8jxph | Other | What is the difference between cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias? Hi. I already plunged myself in a pool of behavioral books and websites but I have a hard time knowing the difference between the two. | When you’re buying a car you spend ages searching through adverts and dealerships, looking for the best deal you can find. The best car, the best price, the best deal. The very moment you commit, you then avoid looking at car ads, billboards, etc. Even TV Ads Make you feel uncomfortable; your brain doesn’t want to create doubt and see other deals that might be better. That active avoidance of discomfort is cognitive dissonance. This is because the brain is wired to commit and stick to your decisions. It’s actually a safety feature. ..... Others have given clear descriptions of confirmation bias. I would add that it also a common strategy in avoiding cognitive dissonance which is why there may be some confusion between the two. | 9 |
fsnmcm | Biology | Does 100 min of sun exposure differ from 100x 1-min exposures? Does the body have a replenishing natural residence to short-term UV? | It's the same as "Why can you hold your breath underwater for 100 times 1 minute but not for 1 time 100 minutes": After the one minute in which you put your body in a stress situation, it needs some time to recover: Replenish the oxygen distribution again, remove excess CO2 levels etc. | 1 |
favyvh | Economics | Why do airlines seem to overbook flights so often, especially when they end up having to pay extra in rewards to passengers who give up their seats? It just seems like it happens so often, and airlines will sometimes offer you three times the price of the ticket just to stay a few extra hours. Seems like it’d be easy to just...stop selling tickets once the plane is full?? | I'll use an example to help illustrate this. You, a traveler for pure pleasure has spent a few weeks tripping around europe. You booked your return ticket well in advance and got a great deal (say $500 because it makes the math easier). Me, a traveler for work, found out this morning that I need to go to New York for an important client meeting tomorrow. Crap, should have planned better but you know gotta keep the lights on. So I look up flights and lo and behold it'll be $2000 for the ticket. Boss says go we need you there so I buy it. We both get to the gate and look at that it's oversold. So they make the announcement for someone to fly to NA tomorrow instead (the plane is not full so this is easy). You as a pleasure traveler don't really care so you go up and take the $500 they give you and go to a pub to enjoy your extra day. Now at the end of the day the airline comes out ahead. I overpaid for the same seat on the plane by $1500, you got $500 and the airline gets $1000 for free. | 9 |
gxafvz | Physics | If planet earth was all molten when it formed, shouldn't all the heavy elements sink to the deeper levels? How come heavy elements are abundant up here? | I just cooked a pot of redbeans earlier today. When I initially added all the ingredients and let them settle, the denser water was at the bottom, then a layer of the less dense beans, then a layer of the even less dense chopped vegetables. Then I heated it up to a simmer. The heat from the bottom started carrying up plums of water, pushing up beans with it past the layer of vegetables up to the surface. Other sections around these plums saw vegetables getting pushed down by the current formed there. It mixed up the layers compared to how gravity had them settled. The Earth's core is geothermally active. Hot spots can carry heavier elements that would have settled at the bottom towards the surface, and circulate lighter elements near the top towards the bottom. If it was all uniformly hot and liquid, there wouldn't be this kind of circulation, but it isn't. | 2 |
5xow1d | Economics | Why aren't philosophy and personal finance mandatorily taught in k-12 school? | Philosophy - more particularly epistemology - tends not to be taught because it's just another way for the average student to fail. Secondary schools are heavily focused on getting students through the process, even if this means not educating them particularly well. Since teaching philosophy requires that students *understand* concepts rather than merely being able to regurgitate memorized information, it's a hindrance to keeping high graduation rates. Personal finance - at least as you imagine it - wouldn't help with the phenomenon you're describing. Pretty much no one 'saves' their way to wealth. They *earn* their way to wealth. Both the poor and the rich tend to operate on a spend-what-you-make pattern. It's just that when the poor do it, they're far more exposed to the consequences. You can certainly teach poor people how to balance a checkbook, but that's not going to change their live-for-today attitude when the entire world they know is one without a future. | 2 |
9agylr | Engineering | how do boat anchors work at sea? Saw a YouTube video of people jumping off a US aircraft carrier for fun in the sun. I assume the boat was shut off and chilling. So, how do they know when to drop the anchor? How long are anchors? Do they not use anchors when the ocean is too deep? Is there a safety mechanism to cut off the anchor if shit hits the fan? Cheers, my semens | There also are sea anchors. Basically a parachute that opens underwater when it is too deep to use a normal anchor. Essentially it slows your drift. | 18 |
chlz9m | Technology | Why does using an ad blocker cause the youtuber not to earn ad revenue? How does youtube know that ads are being blocked? | I'm not sure which method YouTube uses. But one common method of measuring ad displays is looking at how often an ad image is displayed. When you see an ad on a website, it means the image for that ad has been downloaded to your computer to display it in your browser. This download can be tracked on the server where the ad has been hosted. When you block ads, you prevent the displaying and thus downloading of the ad image. Which means it never gets counted as a displayed ad. | 1 |
72q74x | Chemistry | What are the actual negative effects of drugs like ecstasy and Molly? Most websites I've found just say that they will cause increased body temperature and dehydration, but I've heard others warn that they can "melt your brain." Are there any studies or evidence to show how bad they actually are for you? | Hyperthermia, hypertension, excited delirium, and psychosis are the most likely. I work ems and teach responders about dealing with patients that take drugs. Psychosis is probably what people mean when they talk about melted brains. | 4 |
e950vp | Chemistry | How are candles manufactured? | Disclaimer: I'm not a candle manufacturer. I just watched 'How it's made'. They take a piece of string and dip it in molten wax for a short moment. When it is hard they repeat. After many layers a candle is formed. | 1 |
giuamz | Technology | How do Phones vibrate? What is the mechanism behind it? | There's a tiny motor about the size of a flattened pea that spins a little weight. The weight is off-center so it causes vibrations. Some more expensive phones have a solenoid, which doesn't spin but moves back and forth. These vibrations are more controlled and less noisy. | 3 |
9r93xk | Biology | How does a tiny amount of salt create such a drastic effect on the taste of food? | The things that pick up the flavor on your tongue are just more sensitive to salt since in the wild we didn't get salt a lot so our bodies needed a reason to seek it out and good taste was the easiest thing to evolve | 5 |
m0kvul | Physics | What’s with all the fire warnings on kids’ sleep clothes? Are they gonna roll themselves into starting a fire? *totally confused* | The idea is that in a nighttime house fire, their clothing should be somewhat protective. Children's sleepwear must either be 1) flame-retardant or 2) close-fitted to the body (which means it won't have as much oxygen and won't catch fire as easily). For a similar reason, [mattresses are required to be fire-resistant for 30 minutes in open flame.]( URL_0 ) People should have a chance to get out of a house fire even if they're asleep when it starts. | 5 |
63zx5a | Culture | Why and when did sex turned into a dirty sin and become something bad or something we can't open talk about? | If you go outside the US, you will find many countries that are way less uptight and repressive about sex (except the reaaally conservative Catholic ones). The weird standards in the US always amazed me. "No, your boyfriend cannot stay the night, but here's the car, go and take a ride". Duh, what are we gonna do? Just hold hands or something? It sometimes appeared to me like more than half of Americans lost their virginity in the backseat of a car somewhere in the woods (That would be one statistic I'd love to see by the way). And as far as preventing anything goes, it doesn't even work (if you look at your place in the teenage pregnancy statistics). Kids will just be secretive about it and do it anyway, and since they can't ask for your advice, they might screw up and become pregnant or catch an STD. | 6 |
axyh2d | Physics | How does electricity “know” if a circuit is closed or not, before flowing through it? | It doesn't know. It will "flow" into the circuit and get bottled up. Once it reaches an area of high enough resistance to be able to stop the flow. it just sort of sits there waiting. The flow of electricity is really just electrical charge trying to equalise. The electrical charge tries to equalise along the conductor. If one end of the conductor is held at a different potential charge than the other end (like how a battery works), the electrical charge keeps moving from the high potential end to the low potential end. this is what electrical current is. the electrical charge (current) will keep flowing until the battery runs out and is unable to maintain either end at a fixed potential this is sort of how a capacitor works | 5 |
jmlp46 | Other | why does having a long story before a recipe help websites get better search engine results? | I always assumed it was to make sure you spend more time on their web page and that they would get more money from the ads that way. | 11 |
icu63s | Other | Why does the genre "cyberpunk" have a huge Asian influence? | The underlying themes of cyberpunk revolve around a highly urbanized, globalized world with advanced technology where large multinational companies possess more power than governments. Both in its early stages and as it developed, the cities that best fit this vision of a potential future were places like Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Seoul. This made using them as a basis for the urban settings a natural decision. Additionally, independent of the early western cyberpunk we saw the development of a Japanese cyberpunk that came from a very different place historically and culturally but converged on similar ideas and settings. With western cyberpunk already borrowing liberally from oriental settings, blending the two genres together was straightforward and happened organically. | 2 |
aohvm3 | Other | What happens to the bodies of homeless people with no families when they die? | It depends on where the death takes place but it's usually up to the locality. URL_0 | 1 |
frtl94 | Technology | Why does erasing an entire hard drive take less time than deleting some individual files? | Imagine a box of lego. Now imagine you're told to throw out the whole box of lego Or pick out all the yellow 2 x 4 pieces That's wiping a drive vs deleting individual files | 4 |
6uri1b | Chemistry | How did scientists realize that they've discovered a new pure element rather than a compound, before the invention of electron microscope? For instance, how did Marie Curie realize that the new substances she found - radium and polonium - were actually pure elements, rather than compounds? When Michael Faraday liquified oxygen, did he realize that it was an element? How and when did people realize that "liquified nitrogen" was of different nature than "liquified air"? | (Is an electron microscope even useful to determining whether you have a pure element?) > For instance, how did Marie Curie realize that the new substances she found - radium and polonium - were actually pure elements, rather than compounds? The definition of a chemical element is how it reacts. So as the other response noted, you can take your substance, and do all sorts of reactions with it that you know will remove certain types of other, known elements. Eventually you get down to something that can't be isolated any further. In the case of radium and polonium, though, they were also isolated by their radiation signatures — they let out specific, regular amounts of radiation that identify them uniquely. Radiochemistry (the identification of radioactive elements and isotopes) uses these radiation signatures to isolate elements as well. (Technecium is another good example of this.) > When Michael Faraday liquified oxygen, did he realize that it was an element? How and when did people realize that "liquified nitrogen" was of different nature than "liquified air"? The idea that air is composed of two elements — oxygen and nitrogen — was known in Faraday's time (thank Priestly and Lavoisier for that work, about 20 years before Faraday was born). By the time of Faraday the understanding of what a "chemical element" was had gotten to the point where they understood that a simple phase change was not relevant to the identity of the element. To answer the follow-up question — _when_ did that change, if it did? — the answer is, basically that understanding is what we credit to the Chemical Revolution (again, Priestly and Lavoisier, among others — late 18th century). _Prior_ to the Chemical Revolution (but still within, say, the so-called Scientific Revolution) understandings could be quite different and complicated (e.g., Robert Boyle may or may not have understood things the same way — his work is seen as somewhat transitional between alchemy and chemistry, and his understanding of what was going on in chemical reactions does not exactly match up with the post-Chemical Revolution understanding). But to put it another way: in order to have a modern procedure for isolating chemical elements, you must have a modern understanding of a chemical element in the first place. There are many people who participated in that "transition," but crediting Lavoisier (1743-1794) with it isn't the worst thing if you want to just put it on the head of a single person. It was not an overnight thing, though, and Lavoisier was building up a lot of other work himself. There is much more to this historical angle than I have indicated — but the main point here is that by the 19th century, much of chemistry was fairly "modern" in its understanding even if the underlying mechanism (electron bonds, etc.) were not understood well until much later. The "pre-modern," alchemical understanding did not understand elements in the same way as the later approaches did, and it was pretty complicated by the late 17th century and early 18th century; e.g., it was not just a matter of different elements, but possibly the creation of "subtle" elements that were intangible, and elements certainly could change from one element to another in this view. If you want to wrap your head around alchemy, the works of Lawrence Principe (_The Secrets of Alchemy_) and William R. Newman (_Atoms and Alchemy_) are both considered very good by historians of science (of which I am one, but of modern science). | 2 |
9dppbt | Biology | Does our digestive system digest stuff in the order we eat? eg, Will caffeine work slower if it is taken after food? | It’s more that everything gets thrown together into a big pot in whatever order you eat it, but once it’s in there it dissolves fairly simultaneously. You might get a small change if you take it simultaneously with a big meal or other drinks, because that dilutes it down and means it takes longer for everything to be digested, but your stomach is definitely not some sort of conveyor belt that digests things one at a time. | 8 |
cbqo78 | Biology | How do jellyfish mate? | There are many different types of jellyfish, so there isn't necessarily a single answer that applies to all of them. Like pretty much all animals, jellyfish produce sperm and eggs, and in most (but not all) species there are distinct male and female sexes. The sex organs are often pretty easy to see, as in [moon jellyfish]( URL_1 ) which have four circular gonads. Many species don't really "mate" exactly, but instead just release eggs and sperm into the water where they meet, so fertilization happens externally. They often coordinate this process based on daily cycles so that all jellyfish of the same species do this at the same time ([source]( URL_7 )). However, some species like the aforementioned moon jellyfish do have females take in sperm and fertilize their eggs internally, after which they temporarily hold on to the [fertilized eggs]( URL_4 ) before releasing them ([source]( URL_6 )). Finally, a small minority of jellyfish do have something more akin to "one-on-one" mating, where males directly transfer sperm to females. One example of this is [box jellyfish]( URL_8 ), where the males pass sperm into the female's mouth for fertilization (it's not like they have a uterus or anything), and females then lay strands of embryos mixed with stinging cells for protection ([source]( URL_0 )). I also want to point out though that in some ways, mating is the *least* interesting part of the life cycles seen in some jellyfish, since it's not really all that different from many species we're more familiar with. Most true jellyfish are also capable of asexual reproduction, and have something called "[alternation of generations]( URL_2 )". Essentially, the larva that develops as a result of sexual reproduction settles down on a surface and grows into a polyp. From there, rather than growing up into a single individual as you might expect, the polyp starts reproducing asexually (i.e., by growing and splitting apart). The polyp basically turns into a [chain of attached baby jellyfish]( URL_5 ) (all of which are genetically identical) that pop off one at a time in a process called "strobilation"; here's a [cool video]( URL_3 ) of this in action. | 1 |
a1vavz | Other | How come when tv shows or news programmes or articles interview someone that they know is a criminal and hide their identity (like when they interview big drug dealers) why don’t they just arrest them there and then ? | I don’t know how many drug dealers or criminals pop into a Tv studio, usually when talking to someone they’re not at the same location, or evidence against someone is circumstantial. Usually the people you see with their faces covered are victims or people who fear retaliation for what they’re saying Lastly, the same as when a reporter says off the record, etc to garner some info that they won’t put in their article, it’s about gaining a trust relationship. If you interview someone who may be involved in criminal activity and send the police to them, you’re not going to get the next story because people will assume it’s a set up | 2 |
nyiilh | Earth Science | . Salt melts ice. Glaciers sit in an ocean of salt. Glaciers don't melt. | I think you mean icebergs? Glaciers are rivers of ice. They don’t touch salt water as a general rule, except where the river meets the sea. Icebergs are giant hunks of ice floating in the ocean. Salt lowers the freezing point of water, which is why it can cause ice to melt. But it does not remove the freezing point altogether. At about 28.4F, saltwater will freeze. That is the point at which salt will no longer melt ice, and that is the temperature at which icebergs can survive in saltwater. | 5 |
61bffm | Culture | What is the differences between a bill getting pulled in Congress versus it going to a vote and failing? | In other words, what future consequences does pulling a bill have, rather than if it had failed to get a majority of votes. | 2 |
cuemxf | Technology | Why do windows computers take so long to shut down? | Windows will gradually shut down all of the various background programs and update the registry during the normal shutdown procedure. Because Windows tends to have a lot of junk running at any given time, sometimes it takes a while. It definitely helps to have your OS installed on a solid state drive, though. | 2 |
e00rpx | Other | how did we send people to the moon in the sixties, but advanced companies like spaceX are still a few years away from sending another? | SpaceX goal is different from the goal of NASA in the sixties. The goal isn't just a one-time landing and then go home. SpaceX wants to reuse the shuttle it uses. Multiple times. It's not building a disposable rocket like NASA did in the 60s. It's trying to build a shuttle that can be reused multiple times, not just discarded after one use like NASA did. So you can appreciate the difference in technologies needed. | 15 |
63a08j | Other | the brouhaha around Gibraltar and Brexit | 1. Gibraltar is a territory of the UK and under its rule, and therefore with Brexit, it is leaving the EU as well. 2. Spain has always felt as if they should get Gibraltar so just keep that in the back of your mind 3. a significant amount of the people who work on Gibraltar are Spanish citizens so the move out of the EU leaves them in a relative limbo state regarding the laws governing their work and taxes etc. 4. Gibraltar residents voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU | 1 |
bi5vp1 | Other | What does woke mean? | It’s suppose to mean you’re conscious to the biggest issues in society. Racial inequality being the most common one tied to the word | 2 |
djr6wp | Chemistry | why does the soap bar get less soapy the more it’s used | It has nothing to do with evaporating "cleansing oils" or anything like that. The smaller the surface area of the piece of soap, the longer it takes to work up a good lather. When a piece of soap gets small enough, I set it aside and get a new bar and repeat the process. Once I have around 5 of those smaller pieces, I soak them in water for a bit and mash them together into one big piece that will lather up just fine. | 1 |
hilpwp | Biology | If depression is a chemical imbalance why can’t they do a blood test to decide dosage and what type of medication is needed? | There is no evidence for depression being “a chemical imbalance”. Even if a neural correlate was mapped, that would not be evidence that depression was cause by biological factors. | 11 |
cr4tzx | Biology | Why does your metabolism get worse as you grow older? When is your metabolism at its best and when does it usually slow down? | Edit: Not a doctor, shhhshhh... Your metabolism does not slow down with age, or at least not like you probably think. The main culprit is changing exercise and nutrition habits. Of course there are the additional costs of growing for kids, which is why a 16 year old will have a greater BMR (base metabolic rate) than a 30 year old of the same height and weight. BMR is the energy you burn by basically just existing, e.g. lying in bed all day. While most of us were probably more active when we were younger - think of playing outside, PE class and so on - adults are mostly sedentary. We drive to work, sit in an office the whole day and sit at home afterwards. This is why younger people seem to have a larger TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). TDEE is your BMR plus energy burned from moving about and exercise. Humans are really bad at noticing subtle changes over time, which is why most of us don't see that we are moving less and often eat more as we get older. Therefore the resulting weight gain is attributed to the mysterious slowing metabolism. While there are specific health problems or other factors that lead to weight gain, they mostly work by increasing appetite or making you lethargic and therefore use less energy. But these are often minor contributors compared to nutrition and exercise habits. | 7 |
mwfgxg | Engineering | How are needles made? Is the center drilled-out? Is liquid metal shaped with that tiny hole in the center? What holds the spacer (whatever you call the piece that creates the gap) in place? Is it rolled? EDIT: Hypodermic needles, not sewing needles. | They start as a flat piece of metal and are then formed into a tube that is sharpened. At least that’s how this [how it’s made video]( URL_0 ) explains it. | 2 |
90wpk2 | Technology | Why is that plastic-ey printed texture on T-shirts so annoying and why do they keep making them? | None of the answers here are correct. I'm a printmaker, so here's the real deal. What you're desrcibing is plastisol ink, which is very commonly used for printing on t-shirts, tote-bags, hats, and other apparel. It's essentially PVC resin and pigment suspended in a liquid plasticizer. It's commonly used because it's cheap, easy to use, very versatile, and, if done correctly, robust. A lot of printing is not done well, which results in the thick plastic-y texture and flaking that you described. Well printed pastisol items will only have the faintest texture and will last a long time. The alternatives are water-based in, discharge printing, or dye sublimation. They all have their different benefits and drawbacks. | 1 |
b82xmb | Culture | What is this so-called 'virtue signaling' and why is it considered a bad thing? | That's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot today. It's basically when you make a big show of doing or saying something good but really you're just doing it so that everybody sees you doing something good and thinks you're a good person rather than doing it to just be a good person. | 3 |
kydray | Biology | Does hanging really kill by snapping the neck, not by stopping breathing? | That's the intended outcome, yes. If the hangman screws up or wants them to go the slow way, it'll end in slow strangulation rather than a broken neck. | 4 |
5m08ap | Biology | Why do we cry? What is the connection of tears coming out of our eyes with sadness or even happiness. | Crying releases excess stress hormones (like cortisol), which is why you often feel a sense of relief or calmness after a good cry. | 6 |
b06bm5 | Mathematics | How are there "unsolvable" maths equations? And how are some then solved? | There are different ways in which a math equation or problem can be « unsolvable » When an equation does not have any solution, we usually do not say that it is « unsolvable » because we consider the problem of finding the solutions solved by saying there aren’t any. A case in which an equation may not be « solvable » is that we know there is a solution but cannot describe it properly. For example the solutions of x^2 =2 can be de described by using the root function: the solutions are root(2) and -root(2). But for some equations the solutions cannot be described with common functions like root. Another case, that is rarer and usually for more general math problems, is that the problem cannot be shown to be true or false. For some problems, the fact that it cannot be proven either way has itself been proven. Those are called “undecidable” problems. Godel proved that there are always undecidable problems, no matter how we build mathematics, using a logical paradox to create such a problem. | 3 |
ld6vpj | Engineering | How do sports cars benefit from having stiffer/lower suspension? All I notice from lower suspension is that the ride quality is much worse, making you feel every bump in the road. What is it about a nice and soft suspension in a typical car that would reduce a sports cars’ performance? | There are a few advantages to stif suspension on a race car. For example when you go around a corner a lot of the weight is put on the outside wheels. If you have soft suspension then the suspension on the outside wheels will get shorter as it gets loaded and the suspension on the inside wheels will get longer as it gets unloaded. This means that the entire body rolls over to the outside putting even more weight on the outside wheels. This means that there are a lot more forces going through the outside wheels and almost no forces through the inside wheels and it is therefore more likely for the outside wheels to lose grip causing the car to slide. And in the worst case the inside wheels may get completely unloaded and the car may roll over on its side. Another reason you might want stif suspension is so you are able to get the chassis of the car as close to the ground as possible exploiting the ground effect for aerodynamic benefits which allows you to go faster through the corners. A softer suspension might cause the chassis to hit the ground during manouvers which reduces the downforce to almost nothing and unloads the wheels reducing the friction forces you can get out of them. It also improves handling in general as the suspension geometry does not change much depending on the forces put on them. But there are also disadvantages to a stif suspension. In straights you do not want downforce as it creates drag and reduce your top speed so a softer can help you raise the car on the straights and then create the optimal downforce geometry as you slow down towards a corner. Also if you have bumps in the track a stif suspension will cause the wheels to lift off the ground in the bumps and you lose traction while a soft suspension can help the wheel mantain contact and you get more traction. So different tracks will usually have different optimal suspension settings and finding the right setting for the track in the current conditions is very important to winning the races. | 1 |
cnnfht | Other | What’s the science behind why pacing whilst on the phone or focusing on something makes you able to concentrate even more? | The ability to concentrate is still only partially understood by cognitive psychologists. One way of thinking about (model) of attention/concentration is that you have different "pools" for different tasks/senses. For example, doodling while in class helps some people concentrate, because while the auditory-linguistic part of their attention is activated (hopefully) by the teacher, the tactical-movement and sometimes visual attention (if the teacher isn't very visually engaging) is bored and looking for something to do, drawing your attention away from the subject at hand. That's why when you give yourself something to occupy the part that's "bored" it can shut up and let you properly concentrate. Same with phone conversations for some people. The auditory-linguistic-social parts are engaged, but your body-movement parts (or for me, the visual parts) are itching for something to do. & #x200B; Source: Studied this just now for my exam in cognitive psychology. | 11 |
e6re5g | Biology | why is it that sometimes when we wake up it feels like only a few minutes passed but then you check the time and it’s been HOURS, why does it feel like you closed your eyes momentarily? | REM vs non REM sleep. Deep REM sleep happens within 20 minutes of falling asleep, most commonly. Some people have a mixture of both non REM sleep and REM sleep, but some people (or depending on the circumstance) only have one or the other. | 5 |
9ql89e | Biology | Does rubbing alcohol actually kill germs on surfaces? | Alcohol denatures free proteins and destroys many strains of bacteria and viruses. It's one of the reasons we use it for disinfecting cuts and scrapes. You don't want to overdo alcohol cleaning, however, because the few cells that don't die are more likely to be resistant to alcohol, and can grow out of control. It's better to swap between alcohol and other cleaning agents (sometimes you have no alternative, bleach on a computer screen probably isn't good), because it can keep the bugs from gaining an immunity. | 1 |
df9pc9 | Biology | How do retinas detach? When I have horrible allergies, I tend to rub my eyes fiercely, and I was wondering if at some in my life I'm going to detach my retinas. Can someone explain the process? Thank you. | As I understand it, the retina is like a thin skin on top of the back of the eyeball. With certain possible genetic factors and or traumatic impact, the retina can separate from the underlying layer. Normal Rubbing your eyes won't do it. How fiercely....you should probably consult your doctor if you have a fierce eye rubbing issue. | 2 |
l719fv | Biology | What is physically happening when your body develops a tolerance to something? Do we build tolerances to everything we consume? Does it include healthy things too, like vitamins? | there is a sort of balance that the body tries to maintain at all times, called homeostasis. basically, you try to have enough but not too much oxygen in your blood, enough but not too much body heat, enough but not too much calcium in your bones, etc. the body has many, many strategies for trying to maintain these balances. sometimes when your body is being pushed out of balance in some particular way much of the time, your body will enact some counterbalancing strategy all of the time. for example, you may always have an elevated level of some hormone if you always have too much sugar in your blood, or your brain may always spend a lot of time cleaning up some neurotransmitter if you're drunk every day. through these strategies, your body can "tolerate" the imbalancing force. the body doesn't have a strategy for tolerating everything - for example, if you consume too much vitamin A, there is nothing your body can do. you will just die. obviously, though we think of vitamin A as "healthy" because it's necessary for our survival and proper functioning, it's really the *proper balance* of this nutrient in our body that's healthy - that is, having neither too little nor too much. | 2 |
9znrmw | Other | Who “owns” the internet? | The primary feature of the internet when it was first designed was that nobody does. It was the cold war, and the US didn't want it to have a central point of attack that could take the whole thing down, so it was made to be a mesh. You can own a part of it - like Reddit owns URL_0 and the servers that power it, but they don't own the DNS servers that direct people to URL_1 | 3 |
816icz | Biology | With bee populations being decimated why haven't we seen major shortages of any produce? | Because the honey you eat isn’t really honey. It’s mostly synthetic honey from China mixed with real honey from around the rest of the world. Edit: Buy Local Honey There’s also a tv show on Netflix called “Rotten” and the first episode explains a lot about this | 15 |
n1q387 | Other | Why do women on average live longer than men? | This isn’t just something we see in women but in females of other species, females have a stronger genetic combination having a pair of X’s meaning that the chromosome exchange information resulting in a stronger gene pool. Men also have a tendency to lead unhealthy lifestyles, take more risks and also more likely to die in wars. The last one only really changed gradually in the last 30 years but it is still overwhelmingly men. | 3 |
6cc29y | Biology | How is the concept of doppelgangers possible if there's no relationship to other person? | There are only so many arrangements of 2 eyes, a nose, a mouth and two eyebrows. It is actually incredible how much variety we can discern from such a limited amount of information, but itnis inevitable that some patterns are going to repeat fairly closely given 9 billion chances. | 1 |
6lra5n | Physics | . Why do rainbows all have the same shape. You never see one going straight overhead or see one from the end. | Rainbows don't actually occupy a place in space. They are an illusion whose apparent location is dependent on where you (the observer) are. At the time you see a rainbow, someone else standing in a different location might also be seeing a rainbow but to them it would be in a different place depending where they are with respect to the sun. | 4 |
9vitcr | Other | -Cognitive dissonance? | Basically disagreeing with your own beliefs, or that your actions do not line up with your values or beliefs. You contradict yourself. Could be a classic case of the little angel on one shoulder and the little devil on the other. Conflicted between doing what you know is wrong, but you want to do even though you believe in things that go against it. Or that you have a belief about something but because of new reasons or evidence to support the other side of it, you take the action that contradicts it. Furthermore, maybe you find reasons to justify your contradictory behaviour. Examples; “I really do not believe in God, but I attend church every Sunday and am a good Christian. I am in a state of cognitive dissonance. “ “I’m certain that smoking causes cancer and that it is really bad for me and it is a gross habit. I smoked two packs of cigarettes this week and will probably smoke more next week.” “I know this girl is cheating on me, she is no good for me and doesn’t treat me with respect or value me. I just asked her to marry me and she said yes, we are getting married in May.” | 3 |
bj1iwm | Mathematics | what is Benford’s Law or Benford’s Analysis? Also how can it be used in auditing? | In real world data like (from the wiki) electricity bills, street addresses, stock prices, house prices, population numbers, death rates, lengths of rivers, physical and mathematical constants... The numbers seen aren't uniformly distributed. That is, you're NOT just as likely to see a 1 in the first significant digit (not counting leading zeroes basically), as you are to see a 9. 1 occurs much more commonly. So if there's a huge mass of accounting data that you suspect might be faked in a fraud case, you can, as a smoke test, check the frequency of occurence of the leading digits and see whether they follow Benford's Law. If they differ significantly, then it might be fake data. | 1 |
bft541 | Technology | Why do CPUs and GPUs perform better when cool | Lots of great in-depth information in this thread, but the short, simple response is that they *don't* perform significantly better when cool. However, sustained high temperatures will shorten the lifespan of the semiconductors, and extremely high temperatures will damage them rapidly. Running faster generates more heat, so better cooling allows that heat to be taken away more effectively, meaning they can reach higher speeds without climbing to harmful temperatures. **TL;DR genuine ELI5:** It's not that running cool helps them perform better; it's that running fast makes heat, running hot is bad for them, and better cooling makes it possible for them to run faster without breaking from getting too hot. | 6 |
5ssyti | Economics | What's the difference between UBI and unemployment/welfare checks? Aren't they both guaranteed income? | UBI is awarded to everyone automatically. No hoops have to be jumped through, no proving you are looking for a job, no proving your job does not pay enough, no proving you are disabled, etc. | 4 |
dms38w | Physics | I just read about gravity traveling at the same speed as light and I'm still confused. | Imagine a stick that’s one light year long. If you stood on one end and pulled on the stick, it would take time before someone on the other side of the stick felt that pull. So if you pull, and then drop the stick and leave, by the time that person feels the pull, you could be gone and somewhere else | 3 |
9lsxux | Biology | Is there a reason nature chose to make penis a "blood sponge" instead of a proper muscle? | I think that in order to flex, skeletal muscles (excluding the heart and visceral muscles, that is) need to be attached to a bone on each end. Therefore, a skeletal muscle couldn't flex and stick straight out from the body. If it contracted, it would just pull itself closer to the body. | 7 |
l9uhsk | Technology | How do mass distilleries keep the methanol out of their bottles? Thanks all for the answers | While the methanol produced in the first place is minimized, the process of distillation also removes methanol. In the fractional distillation process, methanol should be one of the first components to come over, and will do so around 64.7 degrees celcius. | 2 |
82w2ia | Other | Why Do Most Alphabets In Western (All?) Countries Have Capital Letters? I understand nowadays it's used for proper nouns, but was that always the case? If so, why? I can't imagine it would be to make things easier to parse when reading, like if I wrote "he went to greg" any readers aren't going to be confused and wonder if this person has gone off to either meet a human, Greg, or gone off to greg himself. In addition, as a follow on I suppose, why are some capitals so distinctly different whereas others are just the letter but more big. Like you've got : * A = a * Q = q Then it's the apparently perfectly shaped letters: * U = u * V = v Why? | You can thank Charlemagne for your lower case letters. Capital letters sort of came first. The whole think has to do with people writing (because this comes from before printing was a thing) text and joining up their letters to write faster and making the first letter a bit bigger in words to make it clearer where words began. That the two different ways to write letters became different cases and exact rules where to use which case came later. The current shape fo the letters in different fonts evolved over time sometimes the way the shape look different or similar make little sense when you don't know their history. Capital letters might seem optional in languages like English which doesn't use it as much, but other languages like German use it a lot more and it helps to avoid ambiguity just like proper punctuation. Of course you can get most of that from context, but it would be slightly harder to read if you wrote everything in all caps. | 2 |
7x5bym | Technology | What "hashing" a password means and why it is hard to decrypt them | Have you ever had corned beef hash? Imagine trying to back calculate a cow. | 4 |
ndeeoz | Physics | What do protons do when electrons flow? I know that current is the flow of electrons so what are protons/neutrons doing when electricity flows? I was learning the band theory of semiconductors earlier and it briefly mentioned something about protons moving in an opposite direction to electrons but I don’t understand it well. Can someone help me? Why is electron flow emphasized of protons also flow? Thanks! | I think you've misunderstood something you've read. Protons do not move when electricity flows. Not only are they locked into the nucleus of the atoms of the material, they're nearly 2000 times as massive as an electron and thus far more difficult to move. In a semiconductor you have the concept of "electrons" and "holes"--when an electron moves in a semiconductor it leaves an atom with an incomplete electron shell behind, which is a "hole" ready to accept an electron from somewhere else, but that has nothing to do with protons moving. | 2 |
cjsemp | Technology | Why do streaming apps like Netflix for different products eventually "shut down"? It's been announced that the Amazon Prime Video app for the Wii U will no longer work after a certain date, and today was announced that pretty soon the Youtube app for the 3DS will no longer work. My question is, why do companies do this? Couldn't they just leave the app and let people use it and just say they won't be offering technical support for that app anymore? | I would imagine it costs companies server space and bandwidth to continue supplying an app, even if they have no intention of supporting it further. And while the company may no longer support or work on an app, it doesn't mean that others aren't going to continue accessing it. Part of supporting an app includes keeping it both secure and functional for users. So an unmaintained app can quickly become a liability for the company that supplies it. And even if it's not a security issue, if the app isn't updates and stops working well with whatever platform it's on, it's a bad impression left with users that may or may not be savvy enough to understand the situation. Additionally, in cases like your situation, a business may no longer want to supply access to another company on their platform, or they may no longer be able to. It may be contractual, legal, or just cultural issues that cause a company to cut ties with another. It's like when cable providers stop providing certain channels during negotiations with the networks. The consumer loses access to apps/channels because the 2 companies involved are in a dispute of some sort. Edit: typos | 2 |
k2h4cc | Biology | What happens to our brain when we fall in love, or what makes us fall in love with someone? | The limbic system is a group of interconnected structures located deep within the brain. It's the part of the brain that's responsible for behavioral and emotional responses. When we are falling in love, chemicals associated with the reward circuit flood our brain, producing a variety of physical and emotional responses—racing hearts, sweaty palms, flushed cheeks, feelings of passion and anxiety. URL_0 . | 5 |
hww000 | Technology | Why are modern artists able to draw hyper-realistic art using just a pen/pencil, but artists from 100+ years ago weren’t able to? Edit: In regards to what I mean by hyper-realistic, I’m referring to artwork seen here: [Pics]( URL_0 ) these are almost photograph quality. | Projecting images, digital zoom, and large format printing. Basically the ability to project an outline of a photograph onto paper and then fill in the shades. It’s an advanced coloring book. There are a lot of long replies here, that have some interesting points, but the reality is that they get a photograph onto their “canvas” and color by numbers. Plz Don’t interpret my ELI5 as condescending to the artist or artwork. It’s amazing. I am, however, being slightly condescending to all the comments that make the technique seem deeper than it is. That’s an old pet peeve I have from art school pontificating. | 27 |
7ew8vv | Physics | can a star with no galaxy exist? Is it possible for there to be a star in space, but that it's not inside a galaxy? | Yes. Stars can and do exist outside of the boundaries of galaxies. They are commonly referred to as stellar outcasts or intergalactic stars. | 2 |
cxznxg | Biology | what happens in a person's body when they die that makes revival more unlikely the longer they're dead? For example there's probably bacteria ready to start infecting cells, overcrowd by multiplying without white blood cells to stop them, eating essential parts of cells... or the person's body temperature drops too much for the heart to kickstart. What all happens minute by minute (or immediately) to make revival more difficult and improbable? | The first and most important thing that happens before bacteria even get started is that your brain starts to die. That begins within minutes of cardiac arrest. Within a fairly short time after the brain's resources are expended, a wave of depolarization sweeps through the brain as the delicate balance maintaining electrical potential breaks down. This is broadly considered to be irreversible. The truth is that different parts of you die at different rates, but the brain is a hungry organ and it pretty much dies first. Since we *are* our brains, the rest is mostly academic. | 2 |
8ijw3p | Other | Why does it seem like every movie is produced by both a large well known company and a small, never heard from again company? | The producers for each movie form a company that exists only to finance *that* movie. This allows them to isolate the money and debt involved with the film. If there is some sort of problem and the production company is sued, then only the money raised for that film is at stake. If a large company produced the film, all their assets could be at stake in a lawsuit. NOTE: I'm not advocating for or against this business practice, merely stating why it happens. | 1 |
5w0we1 | Other | Why any country would ever need more nukes than can destroy the surface of our planet (as many have already)? Aside from fighting aliens, obviously. | Redundancy. In a theoretical attack, some nukes might malfunction. Some might be preemptively destroyed by the enemy. Some operators might refuse to launch. You need redundancy for MAD to actually work. | 3 |
itl85a | Other | When did Ukraine stop being called "the Ukraine", why was it ever called "the Ukraine", and why was "the" dropped? Maybe this reveals my age, but I remember that Ukraine used to be called "the Ukraine". Then suddenly I realized that nobody says "the Ukraine" anymore. Someone please explain this. | Parts of the US are often defined by their relationship to the national capital, e.g. as "the North-East", "the South", "the Mid-West". Likewise, "ukraine" meant something like 'borderland' -- its position in the Russian Empire. It was also known as "Little Russia" in comparison to "Great Russia" -- the area around Moscow. When it became an independent state, the country wanted to get rid of that subordinate status even in its name, so it asked other countries to drop the "the". URL_0 | 2 |
jy6t6p | Biology | why do men get the “shivers” while they pee? Until recently I thought the concept of the pee shiver was a universally accepted fact. However, in a recent conversation with my wife, I realized that she has never heard of this before. I have had the idea confirmed by multiple of my guy friends that have also get shivers from time to time while they pee. Someone please eli5 so I can relay the information on to my wife. | I get pee shivers I am a lady, maybe it’s just a pee thing? | 8 |
5wyhgf | Other | When people smoke cigarettes, they put it between their pointer and middle fingers, but when people smoke joints, they use their thumbs and their index fingers. Why is this? | Part of it is, commercially made cigarettes are strong enough to be held with 2 fingers on the filter. Hand rolled cigarettes or joints need to be held differently. Part of it is culture, in western countries, "everyone" knows how to hold a cigarette. Mostly because that's how you see others hold it. In Cambodia I saw old villagers covering their mouth, like you would when you cough, with the cigarette held between their ring and middle finger. Sort of like [this]( URL_2 ) Even in western countries, in some old black and white movies, some people can be smoking cigarettes "joint style." URL_1 URL_0 | 1 |
leiru9 | Technology | Why is 24 FPS fine on movies but horrible for video games | Answer: Motion blur, or more specifically the quality of it. When rendering a CGI movie, the computer knows everything about the current “frame” and the one before it, and what will come after it. This means the computer can accurately calculate the path of motion and simulate motion blur with high accuracy. This results in a film that looks smooth, despite not really being “smooth.” Video games, on the other hand, only know about the current frame, and only get around 16 or 33 milliseconds at 60 FPS and 30 FPS (respectively) to calculate the frame. That’s a lot less time, and means corners have to be cut. The relative lack of information about the frame means that the motion blur (or even lack thereof) is low quality, and we perceive choppiness as a result. [Edit] There’s a lot more to this, but this specifically answers the difference between film and games. | 1 |
69due8 | Culture | Could the internet ever break, either permanently or temporarily, or has it ever done so before? | Just some ideas beyond just "root DNS" that others have mentioned: * Censorship tools sometimes accidentally block everything (overloaded, or bad config file) in a whole country. * Imagine if Windows/Android pushed an OS update which broke the network stack. Internet would 'appear' to be down. * Failures at 3rd-party hosting sites such as Cloudflare and Amazon can cause many different websites to fail at once. * Undersea cables get cut all the time, including redundant routes all having problems. * Something like a leap-seconds or milenium leap-year bug could simultaneously break a large portion of computers worldwide * Computer viruses that can attack webservers (e.g. heartbleed) could cause large portions of the web to become unavailable. | 12 |
6j4u2s | Physics | Why does light appear stronger through smoke? I noticed this while my brother was stationed at a traffic signal and he was vaping. The cars passing by appeared to have very strong headlights. Why do the particles act in such a way? Unless I'm seeing things... | As though speaking to an actual five year old: Imagine that the water hose is a flashlight, or a headlight, or anything that makes light. when I point the water hose right next to you and turn it on, a few drops of water will hit you. Those drops of water are like the little particles of light that you would see if a car was pointing it's headlights near you. If I pointed the hose directly at you and turned it on, the water that hit you would be like the light that you saw looking into a cars headlights. Now imagine that I sprayed a tree that was right next to you. The water that hit you when I sprayed the tree is like the light you would see on a foggy/smokey day when a car near you turns on it's headlights. The little particles of light hit the fog and bounce in all directions instead of just going in a straight line. That's why more particles hit you (and so you see them and the lights look brighter) and also why your headlights don't shine as far in the fog/smoke. | 1 |
8aoutq | Technology | these 2 questions. How does/did dial up internet work? Why and how did making a phone call affect the internet connection? | In the days of dial up there was no pre existing data infrastructure. That means that the only lines run to a house that were capable of transmitting and receiving data were the telephone lines. The dial up modem (modulator/demodulator) would place a specially created call to a service provider and create a session to the web. The session would require the service provider and the local modem to constantly "talk" to one another... If the session/call was interrupted for too long, the modem would drop the connection. If you had a second phone line only for the dial up this could be avoided. Any other questions? Happy to answer. | 4 |
7xsgkl | Biology | How come a person gets dehydrated when drinking certain liquids, such as beer? Shouldn't all liquids provide hydration? | Beer will not dehydrate you, the alcohol content is too low. But alcohol is a power diuretic and so when you get to solutions that are over around 30% (so most if not all spirits) you start getting into drinks that are net dehydrators. Not all liquids are water as you assume. | 3 |
mq4wam | Chemistry | Why do companies combine several types of sweeteners instead of increasing the amount of one? | Some sweeteners in large concentrations don't have pleasant tastes, try a tablet of saccharine straight to the tongue. Is not good | 5 |