id
stringlengths 13
25
| qid
stringlengths 5
6
| question
stringlengths 11
300
| answer
stringlengths 64
13.7k
| score
int32 2
73.7k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
AskReddit/ckoy11e | 2h2lee | What are your favorite 1 person meals you cook for yourself? | In the summer time I live off small Mediterranean snacks. Freshly diced tomatoes with fresh mozzarella cheese and oregano make a good mid-day snack after a tomato sandwich. Stuffed grape leaves are also really good with rice sauteed in olive oil with onion and crushed basil. Hummus and pita chips are decent snacks, as well. Similar to pizza, as well, is a German style onion cake (basically, a quiche/pie with fresh onions, bacon bits, and sweet cream cheese) which can usually be good for two or three meals in the winter time. | 2 |
AskHistorians/c79hlzr | 14301r | What were the reasons that the majority of Jews began to speak Hebrew instead of Yiddish? | Also, don't forget that the Sephardic Jews (of Spain) also spoke Ladino which is pretty much a dead language at this point but was a Romance language similar to Spanish but heavily influenced by Hebrew and spoken by many Jewish exiles, notably in the Ottoman empire. I believe it has had a bit of a lasting effect on some Spanish and Arabic words in the lexicon even up to the current period. My understanding is that about 10% of Jews today have decended from the Sephardic tradition. But historically speaking they had a large role in the Iberian penninsula during a very formative period, likewise for the Ottoman empire. | 9 |
AskReddit/ene6wgp | bobqv4 | What is the most expensive vacation you've taken and was it worth it? | Dubai, did all the touristy stuff, the desert camel rides, stayed at the palm Jumeriah, visited Dubai mall aquarium, Burj Khalifa, expensive restaurants. Financially was it wise? probably not, but as a once in a lifetime opportunity? It most certainly was worth it. | 2 |
AskReddit/ejxa4f0 | b8dn6r | What are the best and worst parts of living in a college dorm? | Worst: Living in a tiny, outdated, cramped room with a stranger. Having an uncomfortable too skinny bed. Having to share bathrooms with others. Never having any privacy ever. Never having any quiet ever. Never having it truly be dark ever. Never having the ability to cook food ever. Best: The walkability to campus was nice compared to the apartment I got. | 3 |
AskReddit/cd5uppg | 1pthh0 | What's something that, no matter how many times it's joked about, you just do not see the humor in it? | Honestly, I believe there is the capacity for humor in everything. Plenty of people find certain subjects off-limits and I've definitely heard people who were just trying to "joke around" say some really offensive things (specifically about the Holocaust, my family is Jewish). On a fundamental level though, when a person believes that a certain topic is completely off-limits for that kind of discourse regardless of content or context I can't help but feel they aren't intellectually prepared to have a serious conversation about it either. It demonstrates an angry distrust for ideas that aren't immediately and, superficially or otherwise, in line with their own, making it impossible for either party to learn or grow from the interaction. That's why I see "Political Correctness" as the death of honesty. | 4 |
AskReddit/ex5erfu | cri838 | What's your ghost story? | So, it runs in my family. All the ladies see em. I can hear and feel things but I've only seen one. A small curly headed boy running down a hallway at my grandparents house. He vanished after seeing me. My mom witnessed a hearse carrying my dead aunt drive into our house in it's ghostly form. My grandmother used to tell me stories of the ghosts she saw, one of whom wore high heels and she could hear them clicking on the floor. | 2 |
AskReddit/cdb3gz6 | 1qbefz | What's the most inane thing you've fished out of a toilet? | my friend's hamster- in year 5 (so about 9 or 10) at my friends house for the first time. she went downstairs to get crisps and left me holding her pet hamster. i needed to pee so logically the only solution was to take the hamster along with me, one thing led to another and it scrambled out of my hands into the toilet. i had to fish a panicking hamster out of my own urine | 2 |
AskReddit/c3wabg4 | qbdlm | Would you like to see a return of the Muppets Show? | No. I love the Muppets, but the show was a product of it's time, and that time has passed. A new show would just be a cynical cash-in, and lack the charm and heart of the original series. | 2 |
AskReddit/c4hz55i | sy8u3 | In a survival situation with limited water, is it best to drink quickly or over a prolonged period? | I would guess that taking your time would be best. If you drank a bunch all at once, your body will assume everything's fine and use the water for plenty of non-essential functions. Rationing it out would let your body know that it needs to conserve it more. Same goes for food, I would guess. | 6 |
askscience/c7j4twp | 1546l7 | What happens to the light information emitted from an object as it moves further away? | In order to resolve an object (or details like edges of letters on a chart), those objects must subtend some minimum angle. This follows from the fact that light coming from real objects projects onto a 2d image on your retina. As an object moves farther away, even though its size is constant, it will subtend a smaller angle. Therefore past a certain point you can't distinguish certain features of an image. As a simplified model, you have pixels on your retina that absorb light. When a feature on your chart subtends a small enough angle, photons from those features will fall into the same pixel and you can no longer tell which photon came from which feature on the chart. Yes, magnification can help you make out details in distant objects. However, if you magnify something with a telescope, the image will be bigger, but you're only going to get so much light into your telescope. As you magnify objects more, the brightness goes down since the light is projected over a larger area (this is assuming you have a constant aperture or opening size on your telescope). This creates a limit where you can magnify something so much that it becomes too dim to see. > Last, if we could make a sensor that is able to detect every photon that hits a surface at 25 feet from the eye chart, would we be able to reproduce the detail from the chart perfectly? Basically, if all the information is still there, can we record it and see it in detail without zooming in through a telescope? If you have a highly idealized sensor that could perfectly resolve photons and there was enough light so that the entire chart could be imaged, then yes in principle this would be possible. In real life, sensors always have some resolution limit. | 6 |
AskReddit/ctd4oc9 | 3eap4f | What irrational fear do you have? | I have panic disorder and OCD. Five years ago or so I learned about rabies. Since then, it has been such a chronic fear that it has affected my life tremendously. I live in America and it is completely irrational but I obsess over it constantly. Wish I would have never googled that disease. | 2 |
AskReddit/erj5g01 | c2c1x3 | What is your opinion of vaccines? | The thing is. there are times you should get them and times you shouldn't. It's a matter of risk management. Do you REALLY need a flu shot every year? No, probably not. If you're going overseas to a place with a multitude of diseases your body has never had exposure to should you get vaccinated for those? Absolutely. If we don't develop immunities naturally and pass them down generationally then eventually something will spring up that NO ONE's body is prepared for. We should be cautious and do things in moderation, vaccines and medicines included. In fact, that flu epidemic that killed so many people in the US way back. was more of an over medication epidemic. People panicked and Bayer got greedy and the doctors overprescribed Aspirin without knowing the effects. This is exactly the kind of mistake we should avoid making again. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/dmh96su | 6xi15n | Why do sirens sound so weird when they stop abruptly, or when they only sound for a short blip? | Mechanical sirens use a spinning disk or cylinder to create their sound. When starting, this spinning component would need to spin up, which would cause the sound to be both quieter and lower in frequency at first, but rapidly reach full strength. So it's basically the same as any other spinning object that makes a lower sound as it spins up, but then reaches a steady maximum. Electronic sirens may emulate this behavior, although they are electronic and it doesn't take them any time to reach full power / the final tone. | 3 |
explainlikeimfive/ektpko7 | bcv7cs | Why does it take a few minutes for eyes to adjust to their surroundings, like when going from a brightly lit place, to one that is relatively darker and vice-versa? | Our iris is in charge of adjusting to light difference- It expands for darkness and contracts for bright light. The expansion and contraction of the iris are done by tiny muscles in the eye, is happening slowly as to not damage the sensitive parts in the eye. Edit: Actualy adjusting to bright light is fast because bright light on an expanded iris can damage parts in the eye (which is the reason bright flashes could hurt your vision). Adjusting to darkness is much slower and can take more than 20 minutes in some cases. | 2 |
AskReddit/c98a5i3 | 1bnkf6 | What do you buy online that you'll never buy in a store again? | Whatever I can buy on Amazon I buy from Amazon. The free shipping and having it delivered to my doorstep is just too good to pass up. Most of my shoes come from Zappos but I don't think I'll ever eliminate impulse shoe buys as I walk through stores. Amazon and Zappos both have great return policies, as good or better than any brick and mortar store. Amazon's 'Subscribe and Save' drops the prices even lower. On the other hand, I am almost forced to buy new books from Amazon because Amazon has driven every bookstore in my area out of business. I don't like everything about them. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/di7beja | 6e38ne | How does my body seem to know exactly when I'm meant to wake up? | The answer is simple: sleep schedule. If you go to bed every day at the same time and wake up everyday at the same time your body gets used to it and 'recognizes' when to wake up. It only happens when keep your sleep schedule on track . Its a pretty nice thing to have tho. Also: it's required that you have a "good" sleep schedule. A schedule that fits your body just right. So if you sleep only 4 hours every night you will never get up yourself without the alarm. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/esxznka | c9gjht | How do spiders string a web at face height across large open spaces? | Spiderwebs have two types, strong or sticky. So a spider will just spin out some sticky followed by some strong, and it will drift on the breeze until it hits something and sticks. It's so light it doesn't take much to get it going across a large distance. Then they move where they want to attach the other end and peg it down with some more sticky. Now they have a secure anchor line, that they can use to move from Point A to Point B if they want to travel to a new home, or they can use it as an anchor line to spin a web. Some spiders like the barn spider will spin a web every evening, and every morning they disassemble the entire thing except for that one anchor line, go and hide in a cool place all day, then they repeat the process the next evening. | 7 |
AskReddit/etvjyeb | cdpvka | What’s the stupidest thing you’ve done but never regretted? | Quitting my job without having a new one lined up. In the short term is was a horrible, horrible idea. One could say even extraordinarily irresponsible. But I can trace every good thing that’s happened to me over the last 5 years to making the split second decision to leave the wretched place. Because honestly had I not quit then and there I might have been stuck there for the rest of my life. | 3 |
explainlikeimfive/cp8otxn | 2ye88c | Do people who talk languages other than english think in those languages? | Do you think in English? Seriously, when you think of a dog running across a field, do you imagine those words "a dog running across a field"? Or do you imagine an actual dog running across an actual field? The only times that we actually think in words, is when we are thinking of a language. I could think "My name is Thomas" in those words, I could also think "Je m'appelle Thomas", or I could think in the abstract sense that Thomas and myself are one in the same. It's similar to "how do deaf people think?" | 2 |
AskReddit/dx5pxji | 8bcryr | What should you never blame on someone else? | Honestly, blame is pretty toxic in itself. You can use experiences with other people to explain how you might feel, but unless you recognize your own responsibility, that doesn't actually benefit you. It's much better to examine the situation and realize what you can and cannot control, and then move on from there. | 20 |
AskReddit/c9c47s5 | 1c1j3q | What would America do if North Korea could somehow destroy Washington D.C? | Honestly? If D.C. was destroyed the U.S. would just level N.K. No holds bared. As far as command and control in the U.S. goes, odds are Denver, CO would become the new temporary center of the U.S. government. It already has the most government employees outside of DC, and is located in about the middle of the county. Much like D.C. was in the late 1700's at the founding of the U.S. | 2 |
AskReddit/elqb1s0 | bh647m | Why is voting in the US so heavily stressed while seemingly useless due to the electoral college? | First off the electoral college is far from useless. It guarantees that the few cities don't make the rules for the majority of the country. Voting popular works for small areas since they can pick who represents them. If the US went to popular vote for the Presidential election then a few cities rule the country. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/ew8bc5n | cnaiu6 | Why does Amazon slow walk non-prime orders? | Expedited shipping, processing, and such costs additional money and effort to process and get to you so fast. Part of what you pay for in your prime membership is essentially "pre-paying" that extra amount to get quicker shipping. It's not free, its just that you've already pre-paid for it. Getting an item to you slower is cheaper and easier overall, so if you're not willing to pay the extra to get it fast, you're not gonna get it fast. | 8 |
askscience/cbvwfto | 1l5a9f | Why do our senses of sight, and hearing diminish with age while smell, touch, and taste do not? | All senses do diminish with age. Although as you mentioned - smell and taste for example only very slightly on average. The reason is just the regenerative abilities of certain cells. If you burn your tongue - you might not taste very well for a day - but it will heal quite quickly. The tissues/cells in the eye and ear grow very slowly or not at all (like the important hairs in your ear). So when they are damaged (and in the ear this just will happen) - the condition gets worse. | 8 |
AskReddit/due8ins | 7y7pq0 | What’s the worst lie you’ve ever gotten away with? | Sneaking back into my parent’s house in high school via the roof, I slipped, fell and landed on the pool box with a thunderous crash. My mother came out to find me there and asked if I had fallen asleep outside. Having not prepared any better to say, I went along with the sleeping outside story and I don’t believe we’ve ever discussed the incident since. | 3 |
AskHistorians/d6duc0e | 4xa778 | Were large combat ships more effective in naval battles than ships of any other type? | Well yes you are basically right. For sinking other ships a carrier generally is your best bet, provided its large and fast enough to actually be useful. A carrier's airwing can deliver a higher weight in ordnance over a much further range more quickly than a battleship could ever hope to. But carriers also have their limits. For one is that until late war air operations stopped when the sun went down. Meaning if you wanted to hit stuff under cover of darkness it had to be from a ship, and the battleship thus was the biggest baddest thing around to do that. The efforts of the USN and IJN around Guadalcanal in the Fall of 1942 are textbook for both fleets trying to fit what assets they had on hand to complete the mission. And that both were willing to commit battleships to surface action in a confined area accepting the risks of superior training and torpedo usage by the IJN, and the threat of a dawn air strike in retaliation by the USN/USMC. We can also look at their employment as AA platforms. Sure a destroyer might be faster(sort of neglible when it comes to the USN fast battleships) but that small size and speed also limits armaments. A Fletcher class DD would have 5 single mounts for her 5in dual purpose guns which were some of the most effective heavy AA ever used. An Iowa class BB would have 4 times that many! With similar relationships in numbers of lighter 40mm and 20mm guns. As a practical example the USS South Dakota was part of the escort of the Enterprise at the battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, trailing about 1k yards behind the carrier. Because she was such a large ship she attracted some attackers of her own, and many Japanese aircraft sought to escape past her through the gaps in the screen to either side. In turn she put out so much flak it was described variously as the 4th of July fireworks, or a Christmas tree all lit up, and Enterprise even sent a query on if she was damaged and on fire. She is credited with about 2 dozen enemy aircraft from the battle, quite the tally even if its probably a bit over stated, consider the IJN only lost about 100 aircraft the whole day. For all that she suffered just a single bomb hit which was shrugged off and was far more damaged in a collision a few days later than the battle. So we can see that the battleship still found its niche as a part of a task force, either asserting tis weight where a carrier couldn't, or acting as the bulwark of its defense. And each navy answered the changing times differently, the IJN being notable for how hard they tried to set up a surface engagement for their battle line essentially all the way through the war. | 9 |
AskReddit/d17qon4 | 4bbyy8 | What seemed like a good idea at the time? | 50s work ethics and ideology was made for the 50s industrial revolution, our school system is still stuck in that ideology. It seemed like a good idea at the time. .but today we need to totally reform that to work for us today. | 307 |
AskReddit/e9k32uz | 9wezk7 | What screams, "I peaked in High School" ? | As an adult constantly bringing up your high school "glory days" or telling your high school stories over and over again. I cringe every time one of my coworkers starts telling stories about a rager he attended senior year. | 244 |
askscience/cic1jus | 28kbd4 | Why does metal get rainbow colored when heated? | This is due to the formation of oxides on the surface of the metal. Higher temperatures lead to faster oxide growth (usually) and hence thicker layers. Light passes through the layer and reflects off the metal but some is also reflected from the surface of the oxide. When the oxide is of a certain thickness, interference between the two can occur and coloured light is observed. The colour observed is dependent on the thickness and the thickness on the temperature so there is a continuously changing colour on the oxide pattern, just like light in a rainbow. | 9 |
explainlikeimfive/cbv453d | 1l2h6t | Why does the Earth rotate? | For the same reason it doesn't stop rotating: the conservation of angular momentum. See, the whole solar system formed out of a vast cloud of what was essentially dust and gas. That cloud was made up of particles, many as small as individual molecules, some rare ones perhaps as large as a grain of sand. Because the cloud was incredibly sparse — it would be considered a hard vacuum in any laboratory — the particles were essentially on free trajectories. They didn't interact much. Each one moved through space in its own direction and with its own momentum. But over time, the cloud began to collapse under its own weight. Nobody knows for sure why. It could've been a spontaneous thing, or it could've been provoked by the shockwave of a nearby supernova or something. Whatever the cause, the cloud began to fall into itself. But each individual particle still had its own momentum. Very few of these particles were either moving straight toward or straight away from the cloud's center of mass. Most were moving at some angle to it. That means that each particle had, relative to the cloud's center of mass, some angular momentum. Angular momentum never goes away. It can be transferred from particle to particle, but it never just vanishes. So as the cloud collapsed, it kept its angular momentum. It fell into a rough disc, then nodes within the disc collapsed into themselves to form the various planets and other celestial bodies in the solar system. Each celestial body had its own angular momentum. And those angular momenta were approximately parallel to the sun's angular momentum, because everything originated out of the same cloud. So the planets orbit the sun in the same approximate plane and in the same direction, and they rotate in the same approximate plane in the same direction. The exceptions — like Uranus, which is famously "sideways" relative to the other planets — happened after the original formation of the solar system, when some interaction changed the angular momentum of the body relative to the solar system as a whole. So the short answer is that the Earth rotates because the solar system started out with angular momentum, and it's never gone away. | 4 |
askscience/cvx6ibn | 3odkzo | Is the human body actually able to produce additional heat "on demand"? | Yes. There are two types of fat tissues in our bodies, called adipose tissues, in animals. You're likely familiar with White Adipose tissue it's the fat storage tissue which gets bigger if we over consume food. However we also have another fatty tissue called Brown Adipose Tissue. This is a tissue which is specifically optimised for generating heat, via a process called non-shivering thermogenesis. The way this works is that all cells have structures called mitochondria inside them which are responsible for generating ATP. This ATP is used to to provide reactive energy through the cell. In brown adipose tissue the mitochondria are able "short circuit" and stop generating ATP, when this happens the energy which would have been captured to make ATP is instead released as heat. Brown adipose tissue is found throughout the body but also has a characteristic distribution along the spine and across the upper back. Worth noting that Brown Adipose Tissue is a bit of a misnomer as these cells likely derive from the same stem cells as muscle tissue. | 3 |
AskReddit/c4fhhbc | snt3r | How do I get through community college and deal with the stereotypes surrounding it? | Focus on why your there. A community college isn't necessarily the doldrums of academia. You have a goal. Not only that, it can serve you with some humility. It can also help you hone your student mentality to better accommodate you when you reach university. In a way,i think youre getting a leg up, too. You get to see a bit of the real world, and sometimes i think that expensive universities shield you from that. It sounds like you'll have experienced both sides of the coin (affluent, and less than so) so it sounds corny to say, but it'll build your character and help round you out. | 2 |
AskReddit/ehla5a2 | awb5my | What's something strangely elaborate you remember from your early childhood and still don't know whether it happened or if it was pure imagination? | One time I closed my hand around a coin in front of my mom, and when I opened it, the coin was gone. I know there's now way it could have fallen to the floor, and my mom hardly even remembers my first words, so it's not like she's a good reliable source to ask, and I'm not sure if I broke the laws of physics, or if it was just childhood imagination to the max | 5 |
AskReddit/cgi3o9j | 21y16n | What is your favorite quote from a tv show? | "No Half Measures"- Mike from Breaking Bad His story that he told Walt in the end of season 3 is the most memorable quote from any tv show ever for me. Don't do anything you're going to regret. Follow through. Make the tough decisions. | 3 |
AskReddit/ct574j0 | 3dhlgd | What dream have you had that felt real, was so vivid, or just plain unexplainable? | One morning as I was trying to wake up I felt this big hand grabbing my head and was really trying to figure out how to wake up because the hand felt like it had a pretty firm grip. It didn't hurt but it really did feel like there was a hand gripping the back of my head. When I woke up I heard and felt something scurrying off between the bed and the wall and it did feel like a big hand walking on it's fingers. I didn't want to go back to sleep after that. | 3 |
askscience/cde60wn | 1qm4gi | Does having dilated pupils increase your field of vision? | No. Field of vision is determined by the placement of your eyes (if they were back further on the side of your head, you'd have a larger field of vision, but a smaller area of binocular vision). Pupil dilation increases the amount of light hitting the retina, but it doesn't increase field of vision, magnification, etc. It's akin to turning up the brightness of the light source on a microscope. | 17 |
AskReddit/cy6r9t0 | 3xpymf | Do you have an alter ego? | My reddit persona is my alter ego. IRL I am mostly responsible, serious-minded usually - but fun-loving. Here I'm totally honest, no holds barred, not subtle in any way, only my friends know what a badass I can be. | 2 |
AskReddit/d42myrp | 4nc4tn | Are you an Early Bird or Night Owl? | I can do both. I prefer the quiet parts of the day when there are few people around. This applies to late at night and early in the morning. If I absolutely had to chose, I'd take the morning because there's something energizing about quietly enjoying a cup of coffee while watching the sun rise and feeling the world slowly come alive around you. | 2 |
AskReddit/cchctln | 1ncmpt | What do you do when your Internet goes down? | Play video games, preferably hand held ones so I can sit in front of the computer and refresh the page every 5 minutes to see if the internet is back | 29 |
AskReddit/dprqfyt | 7cpzbj | What made you realize you had a drinking problem? | I was a senior in high school when I brought alcohol to school in my thermos and got trashed at school regularly. It was when it was the day of the homecoming assembly and other people were drinking with me that I realized it was probably not a good thing to be doing. I still drink occasionally now but it's gone down to once every couple months | 2 |
AskReddit/c4y2pk4 | us8o0 | Does the classification "African-American" bother anyone else? | I don't know, man. I would say if anything, they are African. However there is a distinct difference between African and African American. I think that it's up to the individual to identify how they want. Like you say, you don't call yourself Caucasian. Unless someone jumps in and clearly defines everything, it's a personal thing. But that's just, like, my opinion, man. | 2 |
AskReddit/cazm8to | 1hzzjy | Why can't the human mind understand the concept of nothing? | In our universe, the definition of nothingness is impossible. Also, we can't imagine something beyond our senses. We perceive something everyday. And when we're not perceiving and making memories of the things we sense, we can't imagine or understand anything beyond it. People who are blind from birth can't imagine what things look like because they've never seen anything; they've never experienced sight and can't use the knowledge of what things look like to make imaginary connections. It's the same with nothing. We've never seen it or been able to experience it otherwise, so we can't comprehend what it would be like. Sure, we're unconscious at many points during our sleep, so to our minds, we're essentially experiencing nothing, but we don't have any recollection of those unconscious moments because your brain isn't processing it into memory. | 2 |
AskReddit/c4ntp9s | tlyro | What are some good things you do when no one is looking? | I do little things at work.like hold doors open for people, pick things up off the groud for old people or dads with a child on their back.if i;m at the super market and the little italian lady in front of me can only afford the pasta not the sauce i'll just pay for her sauce. I wouldnt do these things in front of my friends coz it would be "out of character". | 2 |
AskReddit/ehcsoay | av5w46 | What are some of the worst experiences of you being in a group project? | we were doing a group project on the 1980s. One girl demands to do fashion. Decides, 4 weeks later, that it's too hard, and demands to do toys instead. One other girl had already chosen toys, so she refused to do anything. I ended up doing most of it. Also, the person who was supposed to print things off forgot and we had nothing to show. It was fun though. | 2 |
AskReddit/egkrofj | ar4l4v | How do you avoid negative thoughts? | You can try swapping them for positive ones over time. Be gentle with yourself, have a Google on the best way to condition yourself by changing a bad habit for a good one. It's also important to learn why the negative thoughts are there so just ignoring them or distracting yourself won't be enough. They'll keep coming back until you change something for the better. | 2 |
AskReddit/c3trj7f | q0rv6 | What happened to the story about two Italian scientists who claimed to have achieved cold fusion? | Last I heard, they were taking commercial orders, although there is still a lot of skepticism. On a related note, NASA released a video a while back which confirmed that cold fusion was a reality and that they were working on it too. (They referred to its a LENR, low energy nuclear reactions.) | 2 |
AskReddit/d513dbc | 4rh3nn | What are some examples of political buffoonery from your country that might make Americans feel better about our current state of affairs? | I'm American but I lived in Belgium for a while and I can assure you that the Belgians would make Americans look sane. For example, Belgium went without a government for over 500 days because the Dutch and the French speaking parties could not agree on a coalition. Belgium has 3 official languages (French, Dutch, and German) but there are areas where French speakers can't use French in any official capacity with the government and this caused the end of a prime minister's career! In Belgian trains the signage (and the language used first by the attendants too!) changes as you cross one region to another. Mons in French is Bergen in Dutch, if you don't know both names in both languages you could very well get lost! | 3 |
explainlikeimfive/cwyink8 | 3smay0 | Why do people who work in an office who never leave the office and are never seen by anyone other than coworkers required to dress up? | What you wear influences how you feel about yourself and how other people feel about you. Which means that what you wear has influence about how you behave and about how people behave towards you. What you wear sends out signals to yourself and to other people. That's part -- part -- of the reason why a judge wears a robe, a doctor a white coat, a nurse scrubs, a "professional" a suit and tie, a christian a cross, a person from the country a camo shirt, someone who identifies as a redneck a shirt with sleeves cut off, a cop all his or her various adornments, etc. How we appear sends out signals about who we are to ourselves and to other people. When you're representing a company and supposed to be professional and interacting with clients then it's clear why you might have to wear a suit and tie: to signal to the client that you are a professional. Client or not, you're going to be interacting with your co-workers and vice versa. As a general rule businesses think that it would be a good thing if all y'all employees interacted with each other in a professional way. Having to dress professionally reminds and encourages all y'all to behave professionally and treat each other professionally. | 30 |
explainlikeimfive/ekh42f8 | bb6fic | How does a stainless steel soap remove the fish or garlic scent from your hands? | I've seen videos of chefs actually testing this, and it doesn't work at all. If you want to get to rid of bad smells, use soap and water, and scrub really well. If that still doesn't get rid of them all, you can rub some lemon juice or vinegar on your hands. Otherwise, you just have to wait a day or 2 for the smell to go away. | 1,038 |
AskReddit/e953eu7 | 9ukvpy | What are some interesting part-time jobs to consider looking into that don’t fall into the food or retail category? | Check your local government and see if they have any part time clerical openings. It's mostly 20 hours a week of scanning documents, taking phonecalls, reading emails, etc. Plus it gets your foot in the door for office work and typically pays >$10/hr. | 10 |
AskReddit/cv4ndpo | 3laua3 | What is something that will never happen? | Getting questions about unanswered questions to the front page, but with absolutely 0 comments. It's not gonna happen, it's never gonna happen, and my dad died when I was little. | 2 |
askscience/c1fbqje | fejfh | Did the universe initially expand faster than the speed of light? | I feel compelled to correct you on something before addressing the question. Please don't take offense at this, as none's intended. > Supposedly, this must be true because the escape velocity of the singularity would be greater than the speed of light. It's misleading to envision the state of the universe at t = 0 as being equivalent to a black hole. The notion of "escape velocity" doesn't apply. There's a singularity in the FLRW metric that describes an expanding universe, but it's a wholly different type of singularity than that found at the center of a black hole, and has entirely different properties. Now on to what you actually asked … the whole premise of the question is flawed, unfortunately. The speed of light is a quantity that has units of length per unit of time: miles per hour, furlongs per fortnight, light-years per year, whatever. Metric expansion can be described with a number as well, but it's a fundamentally different kind of quantity: units of length per unit of time per unit of length. You can't sensibly compare the two numbers. The observed rate of metric expansion in our universe is around seventy kilometers per second per megaparsec, where a megaparsec is a unit of distance that's equal to about three and a quarter million light-years. You can see the dimensionality of that number: length per time per length. What that means is that the amount by a which a given distance interval increases with time depends on how big that distance interval was to begin with. It also means that if the rate of expansion is greater than zero, then you can always find some interval in space that's expanding in such a way that the distance between the endpoints is increasing more than it would if the two points were moving apart at the speed of light. It's just that if you have a smaller rate of expansion, you have to consider a bigger interval before this is true. The other aspect of your question that's going down the wrong track is the notion that expansion and motion are equivalent. They aren't. They aren't even similar, really. When two things are in motion relative to each other, then the distance interval between those two things changes with time. The same is true when two objects are stationary in an expanding universe … but that's where the similarities end. Special relativity — which is what tells us unequivocally and with no room for argument that "faster than light" is a meaningless arrangement of words — is concerned with objects that are in motion. When you're considering two objects that are at rest relative to each other in an expanding universe, special relativity doesn't come into it. The distance between the two objects increases with time, but not because the two objects are moving. They aren't. It's one of those cases where two entirely different phenomena produce effects that look the same but really aren't. So talking about the "speed" of metric expansion, or the "relative velocity" of stationary objects in an expanding universe is inherently specious. That doesn't mean cosmologists never do it. It's useful, mathematically, to parameterize metric expansion in a way that resembles velocity. But this is a convention, and not a literal physical description of nature. Similarly, when a cosmologist talks to a lay audience, it's sometimes more desirable to simplify things and talk in terms of motion rather than introduce all the counterintuitive and confusing facts of the metric expansion of a manifold. But in that case, it's metaphor, and again, not a literal physical description of nature. | 14 |
AskReddit/cfrzjbk | 1zakpy | What tv series could you not help but to binge watch? | Veronica Mars. Especially the first season. I watches the whole series in just a few weeks. I'm excited because the movie comes out in a couple of weeks. Also, House of Cards. I bow down to Frank Underwood. | 16 |
explainlikeimfive/cms1k5h | 2ozwx7 | Are the police killing more civilians than other years or is the media just choosing to focus on this now? | In the United States an average of 400 people are killed by law enforcement each year. Approximately 1/4 of these cases is a white police officer shooting a black person. This isn't new. Most of these deaths are justifiable or accidental. In these cases it is unreasonable to conclude that an officer was abusing his/her power. However video recordings of some arrests/contacts have cast doubt on the accuracy of "imminent threat" or "accident." The rise of ubiquitous handheld video recording smartphones and viral social media sharing have elevated media attention to something that has been relatively consistent in the United States. This is new. | 3 |
AskReddit/ehvdtep | axqiqb | What is the dumbest thing you believed up until the realisation? | Im super gullible so when my supervisor told me that he worked as a stripper part time I really believed it. The dude wasnt even fit and had a gut tummy. At the time I just wanted to respect his life decisions. Man the thought of him going round and round that pole with only his underwear. | 2 |
Ask_Politics/che1e9k | 255krv | Who should I vote? | The upcoming European Union election is for your country's representation in the European Parliament. Each country does their European Union elections slightly differently, but it's all based on the party list/proportional voting system. This means that you don't directly elect representatives, you vote for a party that has a ranked list of Representatives and based on the proportion of the vote the party receives, they get so many people on their list to go to the European Parliament. The European Union website often has descriptions of all the parties in your country's election (which is usually the same parties as are in your national legislature). You usually will vote for the same party you do in your domestic elections unless there is a party that represents a different pan-european policy you like. An interesting thing that happens in these elections is that far-right nationalist parties do extremely well in the EU elections compared to national elections because there is a perception that they will represent your country's interests above the rest of the Union. | 4 |
AskReddit/csmnnk9 | 3bjf3b | What is something you loved doing as a child but now absolutely hate doing as an adult? | Riding Roller Coasters. I've always loved riding them, but I used to get motion sick. I liked the thrill though. I've realized that most people get dizzy on roller coasters, and even more so some people like getting sick. It's not pleasant really anymore. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/czc9fmg | 42q07r | Why do big computers have fans but little ones don't? | Very small devices, like phones, have their processors touching the metal case, which dumps heat directly into the room. Larger devices, like a desktop computer, can't have their processor touch the case. Instead, they have to dump heat into the air inside the computer. As that air gets hotter, you can transfer less heat into it, so fans are needed to exchange the hot air with cooler room air. | 2 |
AskReddit/ese10mv | c78y5b | Why are the children and grandchildren of immigrants so eager to keep immigrants out? | As other redditors have stated, legal immigrants came here the hard way. Fought for what they have, built a life for themselves legally. Now other people just want to take the easy way to get in? I have had this conversation with people before and its offensive to the hard working legals. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/en3qfvt | bna5ek | Why is there is a helium shortage? | The first myth is that there is some sort of “shortage” of the element itself. There isn’t. The shortage is that there are very few facilities actually manufacturing helium, so prices will increase until more helium producing facilities are made. Most worldwide helium is produced in the US and prices are regulated by the US government who also owns all the helium, going back to the early 1900s when it was mined and developed as a strategic resource. The US govts stores of helium are getting low, this prices are rising. The expectation by the US govt (and everyone else) was that when this occurred, privately ran helium production facilities would spring up and fill the gap. But this hasn’t happened, hence a “shortage” as the prices have risen, but supply has not increased. | 5 |
AskReddit/d36n938 | 4jhnym | If you could get any tattoo, what would you get? | I want the tattoo "Sometimes we are allowed to cry so that we can clear our eyes to better see the good that lies ahead of us". I have social anxiety, and while it's gotten a lot better, I do cry about it a lot and I want a constant reminder that it's okay to cry. | 5 |
explainlikeimfive/dkwvelu | 6qey0w | How and why did the tradition of throwing bread at ducks and geese originate? | As long as people have had farms with livestock, they have thrown their unwanted stale or rotten food on the ground outside for the livestock to eat. Since bread is a common food, and cheap, it was among these. | 3 |
explainlikeimfive/ddop7sg | 5tq0xe | Why does stretching your muscles feel good? | Stretching feels good because muscles, like joints, tend to get stiff if left unused, as most of our muscles are in our sedentary lifestyles. Also, due to the way we have become (sitting for a big portion of the day, taking cars / ubers around rather than walking to and from places, on our phones and computers all day), our muscles tense up and shorten over time in the position where it finds it easiest to do so. Stretching helps open them out and give them a little more flexibility and motion-ability. The increased range of motion and flexibility makes you feel more open and nicer overall. | 4 |
askscience/cfp554z | 1yzf4x | Does the vacuum of space have a temperature? | The thing is, space isn't really a vacuum. It's a very very thin gas. So if you look at a big enough volume, you have enough gas particles to define a temperature. The overall picture is in the galactic disc we have "cold" molecular clouds that are <1000 K, in a "warm" ionised medium that's about 10,000 K, and that's inside a "halo" of really hot ~1,000,000 K gas. However, if you float an object (like a guy in a space-suit) in this 1,000,000 K gas, they won't feel like it's 1,000,000 K because the gas is so thin that its atoms only rarely bump into the object, and so it really feels like a vacuum. The temperature of the object will really depend on radiation - how much light it's absorbing from nearby stars, and how much light it's emitting itself. | 36 |
explainlikeimfive/eukslik | cgtctz | Why is staring at a solar eclipse deemed to be dangerous and what is the difference from just staring at the sun? | The vast majority of people are smart enough not to look directly at the Sun normally. During a solar eclipse, the desire to see something cool and relatively uncommon can override people's common sense aversion to looking directly at the sun, so they need to be reminded that this is still a bad idea, as it is still harmful, even though an eclipsed Sun is technically still less harmful than an uneclipsed Sun. | 5 |
AskReddit/em76r4w | bjcual | What is the nicest thing you’ve done for a stranger? | (not the nicest, just first thing that came to mind) I had a customer come in to my store (when I was working phone sales). He wanted to buy a phone, so I sold him a phone. a week later he came back for another phone and I thought it was odd and when I went on his account, he added 3 more phones. I immediately suspected this poor old man was having memory problems so I asked him to see 1 of his phones. He didn't have any of the 4 phones on his account on him, so I clocked out for lunch and I had a talk with him about my concerns and he just got really confused. So I asked if we could go find one of his phones so I could talk to a family member. I then met him at his home and he didn't know where his phone was so we went scavenging for the phones in the house and eventually I found one. I looked at the contacts and luckily I saw some people with the same last name as him. I called them and began to discuss my concerns of him spending thousands of dollars on his account and not remembering. ​ luckily the person I shared my concerns for lived nearby and met me at my store where I clocked in (my lunch was over). Over the course of a week, I helped legally transfer all the rights to the account to his daughter and I was personally just really happy he wasn't spending anymore money like that. I mean, I felt horrible for him and I was glad that he had caring relatives to help, but it was suspicious it took a random phone salesman to figure it out. | 2 |
AskHistorians/cdtodk5 | 1s3tpi | What happens to the Gauls in France after the Franks invaded and settled there? | The Gallo-Romans were still around, as the Franks are estimated to have only been a population of around 200,000, most of whom settled in northern France in what used to be the Domain of Soissons. This is 200,000 out of an estimated Gallo-Roman population of several million (it's either 3 or 6 million, I forget). Very few of the Franks settled in southern France, which kept more of its Roman identity. So much so that the aristocracy of southern France were referred to as "Roman" well into the 7th century. The Franks, like most Germanic tribes that migrated into the empire, just reinserted themselves at the top level of the former state. Though there was obviously some displacement and land seizure, their numbers simply were too small to create wholesale and immediate disruptive change (especially considering that the Domain of Soissons already had a sizeable Frankish population already before conquest). Basically to the regular Romans, who they paid tax or rent to changed, but they were still paying tax and rent. | 4 |
AskReddit/cmdrtsc | 2ni0nx | What's the strangest thing you've seen lying on the side of the road? | When I was in elementary school I saw a black garbage bag full of meat and possibly guts. It was sitting on the side of the road near my house. I saw it from the backseat of my car while driving by and gagged almost immediately. When we drove by the next day it was gone. I lived in a small rural community so I now assume it was the leftover waste from a deer someone had hunted. | 2 |
askscience/ef8c9p7 | akknrw | Why do animals with tough, armored backs always have soft underbellies? | From my understanding, there's a few reasons. One, most predators have evolved to go for the bite at the back of the neck, because that's most efficient for the predator--losing out on eating an armadillo here and there isn't worth the expense of evolving to scoop out their shells from below, not with so many other things to eat. Miss the crocodile, eat the iguana instead. Two, it's expensive, in terms of development and nutrition, to grow and carry armor. Maximize the value of what armor you can afford by growing it at the prime vulnerabilities, such as the spots that mountain lions and eagles like to strike at. Don't worry so much about being flipped over, unless that's a primary selection pressure. If a random coyote gets a free meal, but 10,000 other armored critters survive to breed, then the population won't see any real selection pressure towards more under-armor. If all the critters without under-armor start to get eaten, then any mutant survivors will pass on their under-armor. Three, weight, mating and pregnancy means that there needs to be a way in, a way out, and soft tissue to stretch while the eggs/babies grow or when food is plentiful and the animal can afford to get fat. If the animal is locked in its armor, like a turtle or insect, it needs appendages like giant tail-mounted penises or oviposters to sort out the breeding and birthing, and can't expand to get fat, leaving it more vulnerable to fluctuations in resource availability. | 19 |
AskReddit/ekp1cq9 | bca8lb | What’s your story of a teacher who made a huge change in your life? | My English teacher for 2nd year of high school. This man changed my whole outlook on the world. The way he analyzed the books we read was one thing but the way he led the class was something else. He valued everyone's opinion, gave everyone the podium at some point. The important part wasnt the topic at hand but how the topic affected our lives. The quizzes and tests were auxiliary. The most important part was the discussion. I remember none of us wanted to leave his class because we all enjoyed it so much. He taught me how much more we can learn from just listening to someone else's perspective, or just talking with one other person about any topic. That's a lesson that'll never be lost. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/cdp7aqf | 1ro811 | Why don't companies with high-value stocks (like APPL and GOOG) split their stocks so more people can buy in? | >Someone young like me doesn't have $1000 to spend on a single share of Google. If you don't have several thousands of dollars to lose you shouldn't be investing in individual stocks. Any single company could have all sorts of things go wrong with it and you would lose everything, that you cannot afford to lose. >and their stock would go up as a result, right? Not really no. A few thousand people buying one share is irrelevant to the share price. The way you should be buying into google (or anyone) is by buying into a mutual fund that has several tech stocks. You get a tiny piece of the larger pie, but you're not stuck to a single company. >Or do they not want that for some reason? They want to drive away hordes of small investors who have no meaningful portion of the company. 1 million investors with 1 share each are only worth a billion dollars, which is less than 1% of the value of the company. That's a lot of paperwork for basically nothing. Particularly if they're highly volatile and trading small numbers of shares around. >please explain if this is not the case Different companies have different strategies, particularly when it comes to stock splitting. If you feel there are enough shares available, or if you feel that you stock is so expensive as to even be pricing mutual funds out of the market you may need to consider a split, unless you only want long term investors. Cheap stocks can see a lot of trading volume from people trying to get a few dollars a share here or there. Berkshire hathaway (warren buffets company) is the example of strongly resisting - to a point of excess. Their share price as of when I type this is 174 000 USD per share. Yes, 174k. Unfortunately they've had to introduce a new class of shares because people started selling securities that were basically just repackaged BRK.A stocks. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/ddc5wl4 | 5s3spx | What does it mean when a album is "perfectly Mixed"? | > But what makes something perfectly mixed? A really good sound engineer. It's all about balancing the everything to achieve exactly the right sound from the performers. To do it you need to know the band, the instruments, the room, and all the little quirks of your equipment. | 3 |
AskReddit/ep2aajg | btto0k | What was the most terrifying presentation you had to give and why? | I had to give a presentation in my health class about alcoholism. Pretty much everyone who made fun of me was in the front row, I thought I had prepared but my partner who did nothing to help couldn’t even read the not cards. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/chapqie | 24u1vq | What is the whole net neutrality debate over and what are the different sides to the argument? | Net Neutrality is the idea that ISPs must treat all content on the Internet equally. I am paying Comcast for a 25Mbps connection to The Internet and they must strive to provide me with that connection for the entire Internet- they're not allowed to change my connection based on what I'm doing online. ISPs would like to be able to shape the traffic based on origin and type. That can be good in limited circumstances- if there's a cable on the backbone that's full, the person who's using Skype is going to notice a blip a lot more than a person downloading a movie overnight, so it makes sense to prioritize the Skype data over the file download. But the fear is that if we allowed ISPs to discriminate on data, they'd use it to push certain services over others. Comcast owns about 1/3rd of Hulu, so perhaps they'd prioritize Hulu traffic over Netflix traffic (so Hulu users would have less buffering time) to encourage you to use that service. Rather than try to sort out which traffic shaping is good, the current rule is just that you're not allowed to do it at all- that way, the little guys get treated exactly the same as the big guys. The fact that some scrappy start-up can show up with a better product and beat out the existing giants is one of the great things that the Internet enables, but that's hard to do if the new guys have to pay the big ISPs millions of dollars to not be extra slow. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/cbdf2h5 | 1jbtqg | Why do many men have red in their beards, even if they don't have any red hair elsewhere? | The gene for red hair vs not red hair and the gene for dark hair vs blond hair are different and can be expressed simultaneously. If you express both the red hair gene and the dark hair gene, your facial hair (and pubic hair) can have the dark pigments stripped away through various means (like using harsh shampoo), leaving the red pigments. Thus you get streaks of red hair in your beard. This is especially common in people from places that were settled by vikings such as the British Isles or northern France. | 20 |
AskReddit/dsfklne | 7p9rce | What's the best bet you've ever won? | Superbowl 2012, NY Giants vs NE Patriots. My mom and I make annual bets on the Superbowl. And I was introduced to Minecraft (don't really remember how) and I really wanted it. NY Giants end up winning and I happily enjoyed crafting away in the game. It might not be super high stakes like others might be, but its good memory | 3 |
explainlikeimfive/e9b6bvm | 9vctbh | How do video streaming services like Netflix or Amazon obtain the original video files from their license providers? | Depending on the service, licensor, and contractual agreements, they either receive the file from a digital distributor or they receive a direct upload from licensor to licensee via a portal or API. Digital distributors need some explanation, so: Digital distributors are like physical distributors, but for digital products; if you're a record label, you don't upload your music to 20 different music stores yourself and then collect the money, you pass your work to a digital distributor, check some boxes on a web form to indicate the formats and regions where you want it licensed, and they do all the work of uploading your music to iTunes/Google Play/Tidal/etc and collecting the revenue for you. | 6 |
AskReddit/eh1migf | atkosy | What’s something you feel bad for doing but do it anyway? | Dropping my cigarette butts. I will ALWAYS use a bin if there’s one in sight; even if I have to walk to it. And I have a portable ashtray to carry in my bag when it’s with me. So 95% of the time I can dispose of them properly. But sometimes I have nothing to put it in and I can’t find a bin so I do drop it. BUT. I have learnt that some birds take them and put them in their nests because the nicotine deters mites, so, I don’t feel TOO guilty anymore. | 2 |
AskReddit/d1854zr | 4bdgzn | What is something that nobody can explain, but everyone understands? | Everyone understands that quantum entanglement is a property of nature, but nobody can explain how it is possible. We know that there is an upper limit regarding the "strength of correlations" between two systems obeying local realism, but quantum theory predicts violations of this limit. | 21 |
AskReddit/cbnkare | 1kcn5e | What is your opinion on the death-penalty? | I'm from Denmark. I'm against death-penalty, in all its forms, without any exceptions. The main reason is that all people should have a second chance, all people can improve, get wiser, learn, so they will not do new crimes. | 3 |
askscience/c38q67u | nfej9 | Which heats water more efficiently: consumer microwave or electric stove? | If you have electric heating in your home, the 'waste' heat costs the same as your other heat. Your microwave is buzzing a metal fan around with an electric motor, to scatter the microwaves around the inside of the oven. Electric motors are really brutal for power consumption. | 2 |
AskReddit/d2xoh11 | 4ifnls | Would you vote for your Mom, Dad, or Aunt for president? | Yes, but the libs would hate my Mom or my Aunt in the white house, lol. We'd probably go to war within minutes of either of them taking office. Direct quote from my mom, "I'll give them a gay rights march, right back to the closet. | 2 |
AskReddit/d4trsit | 4qkv99 | What is the grossest thing you've ever seen a colleague do at work? | When I worked in a supermarket I saw one of my colleague open a pot of clotted cream, put his finger in it, lick it then put the pot back on the shelf. I can't remember if I threw it out though | 2 |
AskReddit/cupj760 | 3jinha | What GOOD would come of a world without any sort of copyright? | For people that are answering with bad outcomes: the question highlighted pretty clearly I was looking for GOOD outcomes, because the bad ones are pretty obvious (for the most part). This is not an argument about whether copyright should or should not exist, this is not a proposal of the abortion of copyright, this is not an statement of "copyright does more bad than good!" etc. It is a question, asking solely what the good side of a crazy completely hypothetical thing such as "copyright anarchy" would be. | 2 |
AskReddit/c2hpo34 | k5qne | How do I tactfully handle this woman at work? | I've got a question to add to this, I had a woman come into work today (I work at a large, very touristy toy store in the UK) and she started playng with a boomerang with the box still on which clearly didn't work, then she kissed every stuffed badger toy on the shelf, whispered in thier ears and stroked them before leaving looking pleased. She was around 50, How would I deal with her? | 5 |
AskReddit/dga0ddb | 65g9pq | Are there any non-religious accounts of Jesus from when he was alive? | There aren’t any religious accounts of Jesus when he was alive. The earliest Gospel, Mark, was written about 30 – 40 years after he died. Luke never met Jesus. And though the Epistles of Paul aren’t Gospel, they may be even more influential in the shaping of Christianity. He never knew Jesus, either. The best non-religious accounts we have of Jesus come from Josephus and Tacitus. | 3 |
AskReddit/cig6b0o | 2904c8 | What single piece of information, that if disclosed, would automatically make you refuse to buy a house? | "This house was built above a live spring" They very conveniently DIDN'T disclose that to my Mom when she purchased her house and she's been having problems ever since. Definitely check for that if you're buying a place. | 3 |
AskReddit/diozjm5 | 6gb5no | What's the best way a person has escaped from prison? | The great Timothy Leary escaped from a prison by using a power line as a tightrope and walked across it, over the walls, in broad daylight. Straight Jedi mind trick. | 2 |
AskReddit/erwxd1m | c4jms9 | If you started your own brand today , what's that brand called and what's your product ? | I would make disgusting flavored lollipops called "suckers". Like Harry Potter jelly beans but worse. The ultimate flavor would be a poopy flavored lollipop | 2 |
AskReddit/d83z9w6 | 54q2d3 | Do you actually feel like a grown up, or are you just winging this 'adulthood' thing and hoping no one will realise you really have no idea what you're doing? | I actually feel plenty grown up. I work for a living, pay my bills, have a mortgage and multiple retirement accounts, and I make all the decisions about how to handle my life. Does that mean I feel mature? No. But this is it; how much more can I grow up? I have no kids, and I haven't yet had to shepherd a parent through death. I expect those things might mature me, but I'm grown up enough to realize that I'll have to wing it through those things no matter what. | 2 |
explainlikeimfive/cgc8zm1 | 21eeb8 | When a company is bought by another company, what happens to the money they were bought with? | Say you own an ice cream truck and you make $500 each day you work. But you just don't own the truck, you own the business name, 18 twenty gallon containers of ice cream, the cones, the chocolate-y bits, the sprinkles, and a three month supply of spoons, napkins, and trays. Now the food truck next to you sells waffles and the owner sees you come in every day and consistently turn a profit, so he decides to offer you money to buy you out. He approaches you and says, "Alligatronica, I want to buy your stand. I'll give you $10,000 cash right now. No, no, don't give me an answer, just think about it for a bit." So you do for a couple of days, but you conclude that you can't sale because this is the only income you have. Yes, the $10,000 would be nice, but what will you do after that? So when old man Waffles approaches you again, you decline because you still need to make a living. But he was ready for the possibility and says, "All right, I'll give you $7,500 cash, and a stake in all of my future sales. Guaranteed income." So you sell. The money plus a contract working out future royalties for whatever reason goes to you the sole owner, and he takes possession of everything ice cream stand related. Edited to add: Since you moved on to bigger and better things Mr. Waffles probably sells out your stock of ice cream and cones, makes his own waffle cones but replaces the ice cream with something called "frosted dairy desert" with 20% the content of actual milk of what you used to sell, decreases the number of flavors so that he can decrease the size of your cart and--so--pay less rent for the space, introduces a scoop that's half the size of what you used to call "small", calls it the "small" and throws out the large scoop. Also since the cones are "hand made" he can sell them for 150% of what he would sell a normal waffle and he increases the prices of all the scoops of ice cream by 40% because nobody else around him is selling ice cream and it's the middle of summer. Doesn't matter because profits soar and you both make a killing. | 4 |
AskReddit/cfgie67 | 1y1gdb | What stressed you out the most when you were 18? | Well, I turned 18 in October, and I would have to say that the future in general stresses me out the most. I'm fairly confident that I'll do fine in whatever I pursue, but you hear all these stories of people going to school and paying thousands of dollars to get degrees, that end up not being able to find jobs in their field and owing a fortune in student loans. I just really hate the uncertainty that the education/career system has today. It doesn't help at all that this is also the point in my life where I need to start looking for a place to live and being 100% responsible for myself. | 3 |
askscience/cicngc6 | 28mpao | What is it radiation does that causes mutations? | If i remember correctly the most common radiation the causes mutations is ionizing radiation. The most common is probably light who's frequency is higher than violet (ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays) but the other types are beta (in which a high energy electron is emitted from a decaying atom) and alpha ( in which a helium particle is released). Sorry if this isn't that clear but it's been awhile since I've touched this subject. edit: I seemed to have misread the OP's question. But to further elaborate ionizing radiation causes the DNA molecules to lose electrons, causes adjacent nucleotides to react (and form dimers), or change one nucleotide into another. most of the time your cells should be able to correct these errors but this isn't perfect though. sorry for my carelessness in reading your post. | 3 |
AskReddit/d88ew03 | 558gb6 | What do you know about your neighbors despite never having met them? | The neighbors on our left are from (I think) Chad. They don't speak a whole lot of English and I really can't tell what language they are speaking. The adults at least. They have a couple of kids who are really sweet. Unlike a lot of parents in the neighborhood who kind of just release their children into the wild, the moms (yes, there is more than one) next door like to watch their kids play from either the picnic tables or their front windows. They seem cool. It's really an upgrade to live in a nice neighborhood after the really crappy apartment complex we used to live in. | 2 |
AskReddit/e4cyilr | 983ce5 | Why is North Korea reluctant to give up its nuclear weapons when it has Russia and China as its defence against any invasion attempt? | The nukes are NK's bargaining chips for stuff. North Korea has an infrastructure system that is in the toilet. It has only just barely gotten to where its people are not actively dying of hunger, but that's only because of the massive infusions of aid its gotten from foreign countries. Then you have the Kim family's voracious appetite for luxury and extravagance. They demand a level of opulence the country can't provide, so they rely on imports from other countries for things like ski resort lifts, alcohol and food. Some of the loudest rhetoric coming out of North Korea came when the US and UN attempted to block the import of those luxury goods. North Korea has the assurance of China and Russia it won't be invaded, but they aren't so hot about making sure that it gets all those aid infusions and luxury imports, which is what North Korea really cares about. And it seriously does not want to admit how badly it needs foreign aid because that goes against the Jute system of ideology it has indoctrinated the people with for most of the last century. So it uses the nukes. NK makes a lot of screaming noise, sets a couple bombs off and throws the other pieces everywhere like a tantruming two year old until the rest of the world sighs, digs up a pacifier (usually Dennis Rodman) and asks what North Korea needs this time. And it's usually the same thing: foreign aid for the people and some new fancy toy for whichever Kim is in charge right now. Take away the nukes and North Korea would have to make a bunch of honest admissions on how completely screwed the country is, and it can't afford to do that. | 3 |
askscience/cch0pyj | 1nao0u | Why did humans evolve to express happiness by exposing their teeth while the same display is an act of aggression in other species? | There was a study done recently about just this. I can't find it though. Said that while baring your teeth in the animal kingdom is typically a sign of aggression, when humans smile it makes their voice higher and "friendlier." So it's not a visual cue, it's an aural one. | 3 |
explainlikeimfive/czjq5yr | 43op4r | Why do dogs howl when music is played? | Well I asked my dog, but she wouldn't tell me. Seriously, though, it's because they have no concept of music and they can't actually understand our words. So, to them, singing just sounds like a bunch of people raising their voices and getting really excited about something. And dogs bark and howl in response to these social cues. Edit: downvotes? seriously? Dogs howl when they get excited. Music gets them excited. This isn't that complicated. Edit 2: Nevermind, thanks for all the upvotes. | 99 |
AskReddit/cxd46d5 | 3u9uk8 | What are some safe and legal ways to have vivid hallucinations? | waking up while having not finished the sleep cycle can drop you into hypnopompic hallucinations. as long as you stay still it is safe. I have them frequently and a lot of the time, I end up jumping out of bed screaming, so if you are surrounded by things that can cause harm, I suggest cleaning up. Ive talked to my psychiatrist about them and he mentioned the have a connection with stress. Thats all I can really say about it, but maybe your own research can lead you further. | 7 |
AskReddit/eeuonz0 | ajdm35 | What ultimately convinced you to leave your good but not great, mediocre relationship? | She was going to buy an apartment in the town I lived in, instead of the town she lived and worked in, to be closer to me. She was a great girl, but I didnt want to be the reason she moved further from her work and friends, when I wasnt totally sure where the relationship was going | 4 |
AskReddit/df8gdhh | 60qf4z | To teachers using Reddit, what are stupid things students have asked? | Well, not a teacher myself but worked with someone teaching first year math for students of medicine at university. Wasn't so much what they asked, but more that they apparently insisted for well over 20 minutes that complex numbers couldn't possibly exist because they learned in high school that negative numbers don't have square roots. | 4 |