Question: How are film crews paid?

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 How are film crews paid?

I’m a TV accountant. Most everyone is paid hourly. Directors are paid by the project. Actors can be paid a day rate, weekly rate or episodic rate. Some jobs, accountants, costume designers, set decorators are paid a weekly “on call” rate. Checks are due the Thursday after shooting (or Friday if you’re on location.) The studio doesn’t take anything! That’s crazy. Residuals and merchandising are depending on the contract. Payment to writers, directors and actors are usually sent to their agent who takes 10% and sends the rest to their client. Crew checks are handed out on set or mailed.


Question: Why can’t people crack AES 256 encryption if they know the type of encryption it is?

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 Why can’t people crack AES 256 encryption if they know the type of encryption it is?

Imagine a combination lock...knowing that there are 3 numbers in the combination doesn't tell you what those numbers *are*, so it doesn't help you open the lock. 256 bit encryption is kind of like that, but better. There are 256 numbers to guess, and each one could be many different things. The fastest super computers on earth would still need millions of years to crack it just by guessing.


Question: Despite being unbelievably rich in resources, why is Africa home to some of the poorest countries in the world?

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 Despite being unbelievably rich in resources, why is Africa home to some of the poorest countries in the world?

In economica this is actually known as the resource curse or Paradox of plenty. Although you would typically think that natural resources would be great for everyone, there are a few reasons it is not. I will try to keep this eli5, and link toa post with some more detail. First, people care more about what the government does with their taxes if they are paying a lot in taxes (so they have "skin in the game"). In a resource rich country, a majority of government revenue may come from the tesource industry, which means that while most of the populace pays low taxes, they also care less about good governance, and this may encourage mismanagement and corruption in the government. Second, Resource extraction only narrowly benefits certain people. The mining companies for instance may make a lot of money, ultimately means that only a few people in the country become ultra wealthy, a small number of workers for the country may live good lives, but most people in the country can only benefit from natural resources through govt taxation (see above for problems) Third, countries that have an abundant resource may not benefit the most from its extraction. Raw materials are just that, raw materials. In most cases, the cast majority of value in a product is its processing and effort, not the value of the raw material. So unless a country is able to develop the means to process and refine the raw material, along with the related industries, they may recieve relatively little economic benefit. Finall, related to points 1 and 3, resource rich countries may focus only on the extractive industries, and not invest in other sectors of their economy. This means that the country may be very susceptile to shock related to their natural resources, and further limits the rest of the economy which is not involved in extraction. A good overview can be found here: URL_0


Question: - How can you be addicted to something and unable to stop?

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 - How can you be addicted to something and unable to stop?

The drug/substance causes certain physical responses and releases of chemicals in your brain that your brain then develops a dependence on - it needs that chemical more to "feel normal", and the only way to get it is to consume that drug/substance again. It's a dumb example but imagine you have a canal in your brain that water flows through normally and you function just fine without any chemicals or substances. And then you start drinking alcohol - well that alcohol starts carving out a second canal in your brain. Your brain starts wanting you to open the tap to keep that beer river flowing because it feels "normal" and makes your body function. A person without alcohol dependence doesn't have that secondary beer canal but a person with alcohol dependence does.


Question: Why companies are able to copyright scientific papers from a hundred years ago or more?

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 Why companies are able to copyright scientific papers from a hundred years ago or more?

In this context, copyright has nothing to do with the author. When you publish a scientific article you give up your rights as an author in favour of the publisher. This is the reason many authors share pre-prints of the articles instead of the final version (own by the publisher). But as mentioned in another comment, universities usually have agreements in order to facilitate access to papers.


Question: How do they re-release low-definition movies from the 1980s in Blu-Ray and 4k?

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 How do they re-release low-definition movies from the 1980s in Blu-Ray and 4k?

Basically, those movies were recorded on film stock, which actually is a high-definition format, we just didn't have the technology to display the full resolution that the movie cameras were capturing back then. But if the original film exists, you can scan it, and get a high definition version of the movie that can be put on Blu-Ray or 4K releases. This can only be done for movies that were recorded on high quality material, and where the original film exists.


Question: why do most lotions contain alcohol when alcohol is very drying for skin?

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 why do most lotions contain alcohol when alcohol is very drying for skin?

Alcohol is a big word that contains a lot of different types of chemicals. Some of them are dry but others are called "emollients" and they partially consist of fatty substances which help hold in moisture. Putting them on your skin has a moisturizing and protective effect, and they also help in making the lotion because they hold some of the other chemicals together when their normal behavior would be to separate. Note for adults: the FDA considers the common types of these emollients to be very safe.


Question: . How exactly do real estate agencies work for you?

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 . How exactly do real estate agencies work for you?

Negotiating deals is only part of it. It’s the agents job to guide the sale and closing process. They ensure that their clients best interest is represented. That’s not just “getting the best price.” It’s also ensuring standard contracts are used, with favorable terms. Deadlines and inspections are met. Deposits are held correctly, and returned correctly. That all the steps needed to close are completed correctly and on time. Most people only buy a few properties in their life time. You’re paying a real estate agent for their knowledge and experience in the process. About representing both the buyer and seller - professional ethics standards require realtors disclose any conflict of interest. Failure to do so would be cause to lose their license. Clients can acknowledge and accept this conflict, or find a different agent to represent them. EDIT: it’s probably also important to note that it’s rarely a win/lose situation. You’re not battling between the seller and buyer, you’re look to find a mutually beneficial agreement. Having objective 3rd parties (realtors) can help this process. The exception would be a competitive bid process, where you’re bidding against other buyers for the same property. The value this is the realtors experience with buyers and understanding how they’re likely to act so you can craft the best offer.


Question: How come certain plants are able to survive when you put them in just water but the same plant dies when you put it in soil and over water it?

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 How come certain plants are able to survive when you put them in just water but the same plant dies when you put it in soil and over water it?

most plants can go from soil to water easier than water to soil. It's easier for it to grow water roots than... soil roots. They're different. & #x200B; To answer your question, over watering in soil kills the plant because it drowns the roots. Literally. They need oxygen, and soil roots can't get it from water. So, the drowned root system dies and rots and the plant suffers and often dies because of it.


Question: How do atoms, which very small in size compared to wavelength of visible light, emit visible photons?

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 How do atoms, which very small in size compared to wavelength of visible light, emit visible photons?

Eli5 version. You can drop a pebble in a lake that makes waves which are a few feet long even though the pebble was very tiny the same way an atom can emit a photon with a longer wavelength in space. Eli20 The wavelength refers to the length not the height or amplitude of a wave. When an electron drops energy levels it releases energy as a photon. Photons are travelling at light speed which is 300 million meters per second in a vacuum. Because the speed of light is so high, long wavelengths are actually very fast frequency. For example blue light will be ~500nm wavelength and the amount of time before the photon travels only one wavelength away from the atom is only one thousandth of a millionth of a millionth of a second or 1.6e-15 seconds. Imagine dropping your pebble in a lake now one second later the wave has travelled farther than most cars' lifespan and has crested 1e15 times. Edit: furthermore photons are massless and so an atom is basically infinitely heavier than a photon.


Question: How do modern smartwatches calculate steps, blood pressure and oxygen level in blood ?

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 How do modern smartwatches calculate steps, blood pressure and oxygen level in blood ?

Oxygen level is done via the color of your blood. That is called *Reflectance pulse oximetry.* The watch shines a light on your skin and the color reflection lets it measure blood flow and oxygenation. Steps are calculated by the accelerometer, which basically measures how fast and where the watch is going. There is a little math and analysis going on, but basically one swing forward and back is one step, because we swing our arms synchronous with our legs.


Question: Why can’t phones and computers charge almost instantly when you plug them in, instead taking 2-3 hours?

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 Why can’t phones and computers charge almost instantly when you plug them in, instead taking 2-3 hours?

Electricity is stored in batteries as chemicals held in two different containers separated by a filter-y thing. Letting electrons flow from one to the other through your phone (for example) is how it discharges. Forcing the chemical reaction to go backwards is how it recharges, by way of a smaller circuit connected to the charger. If the reaction goes too fast, it catches fire. This is annoying, and so coming up with a clever (and cheap) solution is an ongoing challenge in electrochemical engineering.


Question: Why does pretzel making require you give the dough a baking soda bath before baking?

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 Why does pretzel making require you give the dough a baking soda bath before baking?

True pretzel making actually requires a lye bath. Lye, however, is harder to acquire and is extremely caustic For that reason most recipes require a baking soda bath, which is far weaker, but gives the same kind of reaction. Both of them are there to give the pretzel its unique outer skin. When the caustic solution hits the dough it causes a chemical reaction in the carbohydrates of the outer layer of dough, which when baked gives the pretzel that pretzel skin on the outside. It's the same reaction that is used to create the skin in a bagel.


Question: Why in most video games, does it seem that Friendly/Ally A.I. has a much worse A.I. then what Agressive/Enemy A.I. have?

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 Why in most video games, does it seem that Friendly/Ally A.I. has a much worse A.I. then what Agressive/Enemy A.I. have?

In a lot of games, the friendly AI is restricted to doing very little so that the player has to do most of the actions required to progress. You see this in a lot of FPS single-player campaigns where your squadmates often seem to be doing nothing useful despite their shooting at the enemy.


Question: In movies a situation is often portrayed where founder/owner of a company is fired. Is this accurate to the real world?

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 In movies a situation is often portrayed where founder/owner of a company is fired. Is this accurate to the real world?

There are two ways that an owner/founder could be fired from being the CEO. 1. They sell more than 50% of the company to investors and the majority shareholders vote them out. 2. The company is created with a rule that the board of directors can vote out the CEO regardless of ownership, and the people on the board do just that. Often founders of companies can become really emotionally invested in their company and make decisions that might not be the best for the company. Also, someone may successfully start up a company and when it really starts to take off not have the skillset to grow it. For this reason, when investors give money to a startup it often comes with requirements for having seats on the board, or other methods of ensuring their financial interests are looked after and sometimes that means replacing the CEO.


Question: How are pictures of planets so focused and not blurred, when they move at a speed of several km/s?

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 How are pictures of planets so focused and not blurred, when they move at a speed of several km/s?

They're very far away. It's like looking at a distant mountain, or any object on the horizon, when you're in a car. It's far enough that it looks almost stationary. Compare it to the nearby objects that seem to zoom past, even though your speed doesn't change. Also, you often have to adjust the telescope every few mins, to account for the earth's rotation, but that can be done automatically using modern hi-tech telescopes


Question: How would one calculate a person's BMI if they're missing a limb?

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 How would one calculate a person's BMI if they're missing a limb?

You use a technique called Bioelectrical impedance analysis. & nbsp; A handheld machine sends a weak current through the body and the voltage is measured at several points. Since your body stores more water in muscle than it does in fat cells, you can use the amount of impedence/resistance to figure out how much water your body contains relative to muscle, since water has less resistance than muscle mass. Once you get the amount of water, you subtract it from the total body mass and end up with the amount of fat. It's not as accurate sometimes as calipers can be since being dehydrated can affect the total amount of water and make it seem like you're a fatty. & nbsp; tl;dr You don't measure the fat, you use electricity to measure the amount of water. Subtract the water from the total mass and you're left with fat.


Question: What is the suns 11 years cycle and how does it work?

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 What is the suns 11 years cycle and how does it work?

The 11 year cycle is something scientists noticed quite some time ago. It started it by noticing sun spot activity. Sun spots would follow an 11 year cycle. For 5.5 years sunspots would become more frequent. This was followed by a 5.5 year period where the frequency of sunspots decreased. After some time it was noticed that an increase in sunspots coincided with an increase in temperature on earth. The natural conclusion was that an increase in sunspots meant an increase in solar energy output of the sun. This has since been confirmed by advances in science. As for the reasons behind the actual cycle I just don't know. A quick Google search did not give me a reason other than the cycle is also related to the magnetic field of the sun. So perhaps we just don't know why it happens


Question: Why does our body basically kill itself when it goes into anaphylactic shock?

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 Why does our body basically kill itself when it goes into anaphylactic shock?

Questions like this generally stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of why the body is the way it is. Much of this is due to confusing terminology and jargon when talking about biological functions. The important thing to remember is that the body does not have goals. It was not designed, it doesn't have parts with a purpose. Commonly people will say something like "The lungs are for exchanging incoming oxygen and outgoing carbon dioxide with the air," but that is subtly incorrect. That is what they *do*, not what they are *for*. Evolution by natural selection means that the organisms and their associated traits that work will persist and proliferate while those that do not will not. There is no thinking or planning ahead involved. Swelling as a response to irritation in general means organisms have a higher chance of survival. In the case of anaphylaxis it isn't helpful, but it doesn't happen often enough for evolution to favor a more nuanced approach to when to swell or not.


Question: How do seasons work and change?

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 How do seasons work and change?

So weather basically works because some areas absorb more sun than others and heat up more. Warm air rising in one place and cold air falling in another set up large circles of wind. Seasons work because the earth's axis rotation is tilted. Sun hitting at 90 to the land is more concentrated than sun that hits at an angle (because the same amount of light is more spread out) So as the Earth orbits the sun the tilt of the earth in relation to the sun shifts back and forth. Some areas then receive more direct sunlight making them warmer and some receive light at an angle making them colder. Half a year later the earth is now on the opposite side of the sun and the tilt is reversed along with the warmer and colder areas.


Question: How were Congressional Republicans able to delay and ultimately avoid hearings for Merrick Garland, yet Democrats couldn't do the same for Brett Kavanaugh?

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 How were Congressional Republicans able to delay and ultimately avoid hearings for Merrick Garland, yet Democrats couldn't do the same for Brett Kavanaugh?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the Republicans, in the past presidential term, held the majority in the Senate at the time when the confirmation vote required a 2/3 majority. The Republicans have also since changed the rules to simply need a majority vote (greater than 50 percent). The filabuster rules have changed as well. Republicans didn't like the rules so they changed them to suit their needs.


Question: Why does fast spinning stabilize things?

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 Why does fast spinning stabilize things?

By spinning, you give momentum to part of the object, and that momentum takes energy to dissipate (objects in motion tend to stay in motion). You can give a lot more momentum energy to the object than it would have in inertia and so it becomes more difficult to move and therefor stabilizes it.


Question: How did the Greeks measure the circumference of the earth?

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 How did the Greeks measure the circumference of the earth?

To quote Dr Farnsworth "I'm afraid we will have to use.... MATH!" Eratosthenes stuck a pole in the ground during the summer solstice (when the sun is directly over head). It was known that at the equator during the solstice the sun was directly over head so a pole in the ground would generate no shadow. Where as at his location the pole would in fact make a shadow. Using the shadow generated by the pole he then measured the position of the Sun as being 7 degrees different than at the equator (where the sun is directly over head). Since the distance between the two locations was known, and 7 degrees is roughly 1/50 the circumference of a circle, he concluded the Earth was about 50 times the distance of those two points round. And you know what? He wasn't that far off.


Question: Why exactly were open wounds more dangerous ages ago, then the wounds today even without medical treatment?

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 Why exactly were open wounds more dangerous ages ago, then the wounds today even without medical treatment?

> I mean back then it was literaly a deathscentence if you fall down in the grass and get a tiny open wound on your knee by a rock in the grass So I don't think this is necessarily true. Large, severe cuts were prone to infection back then just as they are now, but if people died from small cuts on their knees or hands we would have never survived past the primal stage. The human body is good at fighting regular, everyday infections. The problems you had in the past were with more major injuries - amputations (which they did a lot more of because of lack of other treatments), stab and gunshot wounds, broken bones etc. Basically, the world didn't get any less bacteria-filled or dangerous, you just see fewer infection related deaths because (1) we've learned to keep things in the medical sphere clean, and (2) because we have antibiotics. Any small wound infection that would have landed you in the grave 100 years ago would still land you in the hospital today, you just wouldn't die from it


Question: How does music of dead/retired musicians get remastered?

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 How does music of dead/retired musicians get remastered?

If you have individual vocal and instrument audio tracks from the original recording, you can process them separately with more modern technology. Suppose one of the tracks was noisy or had limited sound quality due to the technology at the time. You could replace the track or filter out the noise. You could make it more on-tune with auto-tuning technology. Mix all these processed tracks back and it will be remastered. It gets more complicated if you don't have the individual tracks. There are some ways of isolating the human vocal tones away from the instruments but depending on the type of music, this may be hard to separate. Even more future technology will allow you to synthesize a person's voice given enough samples. This is still in progress but it will open up a whole lot of issues with ownership of the voice and its use in deep fakes (forged audio or videos).


Question: How do we know that there wasn't an intelligent species living here on earth before humans?

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 How do we know that there wasn't an intelligent species living here on earth before humans?

We don't know. Like we don't "know" anything in science. Science never "knows" anything, but rather builds models upon the most rigirious research and the available data. The extend to which we know there wasn't an intelligent species here before us is that we don't have any evidence that would point in that direction. And if you don't have any evidence suggesting anything, its pointless to consider.


Question: How do spam callers mask their phone numbers to ones registered to someone else?

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 How do spam callers mask their phone numbers to ones registered to someone else?

When you get a phone call and a number shows up on your caller ID, that's not always because your phone knows which number is calling it. The phone that's calling you can send the call *and* tell your phone what number to show, plus maybe a name as well. Scammers use a VoIP phone and can just alter the data that their phone sends to your phone, your phone doesn't know any better and just shows what ever the other phone tells it to show. Edited for clarity.


Question: What's the difference in the sound waves between different letters, like A and O?

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 What's the difference in the sound waves between different letters, like A and O?

Most "tones" aren't just a simple sine wave with a single frequency (let's say 400Hz). There are "overtones" on top of that: Those are waves with multiples of that frequency (800Hz, 1200Hz, 1600Hz, ...). I think with something like human speech there are some more frequencies involved that aren't necessarily overtones. How strong each of these additional frequencies is will determine the "shape" of the tone - which is why an "A" sounds different from an "O", and both are different from a violin or a clarinet. The perceived "pitch" of the sound is however usually just the base frequency, which is why those sounds still work for making music.


Question: How do files/code get corrupted?

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 How do files/code get corrupted?

Corruption happens for lots of reasons. Think of each file as a million light switches. The order in which the light switches are on or off tells the computer what is inside the file. & #x200B; If the light switches were stored I'm a giant steel box then whenever you went to look at them they would be in the same order. In a perfect world, someone could open that box, copy the order of switches into a new box, and then close their box for a perfect copy. & #x200B; Imagine if you started to copy the switch order to a new and something interrupted you, or the box you were copying from was removed. If this was towards the end of the switches, you would think you might think you had a copy, but would be missing pieces of it. This is how files can get corrupted while copying though most programs have a method to verify the switches were copied correctly. & #x200B; When something on your computer is running, it stores those switches in a temporary box that is really fast to change, but also really sensitive. Imagine if you shook the box with a bunch of rocks in it. Theres a chance that while you're shakeing the box, one of the rocks would hit a switch and change it at random. This is what can happen with data while it's in memory, sometimes background radiation can hit one of the electrons and change it. & #x200B; Every time you save or retrieve data there is a chance that someone along the line some piece of hardware will incorrectly read the data or incorrectly write the data. Computers do a lot to check if this happened and correct it, but occasionally something will cause an undetectable issue and that is viewed as corruption.


Question: What are those dust motes we see floating around made of? How do they form?

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 What are those dust motes we see floating around made of? How do they form?

Most of the dust particles that you see wafting around in the sun are organic. These come from plants or animals that have dried out and can break down into smaller and smaller pieces over time. Because these eventually very tiny bits are usually not made out of heavy atoms like the kind that are in rocks and stuff, dust from organic sources is often very light, and so it pretty much floats given the lightest whiff or current of air. Humans and their hairy pets produce a lot of dead flakes of skin and tiny bits of hair that really can contribute to household dust. The next time you have a thin sliver of sunlight coming into where you live, some of the bits that are floating around in there... are very likely yours.


Question: What is the difference between luminescence and fluorescence?

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 What is the difference between luminescence and fluorescence?

Luminescence is the emission of light but that does not also emit heat. This is in contrast to incandescence, which is the emission of light as a result of heat. For example the chemicals in a glow stick are luminescent but a bonfire or an old-fashioned light bulb is incandescent. Fluorescence is the emission of light as a result of the absorption of light, where the emitted waves are usually of a lower wavelength than the absorbed waves. We normally think of fluorescence when the object in question absorbs invisible ultraviolet light but emits visible light, such as a white cotton shirt under a blacklight.


Question: Why can the cursor on a PC go off screen to the right and bottom but not to the top or to the left?

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 Why can the cursor on a PC go off screen to the right and bottom but not to the top or to the left?

The point at the end of the cursor is the exact location of the mouse, which means the rest of the cursor icon is not taken into account. So that exact point is at the end of monitor, which appears as if the mouse went off the screen when it really hasn't, as far as the OS is concerned.


Question: Why does light bend at all when slowed by entering a medium? Why is the wave pulled in the certain direction as a whole, rather than keeping a straight course and goofing up the wave form; Is something holding the wave together?

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 Why does light bend at all when slowed by entering a medium? Why is the wave pulled in the certain direction as a whole, rather than keeping a straight course and goofing up the wave form; Is something holding the wave together?

Light is a wave. When a wave enters a new medium at an angle, one side of the wavefront will enter first. This side of the wavefront will have more/less interactions in the material, changing its speed. To keep a continuous waveform with one side of wave changing speed, the angle of light in the new medium changes, refracting the light.


Question: What discoveries did the famous mathematician Euler actually find?

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 What discoveries did the famous mathematician Euler actually find?

Euler did **a lot** for modern mathematics and some of his work is pretty abstract. His work on graph theory, for example, is pretty hard to explain at a low level simply because the topic itself is pretty abstract. It does have many useful application, though, e.g. in computer science, machine learning, and AI. His most famous contribution though, has to be either **the concept of a function**, or **Euler's formula** for complex numbers. Basically, for the first one Euler formalized, named, and established much of the notation we use when we're looking at some property or physical quantity and **how it changes and accumulates over time**. This is the branch of mathematics know as analysis - derivatives and integrals belong in here. The second one provides a way of transferring pretty much any trigonometric expression or relationship to a complex exponential form. This might not sound very astounding but anyone who's done a bit of complex analysis can assure you these complex exponentials are **way easier** to work with. Since pretty much **any** signal, oscillation, or varying quantity or whatever can be modeled with a finite sum of trigonometric functions using Fourier transform, Euler's formulas helps us turn that model into something we can easily manipulate. Basically, it makes a lot of otherwise hard (or even analytically unsolvable) math easy. There's really no understating how much our modern technology depends on this. Pretty much every single piece of electronic you have ever encountered has been facilitated through Euler's work.


Question: can you explain how you don’t know up from down when you are disoriented in the sky? (Specifically trying to understand the KB flight issues and crash). Wouldn’t your body feel going down rapidly?

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 can you explain how you don’t know up from down when you are disoriented in the sky? (Specifically trying to understand the KB flight issues and crash). Wouldn’t your body feel going down rapidly?

No, not necessarily. When you are falling, there isn't really a distinction between up and down besides the air moving past you. Now add that wind may be blowing, and it's very possible that you lose your bearing immediately in freefall. Not to mention that most of the time, people are not in freefall, so any way of orienting yourself might be lost in a stressful situation.


Question: Why can computers not make curves?

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 Why can computers not make curves?

They can. In 2D, [vector graphics]( URL_3 ) can draw curves using [splines]( URL_1 ). If you use a vector graphics program like Adobe Illustrator, or an image format like [SVG]( URL_0 ) you'll see first-hand that you're working with smooth curves that never become jagged no matter how much you zoom in. For 3D graphics, one common technique is called [Constructive Solid Geometry]( URL_2 ). You can zoom into a CSG model as far as you want and it will continue to be smooth. Many CAD programs use a technique called [NURBS]( URL_4 ) to specify curve surfaces like airplane wings and car bodies. But developers often don't use these techniques because it's slower to render. The root cause is that polygons are natural fit for the kind of parallelization a modern graphics card can do, while techniques for dealing with curved surfaces are not. A modern graphics card will have over 1,000 processors working in parallel. A modern graphic pipelines will take the vertices of a 3D model, rotate and scale it in the scene, transform it into triangles, use a texture to paint it to a 2D screen with a z-buffer, then apply various shaders and effects on top of that, all inside the GPU, all at a parallelization factor of 1,000. It's very hard for fancier techniques to compete with that!


Question: Why does a video game cartridge require a battery to store save data, while something like an SD card doesn’t?

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 Why does a video game cartridge require a battery to store save data, while something like an SD card doesn’t?

SD Cards uses flash storage which didn't exist in a viable form back when cartridges where still being used. There were EPROMs and similar erasable rom technology but those tended to be very expensive and had limited rewrites. The most viable and cost effective method was to have some low power DRAM with a battery to keep it running. Even early PDAs and small computing devices (like the Palm and Psion) used battery backed RAM rather than truly permanent storage for their file systems.


Question: How do derivatives work? Can they go bad and how so?

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 How do derivatives work? Can they go bad and how so?

Because they're based on debts, and sometimes debts don't get paid. I loan my brother $10 and he agrees to pay me back $20 in a month. In the meantime, I come to you and say "I have this IOU for $20; if you give me $15 now, then when the $20 is paid it will go to you." I make $5 profit and get to realize that profit right now; you stand to make $5 profit on this $15 investment. (This is the core of what a derivative is). So right now, on your books, it looks like you have $20 worth of assets. But my brother is a lazy junkie, and he spends his $20 on more pot, and never pays you the $20. So this whole time you thought you had $20, instead you have $0. Multiply this out by tens or hundreds of thousands of debts, and when lots of them default at the same time, billions of dollars can go up in smoke just like your $20 did.


Question: How is contamination avoided if you use the same implements to place raw food as for pulling it off the heat?

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 How is contamination avoided if you use the same implements to place raw food as for pulling it off the heat?

If the tongs get heated up, then the bacteria on the tongs cook out too. Metal heats up very easily, more easily than meat because water in meat moderates its temperature. Metal tongs don't have water to moderate temperature. If the tongs don't heat up, then you do get a risk of contamination, but much lower than eating plain raw meat. This is because there are fewer parasites on the outside than on the inside because there's more meat not exposed to the outside than there is meat exposed to the outside.


Question: Why does the government have so-called Classified documents with information hidden from the public? How do they decide when it will be declassified and available as public knowledge?

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 Why does the government have so-called Classified documents with information hidden from the public? How do they decide when it will be declassified and available as public knowledge?

These generally cover stuff they don't want other nations to know: - Where exactly are weapons stored - What are the plans in case someone attacks - How to build certain weapons (e.g. nukes) If these things were publicly available in your nation, another nation could just sent a tourist/spy to get them easily as well. And that would help them plan attacks, or know in what areas you're unlikely to get involved, so they can get away with doing stuff there. A lot of this information gets outdated within a decade or so, because things have changed. Then they can be declassified and often are required to be by law (It can also be very advantageous, because if the stuff is impressive enough then the other nations will think: Wow, if they had _that_ 10 years ago, how impressive must it be now). Now. This was the "official" version. Governments also do things they would prefer their own people didn't know about, because they might disapprove (e.g. [MKULTRA]( URL_1 )). In some nations the government is forbidden from classifying something _only_ because of that (e.g. [Executive Order 13526 Sec. 1.7 (a)]( URL_0 )), but since the stuff is classified, how would you know that they're sticking to it?


Question: How did we measure the distance between the sun and the earth?

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 How did we measure the distance between the sun and the earth?

You have to start before that. The first distance to be measured with any accuracy was that of the Moon. In the middle of the 2nd century BCE, Greek astronomer Hipparchus pioneered the use of a method known as parallax. The idea of parallax is simple: when objects are observed from two different angles, closer objects appear to shift more than do farther ones. You can demonstrate this easily for yourself by holding a finger at arm's length and closing one eye and then the other. Notice how your finger moves more than things in the background? That's parallax! By observing the Moon from two cities a known distance apart, Hipparchus used a little geometry to compute its distance to within 7% of today's modern value. With the distance to the Moon known, the stage was set for another Greek astronomer, Aristarchus, to take the first stab at determining the Earth's distance from the Sun. Aristarchus realized that when the Moon was exactly half illuminated, it formed a right triangle with the Earth and the Sun. Now knowing the distance between the Earth and the Moon, all he needed was the angle between the Moon and Sun at this moment to compute the distance of the Sun itself. Aristarchus estimated this angle to be 87 degrees, not terribly far from the true value of 89.83 degrees. But when the distances involved are enormous, small errors can be quickly magnified. His result was off by a factor of more than a thousand. Over the next two thousand years, better observations applied to Aristarchus' method would bring us within 3 or 4 times the true value. There was still only one method of directly measuring distance and that was parallax. But, finding the parallax of the Sun was far more challenging than that of the Moon. After all, the Sun is essentially featureless and its incredible brightness obliterates any view we might have of the stars that lurk behind. Enter planetary relational distance and the key is the transit of Venus. Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton had shown that the distances between the planets were all related; find one and you would know them all. During a transit, the planet crosses in front of the Sun as seen from Earth. From different locations, Venus will appear to cross larger or smaller parts of the Sun. Kind of like a planetary eclipse. By timing how long these crossings take, James Gregory and Edmond Halley (the comet guy) realized that the distance to Venus (and hence the Sun) could be determined. This presented a small problem though. Venus is only in transit once a generation (though often come in pairs). By the time Halley realized that this method would work, he knew that he was too old to have a chance to complete it himself. So, in hope that a future generation would undertake the task, he wrote out specific instructions on how the observations must be carried out. In order for the end result to have the desired accuracy, the timing of the transit needed to be measured down to the second. In order to have a large separation in distance, the observing sites would need to be located at the far reaches of the Earth. And, in order to ensure that cloudy weather didn't ruin the chance of success, observers would be needed at locations all over the globe. Despite these challenges, astronomers in France and England resolved that they would collect the necessary data during the 1761 transit. Although not all observers were successful (clouds blocked some, warships others), when combined with data collected during another transit eight years later, the undertaking had been a success. French astronomer Jerome Lalande collected all the data and computed the first fairly accurate distance to the Sun: 153 million kilometers, good to within three percent of the true value! By the way, the number we're talking about here is called the Earth's semi-major axis, meaning that it's the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. Because the Earth's orbit isn't perfectly round, we actually get about 3% closer and farther throughout the course of a year. Also, like many numbers in modern science, the formal definition of the astronomical unit has been altered a bit. As of 2012, 1 AU = 149,597,870,700 meters exactly, regardless of whether we find the Earth's semi-major axis is slightly different in the future. Tl;dr: Bunch of guys, over a period of two thousand years, armed with a bit of creative ingenuity and a celestial phenomenon, used high school level trigonometry to figure it out.


Question: Why does salt make you thirsty?

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 Why does salt make you thirsty?

The salt is carried along with your bloodstream. When the blood becomes saltier than normal, it zooms through your veins and arteries. The salt contains sodium. Hence the body detects an imbalance caused by the sodium rich fluids extract more fluids out of the cells. The cell chemical messengers carry the signals of high salt levels and then trigger the brain's thirst center that leads us to grab our glass of water.


Question: I’ve heard people say that a corporation is treated legally as a person, what does this mean?

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 I’ve heard people say that a corporation is treated legally as a person, what does this mean?

"Corporate personhood" means that a corporation is treated in some aspects like a person, but not all. For example a corporation can own property instead of a specific person owning it. Without this legal framework there would be a specific person who owned all the company assets. Similarly a corporation can be taxed as an independent entity, it can be sued as an entity, it can enter into contracts, etc. Without this concept if you wanted to make a supply agreement with a company you would be signing it with a specific person, perhaps the majority owner of the company, and if something changed with company ownership then it also impacted your contract.


Question: how did we manage to discover bread and other pastries?

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 how did we manage to discover bread and other pastries?

Bread is just mushed up grain and water left to sit for a while and then heated. Over time, the process has been refined to produce better results. Pastry follows the same path but adds refined animal fats - probably after people realized how good bread dipped in roasted meat drippings tasted.


Question: Is "planned obsolescence" a real thing with our devices?

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 Is "planned obsolescence" a real thing with our devices?

Sorta. Rechargeable batteries do go bad. They do not last forever, and if phone manufacturers put customers first, batteries would be replaceable. BUT phones nowadays are iP67 or better, which usually means that there’s a glued seal that your average user isn’t going to replace if they swap to a new battery. For your Xbox, chances are that either the thermal paste has bit the dust, or dust has collected in a heat sink. Things get old and stop working, and because consumer devices are much more complicated than they were 30 years ago, more things can (and do) go wrong. They are planned to last a minimum amount of time, so sometimes it feels like things are planned to go wrong, but it’s usually less ‘planned obsolescence’ and more ‘accounting for entropy.’ Usually, at least; there are probably some cases going through class action lawsuits for it.


Question: What do ink blot tests serve to find? Provided they are actually used in actual therapy.

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 What do ink blot tests serve to find? Provided they are actually used in actual therapy.

There are several different cards, specially chosen through testing because of the variety of answers people give to them. When the psychiatrist asks what you see, it's not just about the answer you settle on, but your explanation of what the card looks like to you, and what that reveals about how you think. It's not as simple as being shown a spooky inkblot and you saying it's a bat, and that meaning you have a particular mental health problem. The pictures are chosen to get the patient talking about themselves, and the psychiatrist can then analyse what they say. These tests were overused by people who didn't understand their strengths and weaknesses, leading people to assume it was old pseudoscience. But in fact they are still used in certain circumstances by trained professionals where they can be a useful tool. Most people aren't good at just openly revealing the information a therapist might be looking for, so by discussing what they see in the inkblot, the therapist is getting them to reveal how they think. For a professional, this can be useful to diagnose if the person has disordered or unhealthy thought processes. A similar test I think, is one used by police detectives where they show a suspect a series of sketches, images that have been specially designed to reveal whether someone is guilty. The series goes from unrelated control images to more relevant ones, and the suspect is asked to make up a story about the pictures. What happened that led to this, what's happening in the picture, and what happened next. You might show a murder suspect a series of images that end with an unconscious body in a bed with a man looking guilty or sad nearby. When asked to make up a story, people will draw from their own experiences and give you information about themselves. So an innocent person might interpret the last picture as showing a wife who is sick and her husband worrying about her, but a guilty person might see the scene of a murder and describe the argument that precipitated it. It's about the process of talking about what the subject sees in the image and why, and what that reveals about their thinking. The police test is called Thematic Apperception Test, if you want to read more.