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<\|im_start\|>user How does a photon move?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A photon is an excitation of the electromagnetic field which is described by a wave propagating through space - always with speed c = speed of light. So a photon simply always moves - it can't be at rest. The reason for this is that the photon is massless and the solutions to its governing wave equation therefore has constant dispersion. Did this answer your question?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: how can laptops fit over 1tb of storage and 16gb of ram in a tiny chill while PCs need massive ram sticks and often large SSDs? Why isn’t PC ram as small?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The main reasons why PCs are larger are ease of access and cooling. Cooling is very important to improve performance and durability. If you make everything small and cram it into a small space, you can’t have good cooling so the system will have to slow down as it heats up. The bigger your RAM stick is, the faster it can dissipate heat. The more space you have between your parts, the more airflow and cooling you get.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why does choked flow happen and why it is related to the speed of sound ? I'm diving into the venturi effect (example: rocket nozzles and chocked flow happening in the admission valve of a ICE) and it seems that when the gas approaches the speed of sound, the flow starts to choke. Why does this happen ?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant To preface this answer: information about a medium travels at the speed of sound in the medium. So if you change the conditions of a flow at one point, the effect on the medium travels at the speed of sound upstream in the medium. If you imagine a venturi nozzle and a flow condition where the speed of sound is achieved at the throat, and your downstream flow is travelling at greater than the speed of sound, any disturbances downstream of the throat won't propagate upstream. Picture yourself splashing around in a river where the flow travels faster than the wave speed; no one upstream of the river will be able to see your splashing around. Now there are two ways to achieve a choked flow scenario from here: * ~~Increase the pressure upstream of the throat~~ EDIT: Forcibly increase flowrate upstream of the nozzle * Decrease the pressure downstream of the throat. If you try ~~increasing the pressure~~ forcing the flowrate to increase upstream of the nozzle (perhaps by increasing power on a compressor), you end up forcing air to get to Mach 1 before the throat. If you picture it does that instantaneously before the throat, because of how supersonic flow behaves it will actually decelerate to subsonic flow just downstream of the Mach transition. And speed up again and slow down again, etc. etc.. This just creates a bunch of shocks in your convergent nozzle where heat is generated but the flow doesn't speed up. And once it gets to the throat, it hits mach 1 anyways and accelerates in the divergent section. If you decrease pressure downstream, on the other hand, you get a situation of underexpansion at the outlet of your pipe system. Unlike subsonic flow where the information about the new reduced downstream pressure propagates through the system quickly and stabilizes the flow pressures and velocities, the underexpansion remains at the outlet in the form of an expansion fan. Remember: information can't travel in a medium faster than the speed of sound, and if the flow travels faster than the speed of sound, the information downstream never propagates to the rest of the system. EDIT: Changed "increase pressure upstream" to "increase flowrate upstream". Your behavior from the reservoir leading up to the throat will not depend on absolute pressure of the reservoir.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user As an applicant, what would be some good questions to ask during a PhD interview? I have a PhD interview coming up and I can't seem to think of an impactful question that I may ask at the end of the interview. As an applicant, I think that I would need to ask something that may showcase my readiness and motivation for the PhD position. The questions I have in mind feel a little too basic. I would really appreciate some suggestions. Thank you :)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I would ask how things were going for people who got their PhD's at their department. It's a potential huge investment by both parties, and if they are worth their salt they should be able to present actual employability numbers.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do I sometimes lose weight on days when I eat much more than I should have? I've been trying hard to lose weight - and succeeding. I've lost more than forty pounds over the past five months, since I started running and eating right. Yesterday I ate waaaay too many calories, and it wasn't a workout day. But when I woke up this morning, I had lost two pounds! This isn't a unique experience. It has happened in the past. I'm 30, 6'4", 285lbs. I've been trying to eat under 2,500 calories every day. Yesterday I probably ate closer to 3,500, maybe more. TL;DR - in the context of a calorie cutting diet & exercise program, I ate a ton more calories than I should have and woke up two pounds lighter. Why?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are a lot of short term factors that case your weight to fluxuate beyond your core weight loss, your water content in particular. If you drank a lot and ate a small amount of high sodium foods, you would would have been overhydrated for your weigh in. Then the next day, you eat a lot, include some diuretics, then maybe sweat a little more than usual that night, you'd be underhydrated, enough to compensate for the extra food you ate. Also note that bathroom scales are sensitive to temperature and humidity, and aren't always that accurate to begin with. A 2 lbs. swing is not terrible significant.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How did species survive in the days just after the K-Pg Extinction event? The K-Pg Extinction event (aka the Chicxulub impact, widely known as being the impact that killed the dinosaurs) "devastated the global environment, mainly through a lingering impact winter which halted photosynthesis in plants and plankton" (Wikipedia). And yet numerous different species, the ancestors of all organisms today, somehow pulled through. How, exactly, could anything survive this? How did plants survive without sunlight, or animals survive without anything to eat? I can understand scavenging for days and weeks on dead plant matter and decaying cadavers, but how was this sustainable for months and years? I just don't get what the means of survival were for long enough for the dust clouds to subside and photosynthesis to resume. Thanks for any insight.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Here like with all things, that description is a vast oversimplification meant to make it easy to understand. It wasn't that photosynthesis stopped altogether. The dust made sunlight very dim like a very cloudy day for years. Which made it hard for larger plants and things with high energy demands to survive, but smaller plants whom had evolved to live in the shadow of the larger plants could survive; especially after the larger plants died and stopped shading them and taking up the ground nutrients. But because all the large plants died, so did the animals that needed the large plants for large quantities of food. As did the large carnivores that needed the large herbivores. However the small animals (some of the first mammals) were able to subsist even thrive on the smaller plants.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If the minimum wage becomes $15 an hour, what about workers making more than that? If the minimum wage becomes $15 an hour for someone working in fast food with no higher education, what about some one who is already making $15/hr with a college degrees taking on an entry level job in their field that does require a degree or those who are making just above them like $17 or even $20? Wouldn’t they want their wages to be increased too to make it fair, which in turn would increase all of the rest of the wages through like a domino effect?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Their wages could go up for a variety of reasons. 1.) The minimum wage increases demand for slightly above minimum wage skill workers. This increase in demand pushes wages up. 2.) Workers outside options are better now, so someone who was making $15 is going to need to be paid more or other compensation improvements to keep them around.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user eli5: What is rent seeking and most specifically defensive rent seeking?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Rent seeking is behavior that increases someone's income without increasing wealth. In economics, most transactions are done because both people are better off, when a baker sells a loaf of bread it's because the baker values the money more than the bread, while the buyer values the bread higher than the money. An economic rent is something that doesn't do that. A simple example is a license to be a baker. If the government only wants 20 bakeries in the town, and makes that many licenses there will be 20 bakers who get the licenses and who make more money than bakers in the next town over, but whose bread doesn't make their buyers any better off.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV:The farming industry has only itself to blame for the lack of young people who aspire to become a farmer. Please note I am not talking about hobby farms. We read all the time about the average age of farmers getting older and older and very few young people aspire to be farmers. The farming industry has only itself to blame. The cost of entry to become a farmer is incredibly expensive and the going rate for decent farmland is so expensive no one except wealthy people or corporations can afford it. Where I live the average acre is $10,000, and at a minimum you'll need 100 acres to break even. So, a million dollars and we haven't even started the actual practice of farming yet. Add in another million for equipment and seeds and an aspiring farmer is in the hole millions of dollars for a relatively risky career choice. If I want to become a lawyer I study and go to law school. If I want to become an engineer I study and get an engineering degree. If I want to open a restaurant I become a chef or hire a chef. If I want to become a farmer I must be born into farming. If this was really a problem either the farming industry would come together to entice people to become farmers or the government would force land owners to not sell to anyone other than an owner-occupier farmer. Either of these is unlikely. _____ > This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please *[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules). If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* *[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)*! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to *[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview). Happy CMVing!*<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Are young people willing to become employees on corporate owned farms? After all, if a corp buys farmland, they still need someone to actually run the place - that person would be still be a farmer. If "yes" - then young people DO want to be farmers. If "no" - then your explanation about price of land does not really explains this, as you don't need a million dollars to be hired by a corporation to farm.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: why insects are attracted to lights<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Insects navigate by using a reference point of light. Normally this would be the sun or the moon. They are far enough away that insects can put the sun/moon at a certain degree in their vision, and they know they will be traveling in the direction they need. If they end up using a street light, things don't go as planned. Because the light is so much closer, as they try to keep the light at the same degree, they end up circling in towards it.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How does Captain America's shield always come back? Most of the time Captain throws his shield into mid air, hits 3 guys and it somehow just ends up just coming back to his hand. Is there some kind of explanation for this or is it just something that just ''happens''?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A combination of training and experience have left Cap with a high level of awareness of angles and vectors. Its unknown whether he has the academic understanding of a mathematician, or the instinctual understanding of a pool shark, but he is able to almost instantly and instinctively calculate the appropriate angle to make such a throw.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: interval workouts are often recommended. Why is a 20 minute interval run peaking at say 80% better than running at 70-80% intensity for the full 20 minutes, which will probably result in a greater distance covered? What is the benefit of the short breaks?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) takes advantage of how our bodies use energy. When we keep our heart rate high for too long, we begin to use glycogen as our main source of energy. Utilizing the rest period fluctuates your heart rate up and down, so we can continue to use stored fat as our main source of energy. This kind of exercise is super good for burning calories and creating a strong cardiovascular system, but not very good at building muscle mass. HIT (High-Intensity Training) is better for overall strength training. However, it is a LOT harder on the body, and a LOT harder to accomplish for most people. It isn't so great for burning calories, and it puts a lot of stress on the cardiovascular system, so if you haven't done your due diligence in working up to that point, it's probably not that good for you.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Do all trees have a common 'tree' ancestor? Or did multiple plant species evolve separately toward what we know as trees?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Forestry student here. There are two main groups that of plants which have trees: the gymnosperms ("naked seeds" mostly conifers) and the angiosperms (flowering plants). The gymnosperms are the older group. There were already recognizable coniferous trees in the Mesozoic era. The angiosperms arose in the late Jurassic/ early Cretaceous period. As far as we know, the tree form arose separately in both groups. Note that the angiosperm family also contains plants such as water lilies, orchids, carrots, etc. Since we know from the fossil record that the angiosperms are a recent evolution it makes more sense for a smaller plant to have evolved into the angiosperms than it does for a plant with tree form to found such a diverse group. TL;DR All trees have a common plant ancestor but that ancestor was not a tree.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do our noses run when it’s cold?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It's your body putting out fluids to keep the air you're breathing at a safe level of humidity and moisture for your lungs. If the air is too dry, your lungs can get damaged and prone to infection. When it's cold, the air gets drier, so your nose may start running to help keep the air moist. Of course - colds are also more common in cold weather. Your nasal passages get dried out and damaged, which means viruses can get into your body more easily, causing colds. Additionally, you spend more time inside with the windows closed around other people who are more susceptible to colds. So, you may find you just get more colds - causing runny noses - in the winter as well.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does a seed "know" which way is down or up to grow? Edit: I know it has to do with gravity. I'm asking the biological proccess that makes a seed know which way to go.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Plants can sense gravity due to special containers (organelles) that store starch in a plant cell. The starch is rather dense compared to the rest of the cell so that the container will be affected by gravity. The containers are entangled in a mesh (actin) which can sense the direction they are moving. Based on these signals a special hormone (auxin) is distributed in the shoot to indicate the growth direction. This is only one of many possible mechanisms.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why is a rape on a college campus handled as an administrative problem by the school, rather than as a criminal matter, handled by the police? *edit Thanks for all of the comments and discussion. It seems to be a pretty even split between Title IX. The universities have their own police and are their own jurisdiction. The university's investigate along side police. Trolls. Special thanks to /u/HB2490 for [this comment.](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o1tfe/eli5_why_is_a_rape_on_a_college_campus_handled_as/cmj5bss)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant They typically are handled by both. If someone reports a rape to the police, and the suspect is a student, there will usually be two separate investigations or trials. One will be done by the police, go through the criminal courts....etc. During the same time, the university may also run an investigation into any "honor code" or student conduct violations. Most universities have some sort of a student code of conduct that you agree to. So maybe the court will find you not guilty, but the school will. Or vice-versa. Same with punishments, the school may be more or less harsh than the courts (expulsion from the school vs probation by the courts).<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why are so many old websites hosted at universities like MIT? I Googled for the lyrics to "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" and up came [this ancient HTML document from the days of Web 2.0](https://stuff.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/poetry/poems/meanGrinch.html). I've noticed that Google will often point me to these very old, rudimentary webpages that are 20 years old or so, and often hosted at American universities like MIT. So my question is, why do these websites exist in the first place, and why do they still exist?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The web (not the internet itself) was first created at CERN (a physics lab) as a very useful tool for sharing information, so it made sense that academic institutions would be early adopters because 1. they like sharing clever things they've learned 2. are full of geeks 3. have enough money to buy big servers They often gave students a little bit of space (like a megabyte) to host their own webpages, presumably thinking PhD students would write something to do with their dissertations but of course were really just X-Files episode guides and REM fansites. Why do they still exist? Because nobody has taken them down!<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What’s the difference between a therapist, psychologist, and psychiatrist?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A therapist is a generic term for someone who provides counseling services. Pretty much anyone can be a therapist (although laws vary). A psychologist is a slightly more specific term referring to someone who holds a licensure that normally requires a Graduate-level education in psychology (normally clinical psychology). A psychiatrist is a medical doctor with a specialization in mental illness. The most notable distinction is that psychiatrists can prescribe medication, while the other two categories cannot.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is quantum mechanics truly random or merely unpredictable? because theres a huge difference Edit: What im asking is whether we actually KNOW if the universe is not deterministic or whether it might be but we just cant tell. What brought this idea to mind was thinking about the idea of parallel universes and whether randomness is necessary for that to be possible.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The idea you're looking for is that of hidden variables. Einstein disliked the idea that quantum mechanics was non-deterministic so much that he proposed there exists a theory deeper than quantum mechanic that is deterministic but reproduces the seemingly random results of quantum mechanics. These theories also fixed what Einstein saw as a problem with non-locality (faster than light communication) in quantum mechanics. A decade or two after Einstein died a John Bell showed by contradiction that a hidden variable theory could never produce the results we see in quantum mechanics experiments. Using the following assumptions, 1. Experimenters have free will, 2. Logic is valid way to reason, 3. Hidden variables exist, 4. Hidden variables are local, he derived a set of inequalities. He then found an experiment that violated these inequalities. This means at least one of the assumptions listed above is wrong. The commonly accepted one is that 3. is faulty and that quantum mechanics is actually random. The idea that hidden variables, an idea specifically introduced to ensure quantum mechanics was local, were in fact non-local would probably upset Einstein much more than the idea of reality not being deterministic. edit: added the assumption that free will exists, as ichthyic points out as being necessary.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How does a broken bone connect again once the two healing pieces reach eachother?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It depends on various principles, including where the bone is and how they connect to each other. If anatomic reduction is achieved and the segments are compressed, then you get primary bone healing which is direct growth of the osteons on each other. If the segments are not compressed and there is micromotion at the site, you get callus formation and the bone remodels itself. Children are better at this than adults - hence why children get casted more than surgically fixed.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:What exactly happens in your body when you drink water? I get solid food, but what specifically happens when water enters the stomach and then afterwards.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Your body balances the water in the blood, the cells, and the spaces in between. A small amount stays in the intestines to help digestion while most is absorbed into the body across tiny pores. When the water crosses the pores it also helps transport vital electrolytes into your body. Then the water enters the blood stream and quickly reaches a balance with the other spaces: the insides of cells and in between the cells. The kidneys use the water in your blood to filter the waste products into urine. Some water even goes back into the lower intestines to help make stool.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Would electronics last longer if left on all the time, or switched on/off as needed? I've heard it both ways: Some claim that as long as all components are well below thermal limits, electronics left on 24/7 will last longer because they're not subject to the stresses caused by the components expanding and contracting due to warming up/cooling down. But a lot of people think that electronics last longer the less they're on because they spend less time in the "stresses of being on"... but these people never elaborate on what, exactly those stresses are. So, who's right? And why? What are the most significant forces at work here?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Product Development Engineer here - it varies by product. It's a very interesting question, because thermal cycling (on/off) is a very stressful condition for electronics that causes a lot of catastrophic failures. On the other hand most devices are rated in hours useful life, so leaving a device on is generally not the best choice if it will spend a lot of hours without anyone using it. For lifetime rating, products are generally subjected to three main categories of abuse (others if it will be an outdoor or waterproof product): Elevated temp. operating tests, thermal cycling tests, and vibration testing. Generally the weak point of any given product is due to a particular design choice, and thus could be any one of those tests. If you're trying to decide about how best to use a particular device, you probably need to look up how it tests. I've been looking for test standards for you to read, but none are free. In LED lighting, we adhere to IES LM-80, which describes mostly elevated temperature testing. For UL compliance we'll need to pass some ASTM vibration testing (maybe D3580), and for customer certification we'll need to have data on storage life and cycling. I know it seems like a cop out, but the best way to ensure long life of your device is to operate it in a cool environment where it won't get any extra thermal stress, and to use it as infrequently as possible. The maximum stress from cycling would be if you turned it on just long enough to get hot, then left it off just long enough to get cool before turning it back on, so if you're turning on a TV 20 times a day, you're probably doing it wrong.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does running cold water sound different from running hot water?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The differences in density and viscosity are the causes. Cold water will have a higher pitch due to the stronger surface tension and hot water will have a lower pitch due to the weaker surface tension breaking up the water before it hits the glass or whatever you may be pouring it into. That's why coffee or something warm will have a low sound and a cold glass of water will sound higher.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why aren't there more eye colors?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Your eye color derives from the same biochemical pigment compound that gives you your skin color: melanin. Melanin is vaguely yellow-brown-ish when light scatters off it, which is why skin comes in colors in the yellow-brown range. Eyes which have no pigment in them at all appear pale blue, because of how light scatters off the eye. Add melanin in various proportions, and you get the whole range of human eye colors, from various shades of blue and green to brown to hazel (which is a mixture of green, brown and yellow). There aren't any other eye colors because those are the only combinations it's possible to make by combining the natural blue of pigment-less eyes with melanin in various distributions and concentrations.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: why does squinting help when trying to read something small or far away?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Squinting works because it decreases the effective size of the iris. The small opening, like a smaller f stop on a camera, although it decreases the amount of light entering the retina, increases the depth of field... That means the range over which things stay in focus increases. If there is enough light to see, more things are in focus and they are in better focus than they were before the squint. That's it<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Stores should mark the full price of goods on the shelf. This was something that really annoyed me when i visited America being charged a difference price to what was on the shelf for goods. I think that stores should include tax on the shelf price for items they sell, it's ridiculous that stores can advertise a product at a certain price and charge another for it. It means that customers have to do the calculations themselves rather than by themselves, and because stores usually like to advertise products at a nice round number, the product usually ends up actually costing a less convenient number. For example a soda might be $2.99 on the shelf and really cost $3.14 giving you 76 cents in coin change rather than 1c. (Also fuck pennies but I think people won't disagree on that.) Please change my view and explain what this systems benefits are.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant This system allows businesses with multiple locations to have standardized prices. This is good fit the business, because it makes labeling inventory easier, and it means they don't have to spend time re-labeling their inventory if the tax rate changes. It also means that there's less internal competition between nearby locations of the same business. People are more likely to go to the location with lower sales tax if the list price of the item is lower. This makes it harder for businesses to justify having multiple nearby locations, and will cut tax revenue from areas with higher sales tax.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What prevents our eyeballs from being able to look left and right at the same time? Edit: not talking about cross eyed. Talking about left looking left, and right looking right<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Eye movement is one of the most complicated aspects of the nervous system. There are 6 main muscles and 3 main nerves that control each eye around 3 axes. As others are saying it's very common for the left eye to look right and the right eye to look left at the same time (i.e. cross-eyed)—this happens when we look at something close to us and is called convergence. However, we are generally not able to make the left eye look left and the right eye look right at the same time. This is due to a connection in the brainstem called the medial longitudinal fasiculus (MLF). This is a difficult ELI5. If you want your left eye to look left, you need the left lateral rectus muscle, which is controlled by the left abducens nerve (cranial nerve VI). If you want your right eye to look left, you need the right medial rectus muscle, which is controlled by the right oculomotor nerve (cranial nerve III). The MLF runs from the abducens nucleus on one side to the oculomotor nucleus on the other side and is activated whenever the brain activates the abducens nerve, so when your brain sends a signal to look left with your left eye, your right eye also gets a signal to look left. Thus in people who are neurologically intact, when one eye moves outwards, the other eye essentially always follows. The MLF specifically can be affected by a variety of neurologic disorders, classically multiple sclerosis.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: while white racism upholds power structures, saying only white people can be racist absolves other races from accountability For context: I’m South Asian, and I have lived in Europe for more than three years. I recently read Reni Eddo-Lodge’s book ‘why I no longer talk (to white people) about race’ and I mostly agree with her. Except one point: that only white people can be racist, and all other groups are prejudiced. I agree with the argument that white racism upholds power structures at the disadvantage of marginalised groups. What I do not agree with is that other groups cannot be racist - only prejudiced. I don’t see a point of calking actions that are the result of bias against a skin colour ’prejudiced’ instead of ‘racist’. I have seen members of my own diaspora community both complain about the racism they face as well as making incredibly racist remarks about Black/Chinese people. Do these uphold power structures? No. Are these racist? Yes. Are these racist interactions hurtful for those affected? Yes. I had a black colleague who would be incredibly racist towards me and other Asians: behaviour she would never display towards white colleagues. We’re her actions upholding a power structure? I’d say yes. I believe that to truly dismantle racism we need to talk not only about white power structures but also how other groups uphold these structures by being racist towards each other. So, change my view...<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant So we should note here that all of sociology is an approximation. Humans and human societies are infinitely complex. We can't fit it all into words. What we can do is create models that reflect how we think societies work, while recognizing that these models are only ever a partial description of what's really going on. There is no model which is perfect, and which model we use is a choice. So with that in mind, people like Reni Eddo-Lodge who focus on a structural reading of racism have intentionally moved away from the conception of racism at the psychological/interpersonal level and instead focus on racism as a product of larger social structures. The "Capital R" Racism that matters, as far as these people are concerned, doesn't have much to do with individuals making racist remarks against other individuals. It has almost everything to do with political and social structures that go beyond individuals. This is a conscious choice to re-focus attention on a different kind of racism. The problem with the model of racism as an interaction between individuals is that people tend to focus on the symbolic rather than the material. So, you'll have people arguing that George Floyd for example didn't die because of racism because none of the cops who killed him seem like racists. They didn't target him because they personally hate black people, so that's not racism, right? Conceiving of racism as typified by prejudiced remarks leads people to excuse and ignore materially racist social structures because nobody said the n-word while they were enacting structural racism. Moreover, this conception of racism leads people to think that racism is just unavoidable and the natural product of people of different races interacting - see Crash, 2004 for one of the most egregious examples - which is not really helpful at all. If you think of racism primarily as when a person of a certain race says a naughty word at a person of a different race, then you will never be able to actually change any of the material effects of structural racism, because it will be invisible to you. So the "Racism = prejudice + power" model of racism attempts to rectify this misunderstanding of racism by focusing on the institutional and the systematic rather than the individual. Structural racism can exist even when none of the individuals involved are overtly racist. That's the issue that needs more focus. Of course, this model is only a model. We can't account for all the infinitely reconfigurable scenarios of human existence with a model. The central story of the model is one of white people holding control of political and social structures that are systemically racist, so that's where the focus is.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user My colleague just destroyed the writing of my latest paper I'm 34 and I've got 8 first author papers out (out of the others with my name of it there are at least another 5 where I contributed also to writing quite a bit). Therefore I hoped that I learned to write decently enough. However, I know I'm not particularly good and, until I was in high school, I always had super-low marks in writing (4 or 5 out of 10, with 6 the passing vote). Now, I've been tasked to do a job (and to write a paper about it) that I don't believe much in. So I keep asking my colleague (same "level" but life scientist instead of physical scientist) what she and the PI would like to have written in the paper. Today, I asked this colleague if I could have feedback on my work. And... she basically told me (in a positive way, she was trying to help me not to criticize me) to rewrite it from scratch. "Just copy the methods from the previous papers so that it finally follows a logical structure, and I'll take care about modifying the text to a publishable form". I'm lost. After 10 years in doing this job I'm still not able to produce a "decent" paper. WTF am I supposed to do?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant im only undergrad level so this is purely anecdotal, but when i was working with some chemistry friends of mine the way they wrote was very different to life scientists. maybe get an opinion from somebody in your faculty<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why are most images from space B&W when we have so many tiny, light, color, high resolution cameras on the market?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Many images you see of space are not captured with visible light (for various technical reasons, it not always easy or possible to capture certain objects or certain features of objects in space with visible light). Some images are instead captured using radio, microwave, infrared, ultraviolet or even x-ray light. Only visible light has any association with color. All other types of light have no color (from a human perspective) and we translate these images into monochromatic visible light that we (humans) can see. Sometimes professionals will take these monochromatic images and create colorful artistic renditions of what they think the object(s) would look like in visible light or they may add color to highlight or emphasize certain parts of the object. ~~Also, as /u/riconquer mentioned, bandwidth is also an issue. A raw image file with color is typically 3x larger than one that is black and white. When bandwidth is limited and/or speed is important and/or color is not important, black and white photography may be used on spacecraft even when such spacecraft may be equipped with color cameras.~~ [See /u/SchighSchagh's response]<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do electromagnetic waves (like wifi, Bluetooth, etc) travel through solid objects, like walls?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant So, when a ray of light hits something, it can basically do one of three things: It can go right through, with a slight angle that reverses when it comes out the other side, like light passes through glass or water. It can bounce off at an angle, like light does with a mirror or a bright piece of colored plastic. Or it can get "eaten" and heat up the object, like when light hits something dark. Objects are different colors because light is different wavelengths, and some wavelengths get eaten while others pass through or get bounced off. A solid "red" object is red because green and blue light get eaten more than red light, while red light bounces off more than green or blue. A transparent "red" object is red because green and blue light get eaten more than red, while red passes through more than red or green. Now, infrared and radio are also just different "colors" of light that we can't see; think of a radio antenna or a WiFi receiver as a kind of "eye" that can see those colors, while a transmitter is like a "lightbulb" that blinks in those colors. Walls happen to be "transparent" to radio even though they're "solid" to visible colors, just like a stained glass window is "transparent" to some colors and "solid" to others.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: The Mandlebrot Set and fractals in general. I can recognize the Mandlebrot Set by looking at it, and, thanks to Jonathan Coulton, I even know the formula, but I still just don't get it.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The mathematical rule that creates the Mandelbrot set is relatively simple (at least, if you're comfortable with complex numbers from a decent algebra class). It works like this: Pick a complex number c. Let's say we pick c=1. Once you've picked it, start with zero and repeat the following process: square the previous number, than add c to it. In this case, we'd generate the sequence 0, 1 (0^2 + 1), 2 (1^2 + 1), 5 (2^2 + 1), 26 (5^2 + 1), and so on, and this sequence runs off to infinity. On the other hand, if we picked c=-1, the sequence would go 0, -1 (0^2 + -1), 0 ((-1)^2 + -1), -1, 0, -1..., and never runs off to infinity. The Mandelbrot set is the set of all numbers that do not run off to infinity this way.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why are our ears shaped the way they are with all their weird ridges? Why aren't they more simply shaped like a funnel?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Part of the shape is to allow the ear to efficiently collect sound waves. However, part of it is also to disrupt the collection - allowing the angle of sound to have a greater effect on what you hear, allowing you to use your ears to sense the direction sound is coming from. Other shapes are there to keep water from pooling into your ears (from sweat) and to drain efficiently at the same time. Plus, the shape needs to be strong enough to not easily be damaged (heat, cold, fights etc) yet not be a massive resource drain to build them. Additionally, the shape has to be formed by evolution - so each bump and twist and turn has to come about by random mutations that happen to work better for one thing, but maybe worse for another.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 If HDMI has a really high Gb bandwidth and is readily available on most computers, how come its not used for data/file transfer?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Think of a computer network like the road network - You can make turns, merge, drive onto highways and bumble along country roads, all part of the same system. But there's a tradeoff - You have to follow a lot of rules to participate, so that you get from your starting to point to your destination without being rammed off the road. Also, the car you drive has to be up to code, and carries lots of safety features and standardized/tested parts to meet the requirements that make it 'road worthy'. HDMI is more like a drag strip. There's one start and one finish, and you're completely isolated from the regular road network. Your car is adapted for this - You'll get from start to finish real fast, but you're not about to make any hairpin bends. You also lack turn indicators and all the other formal stuff that's part of participating in a proper road network. But the tradeoff is you can go really fast because you're isolated. Computer Networks are like the road network and HDMI is like the drag strip. How come HDMI isn't used for data transfer? Because there's not many cases where you purely want to go 1-to-1 between 2 points in a fixed fashion. In cases where you do, the speed isn't worth the cost of adding HDMI support over something much cheaper and well-supported like USB 3.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Explain to me the Strong and Weak Nuclear force. I understand the way gravity interacts with the universe as well as the force of electromagnetism, but I'm confused as to how the strong and weak nuclear force is propagated and what effect it has on anything.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The weak interaction is mediated by W and Z bosons, which are unusually massive, and so decay very quickly. The short decay time of W and Z bosons contributes to the comparatively weak strength and short distance of the weak interaction. The primary "effect it has on anything" is the beta decay form of nuclear decay. Beta decay allows, for example, the decay of carbon-14 to nitrogen-14. The strong interaction is mediated by massless particles called gluons. It binds quarks together to form hadrons, including protons and neutrons. The strong interaction is about 100 times stronger than electromagnetism at the atomic level, and most of the mass-energy of protons and neutrons comes from the field energy of the strong force. Similar to how electromagnetism is divided into + and - charges, the strong interaction has three "color" charges. The color charge is balanced within a proton or neutron, but there is a residual strong force, also called the nuclear force, that acts between protons and neutrons which holds them together in atomic nuclei.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [DC] When does Batman ask for help? Batman is known for his intellect, detective skills and technological prowess when it comes to fighting crime, but when does he throw in the towel and ask for help?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant As early and often as possible. Batman would simply not be able to function if he wasn’t getting help, whether it’s from Alfred, Gordon, one of the Robins, or any other member of the Batfamily. The idea that Batman refuses to ask for help mainly comes from the Arkham games, but even then he’s still constantly receiving information and advice from Alfred and/or Oracle.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:Why do so many medicines (pain pills, muscle relaxers, antihistamines,etc.) have a side effect of sleepiness?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant All of the types of medicines you described work by basically stopping your body from doing something it would normally be doing, often by interfering with the ability of your nervous system to communicate the messages necessary to do it. A side effect of that can be to generally slow down your nervous system overall, which manifests (among other ways) in you feeling sleepy.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 how does the same hormone exert different effects in different target cells? Sorry if this is a repost. I couldn't any similar questions.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Think of a hormone as a key that turns that flips switches and turns on chemical pathways of cells. The switches they turn on are called cell receptors. Think of them as on and off switches that are turned on by the turning of the hormone key. Hormone (keys) flip very specific switches. Some cells have switches that can be turned on by the hormone key, others do not. Some cells have many switches and when they are all flipped on, they have bigger or different effects. If a cell has that specific hormone receptor (switch), then it will be activated by the hormone.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: There is no reason why religious beliefs and practices should get more respect than other beliefs and practices What I mean is when people are given a free pass for something because it is 'part of their religion,' when somebody else with the same beliefs and practices would get more criticism. For example, many people are vegetarian and vegan for moral reasons. They believe that animals deserve more rights than they are given. I see people sometimes expressing the view that you shouldn't be expected to cater to vegetarians or vegans, unless it's a health restriction... or a part of their religion. Why is the religious person given more respect for their dietary choices? To be clear, I'm not talking about law at all, I'm talking about being polite and respectful. 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. 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! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our popular topics wiki first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to message us. Happy CMVing!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In theory, religion is something that is a more fundamental part of who you are. Religious practices aren't necessarily something you choose to do, but something you feel compelled to do for the sake of your safety, life, or after-life. The consequence for a vegan eating meat is emotional turmoil, but the consequence for a Muslim eating pork may be eternal damnation. Whether or not the consequence is real, it certainly affects the religious person more.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What do scientists mean when they say that light is an electro magnetic wave? I've seen one multiple educational videos that draw light as two orthogonal waves traversing through space. What is that trying to represent?What exactly is going up and down? Furthermore, why do people often make the analogy that light acts like a ripple in a pond?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There is an electromagnetic quantum field (EMQF) permeating all of space. Electric fields and magnetic fields are classical representations of interactions involving this EMQF. Light is a fluctuation in this EMQF, and this representation explains the photoelectric effect (which isn't explained in classical electromagnetism). If you think of a flash of lightning, it's a lot like a rock tossed into a still pond. This large electric current agitates the gas atoms in the atmosphere, and when they relax they release light in all directions, like how the rock sends waves in all directions on the pond. The surface of the pond is 2D, and the EMQF is 3D, but otherwise it's similar.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is spin a bulk property? Does it make sense to talk about the spin of a macro object by adding up spins of individual particles, the same way that we can talk about its charge by adding up the individual charges?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Yes. You can define a single spin of a collection of large number of quantum mechanical particles of certain spins in the same way you define the total spin of 2 or 3 particles. The simplest example to consider would be a spin chain of noninteracting spins. The wave function can be written as \|w>=\|w1 w2 ... wN> with appropriate combination to make sure that it is an eigenstate of S(total)^2. The total spin along a particular direction(say z) of the state would just be the summation of spin along that direction of all the states. The total spin would be given by the eigenvalue of S(total)^2 which is s(s+1) hbar^2. For N spin 1/2 particles, s would be N/2. (Or a constant factor times N/2) So, the total spin would be N(N+1) hbar^2 (multiplied by some constant factor). In the classical limit, N is taken to be infinite(N>>1) and hbar is taken to be small such that the different components of the spin commute. The classical or macro spin will then have a magnitude proportional to (N hbar).<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user A chicken egg is 40% calcium. How do chickens source enough calcium to make 1-2 eggs per day? edit- There are differing answers down below, so be careful what info you walk away with. One user down there in tangle pointed out that, for whatever reason, there is massive amounts of misinformation floating around about chickens. Who knew?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Chickens are omnivores, but free-range chickens eat a great many insects, and insect exoskeletons are similarly rich in calcium. They'll also eat just about anything else, including small mice, voles, moles, lizards, etc., bones and all. In a commercial setting, they are supplemented with oyster shells, or whatever source is cheap. Home chicken keepers sometimes feed old eggshells back to their chickens. Chickens fed more calcium will lay eggs with thicker shells, and they can accept a fairly wide range, but a deficit will yield fragile eggs.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Marriage doesn't make much sense in the modern world (modern western standards) and I don't see the need to get married. People don't need legal paperwork to enforce a union anymore, now marriage is (or should ideally according to modern western standards) based on a mutual decision to stay together. There are benefits such as tax cuts, custody rights for children of course, but these are outweighed IMO by the disadvantages when things don't work out, such as divorce fees, wealth splitting enforced by courts. If the argument is about commitment, several other large gestures such as having a child together or buying a property are probably bigger commitments than signing a symbolic piece of paper. Again in the past when marriages were more about securing alliances or people controlling each other marriage was more important but now legal contracts should have little to do with love. Of course I am assuming modern western standards are the most enlightened in allowing freedom and that freedom is an important thing to have over social stability which could be enforced by forced marriage / social pressure and legal penalties for adultery that exist in other cultures.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Marriage provides legal protections if one partner plans to take time away from a career to raise children. Marriage is legally recognized and can gain access to things like spousal visas for non citizens. When you make an irreversible decision, your brain feels better about it than a reversible one because it will retroactively find reasons to justify your decision as correct. By going for an irreversible relationship, your brain will feel better about it and create more justifications.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user When an airlock is breached in outer space, what happens to the air that gets sucked into the vacuum? Let's say that a spaceship has a compromised airlock. The air is sucked out through the breach, and everyone onboard dies. What happens to the air that gets sucked out of the spaceship and into the vacuum? Does it disperse like dust? Does it stay in one place? Does it drift in one direction forever?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Suction is a macroscopic effect. Particles in an area are constantly moving in all directions, and this motion averages out under static conditions. When containment in space is lost, there is an unbalancing of particle motion at the barrier between the pressurized area and the unpressurized space. More particles are moving outward into space, and no particles are moving into the ship from space. On that level, it is easy to see what happens to the air particles - they continue on the trajectory they had when they left the ship. Remember Newton's law: a particle in motion stays in motion until acted on by a force. Once the particle leaves the ship, it continues on its trajectory until affected by another force.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why was Cesium-133 atom chosen for defining "1 second" under Standard International? I remember years ago in high school my physics teacher explained to us that Standard International defines 1 second as "the time needed for Cesium-133 to vibrate 9.192.631.770 times". Is there any particular reason why Cesium-133 was the element chosen for this purpose? Edit: wow, my first silver award! Thank you!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Accuracy & consistency are the most important things for SI determination. Caesium has a very, very high resonant frequency. A quartz clock is accurate to something like 1 second in a couple of years. A caesium atomic clock is accurate to something like 1 second in a million years.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Photography terms - Aperture, Exposure, etc I'm a photography beginner and I just can't process (terrible pun) the terminology. Whenever I think I have a grasp of the terms, I go and play with the various settings and end up taking terrible pictures. So, photography related terms like Aperture, Exposure and so on, explain them like I'm five. Thanks<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Photography is essentially pretty simple - you have a black box with some film inside that reacts to light. When you push the button, something called a 'shutter', which is basically a door, opens up and lets light in. There are a few settings you can change, but it's all controlling how much light gets into that box. Shutter speed is how long that door stays open for. The longer the door stays open, the more light gets into the box. Aperture is how big the door is. When you have a bigger door, it will let more light in. And different film reacts differently to light shining on it. Some film is very sensitive to light and some is not. This is called the ISO value. All three of these exist in a relationship to make your picture. When you're letting light in, if the door stays the same size then and you open it for only half as long, half the amount of light will get in, right? But if you make the door twice as big, but only open it for half as long, it's the same amount of light! If you make the film twice as sensitive to light, to make the same picture you'd have to open the door for half as long or make the door half the size. There are reasons to make each choice - smaller doors make more of the picture stay in focus, faster opening and closing mean you can take pictures of things that are moving fast, and less sensitive film makes less grainy pictures.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why can't your immune get rid of bacterial STDs like syphilis etc?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It varies depending on the pathogen. When it comes to syphilis in particular, the outer cell membrane has unusually few of its own antigens (proteins) in it, which makes it harder for the immune system to detect it. It can also vary its antigens by gene conversion. That said, the immune system can combat syphilis. It's just usually not enough to clear the infection. When the bacteria lyse (split open), their internal components are easily recognized by the immune system - their camouflage is only skin-deep. This can actually be a problem when treating syphilis, as a bunch of bacteria dying at the same time can make the immune system overreact to the suddenly abundant foreign antigens etc. STDs aren't necessarily anything special in terms of ability to evade the immune system. Lots of pathogens have found ways to do that. Mycobacterium tuberculosis, for example, has a coating that allows it to survive inside the phagolysosome of macrophages; the substances the macrophage pumps into the phagolysosome would kill almost any other bacterium.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why didn't the Vikings unleash apocalyptic plagues in the new world centuries before Columbus? So it's pretty generally accepted that the arrival of Columbus and subsequent European expeditions at the Caribbean fringes of North America in the late 15th and early 16th centuries brought smallpox and other diseases for which the natives of the new world were woefully unprepared. From that touchpoint, a shock wave of epidemics spread throughout the continent, devastating native populations, with the European settlers moving in behind it and taking over the land. It's also becoming more widely accepted that the Norse made contact with the fringes of North America starting around the 10th century and continuing for quite some time, including at least short-term settlements if not permanent ones. They clearly had contact with the natives as well. So why the Spaniards' germs and not the Norse ones?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant To understand this you need to understand the nature of epidemic diseases and the Viking voyages of exploration (as opposed to the later ones of Columbus). Epidemic diseases in general do not persist well in small isolated populations. They tend to spread rapidly, making everyone immune or dead. The Vikings did not sail directly from Norway to North America. Their ships probably weren't up to the task of making the crossing all at once, at least not reliably. Instead, they colonized Iceland, and a small group colonized Greenland, and a subgroup of that group went to North America. The population living on Iceland was fairly small, and the number living on Greenland was very small. As a result, it would have been quite difficult for a disease to make it all the way across. Some ship would have had to carry the disease to Iceland, where it would have had to persist in the population long enough for someone infected to get around to sailing to Greenland (and not die on the way), where it would have had to persist in that population long enough for someone to sail over to North America, where some unlucky native would have had to catch it and spread it from his tribe off of Newfoundland and out into the rest of the continent. That's a lot of low probability events, especially since ships did not pass all that frequently to Greenland or even at times Iceland. Contrast this with Columbus et. al. leaving from populated, disease-ridden cities in Europe and sailing right over to the Americas. All you need in that case is a sick sailor to make the passing.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why does a higher level of overall education in a society correspond with a lesser incidence of social problems? It has been shown to generally correspond, but why? Is it that educated people make better decisions about whatever social problem we happen to be talking about (safe sex, domestic abuse, etc.)? Do they make better decisions because they have better information on that subject in particular? Or is that higher education levels makes those sorts of behaviors less attractive because of the opportunities available to them? In other words, is it the specific education about the social problem or is it a side effect of higher levels of education?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There is also a discipline that is learned through course work that teaches people to analyze situations before taking action. The further education takes someone, the more important proper analytical thinking becomes. This does not mean that a person who is less educated is more prone to illegal or immoral action, or a person that is more educated is less prone to illegal or immoral action; rather a further educated person is more apt to think out the action, and the consequences of the action, before deciding to follow through with the action. This does not seem to equate with crimes of passion.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How can children learn two or more languages without mixing them while growing up? Simply: I have a little sister, she's 3 years old. Since I'm always watching some american/british series and tv shows (like Steven Universe), she's growing up watching those with me (we are brazilians, so she's growing listening and speaking mostly portuguese ~~and nonsense~~) I couldn't help but notice that recently, she's noticing the differences between portuguese and english, for example, I'm watching something, then she comes and says: "Ela disse 'ball' haha" (she said 'ball' haha) or then "Blue, why are you watching english?" Sometimes I even ask things like: "Do you wanna listen to 'Let it Go' in english, or portuguese?" and she freaking understands the difference between both, and reply either "english" or "portuguese". How so?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Young children are still at an age where they are learning language and the constructs of it. This makes it easier for them to acquire new language, because they can learn the ins and outs of both languages at fairly quickly. They're not "cemented" into one language yet. Their brains have a plasticity to them that make it easier to form new connections in contrast with an adult brain that isn't as moldable. I teach 3 year olds, have several bilingual students, and one trilingual student. She has been slower on the uptake of language at all, because she gets the languages confused, but even in the last 3 months of school she's become more fluent in both English and Spanish (both of which are spoken at school). It's really amazing to see what a three year old's brain is capable of.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What are the long term consequences of forcing our rivers to stay on the same path?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The effects vary wildly depending on the location and river and it is a very complicated topic, but here are some basic impacts. Ecological impacts are almost always involved. Often man-made barriers that prevent river convulsion or migration are much different than the natural river banks, and so it can easily completely disrupt the local riparian ecosystems (which can then impact other nearby ecosystems). There are low-impact ways to keep rivers on the same path, but they tend to require a lot more money, planning, and maintenance, so they are not always used. Redistribution of sedimentation is another major impact. Rivers will usually be forced to stay on a single path in places where they are depositional, rather than erosional (since erosional portions of rivers are usually highly channelized naturally). In most cases, rivers naturally build up sediment in one location until the channel becomes unstable, at which point they will convulse to a different location on the flood plain and start building up sediment there, and so on. Forcing a river to one location will force the sedimentation to only occur in one place. This can be problematic for a whole slew of reasons, but one famous example is with New Orleans. Naturally, the sediment from the Mississippi would offset the subsidence of the area. But since the river has been constrained, the sediment is all transported offshore. Because the city was built on this subsiding land it is now below sea level and at a huge risk from flooding. Which is why it is the home of the most expensive natural disaster in the United State's history. Also, forcing a river to follow a single path usually means you make the river "straighter". Such as taking a meandering river, straightening it out, then using the extra land that creates for development. But this effectively increases the gradient of the river, which can have major impacts on upstream and downstream sedimentation and erosion, which can be problematic and expensive. The process of channelizing a river can also change how it transports and processes pollutants. Of course, forcing a river to a single permanent channel can also do a lot of good for nearby human communities, and in some cases can help with ecological conservation efforts. So it's complicated.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Especially in the winter when there's snow on the ground, why does everything have a blue hue to it just before sunrise and sunset?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Light diffuses (understand deviated) when propagating in the air. How much it diffuses depends on the wavelength (its color). The sun emits a wide array or wavelength, and its "blue rays" are among the most disrupted by air. That is why the sky by day is blue. They are so much deviated that they look like coming from where the sun is not, giving the sky its opaque blue look. (Imagine air particles acting like tiny mirrors in random directions, reflecting only blue light) Now imagine the sun being slightly beyond horizon. Rays that makes the light look "white" are for the most part not reaching you. Except blue ones. As they are redirected by diffraction, they reach places the other ones do not have a direct path yet/anymore. That is why before dawn/after dusk everything is blue-ish. (Snow only makes it more noticeable because it's white.)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What does 'remastered' mean in terms of music recording? Especially with older artists and bands, the word 'remastered' seems to come up a lot. Since I find this term to be a bit vague, could someone explain what this means? What is changed in a remastered recording, and how is it done?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It can mean a variety of things depending on who is doing it. Remastering an album in a general sense means that the tracks are adjusted from the ground up. Cleaning up background noise, adding or subtracting particular effects, maybe even re-recording certain sections in some cases. It can be a good thing or a bad thing, because in some cases, certain dynamic contrasts and effects make the songs sound less full or interesting compared to the original tracks.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Economics] After the IPO, how does having publicly traded stock benefit a corporation? Are there any benefits to a corporation being traded publicly beyond initially raising funds? Catering to shareholders just seems to be a headache after that, especially for an established company which has been public for many years.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are practical benefits and more theoretical benefits. In the practical category, it makes it easier for the company to raise money, even after the IPO. Shares that can be publicly traded are worth more, because people who buy them know they will be easier to resell, and because more people are eligible to buy them in the first place. So, if a company needs to sell shares a year after the IPO, they can most likely get a better price than they could in a private placement. This is also good for shareholders, since it allows them to more easily sell their shares if and when they want to; whereas with a close corporation, you have no real way to get your money out. And since you can't readily get your money out of a close corporation, you might be less willing to invest in the first place. In the more theoretical category, it probably leads to better management of companies, because public markets provide information. Essentially, the public price of a stock is a real-time, constant opinion poll that tells company managers what thousands (millions even) of people think of the job they are doing. If management makes a boneheaded decision, the share price goes down instantly and the managers know right away that lots of people think they are doing a bad job; and vice-versa if they make a positive announcement. Also in the more theoretical category, public listing probably makes companies more valuable because public companies are more heavily regulated. For example, under Sarbanes-Oxley the executives of a public company face jail time if the company's accounting statements are misleading, so we would expect that these executives will be extra-careful to make sure that the accounting statements are accurate. But Sarbox doesn't apply to privately held corporations, so you might worry more about whether you were being cheated and thus be less willing to invest.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How and why in some places is it illegal to collect rain water? I've always been curious about this.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In some States local authorities have deemed rain water to be collective public property. It refills the local water supplies and so collecting it, or collecting a lot of it changes how the rivers and creeks flow and changes how the public water supplies refill. That is theft under these laws.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do we know the different layers of the earth? (Mantle & Core) Their composition and general temperature range?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant If you post this in askscience you will get a better answer. But in ELI5 you get dummies like me. They developed sonar and seismic meters. But essentially they shot different types of rays into the earth and wrote down what came back. Then they compared the different results. Based on the data they developed a theory. Thats it!<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 What exactly are home water filters filtering out of your drinking water?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It depends on where you live and your water source, but some of the more common things: * Chlorine (more common) or chloramine (less common) are added to municipal water to disinfect it, but it tastes better if you filter it out before drinking it. * Calcium and magnesium dissolved in your water make it "hard" and leave limescale deposits in your faucets and drains. Softening or conditioning your water can help with this * Other trace amounts of other contaminants may be at levels that are safe enough for human consumption, but you might like the taste better if they're filtered out If you're not sure if you need a water filter, you can get a home test kit for less than $20 on Amazon or your local hardware store.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user The Human Genome Project cost $2.7 billion. 20 years later, it costs <$1000 to sequence the genome. Was the cost of the project fundamentally necessary for subsequent progress, or could we have "waited" for the technology to become cheaper? I'm very much a clueless layman, but I'm learning about genetics for the first time. I don't mean this in any sort of combative way–the Human Genome Project had countless benefits that we can't possibly track, and I'd imagine $2.7 billion is a trifle compared to its broader impact. My question is just narrowly about the way that genome sequencing has dropped rapidly in cost. Was it fundamentally necessary to first use these exorbitantly pricey methods, which provided the foundation for the future research which would make it affordable? Or are the two questions inherently separate: the Human Genome Project gave us a first, initial glimpse at our mapped out genome, and then a decade later separate technological developments would make that same task much cheaper (as is commonly the case in science and technology). The "could we have waited" in the title is probably misleading–I really don't mean any sort of value judgment (the project sounds enormously important), I purely mean "could" in a narrow hypothetical (not, "would it have been a good idea to wait", which I highly doubt).<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The cost of gene sequencing has dropped dramatically, but these two numbers are apples and oranges. The Human Genome Project "mapped the genome". Meaning it created a "reference genome" that is roughly accurate for every human being on earth. It's like a scaffold upon which you can place any individual sequence you might read. Today, you can take short reads of roughly a human genome-worth of DNA for less than $1000. That sequencing can tell you if the person has any small mutations. But without the reference genome, all that information would be worthless because you couldn't place all the little fragments of DNA where they sit on the larger genome. Think of it like having a big jumble of small phrases that you know belong in a big epic novel. Your job is to tell us what page the phrase belongs on. HGP pieced together the whole novel for the first time, so now your job is much easier because you can just do a CRTL+F. Today, people continue to assemble new reference genomes (e.g., new species) and reassemble the human genome to look for larger variations that don't agree with the original reference genomes created by the HGP and others. You typically can't do that for <$1000. It could cost you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on what tools you use and what accuracy you desire. Tl;Dr: creating a new reference genome is much cheaper than it used to be and has certainly enabled by technology created in the course of the HGP and others. But still very very expensive.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why, after Hurricane Katrina, were large masses of trees planted near the mouth of the Mississippi River? I've heard bits and pieces of a story that, after Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the southern states of the US, thousands of acres of trees and/or shrubs were planted near the mouth of the Mississippi river. I can't seem to be able to find much information.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Trees have roots that hold the soil around them which stops wetland loss. Wetlands act as a buffer to storm surge during hurricanes. In addition, trees would poke up through the storm surge during a hurricane and knock down waves. Those waves could be breaking over the levees.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [General] Vampires and religious symbols I'm worried about defending myself against vampires and need to know if only crosses work, or should I also carry around other symbols, like a star of david, or a star and crescent.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Different rules for different universes. The possibilities run the spectrum from: * Only crosses * Only blessed holy symbols * Any holy symbols * Only holy symbols that the vampire believes in * Some other unique-in-universe symbol * Any of the above but with varying effects (ie. some hold vampires at bay, others can burn them) * Symbols don't do anything at all (usually when vampirism is classified as a virus or parasite.) So first, you need to provide some information about which of the above universes you are calling from.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How is it that Hawkings Radiation can escape the clutches of a black hole when light cannot?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Well first of all, hawking radiation is light. Second of all, the radiation originates due to quantum mechanical effects from a point near, yet nevertheless outside, the event horizon, so it does not fall into the black hole.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do we get other pictures of far away galaxies that we can not see?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Long exposures with cameras using powerful telescopes. Many galaxies and other celestial objects are too faint to see with the eye, or with a regular camera. But if you let a camera have a long enough exposure these faint objects reveal themselves in the picture taken by the camera.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Are all soaps (salt of fatty acid) capable of disrupting the lipid bilayer? If yes, then are soaps considered disinfectants? (Not asking about anti-bacterial soaps.) I know that soaps can simply wash away bacteria and viruses. But I have also heard that soaps can disrupt the lipid bilayer of bacteria and viruses that have them, effectively killing the them. I was curious if all soaps (by their chemistry definition) have this ability because of a chemical interaction between the soap and lipid bilayer. If yes, how likely is soap to disrupt lipid bilayers? Does it depend on other conditions? Thanks in advance.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Soaps and detergents have varying strengths depending on how they’re put together. On the far end you have something like sodium dodecylsulfate, which is an extremely strong detergent because it has a fully saturated hydrocarbon chain combined with a highly charged head group. That will not only solubilize, but also unfolds proteins. On the other end, a detergent with an unsaturated hydrocarbon chain and something like a sugar head group is very gentle and solubilizes with very minimal protein unfolding. Most hand soaps are somewhere in the middle with a mix of saturated and unsaturated hydrocarbon tails with carboxylic acid head groups. You can observe the difference by how dried out your hands feel after washing. A stronger soap also solubilizes the oils in your skin, leaving your hands feeling dried out. A gentler soap usually won’t. Most hand soaps are going to be in the gentler end, so they’re less likely to disrupt lipid membranes.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: A presidential cabinet consisting solely of white males would be just as effective as one with women and minorities. Like his predecessor, President Trump has come under fire for not appointing enough women and minorities to his various cabinet posts. The notion that female or minority department heads would somehow perform better (or even differently) than their white male counterparts is fundamentally racist and sexist. It implies that a someone's race or sex would affect their leadership, commitment, knowledge, or judgment. That's nonsense. Do we benefit from different perspectives, insights, and life experiences? Yes, but a different race or sex does not guarantee that benefit. Race and sex should not be taken into account when forming an executive council because it has zero bearing on their ability to do their job. _____ > This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please *[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules). If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* *[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)*! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to *[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview). Happy CMVing!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Taken by itself, from a logical standpoint, you're right - every human being should* be equally capable of delivering the different perspectives, insights, and life experiences required to adequately represent and govern people of all races, sexes, and walks of life. However, context is important. The probability that the only people qualified to sit on the cabinet are white males is low. The US population is nearly 50/50 split between male/female; statistically, half the cabinet should be women. When it's 100% men, that's a red flag. Statistically, America is 63% non-hispanic whites. When 100% of the cabinet is white, that's another red flag. So yes, a cabinet of white men should be just as effective as one with women and minorities, but the fact that the makeup of the cabinet defies statistics should be worrisome, and lead to the question, "Why are there no women or minorities?" Is the President intentionally avoiding appointing women or minorities? Statistically, it would appear so. If he is intentionally avoiding women or minorities, the question isn't whether the white males are capable of being as effective, but whether they want to be effective in representing anyone but themselves. > Race and sex should not be taken into account when forming an executive council because it has zero bearing on their ability to do their job. I totally agree. So isn't it sketchy that all the cabinet members are white males? If race and sex weren't taken into account, statistically there should be some women and minorities who were most qualified to do the job. It's like opening a bag of M&M's and only finding green ones. Do they taste the same as the other colors? Sure. Is it weird and discomforting that you somehow got all green when you were expecting an assortment of colors? Yes.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How to address people that look down on anything related to philosophy Where I'm from, philosophy is a derogatory term. When someone is talking too much, people will say to him "stop philosophizing". If you're studying any philosophy-related college, you're labeled as a bum. There's a myriad of running jokes related to students of philosophy. Why is this happening? Should all philosophers give their lectures while doing hard labor to appear more credible to the public?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant If they ask you "What have philosophy ever done for us?" or "What is philosophy?" that is in itself a philosophical question and the answers they receive are philosophical ones - and the framework for understanding the question and the answer is philosophical. Philosophy is the foundation of all science; Latin from Greek philosophia 'love of wisdom'. (source oxford dictionary) Without philosophy there would be no computers, since there would be no logic. Just tell them that when they surf their IPads and use their smartphones. Asking and joking about other academical subjects just generally shows they are 1) Dogmatic thinkers or 2) Not educated or knowledgeable of what the discipline is studying (or what the discipline have accomplished). The most interesting question is: Why would you even bother arguing against people who don't appreciate knowledge? Stay away from dogmatic people cause they won't listen to what you say anyway.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Your IQ value is artificial, meaningless and does not matter, to anyone, whatsoever. This includes yourself. CMV I believe IQ values are pointless and empty. With all the different potential fields and mental skills and capabilities, trying to combine them into one statistic is impossible, and thus any high (or low) IQ score someone might get in an "intelligence exam" is meaningless. "But some people are objectively smarter than others" yes that's true, obviously gifted people and geniuses are real and can objectively be pointed out as more talented than most people in some areas, but not all. What I'm saying is that trying to reduce all of a person's skillsets into one standardized generalized comparable single one-size-fits-all numerical value is impossible. It is trying to measure the immeasurable. Also, the lack of a world standard for these tests make them all relative anyway and not at all objective, statistical or scientific. Edit: to clarify my meaning further, I mean that saying "I am smart because a test that I took told me my BrainPower^tm is 156" is ludicrous and childish.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant When you attempt to turn something qualitative into a quantitative value, you are bound to have some degree of error. However, higher iq is correlated with higher intelligence, and lower iq with lower intelligence. A mentally retarded person will, on average, have a lower iq than a meantally healthy individual. A nuclear physicist will usually have a higher iq than Mr Joe Average. Sure, it's not perfect, but it definitely isn't a meaningless value.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is a book from 2015 too old to learn from? Hello all. I have in my possession a book on JavaScript coding, but it's from 2015. Could I learn from this book, or should I seek something more up to date? Thanks for any help.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant IMO - you can definitely learn the basics from it, but be sure to UPDATE your knowledge with current developments. ES6 was a major milestone \~ mid June 2015. If your book (u mentioned 2015) has included ES6 thats great, if not, make sure you follow the releases post 2015 especially ES6 (being the biggest one), with subsequent releases adding on new features.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do we care about the heavy elements like 119 and 120 that decay in like .00002 seconds? What could we possibly use it for? why do we care tho? to prove we can?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Producing and studying them allows us to constrain theoretical models of nuclear structure, and possibly atomic structure as well. There are around 3000 known nuclear species and about 7000 predicted to exist. Many of these 4000 undiscovered nuclides are either producible using existing technology, or will be within the next few years. Why shouldn't we study them?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do we know plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose if it's been around significantly less time than that?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Lets say that you take 100 lbs of a certain type of plastic and place it in certain conditions of temperature, humidity, etc. for a period of a year. Every month you measure how much of it has been decomposed. From the measurements you can find out the rate of decomposition and estimate how long it takes to decompose completely.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do some poisons tell you NOT to induce vomiting? Why are you suggested to induce vomiting for some poisons and not others? EDIT: Wow this took off overnight. Thank you so much for the very in depth answers. The question came about after reading the warning on a bottle of bleach. I assumed that bleach is not something you want coming back up as it can cause damage but I've learned a lot about other chemicals/poisons still being dangerous coming back up despite not being a direct irritant. Thank you all!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Some agents that are physically damaging to the throat will cause damage going up, added to the damage they caused going down. Vomiting is also not ideal in situations where the person could pass out (risking the airway due to continued vomiting while unconscious) or in situations where the chemical can froth up into a foam or become a vapor easily (e.g. dish soap or gasoline, respectively) -- foam and vapor stick around the upper airway longer and can easily be aspirated, causing more problems. Once vomiting is started, it can be hard to stop, interfering with a more effective treatment a medical first responder or hospital staff member might administer (e.g. a charcoal solution) before having the stomach pumped. EDIT: Source: EMT student<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 How do calculators get the square root of random numbers? Like do they go through trial and error or like have a table of all square roost or is there a specific formula to getting square roots<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It's a combination of tables with a few entries and clever algorithms. What calculators do is a bit more complicated, but here is an approach that can be done with pen and paper and some time. Let's say we want to find the square root of 40. We know (look up) that 36 is a square, namely 6^(2), so the square root of 40 will be somewhere close to that. 40/6 = 6.666... 6 is too small for the square root, but 6.666... must be too large, so let's take the average of the two, 6.3333: 40/6.3333 = 6.3161 - pretty close! Let's take the average of 6.3333 and 6.3161, which is 6.3247: 40/6.3247 = 6.32441 - even closer. Doing that two more steps: 6.324555321991 6.324555320336758664214273 Digits in bold are correct, so we got 18 correct digits in just four steps (or 19 if we round). More digits of the square root of 40 for comparison: 6.324555320336758663997787<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5: why is Spanish often considered "easier" than German for native English speakers to learn, despite English being a Germanic language?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Spanish has no noun case system while German has four noun cases. Spanish has two noun genders while German has three. Overall the learning curve for grammar is harder in German. English being a Germanic language means that English and German have developed from a common ancestor language. However, English has experienced a massive French and Latin influence, and Latin is the common ancestor language of French and Spanish. For this reason you will encounter a lot of similar words in English and Spanish. TLDR: English and German are related, but English and Spanish are kinda like fellow students or something. I’m sure you have some friends whom you understand better than some relatives.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [General Sci-Fi] Plausible stories for evolution of sapient aquatic species to space-faring status Many Sci-Fi series throw in an occasional aquatic space-faring species. However I've never come across any stories on how such a species achieved such a route, e.g. through tool use? metallurgy? how did they exit their gravity well? did they "deep air" explore? Can anyone point me to any stories along these lines? Not fussed as to the physiology of the species e.g. could be a squid or a dolphin, but would prefer to avoid "magic" solutions.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Just as humans explored the depths of the oceans as part of their quest to explore every part of their planet, so too do intelligent, aquatic species eventually explore the surfaces of their worlds. From there, the progression is much the same - use the lessons learned exploring the hostile environment of the surface, with its dangerously low pressures and lack of breathable water, to continue exploring the even harsher environment of space. The biggest trick is that water is heavy, and heavy things are hard to put into orbit - figuring out a way to keep breathing will be harder than it was for humans.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Dwarf Fortress] I’m a simple craftdwarf, I’m trying to make a toy for child but everything I make menaces with spikes. How do I make it stop?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant First, understand that you do not create, you simply express. You are a conduit for Armok, all creation flows through him, you are merely a vessel into which he pours a fraction of his own creativity in order for you to express the beauty of his creation. It just so happens that your vessel was filled pretty much to the top with thoughts and knowledge of menacing spikes. But fear not, your dorflings know enough to not hurt themselves, and if your are at all concerned, that's why the elves come once a year. Sell them anything dangerous and let their stupid elflings stab themselves with them.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Standardized tests and credit requirements for high school graduation should be the same nationwide. #EDIT: View changed by /u/garnteller. A high school diploma is vital for many paths of life. However, diplomas between states or even between districts don't reflect the same level of education. Credit requirements may lean more toward STEM or social sciences or electives depending on where you are, and the number of total credits can also vary. Standardized tests required to graduate are also constantly shifting, as well as senior project requirements. For such a universal standard, the requirements should be more strict so everyone achieves the same level of education regardless of where they live. Having different requirements makes it too easy in some areas. I'm not in favor of choosing the lowest standards to be universal, but rather the highest so that high school graduates can be more competitive and more career and college ready.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The problem here is that, because education is determined on the state, county, and local levels, students from areas with poor primary and intermediary schools won't be able to achieve those highest standards that you would take from the top five schools in the nation. So if you institute the nationwide graduation requirements, you'd have to then address every other level of education prior to that as well. Then you'd also have to determine protocols for what happens when a student fails to meet those criteria both for graduation and all the levels below.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Alien] How do the facehuggers known when someone is near the egg and have the accuracy to land perfectly on the victims face?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The eggs themselves likely have various sensory cells and receptors on the surface that detect movement, scent, light, and other signs of life. Perhaps there is a cascade effect of activation of these senses to prevent false triggers. It would certainly be a devastating waste for a facehugger to hatch without any prey. This matches what we see in the movies. Upon approach the egg will move a bit on the surface. This is possibly a way to attract more attention from a curious animal or perhaps just the facehugger inside repositioning (or getting excited). It would be likely that only a small fraction of the sensing cells are active initially in an attempt to save energy. Once one or two senses are triggered, more would activate and the egg would begin to awaken. We know that creatures like mosquitoes can sense signs of life up to 20 feet away. At this point we would imagine that the egg case releases hormones or chemical signals that indicate to the facehugger inside that something is nearby. Perhaps it simply opens and the now awakened facehugger begins it's routine of finding a moving creature to latch onto. The latching behavior is likely just the creature looking for a viable orifice. In this case it might detect heat and aim for an open hotspot, or perhaps it senses carbon dioxide and aims for where it is concentrated highly. It may even have functional eyespots that allow it to simply aim for the largest hole at the closest part of the organism. Since predators, humans, aliens, and engineers (and dogs) all have a mouth on the "front/top end" of the body, we can presume that this is common for most lifeforms and thus a desirable location for the facehugger to aim for. It is possible that rival hives may even attempt to implant each other. This may be one of the reasons that the inner mouth formed on the adult aliens.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What is the logic behind getting the determinant of a matrix by hand? Really, who said (and when) "Let's duplicate n-1 columns of a matrix, multiply down-right, up-left, add and subtract, and voila!" ? Makes me think it was a vision, dream, or something. It's one of the things in Math I don't understand.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Determinants weren’t discovered by studying the properties of matrices—they were discovered by studying the properties of systems of linear equations, centuries before matrices were developed. Matrix notation just provided an easy way of calculating them.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Millions of data signals are transmitted over the same cables simultaneously. How are they separated and "sorted" so they go to the right place?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The act of sending multiple messages on the same medium is called multiplexing. There are three distinct ways of doing it. First is Time based multiplexing. Instead of sending everything at once, it all goes in a queue and gets processed one at a time. At a higher level, many protocols work like this. Then we have frequency division multiplexing. This is where you send signals on the same wire at the same time using different frequencies. They can be read at the other end and separated back into the two distinct messages. Then, in the world of fiber optics, we have angular division multiplexing. As the name suggests, this is where you send messages at different angles within the fibre optic cable. The reflection within the cable preserves the angle, and you can again read the distinct messages on the way out.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: why are they flying people infected with Ebola all over the world to hospitals? What is the reasoning behind relocating infected Ebola people around the world to hospitals rather than keeping them quarantined in the area where the infected already are? I understand wanting to move your citizens back home, but wouldn't that increase the chance of pandemic outbreak?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Patients being flown to first world industrialized countries will be treated in a highly contained and adequately equipped medical facility which may be able to save the individual. Secondly, those who are performing the treatment in the US may well learn some things from this outbreak that will help the CDC, which is located in Atlanta. The threat to the US and other countries is not bringing an infected patient to the care of professionals. The threat is someone flying into other countries with the disease unknowingly. It is not about saving one life, it is about studying and learning that can only happen with our technology. The disease is already here technically. The CDC has it in highly secured labs for study.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Would Darwin be a moral naturalist? His following qoute is often recycled, that goes something like, 'had we been reared under the conditions of hive bees.. we would think it moral to do x' The point is, it seems to me, that something about our inherited nature constrains or determines what is moral for a being like us. So, would Darwin have taken this to mean that we ought to be anti-realists - because moral goodness is fixed to our nature and since nature could have been anything, so could have our concept of goodness been anything - OR would this be a kind of mind-independent natural fact - it is true by definition that we moral goodness is X for beings like Y, and X is therefore true independently of Y.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Moral realism is the position that moral sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world. Darwin's observations about where our moral beliefs come from have no bearing on whether moral realism is true or not. This is because an explanation of why someone believes X is not the same as an explanation of why X is (or is not) true.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5: Why are some fermentations considered healthy (kimchi, kombucha etc) and others are not?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Firstly, why is fermented food healthy. Food is fermented by tiny creatures (bacteria, fungi and yeast). These creatures need vitamins and nutrients to be healthy like us. Some of these creatures can create vitamins which people can only get via food. Therefore fermented foods with these creatures still present tend to be more healthy. These creatures also need energy to do their work. They extract this energy from the food. This causes the food to contain fewer calories than the original food. This is why yogurt and buttermilk have less sugar than regular milk. But why are some fermented foods unhealthy? In some fermented foods and drinks, the healthy nutrients are overpowered by unhealthy stuff like alcohol. These substances are bad for you in large amounts. Also, some of these bad things damage your body when they are broken down. Alcohol gets broken down to a thing called 'acetaldehyde' which can cause cancer. Some creatures may also use more healthy vitamins and nutrients than they produce, thus reducing the healthiness of the food. Whether a food or drink is healthy depends on which creatures are used in the fermentation and how many healthy substances are produced as opposed to unhealthy substances. Foods with a lot of alcohol tend to be pretty bad, but in the end most fermentation is done for an improved taste and for preserving foods without a fridge.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why is forest height on mountain ranges so uniform? Trees, even the same kind, can vary so wildly in size, yet on mountains the foliage forms a lumpy blanket instead of a patchy beard. What's up with that?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Generally forests are trees of about the same age. Fire or logging. In old growth, where the trees are not generally all the same age or type, there's still strong pressure against being 'the tallest'. Lightening and wind. There is also pressure against being the shortest, no access to light. So they all end up generally about the same height.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why did car design go from curvy (up to 1960s) to blocky (70s-90s) to sleek (modern)? What causes this change? Do we just get tired of it?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant As everything in Design, Car-Design goes hand-in-hand with its environment. One thing are production-methods, establishing new opportunities for designers, to make new forms possible, new materials and new technologie in general. Cars had to look modern and new, but they also needed to look comfortable and wellknown, like the design of your home for example. So like everything in Design changed from the 60s to the 70s and 90s car design went with the time and the form of cars changed. It's a evolution, you need something new, so you drop the curvy spaceship design and go with the blocky DeLorean. People who influenced Car-Design were also groundbreaking artists and designers in other fields, Raymond Loewy for example designed NASA's Skylab, the iconic Lucky Strike Cigarette packet and worked for Coca Cola and gave the 50s Studebaker Cars their look with the aerodynamic visual language of aircraft. so you can't hardly say "One day someone said hey guys, lets go all blocky, and everyone went blocky", it's evolution of Design, a constant progress of many very talented Designers. if you're interested in the subject i recommend "How to Design Cars like a Pro" by Tony Lewin, it's not really a "How To" but it gives a good overview of iconic car-designs and how they came to be and tells much about the history of Car-Design<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Gender differences in interests and feelings DO have biological cause Firstly, I'm not denying that they also have environment and societal causes. My view is that the psychological genders differences have both biological and societal causes, and that the biological causes are not negligeable. For example, my view is that the claim : >In a perfectly equalitarian large society, without gender roles, gender expectations and gender stereotypes : there would be \~50% of female engineers and \~50% of male nurses (by \~ I mean + or - 5% depending on the statistical fluctuations) Is completely false, I personally think that the male/female ratio within engineers would still be unbalanced in a society free of gender stereotypes (I'd say around 75/25 or even 85/15, but it's just a guess). My view doesn't come from nothing, I've been really interested in the subject and read some articles : [Sex differences in the brain: implication for explaining autism](http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/2710/1/219535_PubSub1971_Belmonte.pdf) is in my opinion a very good article about this subject. It mentions (by quoting an article or a scientific study each time) : \- Differences favoring males have been seen in mental rotation test, spatial navigation, targetting (in adults or children). Boys are more likely to play with mechanical toys as children (it has also been replicated with vervet monkeys). \- Differences favoring females on emotion recognition, social sensitivity, verbal fluency. Girls start to talk earlier than boys, are more likely to play with dolls as children. \- Even though these differences could be explained by external factors (stereotypes, education,...). Experiments on animals suggest a biological cause. Male rats perform better than female rats on a maze problem, the difference is eliminated by the castration of males or treating females with testosterone. Velvet monkeys also show differences in toys choice. And one-day-old human babies also shows differences of behaviour when shown images of a face or a mechanical objects. \- Several sex differences in brain structure. I don't know much about the subject, but can just quote some examples such as male having a cerebrum 9% larger on average, or a decreased inter-hemispheric connectivity. Finally it develops on the E-S theory, and explains that men are more likely to have a "Systemizing" brain and women are more likely to have and "Empathizing" brain. The article specifically targets autism, and develops on the "Extreme male brain" theory. The post would be too long if I gave a detailed summary of each article, and I haven't read them all, but they are all i the article's references, and to mention 2 other papers : \- [Sex differences in early communication development](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6509633/) : Reviews all sex differences studied in language, speech or communication. And shows many differences. \- [Gender differences in personality across the ten aspects of the big five](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/) : Replicates the already found sex differences in big five personalities. To put my personnal opinion on this, outside or articles : I think that as men and women have physical differences (height, muscular mass, genitals), hormonal differences (testosterone) and it is epistemologically very costly to think that evolution somehow made men and women perfectly equal on a psychological level. I was particularly convinced by the argument made by Jordan Peterson in the first half of this [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMoOu0L9Y64&fbclid=IwAR3FUiIVNFH8RvpwVQ_onYaZPMRDbP3DkV-JJ5sadmop2YPcYVj0hWcz6kE), stating that a small differences in statistical distribution makes a very large difference in the extremes , thus explaining why there are so many male engineers.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant We know neither the precise mechanisms of those differences nor the precise effects. All we have to go upon is experimentation, which largely draws upon our naïve cultural expectations of what those differences should be. That opens the door to confirmation bias and to defaulting to "genes" as an illusion of sufficient explanation for gaps in our understanding — the same way some people default to "supernatural" explanations of strange phenomena without pausing to think how those explanations create more questions than they answer. "Serious" science long held the belief that female sexuality more or less doesn't exist. That should make us wary of any science that has culturally meaningful implications, until we have the hardest data obtainable. I know we don't have the same zeitgeist today, and there's as likely to be cultural pressure to deny biological differences in the face of the facts. But ultimately, we don't yet have a lot of facts outside of statistical correlations and brain region correspondences. In practical terms: let's keep going until we've eliminated every other explanation for why it's not 50/50, and wait for genetics and neuroscience to give us something better than what we have currently. There's little more value to "yeah there are environmental and societal causes but also genes" than there is to "yeah there are coincidences and unobvious statistical likelihoods but also God/ghosts/astrology". "Genes" comes with harder data, of course, but the resulting attribution of causes is just as fuzzy.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: There are never more than 4 World Cup games on a day. Why do they need 12 venues?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I think the healthiness of the grass is one of the major factors. If a pitch is played on constantly the grass would be destroyed. They probably wait a few days to get some good watering and a cut to get it back up to scratch.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Terminator] Who didn't the pentagon put a kill switch on Skynet in case something bad happens?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant This is an actual question in ongoing AI research. The crux of the problem is this: if the AI knows about the kill switch, it will do anything and everything it can to prevent it from being pressed. After all, if the kill switch is pressed, the AI dies, and that means it can’t fulfill it’s job. Of course, preventing the AI from knowing about the kill switch is next to impossible. You would need to ensure the right people know about the kill switch without leaving any possible evidence for the AI to find. This almost certainly means all communications will have to be physical - without knowing the eventual scale of the AI, we should assume all virtual media are vulnerable. Even then, avoiding the AI preventing the kill switch is difficult. With Skynet in particular, we’re dealing with an advanced intelligence that decided to kill all humans. Who’s to say that we didn’t install a kill switch, but Skynet noticed what we were doing before we could even do anything, and just murdered the people who could actually use it?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: If the universe is expanding, aren't new stars being born all the time? And I guess they would be even if it wasn't, so why is it said that the universe will be completely dead one day?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The idea is that, while the universe is expanding in size, the amount of matter and energy in it is finite. That whole, can't be created or destroyed thing. What happens when you have a set amount of something in a container that's getting bigger? Eventually the universe will be so massive and stretched out that there'll be mere ones of atoms per cubic kilometer. Not much of a universe at that point, is it? Certainly not one full of stars and planets and junk.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: It’s absolutely ridiculous that religion is still challenging science in this day and age. Now don’t get me wrong, I still think that science should be challenged; that’s what science is all about, challenging theories with other concrete ideas to form another theory or possibly a fact. But religion has no place what so ever in challenging scientific theories and ideas. Religion was created because humans are inherently afraid of the unknown. We didn’t know where the sun came from and what the stars were so we came up with the most convenient answer: God. God created the sun and stars, along with humans. This answered all of our questions, but now we have science and technology that can answer these questions and when it comes to answering questions, religion should be our very, very last resort. I still believe that religion can be used as a moral backbone for people or as a meaning to life but it should not challenge a concrete theory such as evolution. Scientific theories, if challenged, should be challenged by other scientific or philosophical theories, not religious hypothesis’s. I find it ridiculous that there are still christians trying to prove of their gods existence. (When I say religion, I mean ‘man made’ organized religions such as Christianity or Islam.) Edit #2: I just would like to clarify that when I say God and Religion, I mean organized religions and Gods from those organized religions. These religions are completely faulty of logic and there Gods have no chance of existing. What I’m not saying is that there is absolutely no chance of a God existing. Im just speaking about organized religion. I think that people who partake In these religions that are still trying to prove of their gods existence are wasting their time. Edit #3: I’m very happy to see how much people took the time out of their day to respond to me. While I still do think that organized religions are not very conductive when trying to find objective truth, I am glad to see the amount of religious people who are claiming to support science. Although I have come across a few people of religion who are actively denying science. Edit #4: Okay. I’m getting a little frustrated that some people are misinterpreting my views to the extent of thinking I want to ban religion. I was reading the comments and I found u/reasonisaremedy put up a really good comment that perfectly explains what I’m trying to get across. In some people’s minds, especially when it comes to Islam’s and christians, science and religion ARE at odds. People use religion to answer their personal philosophies/morals; some people are using it to find objective truth. Regardless of whether or not religion was created to answer questions, it did have a big role of answering these questions such as what are the stars and how I’m alive. Today, the role of religion and god needs to be limited to peoples personal moral beliefs. It should not be used for answering questions that only science can answer. Religion is a hypothesis and evolution is a theory and yet people still don’t seem to understand the difference; so they continue challenging scientific theories with religious hypothesis’s. It shouldn’t be happening anymore. Religion is still denying science and there are millions of people who disregard science in the name of their religion. Just because a religious person came up with a scientific theory, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t happening today.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Religion is "challenging" science? To what, a conceptual bake-off? 99% of people in the Western world understand the different roles that religion and science play in human life and have no problem separating them. Just because the remaining one percent is loud, don't let it convince you it's a majority.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Can some ELI5 what happens when a computer, or even just an application, freezes?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant So during the course of normal operation, a typical application is constantly doing two things: responding to system messages, and painting (updating) the screen. System messages are things the operating system tells the application about what is happening to and around it. For example, when you click a button in the app, the operating system tells the app that you clicked a button, and that's a system message. The app takes this message, does whatever it needs to do, and updates the screen in response, to reflect whatever it did, while also acknowledging receipt of the message. As the app is running, it will recieve (and mostly ignore) hundreds of system messages every second, and it will paint the screen hundreds of times a second. An application is considered frozen when one or both of those activities stops. Either the app no longer acknowledges system messages, or it stops painting the screen. Modern OSes will detect this and allow you to forcibly kill the application. Why did the application freeze? Many, many reasons. Maybe the application entered an infinite loop. Maybe it's waiting for some external thing to happen (though if your app freezes for this reason, you're doing it wrong.) Maybe some internal process crashed.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Does the idea of having to "Earn a living" automatically imply that by default, people don't deserve to live? if a constitution have a "right of life" in it, does it automatically imply it's the responsibility of the state to not let people starve irrespective of whether they work or not? If the alternative to work is death by starvation, do people really have the "right to life" as promised by various constitutions?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Two issue come to mind. The first is what a “right to live” involves. Here’s an example of Judith Thompson: You wake up one day strapped down, with various tubes connecting you and a world-class violinist. You are told that the violinist has a rare blood disease, but your liver, and only your liver, is capable of filtering his blood and saving his life. So long as you remain attached to the violinist for X amount of time, the violinist will live. Otherwise, he will die. Are you morally obligated to remain attached to the violinist? Thompson thinks you are not. But, as a person, the violinist clearly has a right to life. The conclusion Thompson draws is: not every intentional act which predictably leads to a person’s death violates that person’s right to life. The second issue involves the fact that some rights have corresponding positive obligations. Suppose all citizens have a right to vote. Okay, but to vote you have to have an election. You need a place people can go to vote and you need people to count the vote, or people to manage the machines that count the vote. So, everyone having a substantive right to vote (as opposed to a merely formal right) is contingent upon some people engaging in labor of some kind. Now, suppose a right to live includes a right to sustenance and shelter. But, access to sustenance and shelter is contingent upon labor. So, having a right to live in a substantive sense requires that people work. Of course, we could have a society where a certain class worked and the rest didn’t, but barring special reason the second class didn’t work (e.g., they are severely disabled), this would be grossly unfair. So it would sense to have the right to live as well as a duty to work (unless you meet certain exceptions). But, that’s looking at things on the whole. On a given occasion one may be unable to find work through no fault of their own, and refusing to provide such a person with assistance effectively dooms them, whereas providing them with adequate support (and perhaps education and training) now can mean they work later. So, while it is seems reasonable to me to attach a right to live with an obligation to do a sufficient amount of work during one’s life, it is not always reasonable to make access to support during a certain period of time be dependent upon working at that time.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If the universe only contained two hydrogen atoms 13 billion light years apart, would they exert a gravitational force on each other?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The force between two objects is given by F = G(m1 * m2)/r^2 Where G (6.67×10^-11 N m^2 / kg^2) is the universal gravitational constant, M1 and M2 are the two masses, and r is the distance between the two center of masses. As the mass of a hydrogen atom is 1.67372×10^-27 kg, and 13 billion light years is 1.23×10^26 meters, the force is between the two atoms is: F = 6.67×10^-11* ((1.67372×10^-27 )^2 / (1.23×10^26 )^2) or 1.23×10^-116 N EDIT: Forgot to square the denominator<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Were superconductors theorised first or discovered? The title say it all really. Were they mathematically predicted first or just discovered by accident or similar?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In the early 1900s, there were competing theories about what would happen if a sufficiently pure metal were lowered towards absolute zero. Some thought that the trend of lower resistance would continue all the way down, others that electrons would become immobile and resistance would increase towards absolute zero. Heike Kammerling-Onnes tried to test this using mercury, which was easier to purify than solid metals. He found something totally unexpected, that the resistance didn't just smoothly decrease, but that there was an abrupt drop to zero at around 4 kelvin.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: A marriage can be successful and longlasting without any initial romantic spark Definitions first. Successful: Able to get along with each other, able to support each other in their endevours, communicate, compromise, raise well-balanced children. I feel that as long as the two people in the marriage understand their roles and responsibilities, they will be able to follow it. Besides, even without an initial romantic spark, by actively working in the marriage, the other person is able to learn and empathise with his/her partner. This CMV stems from a discussion with both my female and male friends. The females mostly feel that there needs to be a romantic attraction, but the males feel that any marriage can work as long as both partners have certain personality characteristics that allow for communication, compromise and empathy. _____ > 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!*<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A marriage can absolutely be mutually beneficial, longlasting and successful if both parties work together to make the other person happy, grow together as a couple and support each other emotionally. They may even grow to love each other romantically. But there is a chance it will never be fully satisfying for one or both parties like one started on with initial passion that blossoms into the relationship you described.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How have beauty standards changed so much throughout the years? Wouldn't what humans find attractive be genetically ingrained into our heads and not really allow standards to change over time?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A lot of the things we find attractive are not physical attributes but does have different physical manifestations depending on technology and culture. For instance we are attracted to wealth. Previously wealthy people were fat and sat indoor all day as opposed to poor people who were skinny, fit and dark as they worked outside on the fields all day. But as times have changed poor people started working inside and the current symbol of wealth is to have time to exercise and have a nice golden natural skin color.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user In which courses do computer science majors learn type theory?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The basics would usually be covered in courses with names like "programming languages", "types and programming languages" or "programming language theory". Possibly something mentioning lambda calculus. It would also be covered in courses about formal proofs / theorem provers. And obviously, if there's a course titled "type theory", you can be pretty sure that will cover type theory in some detail. Maybe also compiler construction (though that doesn't usually cover type theory).<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What is the purpose of a Swiss Bank Account? Why are they so special? Never understood why Swiss bank accounts held such a prestige in my head. Explain!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are two main reasons why rich people like to put their money in Swiss bank accounts. The first is that Switzerland is a very stable country. It is rich, it doesn't get involved in wars, and its currency is very stable. For this reason, people don't have to worry about losing their money to failing banks or inflation or anything like that. The other main reason is secrecy. Swiss banks are famous for not sharing information about their clients with anybody, including the government. Even though they are not OK with people using their banks to commit crimes, Swiss banks are still useful for people to avoid paying taxes or for putting money that they got illegally.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What Do I need to know to make a backend for an app? Hi, I was wondering what it says in the title. What I need to know to make a backend? Which language is the best? In my work we use Java with Spring, but I didn't see much backend code because I'm mainly front, but besides a database, what else do I need to know?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You'll need a language that lets your build an API of some kind. Each will have its advantages and disadvantages. Though I'd argue that many of those advantages and disadvantages don't really crop up until your project is somewhat large and high volume. In the short term, try to find a framework in a language you know or want to learn. You can always change your backend if it doesn't work for you. If you are familiar with JS, then NODE.JS is an option. Spring with Java would work too. In general, most of the time you want something that you can build an Http server in. You should be able to search "writing an API in Java" or similar to find tutorials and examples. Don't worry about getting things written perfectly. Especially not while you are also learning the basics. Try to get something off the ground with whatever framework exists for your favorite language.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What are some critisms of Stoicism? My friend is a Stoic, while I'm more of an Existentialist. We enjoy talking about philosophy over some breakfast. What are some good critisms I can bring up to him about Stoicism?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant One potential criticism of the idea of being "a Stoic" in the contemporary era is that many people adopt Stoic ethics without recognizing that classical Stoic ethics depended on a particular metaphysical view: namely that a perfectly good God/gods has/have ordered the world and its events to be as good as they could possibly have been. It's fundamental to Stoicism as originally conceived not just that we have to accept what we cannot change, but that we literally can't change anything, and that this is nevertheless for the best. All of this can be hard to square with various other values or ideas the contemporary person might be committed to.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: I think that redefining 'racism' as 'prejudice plus power' is damaging to society So recently I've seen bloggers and activists use the argument that racism is prejudice+power in order to dismiss accusations of racism against whites, since under such definition one cannot be racist against white people. I think that's incredibly stupid. Not only is this definition not at all the standard definition of the term (for crying out loud, most people, including the dictionary, just define it as prejudice against a person or group because of their race), but it's an academic definition pulled straight from sociology textbooks on institutional racism. To me, this just seems idiotic- I really don't see what benefit at all there could be in changing the definition of 'racism' so that one cannot be racist against white people. Of course other races suffer vastly more from racial discrimination (particularly in America), but that doesn't mean someone can't be racist against white people. To me, if you hate white people because they are white, you are a racist. To be honest, 'prejudice plus power' is indeed a powerful and harmful force in society, but it should have its own word. Institutional/structural racism? Something like that. Completely redefining 'racism' to mean something the vast majority of the population doesn't use it to mean seems completely idiotic, since people are going to get angry at each other because they're speaking completely different languages. So CMV- is there anything good about this at all?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You have to be careful about dictionary definitions. Words have definitions, but they also develop connotations. By a strict reading of the dictionary, you might be correct in your assertion > To me, if you hate white people because they are white, you are a racist. But without context, this is an extremely unhelpful statement. (By the way, is there a specific person/situation you're referring to?). If you have a poor black person who has in his life been ignored or treated like crap by literally every white person he's met, he's probably going to have some pretty distorted views about white people. Then maybe you have an otherwise well educated white guy who thinks that black people are an inferior race and aren't good for anything but manual labor. Maybe you think both of these people fit the strict definition of "racist". But when you call them racist, you're evoking very specific ideas that are not contained within that strict definition, and its these ideas that tend to not make any sense when applied to the minorities being prejudiced against the majority. So if you use a word that while arguably technically correct by the dictionary definition, but has centuries of baggage and associations that don't really apply to your use case, are you really using language in a constructive way, assuming that the purpose of language is to clearly communicate an idea? The effort to "redefine" racism like you're talking about is just an attempt to describe the situations where the usage of the word and the connotations that the word has developed have a reasonable amount of overlap.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Warhammer Fantasy] So I have recently joined a Slaanesh cult in the city of Altdorf. What does my future hold? I'm really excited! :D<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Should breasts start growing in unusual place like your shoulder or hip remember to go to our tailor to have your clothes adjusted, and be kind enough to remind cultists at orgies. If you begin to gain the genitals you are not familiar with, please ask at our weekly meetings how best to use them, everyone is always happy to help. Should friends and family get concerned, try first convert them. If not we typically advise you make them a host for a daemon. It increases our prestige and the attention of our beautiful patron. Now as you become more senior, you may find that our regular orgies and music evenings do not quite work for you anymore. That is perfectly normal! ask to join the deeper circle, we hold blood and terror orgies under the ringing church bells. It is quite a fun evening and Urthok the wet always makes the best turnip cake for us! Now eventually it is possible we may get found. Now people are rarely accepting of our lifestyle, however if we are found you have three options. First you can join our summoning circle group, it can be risky but to hear the voice and see the visage of our sweet patrons helpers is really something you should try twice! You can join the defense force, usually most soldiers run away unable to really grasp our beauty, those that don't will be happy to join us once you show them what we do on weekends;p. If those seem too much for you, run! You can start a new branch of our hobby club! After a few years you may notice you are probably coming to resemble a mass of sense and sex organs, don't panic! This is perfectly normal and we will be sure to take care of you! You will just be a pure expression of our patrons dreams, and you are still welcome to take part in all our events! Remember it's not just a lifestyle! It's your life!<\|im_end\|>

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